“It’s owl!” Primrose said.
“It can’t be! It’s blue!”
“I know an owl feather when I see one and so do you.” The tiny Pygmy Owl stomped her talons on the ground. “If this isn’t an owl feather, I’ll eat my trousers.” Eglantine stepped closer and peered at the bright blue feather. “It certainly does look like an owl feather. But blue!”
“It’s a median port wing covert,” Primrose said. “But how do you explain this color?”
“A kraal?” Eglantine looked up and blinked.
“Kraals this far south? Besides, this isn’t paint. This is real—a real, natural color.” Kraals were the pirate owls of the Northern Kingdoms who painted their plumage gaudy colors. Primrose delicately extricated the feather from the thorn.
“It’s a molted feather. I mean, it doesn’t look as if it was torn off in a skirmish or anything,” Eglantine said, as Primrose dropped the feather on the ground so they could better examine it.
“Yes, but it’s really weathered—right down to its barbs,” Primrose said. The barbs and barbules were the minuscule interlocking hooks that ran diagonally down a feather to make its surface smooth and functional. These had been worn away, leaving a fuzzy surface to the feather.
“This feather has had a long flight.” Eglantine was bent over, examining it closely. There was a queasy squirm deep in Eglantine’s gizzard. She sighed. “Well, standing here on the ground isn’t going to get us any closer to Bell. But maybe we should try and follow any signs of this blue owl and see if the track might lead to Bell…,” she paused, “…in some way.” Poor Bell, she thought. Where could that little owl be? Eglantine herself had once been a lost owlet. A victim of the Great Downing. Twice owl-napped, first by the Pure Ones, and the second time by St. Aggie’s. However, she managed to survive. She knew all too well the frightening feelings that a wounded, flightless owlet could experience when it was “ground bound,” the countless hours looking up and wondering if she would ever be part of that sky world.
Eglantine and Primrose were still in the middle of Ambala and had to fight an increasing headwind as they flew east. They had promised themselves that they would fly at least as far as the desert. But the two owls were growing very tired. This was their fifth night of searching. What few wind tracks were left had begun to feel the same. With each wing stroke forward it seemed that the easterly wind pushed them back half a stroke. But how could they stop? This was Bell, precious Bell. Eglantine’s niece. Soren’s dear little daughter.
In the easternmost region of Ambala, Bell waited for the blue owl. Striga had been gone for the better part of the night on his hunting expedition. Bell had to admit that this blue owl was not the most proficient hunter. The bodies of mice and voles and squirrels that he brought back were badly mangled, as if he had very little experience. At one time, he had said something about how he had led a rather vain life. “One of luxury and impracticality” was how he described it. “Until you were a Glauxian Brother, that is?” Bell offered, and he merely nodded, replying, “I missed those early years when one learns the basics.”
Striga cautioned Bell about what he called false Glauxes of luxury and refinement, and the pitfall of vanity. He even scolded her once when, bored with her days of confinement, she had strung some red berries onto one of his molted feathers. The berries were from a stash a squirrel had left behind in the hollow. Bell had thought the bright red against the blue of his feathers looked quite pretty, but Striga was completely scornful of what he called such “stupid and outrageous vanity.” He threw the thing out of the hollow.
Nonetheless, he felt a great affection for the little Barn Owl. When she slept, he often watched her. For Striga, she represented the vigorous, wholesome life he had yearned for but never had. In the days and nights of caring for her, putting her needs before his own, and suffering the privations of life in the rustic hollow, a hope dawned in his gizzard: Maybe this little owl could be his redemption. Maybe he could do more than just wait for the completion of the cycle of his fate. They said there were no shortcuts. But there were—there had to be. He was a good owl now, no matter what he had been before. He could change his fate. This was his chance.
Other owls had mourned their existence at Panqua Palace, Striga reasoned further. But that was all they did: mourn. They had not become sickened, literally sickened, by the excess as he had: the jewels, the rubies, the sapphires, the constant preening of their glorious feathers, feathers as brilliant as the jewels that imprisoned them. While those owls had grown fat and ungainly, had he not lost weight? While their feathers grew long, had he not cut his? It was a sign that he was different. That his spirit was more refined. He knew that some force had chosen him, some force even greater than that of fate had dared him to change his destiny. So he had defied them. He had escaped, borne by the Zong Phong, into a new world. And now this little owlet, whom he had saved, confirmed to him that he was chosen for something else, something grander than the antiquated notions that governed the owls of Panqua, notions that they merely subscribed to and had no power to change. Well, he had power. And his mission must now be to warn others of the deadliness of excess, luxury, and the vanities. This was his duty, his sacred duty, and by fulfilling it, he would free himself.
But he was no fool. He still had much to learn. And why not, given the life he had led? It was embarrassing that this little owlet who called herself Bell knew so much more about hunting than he did. Earlier today when he had brought back an especially mangled mouse, she had asked if he had lost altitude too fast at the beginning of his kill spiral. The kill spiral is the plunging dive that an owl makes as it closes in on prey. Striga was completely ignorant of such a maneuver. “Kill spiral?” He had blinked. Bell explained in more detail.
“Yes, it’s important to keep it very tight. You do it by using your wing tip as a pivot. You drill the air. That’s the expression.” Bell had nodded authoritatively.
“Sounds complicated.”
“No, not really. Takes some practice. But I learned it really fast, faster than my two sisters, and I’m the smallest of the lot.”
Bell, too, remembered the hunting tips she’d given Striga earlier. Her eyes had brimmed with tears when she mentioned her sisters. Now, as he was off hunting again, she felt herself getting all weepy just thinking about them. She sniffed and tried to think of something else to pass the time until Striga returned from the hunt. Imagine, she thought, me teaching a grown-up owl about the kill spiral. Blythe and Bash won’t believe it! A sob welled in her gizzard. She swallowed. Would she ever see them again? And Mum and Da? Her wing felt a lot better. Maybe she could try just a short flight. A teeny-weeny one. She stepped tentatively out of the hollow. I’ll start with branching. Just the way I did when I was little in the days leading up to my first flight ceremony.
She hopped to the nearest branch. Then hopped again and again.
Only two trees over from where Bell was testing her strength, in the thick, gnarled branches of an oak, an owl with weathered, ragged wings and a huge moon face watched the little owl’s progress. “Will you look at that!” Nyra whispered to herself. Amazing, she thought. Same speckled pattern around the fringes of her facial disk. Same tilt to her eyes. That’s Soren’s chick—I’ll stake my gizzard on that.
There was no time to think. One minute Bell was hopping from branch to branch. She paused to waggle her port wing a bit and was thinking that it was still a bit sore when a horrendous glaring disk appeared in front of her from out of nowhere. It looked as if the moon had fallen from the sky. The thought flashed through her mind, It’s the hagbogey! Her gizzard cringed and twisted painfully. She yelped, then felt talons wrap around her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Ember, the King, and an Owlet!
The blue owl had been eager to show Bell the vole. He had successfully executed the kill spiral just as she had described it and was very proud of the prey he now gripped in his talons as he approached the hollow. She was a sweet little owl.
They could both learn from each other—he about hunting and she about the dangers of being seduced by silly vanities. “Bell,” he called out as he alighted on the branch just beneath their hollow. “Bell,” he called again. How odd, he thought. He poked his head into the hollow. It was empty. “Bell!” And then before he could think, something swooped down upon him. Two white faces. Barn Owls! he thought. They must be Bell’s parents.
The owls had appeared out of nowhere. There was one on either side of him, seizing each of his wings. Their talons didn’t look like talons, more like long claws. They were shiny and caught the glint of the stars.
“I tried to help her. Don’t hurt me. She’s fine, isn’t she? She wanted to get back to you as soon as she could,” the blue owl wailed.
“Shut your beak. You’re coming with us,” said the larger of the two Barn Owls.
“But I don’t understand…You’re her parents, aren’t you?” Then Striga became so agitated that the Hoolian he had acquired since rescuing Bell seemed to vanish. He lapsed into Jouzhen.
“What in hagsmire is he babbling about, Stryker?” the other Barn Owl said.
A third owl appeared. Not white, and the legs were long, featherless, and very strong. He stormed into the hollow and bellowed at the Barn Owls holding Striga. “Everything under control here, Lieutenant Stryker and Corporal Wort?”
“Yes, Sergeant Tarn,” the two Barn Owls barked in unison.
“Good. General Mam has flown on with the little one. She can handle the owlet on her own, but sent me back to help with this one. We’re to take him back—in one piece. General Mam has some questions to ask this…this thing.” He looked at the blue owl with contempt. The Burrowing Owl, Sergeant Tarn, and the two Barn Owls, Lieutenant Stryker and Corporal Wort, had been on this stakeout for the past three days, observing the blue owl and the little one who General Mam felt sure was the daughter of Soren. They had planned a two-phase strike. Phase one—Operation Owlet; phase two—Operation Blue Owl. First, they waited until the blue owl had gone hunting, at which time Nyra and the Burrowing Owl went in to snatch the owlet while Stryker and Wort flew lookout for the return of the blue owl. When the blue owl came back, Stryker and Wort hit. It was always better to attack while the target was in a confined space.
“Tether him, will you, Sergeant?” Stryker said. “Wort, you fly starboard. I’ll fly port; Tarn, the rear. It should work. Wind’s down. We’ll take a straight-on route to the desert. Nice thermals coming off the sand. Should be an easy flight.”
They had not been flying long, however, when the three owls realized that the blue owl was quickly tiring despite the warm thermal updrafts helping them.
“What’s going on with this blue idiot? He can hardly fly,” Corporal Wort muttered.
“I’m not used to it,” the blue owl whined.
“Not used to it? Where you from?” Stryker demanded.
Striga clamped his beak tightly shut. Stryker did not feel like roughing him up right now. It would only make him slower. General Mam wanted him back in one piece, as she had said. She had very persuasive methods of making owls talk. He was sure she would get the information she needed.
The blue owl looked down. The forest was growing thinner. The tree line became fainter and receded behind them. The ground below turned hard and scrabbly, dotted with a few clumps of dusty low-growing shrubs. There were no cliffs, no canyons, no trees, and it was hard to imagine where an owl might live. Perhaps there were caves. He found himself thinking almost longingly of the place from which he had escaped, the Dragon Court of the Panqua Palace.
No! No! he scolded himself. He would never go back. He felt a quickening in his gizzard, and a strength began to flow through his hollow bones. But he must disguise it; they must continue to think of him as a weak, distracted, babbling owl. He would tell them nothing, but he would save that little Barn Owl. His life, which had not been a life at all but rather a living death, finally had meaning, purpose.
Eglantine dived toward the bush, carefully avoiding its sharp thorns, and plucked the feather from it. “This is Bell’s feather. I’d recognize it anywhere. She has that russet brown in the fringe feathers of her face just like her mum. And look, the trail is absolutely clear—blue feathers mixed with a Barn Owl’s. That blue owl must have snatched her.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Primrose said. “Look at these broken feather shafts. I don’t think Bell could have fought back to the point of breaking this owl’s feathers. I think the Blue Owl might be a victim, too.”
“Well, one thing is clear. They seem to be heading for the desert. I don’t think we have any choice but to continue,” Eglantine said, further examining the feathers.
“Should we send for reinforcements?” Primrose asked.
“I think we have to find out more first,” Eglantine concluded.
Being experts in search-and-rescue and familiar with tracking techniques, both owls were not only experienced in uncovering tracks but in covering up their own. Stealth was part and parcel of any rescue or tracking operation. Whatever owls had abducted Bell and the blue owl had done their work in the sloppiest manner imaginable. In fact, as soon as they had come across the hollow where the owl-napping took place, it was simple to follow the track. Eglantine and Primrose were not sloppy owls. They would fly low but fast. If necessary they would use camouflage. Although few trees grew in this desert, there were plenty of scrubby bushes.
They flew a dark sky for the better part of the night, as the moon was still young in the newing. The track of the abductors had extended far into the southeastern section, avoiding the more heavily populated regions of the desert, where there were scores of Burrowing Owl settlements as well as cactus hollows for smaller owls.
“We need to get higher and look down. I can see the trail clearly. Great Glaux, these fellows are messy fliers. There’s tumble feather all over the place,” Eglantine said. The downy underfeathers were only shed if the owl was a noisy flier, which also meant the owl was a messy flier. She felt a slow dread creeping through her gizzard. The Pure Ones were just such fliers—strong, fast, and incredibly sloppy. Eglantine and Primrose clawed against a stiff headwind to a higher altitude but then found a buoyant warm thermal that gave them a good boost. Here they virtually soared, never having to flap a wing as they examined the landscape below.
“I’m seeing a pattern,” Eglantine said as they flew over the easternmost region of the Desert of Kuneer. “Look at those humps in the sand. I’ll wager there’s a mess of burrows down there, more or less connected.”
“If Digger were here, he’d know how to get in.”
“Well, he’s not,” Eglantine said tersely. “We’re going to have to figure this one out for ourselves.”
“Look,” Primrose said. “There’s an owl flying low and it’s heading for that rock.”
Eglantine, however, had heard something even before Primrose had spied this low-flying owl. She was angling her head this way and that as they flew. Tilting her ear slits, she scanned what was quickly becoming a narrow vector from which vibrations were issuing. She listened as only a Barn Owl can. Barn Owls were known for their extraordinary hearing abilities, superior to those of most owls. She had already sifted through a hodgepodge of irrelevant noises, from the slitherings of a rattlesnake through the sand to the gasp of a rabbit as a desert bobcat sank its fangs into its back. She could even hear the snap of that rabbit’s spine as it was torn apart, the trickle of its blood, the weakening pulse, and then the crunching of the bobcat’s teeth. But through all this, she heard something much more alarming and familiar. Not words yet, but a vibration, a tone that she recognized.
“She’s down there!” Eglantine whispered as she began a banking turn. Primrose followed in Eglantine’s wind groove as she carved the turn.
“Who?”
“Nyra.”
“Great Glaux!” Primrose’s gizzard clenched. “But if we can hear her, she might be able to hear us.”
“Doubtful. The Pure O
nes listen as sloppily as they fly. Besides, we’re in the better position. These rocks are streaked with long fissures. They are great for transmitting sound above the ground. I have an idea…a plan.” They alighted on a rock not far from the one toward which they had seen the low-flying owl heading.
The plan was not spoken aloud. To be very safe, Eglantine reverted to a series of signs—wing signing, it was called. By making various subtle tilts and shifts of their wings, the Guardians could communicate when they did not want their voices heard. It had been developed by the Band and Otulissa after they had become members of parliament. For years as youngsters, the Band and Otulissa had eavesdropped on the parliament by “going to the roots,” as they called it. Once they became members of the parliament they feared that others might go to the roots and eavesdrop on them in turn, so the Band developed this silent way of communicating, which they taught to the other members as they joined the parliament. They only used it when they had to discuss the most sensitive issues and then adapted it to be used in other situations as well. Fortunately for Eglantine, these rocks possessed a powerful resonance, and with her acute hearing, the sound from beneath was transmitted with reasonable clarity.
“He can’t hold out much longer…he’ll talk. Tarn, do you have that serum from the healer?”
Primrose and Eglantine stood just under a ledge of the rock on the opposite side from where they had seen the owl enter. The words came through with increasing clarity. Other sounds came through as well, agonizing ones of an owl gasping in pain, and then the soft mewlings of dear little Bell. Glaux knew what they were doing to her!
“I repeat, where are you from, blue owl? We want to know. Did you come from where we think the Chaw of Chaws went? My scouts followed them to the edge of the Beyond to the sea. Do you know Soren?” There was a loud wail as Bell heard her father’s name. And Eglantine herself almost yelped. She and Primrose were no longer the only ones who knew where the Chaw of Chaws had gone. Nyra knew. Maybe this blue owl was from this new kingdom? What else could explain his peculiar plumage of blue and sapphire hues? Such feather colors were unknown in the Five Kingdoms.