Neither Coryn nor the Band had known that at the very same moment he had spoken these words, his own mother was speaking nearly the same words to Stryker, her top lieutenant. Still, Coryn’s obvious agitation over the coming eclipse coupled with what they now knew of the effect of the full moon on vyrwolves added an acute urgency to her mission.Aside from the navigational information Gylfie was continuously processing as she flew, she kept in mind Digger’s stories of the tunnel. The legend of the place interlocked with its natural history in a remarkable manner. The tunnel, which meandered off into caves of varying sizes, was perforated with thousands of holes, cracks, and crevices through which rainwater seeped. On its journey downward, this water dissolved the rock in its path, leaving these many cave flowers and strange formations. And as the water collected, it turned fizzy and bubbled not with heat but odd gases. The oldest caves and pools were closest to the Earth’s surface. As water continued to leak down, cutting more passageways, the newer caverns were formed. It was in the oldest caves, however, with their burbling gaseous pools, that strange creatures lived. Eyeless fish and shrimp, blind albino crayfish, and all manner of strange spiders. Certain kinds of eels and catfish also found their way from aboveground streams into those of the Tunnel of Despair. And finally there were trogloxenes - cave visitors or cave guests - crickets, bats, rats, and flying insects, and, Gylfie supposed, herself. There was in the Tunnel of Despair an unnatural history as well and it, too, had its source in the pools and lakes. For it was the deep water of certain pools that gave rise to vyrwolves. By drinking deeply from these pools, a wolf- not an ordinary wolf but a vicious or depraved one with a touch of evil - could be transformed into a wolf with the potential
for extraordinary evil, and on nights of the full moon become a vyrwolf.
Gylfie’s mission was to find any trace of these wolves and to locate this pool of potent waters. She was also to explore and see where the tunnel ended. Coryn knew that Nyra had collaborated with MacHeath to try to seize the ember. If they were together again, the destruction they could wreak was gizzard-freezing, unthinkable. With the full moon and its eclipse fast approaching, it was as if heaven and earth were conspiring to inexorably arrange themselves in a deadly design. A dance of death was about to commence.Gylfie was not sure how long she had been flying, but she knew she had covered several leagues with all the twists and turns. She had rarely stopped to rest, but now just ahead there was a welcoming niche and she thought she would fetch up in it. The tunnel, of course, was windless and Gylfie had never felt more cut off from all the things that had meaning for an owl - the billowing thermal drafts of air rising from earth warmed by the sun, the coolness of the night, the moon scattering its silver on her wings, the stars - the dear, dear stars in their familiar transits across the velvet of the night. She slipped into the niche. A flatworm was crawling by and she peeled him off the stone ledge with her tiny talons and popped him in her mouth, then settled in for a short snooze.
It was the smell that first woke her - deeply rank, wet, wet fur! And they say owls cant smell! And then she became aware of a loud panting. I’m near! she thought. She shut her eyes tight and told herself not to panic. I must stay calm. I must find out as much as I can. She stepped out onto the ledge. Her talons clicked against the stone. She. froze. She would have to fly. And she wasn’t the most silent of fliers. Still, it would be more silent than trying to creep up on them with her talons striking the rock surfaces. She flew close to the wall. Suddenly, there was light! Gylfie blinked. A moon hung in the darkness of the tunnel. For a second she felt completely disoriented and faltered in flight, recovering just before colliding with a stone flower. She lighted down. The moon? Impossible!And then she realized that through an opening in the cave’s roof the moon was reflected in a large pool of water. Still water. All the pools she had seen so far were fizzing with tiny bubbles, but not. this one. And it was not only the moon she saw reflected in its dark surface but the faces of a half dozen wolves.
“Drink, drink deeply,” one wolf counseled. “It has been a whole moon cycle since last we met to drink of the vyr. Our strength has waned but it will come back. Yes,
it will!” As the wolf said this, he lifted his head and swung it in Gylfie’s direction. His eyes hung in the blackness like two yellow flames. Gylfie felt a coldness in her gizzard. Her wings drooped. It was like every fyngrot she had imagined when they had read the legends. This was a hag-wolf if there ever was one. She wilfed and grew thinner. She heard in the distance a fluttering of wings, large wings. And then there was a second moon! A scarred moon. There was only one owl with such a face. Nyra!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONERace the Moon
So you’re sure, Gylfie, that the cave over there is where you would have emerged if you had been able to go to the very end of the tunnel?” Soren cocked his head in the direction to which he was referring. The owls had flown to the canyonlands as soon as Gylfie had reported back to them at their prearranged meeting place in the Shadow Forest.
“Absolutely.” The tiny Elf Owl nodded firmly. “Somehow I managed to fly out of it while the wolves were still drinking at that pool just before the tunnel widened into the cave. No one saw me.
“And this is the cave of Kludd’s Final ceremony?” Twilight looked at Coryn.
“It is. And just over there in those cliffs beyond the next ridge is the stone hollow where I was raised.” Coryn swiveled his head around. This place was filled with bad memories. His First Flight ceremony. His mother’s rage, his own despair over his friend Phillip, the terrible fear when he had experienced his first visions in the fires of his father’s Final ceremony and realized that he had been lied to since the moment of his hatching.
It seemed an uncanny twist of fate that, the Tunnel of Despair had ended in the very same cave in which Kludd had been killed. The Band, Coryn, Gyllbane, and the other wolves who traveled with her were gathered on a ridge in the canyonlands. Gyllbane and the wolves she could muster had traveled in a byrrgis at a speed they called “press paw”- not as fast as attack or chase speed but fast enough to cover long distances quickly.It had been hard to get more wolves, for it was mating season and the clans were scattered. But Hamish had known where to find Duncan MacDuncan and his lieutenant. Gyllbane had prevailed upon Fitzmore McFang, who had kindly taken her in after she had left the MacHeaths. McFang had come with his powerful mate, Adair, who was as fearless as she was strong. Their son, Fitzy, had also come. In addition to these, there were three from the MacNamara clan, a clan traditionally headed up by a female always called Namara. And because MacNamara she-wolves were known for their toughness and great intelligence, males vied for them. But only one male would be chosen and, contrary to all custom, he would drop his birth clan name and assume that of
MacNamara, So Namara came with her mate Cormag and their son. Airiila, and daughter. Mo rag. In all, there were a dozen wolves. But they were dire wolves - not vyrwolves. It remained to be seen if it would be an even match,
“Are the vyrwolves all in the cave now?” Twilight whispered.“I think so,” Namara answered. She lifted her nose. “The scent marks are old out here. They have not been out for some time,”
The owls and the wolves knew that they had to strike before the moon rose, but cave battles were difficult. Even in a large cave, space would be tight if they fought with fire. And they did plan to do just that. There were other considerations that made the cave far from ideal: It led into a long, long tunnel. The last thing they wanted was for the vyrwolves to scatter down the intricate maze of passages. They had to assume that the vyrwolves and Nyra and her remnant Pure Ones knew the terrain of the tunnel better than they did. That meant that Nyra and the wolves would be fighting on familiar territory. This would give them a distinct advantage. But if they rushed them in the cave - before the moonlight shone on them - the wolves would still be just wolves and not vyrwolves. For that transformation, they needed to expose themselves to the moon. It was a very hard call to make.
They say
owls cant smell Stryker thought to himself. But he could. He could smell the fetid stink of these wolves to whom his commander, General Mam, had allied them. There was no choice, really. Their own ranks had been shattered, and he had to admit these wolves had powers — powers that Nyra felt were akin in some mysterious ways to the powers that she hoped to attain. She was saying the words again now.
“The book, the transforming waters, these ashes of my dear Kludd.” She ran her beak through the ashes and seemed to inhale them as if savoring their scent. “These ashes, my friends” - she swiveled her head to look at the congregation of wolves and remaining Pure Ones - “are the key to what the ancients called nachtmagen. With them, you will see, I shall transform my son - and, with that, the ember shah be ours. ““Does the book say that. General Mam?” Stryker asked.
“You doubt me, Stryker?” It was as if a stream of yellow heat glared from Nyra s eyes,
“Never, my general,” He raised his right talon in the salute that Nyra had recently begun insisting upon when being addressed. It seemed that since their numbers had been depleted, Nyra had become increasingly obsesssed with these formal gestures indicating acknowledgment of her exalted state. She greatly admired the elaborate codes of conduct that the wolves required between the lower and the higher ranks and wished that owls could scrape the ground as effectively as the wolves did when they cowered on their bellies in front of MacHeath, rolling their eyes back until they flashed white. But this was simply not how owls were constructed.
She lowered her voice and spoke in a close, intimate tone. “You see, my dear Stryker, I feel a kinship with this ancient bird named Kreeth.” She would not admit that the words from the book were hard for her to read. The diagrams and the pictures were really enough. She sensed their meaning. “I understand the science of nachtmagen. These are deep things that only a chosen few can comprehend. And Kreeth and I are among them. Or she was ..Stryker, though not very bright, was mulling over some troubling thoughts. The Pure Ones’ entire philosophy was based upon Barn Owls being the most superior breed of all owls. And yet this Kreeth was not even a true owl. She was a hagsfiend, a strange cross between owl and crow. He himself had encountered those ragtag remnants that came like dark wisps of bad dreams as one flew through the night. Their hauntings, although startling, were harmless. But here was Nyra, claiming kinship with an archfiend from some distant past who was as far from pure as one could imagine. He dared not question her, though. No, never. He regarded her now, as she once again ran her beak through the ashes, and observed that there seemed to be a darkening of the white feathers at the edges of her face.
Always just before a battle there were those quiet thoughts one had - random notions that often had nothing to do with the attack, with strategy, or even with premonitions of death. Soren was experiencing such thoughts as he perched on the ridge and swiveled his head toward his nephew. Coryn appeared to almost bristle with readiness and galIgrot for this fight. But would he be strong enough to face his mother? To fight her to the death if need be? To kill her? Soren vowed that he would spare Coryn that horrendous task. He would kill Nyra. A son, even the son of one as terrible as Nyra, should not be required to fight his mother to the death.How odd, Soren thought, that it had been his intention to set out on this journey with his nephew to distract him from his obsession with Nyra and his own haggish-ness. Instead he must face her. Then for perhaps the thousandth time, Soren wished that Otulissa were here. The Spotted Owl was a superb strategist. He closed his eyes and tried to think of how she would have planned the attack. Once again he felt that deep twinge in his gizzard. Why is it that every time I think of Otulissa I feel something like dread?
It was a race with the moon. When the wolves came out under the full-shine moonlight they would become monsters. But with the eclipse, would they lose their power or would a worse one arise? If Soren could have flown up and stopped the moon he would have. He looked up and blinked at it. Two great forces were coming together on their inevitable course. Would he try if he could to stop the moon or stop the Earth? Stay the night or wish for the day? For it was the night of a lunar eclipse when the Earth in its orbit would come between the moon and the sun. He imagined that first bite that the Earth’s shadow would take from the moon as the eclipse began. He imagined … and in that instant his dream came back. The slits in the ether veil! The black feathers piercing through. “Don’t wait for me!” That voice — it was Otulissa’s! “Go! Go!”Soren turned to Coryn. “We gonow” Behind them in a shallow trough in the rocks were dozens of smoldering coals. Nearby were neatly stacked dried twigs and limbs gathered from the Shadow Forest. When Gylfie had met up with the Band and the wolves in the Shadow Forest and given her report, with the help of the wolves the Owls had begun to gather their arsenal, for they knew that trees were sparse in the canyonlands, especially since the Battle of the Great Burning. From the Beyond they had brought coals in their botkins and buckets.
Coryn watched nervously as the Band chose their weapons - two light spruce twigs with fine tufts of needles on their tips for Gylfie; a larger limb for Twilight, who could handle the heft of the well-seasoned oak branch that would burn slowly and maintain a glowing, fiery tip. Soren chose a pliant limb from a fir tree. He knew firs, and this particular limb had an abundance of needle clusters. It would be the most strategic weapon of all. With his superb flying skills, Soren would be able to clear a path as if he were brandishing a comet. Digger, who had the strongest legs of any of them, would carry a double-fired birch limb. With flames at each end of the branch, he would grip the limb from the middle and wield it like a. stave. After selecting the right weapon, with a near ritualistic serenity each owl would dip it into the coals to ignite it. The Band had all been tested in battle. But Coryn, though he had survived more than his fair share of tests of courage, had never really been tried in full battle. And although he was perhaps one of the greatest colliers who ever lived he had never fought with fire. How the young
king envied the four owls of the Band their confidence, their single-mindedness, their unswerving determination. From the smallest to the largest, they seemed so resolute, so ready. And yet who had more at stake than himself? Fie was about to face the mother who once tried to kill him. He was the king of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. But did he have Gad that elusive spirit he had read, about in the legends? Hoole’s mother. Queen Siv, was said to have had it Coryn suspected that his uncle Soren possessed Ga’. Fie looked, at his uncle now as he stepped forward to ignite his branch. Coryn would be next. Would something fire within him to steady his nerves, to trim his gizzard for this battle? Yes, he had retrieved the ember, but did he have Ga? That, was the question.
chapter twenty -twoThe Book, the Battle, and the Band
There were two thoughts in their minds as they flew with their burning branches toward the cave: Don’t let the wolves or Nyra leave the cave and don’t let them go deeper into the tunnel. That was their strategy, coupled with the element of surprise. There was one other thing that they had to accomplish, and indeed, this was the entire purpose of the attack: to take The Book of Kreeth. Gylfie had managed to see where Nyra had put the book. It was in a niche just above the fire pit where Kludd’s bones had been burned. The ashes of those bones were still there in a small pile encircled by stones - an altar to a tyrant.
And now, deep in. the bowels of the earth, Nyra perched near the tyrant’s ashes, hoping with Kreeth’s book of charms and spells, to re-create herself as a hags-fiend and ultimately regain and re create her son. And then - the ember.
Outside the cave the twelve wolves were crouching on top of boulders, ready to pounce should a vyrwolf charge from the cave. The Band had remembered how in the legends Hoole had used the wolves and the intense green light of their eyes to cut through the fyngrot of the hagsfiends. If the wolves in the cave escaped into the light of the full moon, could this weapon of green light be used now? Would it work? They all hoped that there would be no need to find out, that the vyrwolves would be c
ontained within the cave and be brought to a quick end.