The moon was slipping up over the horizon in its unstoppable ascent. Another thought flitted through the minds of both Soren and Gylfie. How deadly the moon could be! Years before as near hatchlings - when they were both imprisoned not far from this very spot in the canyon lands in St. Aggie’s - they had been forced to remain under the light of the full moon as part of those tyrannical owls’ attempts to moon blink them. Somehow they had survived and now the memory emboldened them.“Hi-yiiiiii!!” Soren gave the shrill shriek of a Barn Owl as he whizzed into the cave with his burning firebrand. A fiery blizzard of snarks crackled through the darkness. He flew in steep, ascending and plunging loops until the cave was criss
Criss-crossed with trails of sparks. The wolves began to howl. Nyra and her owls screeched and flew for their battle claws.
Under the cover of this fiery melee, Gylfie flew with two ignited spruce twigs, one in each talon. Steady, steady, she told herself as directly ahead she saw a wolf’s jaw drop, opening a pink cavern that could easily swallow her whole. She flew right for the throat and crammed one of her flaming twigs down the wolf’s gullet. A tremendous gagging howl ripped through the cave. One twig gone but she still had one left. She wheeled around and saw Nyra come toward her. Nyra had only had time to put on one battle claw. It shot out toward Gylfie, but it merely raked the air as Gylfie darted out of Nyra’s path. Because of the single battle claw Nyra was flying unbalanced. Gylfie realized that this was to her own advantage. She must continue to distract Nyra by leading her away from the niche where the book was hidden. It was Cody’s job to retrieve the book. With her remaining twig, Gylfie feinted and jabbed at Nyra, who was maddened by the little owl. She then wheeled around to come in for a new, angled attack. That was when Nyra spotted Coryn. He was backing a snarling wolf into a corner with a double-fired branch similar to Digger’s.“You!” Nyra screeched.
And then a searing taunt seized the air. It was Twilight bellowing at the top of his lungs.
General Mam, she don’t scare me,she ain’t gonna make me flee.
General Mam, she so dumb,
she don’t know which way to run.
Fly by night, fly by day -
she ain’t gonna get away.
She so ugly, thatfrinkin face,
she ain’t nothing but a fat disgrace.
Disgrace in word, disgrace in deed,
Monster Mam is what I see!
Nyra staggered in flight, then tore off her battle claw and, seizing it like a flail, began to swing it wildly at Twilight. Suddenly, blood and sparks flew through the air. Twilight began to plummet. “No!” An anguished cry tore through the cave.
“Yes! The mighty Twilight falls!” Nyra screeched. There was a blur as Nvra flew toward the back of the cave. “Death to Twilight, killer of Kludd!”
“Stop her!” someone cried out.
The Tunnel, the Tunnel of Despair. They can’t go in! That was all that Digger could think of as he tried, with his double-fired staves, to block the part of the cave that led into the tunnel. Digger was quick but not quick enough. Nyra slipped by him and now three wolves were charging him. He clipped one, setting its tail on fire. But he knew he had failed to block the tunnel.
“I’m after them!” Coryn shouted as he flew by with his fir branch spitting fire.Furious, Digger cracked his long stave on a sharp edge of a rock, splitting it in half so he could fly down the narrow passageways of the tunnel. He had to go. Despite their narrowness, he knew best how to navigate the twisting channels of the cave. Gylfie had been there before, of course, but she was occupied with helping Cody retrieve the book. So he flew in the wake of Coryn, a burning stump of stave in each talon. The defense of blocking the tunnel entrance had failed. This was a battle that was going to be carried deep into the earth.
But perhaps not deep enough. Through a slit in the rock, a filament of moonlight seeped, a sliver of light no bigger than the thread of a plummel.
chapter twenty-threeMysticus!
Strange!“Doc Finebeak muttered as he alighted on a rock outcropping a short distance from the cave where the lighting had erupted.
“‘What?” Madame Plonk asked.
“I had the trail I mean, we’re still on their track but I get the oddest feeling that it has doubled back … back to where we are right here.”
“But how could that be?” Madame Plonk hesitated. She was not sure exactly how to address this handsome, distinguished Snowy. They had been flying together for more than two nights. To call him Doc Finebeak seemed rather formal, and also was a beakful. Fie had not given her any other name., however. “Doc” seemed too casual. Beakie? Too familiar. Madame Plonk blinked and blinked again. Something was visible above a, depression in the very rugged terrain not far ahead. “What in the world is that?” she whispered. In the light of the moon, two bright yellow slashes seemed to float just above the ground.
They rose and winged cautiously closer.
“It’s … it’s …” Doc Finebeak hesitated, then whispered, “a wolf!” There was more movement close to the ground and then a plume of sparks. A volcano, here? Finebeak wondered. It was not a volcano, but the earth seemed to be erupting. Sparks, wolves, and owls spouted from the ground. “A cave battle!” Doc Finebeak exclaimed. Some owls were fighting each other with burning branches, some were chasing the wolves and were brandishing fire as well. The battle was both above and below ground now.“It’s Coryn!” Madame Plonk gasped. “Coryn, our king.” They watched in stunned silence. But now something even more peculiar was happening. Some of the wolves stopped fighting and were gamboling in the moonlight. They were growing larger before Madame Plonk’s and Doc Finebeak’s very eyes. They were becoming enormous.
“Great Glaux!” Madame Plonk exclaimed.
“They need our help!” Doc Finebak said. Four simple little words, but nearly incomprehensible to Madame Plonk. What? What in the world could she possibly do in a situation like this? Me, fight? Fight with fire? Fight with anything?
Ahead of them two Barn Owls rose higher, above the fray - Nyra and Coryn.
Doc Finebeak roared, spread his great wings even wider and powered forward. “I let this female almost kill her own son once. I shall not stand by this time! Never again!”
Me? Madame Plonk thought desperately again. Panic welled in the back of her throat. I’m a fiat owl with a cracked voice. She opened her beak to protest her helplessness. And from it a note came pealing into the night. Madame Plonk had sung many high notes before in her life. High C was an ordinary vocal experience for the singer of the great tree but right now in this moment, under the full moon with the shadow of the Earth creeping in front of it, she hit an unbelievable note. It was not simply high C. It was C-sharp in the eighth octave, the note sometimes referred to by other singers as mysticus. High enough to shatter glass. And now its vibrations shimmered out into the night. The wolves who had been yelping and howling fell to the ground writhing in pain. Chips of mica split off rocks. But the moon was not stayed.Digger flew up. “Plonk, keep singing, but go to Twilight. He’s … he’s dying.’
“What!” she shreed, and a vyrwolf fell dead. Gyllbane and her pack fought on and above the writhing vyrwolves, who seemed vastly more affected by the mysticus than the dire wolves, Coryn and Nyra began to circle each other in flight. The merest sliver of the moon disappeared as the shadow of the Earth began to slide across it. Nyra swung her head toward her son and hissed. “We belong together, Nyroc. We were both hatched on a night such as this. Our power is great and will become greater tonight.”
“That is no longer my name. I am Coryn.”“You are Nyroc and you are nothing without me.” The night was growing dimmer as the Earth’s shadow ate away at the moon, gnawing it like a fanged animal tearing flesh from bone. Nyra held the single battle claw in her two talons, and Coryn knew she could swing and attack with great accuracy. He still had the drops of Twilight’s blood splattered on his face, and he would never forget the sight of the Great Gray plummeting in a fiery red rain of blood and
sparks. Coryn’s own double-fired branch was losing its heat. One end was nearly extinguished. If only the wind would rise and breathe some life into the remaining fire. If only … my life is filled with “if only s.”
Suddenly, Nyra was nearly upon him. She now had the battle claw in her teeth and a flaming branch in her talons. She was advancing upon him, pressing him against a sheer cliff wall. He hovered, backstroking as she continued to advance. He could feel his tail feathers graze the wall. He was alone. There was no Twilight to begin a taunting chant. Where was Soren? That excruciatingly high note continued to scratch the night and the flames of Nyra’s branch were singeing his breast feathers. He could feel their heat. But it was not the heat of flame he felt. What heat was that? It was coming from within him. His gizzard felt on fire.
Nyra suddenly stopped advancing. She blinked. What is this? she thought. My son’s eyes ate burning green, green like those of a wolf but not a vyrwolf The light flowing like a liquid green flame from Coryn’s eyes was overpowering. Deep within that light was a flicker of orange with a lick of blue at its center. But the mysterious light was coming from that ring of green. The orange, the blue, the green - was not that like the Ember of Hoole? Coryn saw Nyra begin to go yeep. Yet he hardly noticed. He just felt this overpowering glow within him. Impossible, he thought. He was here and the ember was far away.The world went black and silence filled the night. The singing stopped. Coryn looked around. There was no one. Nyra had vanished. She was not on the ground or in the air. He flew down to have a closer look. No sign of her. In the back of his mind, there was a fleeting thought: Could she have fallen into one of the openings of the Tunnel of Despair? The wolves, too, seemed to have vanished. Were they in the tunnel as well? Had the earth opened to swallow this evil? May it stay in the tunnel forever, he thought. In the distance close to the ground, Coryn glimpsed a puff of white. He flew toward it. As he flew, he noticed beneath him a carnage of wolves, but so far no bodies of owls, and although he did not recognize the wolves as the ones who had come with them from the Beyond, they certainly did not look like vyrwolves. They were of normal size, their different colors ranging from gray to brown to cream. Was this like that desert battle of the hagsfiends he had read about in the legends when the hagsfiends, finally vanquished, looked no bigger than ordinary crows? As he drew closer, his gizzard stilled. Something awful was ahead. His mind, his heart, his gizzard railed against it. No, not Twilight. Not Twilight…
CHAPTER TWENTY FOURNot Twilight
It wasn’t Twilight. It was Cody. Gyllbane’s sobs racked the night. The young wolf barely beyond being pup lay atop The Book of Kreeth, his throat slashed. “He saved the book;’ Gyllbane sobbed. “He saved it, but for what?” She raised her head. Coryn’s gizzard was wrenched. Here was a mother who truly loved her son.
Near Cody’s body lay Twilight. Madame Plonk was hovering over him, fanning him with her large wings. The Band crowded in close. He had lost a great deal of blood. He seemed shrunken and his gaze wandered deliriously.
“How will we ever get him back to the great tree?” Coryn asked.
“We won’t,” said Digger solemnly. Coryn blinked. Was Digger saying that Twilight would die here? He didn’t understand. This wasn’t like the Band. Not at all like the Band - and where was Soren?
“Where’s Soren? He isn’t hurt, is he?”
“No.” Gylfie stepped forward. “Soren is on his way to
Ambala with Doc Finebeak. They will fly through the rest of the night and through the day.”
“Why?” asked Coryn. But the rest of them really weren’t hearing Coryn’s questions. They were all staring at his eyes as the last telltale reflections of the Ember of Hoole faded from them. “Why?” demanded Coryn more forcefully. “Why, at a time like this, is he flying to Ambala?”Gylfie stepped forward closer now and looked up into the young king’s eyes, still searching for what she thought she had glimpsed. “He has gone to Ambala to seek Slynella and Stingyll.”
“Slynella and Stingyll!” Coryn felt his gizzard stir with happiness because these were the two flying snakes, companions of Mist, who lived with her in the eagle’s nest high in the mountaintops of Ambala. Their poisonous venom could also cure, if properly dispensed from the two prongs of their ivory-and-crimson forked tongues. The snakes had befriended Coryn after he had left his mother and the Pure Ones, when Coryn had been treated as an outcast and forced to flee nearly every forest in the Southern Kingdoms.
If only Twilight could live until they arrived. Soren was a fast flier, and with Doc Finebeak’s free pass through crow territory, perhaps there was a chance. Coryn crouched down on the ground near the Great Gray.
“Twilight,” Coryn whispered. “Live. Please live.” The other owls huddled in closer. They, too, began to speak encouraging words despite their worst fears. Gylfie and Digger were dazed. They had been the Band forever. They had been four. And now with Twilight on the brink of death, and Soren away, we feel.,, Gylfie thought, like an owl with one wing. Halved. Diminished.
For the rest of the night and through the next day they all spoke encouraging words to the Great Gray, and Madame Plonk continued to fan Twilight tirelessly with her enormous white wings. A vole was caught, killed, and its blood squeezed into Twilight’s parched throat. Twilight had been thrashing and restless, but now as tween time approached, he grew quieter. Digger and Gylfie and Madame Plonk glanced nervously at one another. What did this mean? They all knew this was the hour that Twilight had been named for. It was that silvery edge of time that truly was Twilight’s hour. Fie was an owl who could see things that other birds could not when the boundaries between day and night became dim and shapes melted away, when the edges of time and space, of earth and sky, became uncertain. How often had they heard the Great Gray say, “I live on the edge and I love it”? But what edge was that dear, brash owl teetering on now?
Was it truly the edge between being and not being, between sky and glaumora, between life and death? For Twilight to die at twilight, for him to draw his last breath as the evening shadows gathered seemed so wrong. So very wrong, Gylfie thought.
“Look!” Hamish said. “Look to the east.” Two glowing scrolls of green unfurled through a low-flying cloud.“It’s Slynella!” Gylfie shrieked.
“And Stingyll!” Digger gasped in relief. The two flying snakes were flanked by Soren and Doc Finebeak.
“Hang on!” Gylfie crouched close to Twilight’s ear slits. “Hang on! Remember how they saved Soren that time, Twilight?”
The venomous green flying snakes of Ambala, elixirs for life and poisons for death in their forked tongues, could cure the most grievously wounded, but they could not bring back the dead. Gylfie glanced at Gyllbane, who had dragged herself to her feet and looked longingly as the snakes coiled themselves around the barely breathing body of Twilight. Gylfie flew back and lighted down in the ruff of Gyllbane’s neck fur. “I am so sorry, Gyllbane. So very sorry.”
“Can nothing be done?”
“I’m afraid not. The snakes are good but they cannot perform miracles.”
Gyllbane shut her eyes tight. “Cody and I, we escaped
MacHeath and that was a miracle, and our time together seems like another sort of miracle. But it is over.” The sky was growing darker. The stars were breaking out and Gyllbane looked up as if searching for something. Then she rose and walked awav. Gvlfie fluttered off her back, sensing that the wolf needed to be alone for a while, alone and apart. She went over to where the owls were still clustered around Twilight. The snakes’ jaws were stretched so wide open that they appeared to be unhinged. Their forked tongues were flickering in the night like strange pink lightning as they dabbed their venom in the still-bleeding wounds of Twilight. Soren looked up. “I think they’re stanching the flow of blood. He seems better. His breathing is more even. Rut the gash on his port wing is bad. I don’t know how he’ll fly with it ever again.”
A ragged voice cut through the evening air. “I’ll teach myself. I’m from the Orphan Sch
ool of Tough Learning. Flew when I was barely fledged. Nobody taught me then. Had to figure it out for myself. Lived with foxes in Kuneer. Learned how to drill a hole in a tree from woodpeckers in Ambala. I’ll teach myself to fly with this wing, you can bet on it. Now, scram, all of you. I need my sleep. I’ll be ready to fly by tomorrow’s First Black.” He paused and churred. “With a little help from my friends.”
Twilight was ready not by First Black but two days later, which was miracle enough. The Band arranged themselves into a loose rectangle known as a krokenbot, which was a flight vacuum for transporting wounded owls. It was a formation they had learned from the owls of the Northern Kingdoms and it had proven as effective as the more traditional vine hammocks they often brought to the battlefield. The seven owls, the Band plus Doc Finebeak, Coryn, and Madame Plonk, rose now into the night with Twilight in the middle of the rectangle, who gingerly flapped his wings every few seconds. As they flew, Gylfie spun her head back to look for Gyllbane. The beautiful wolf had climbed to the very top of the rock formation known as the Great Horns, which were two peaks that rose like the tufts of a Great Horned Owl into the sky. The wolf had camped there for a night and a day and now into this night. Like a sentry of the night sky, she kept watch on a track of stars that the wolves called the spirit trail, which led to a constellation known to wolves as the cave of souls. She was waiting for the lochinmorrin, when Cody’s spirit would begin to climb the spirit trail to find his peace in the cave of souls. Gyllbane would know it deep within her when it finally happened and she would wait patiently until that moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEOther-ish
Primrose!” Otulissa said, shocked as the tiny Pygmy Owl was shoved into the prison hollow of the great tree. “What in the world are you doing here?” “Blasphemy.” Primrose sighed.