The River of Wind (10 page)

F
ar away in the Desert of Kuneer, an Elf Owl poked his head from the cavity in the cactus. He saw the moonfaced owl and a small division of her followers flying overhead in a westerly direction.
Good!
he thought.
They’re gone. Now I can get to work.
Eglantine and Primrose had not been the only owls listening that night to the voices that had filtered up though Nyra’s burrow. Cuffyn the desert healer had also been listening, but from another place.

The Elf Owl was prodigiously intelligent. Not only was he a fine and esteemed herbalist and healer, he had learned the ways of the Burrowing Owls, who were numerous in the Desert of Kuneer, and despite his small size, he had become an excellent excavator and digger of tunnels, very small tunnels that were nearly undetectable. He had become deeply suspect of these Barn Owls who had arrived in Kuneer and seemed to be growing in numbers with each passing cycle of the moon. He harbored a
particular resentment for the one called Stryker. That brute had roughed him up to obtain some of his precious gizzard tonic. Shortly after that, he began his surveillance activities and had made the exquisite network of tunnels that led to the central burrow of these Barn Owls. He had taken to the tunnels two nights before when he saw yet another small Barn Owl being flown in. Owl-napping, that’s what they were up to! Cuffyn was convinced of this. Shortly after that, he saw the strangest sight of all—a large blue owl being air-dragged to the central hollow. He quickly took to his tunnels and made his way toward the central burrow to listen in.

While Eglantine and Primrose had taken off at the first mention of Nyra’s plan to go to the strange world to follow the Chaw of Chaws, Cuffyn had stayed on and heard the agonizing cries of the blue owl as they attempted to extract additional information from him, and then heard his dazed ramblings as they forced a serum upon him. Cuffyn blinked.
Racdrops! They stole that from me! How did they know about it? These owls are beyond belief!
He listened carefully as the blue owl spoke in a slow, slurred voice.

“At the farthest edge to the north in the land of volcanoes, you must go to the place where the water from the sea of vastness swirls into an inlet. Fly there, for that is the only way to the Zong Phong—which will take you to
the Middle Kingdom. But it is hard to find. When you leave the coast behind, fly due west out to sea, to tomorrow, and then find the windkins to the Zong Phong…To tomorrow, that is the first part of the journey.”

“What do you mean—to tomorrow?” Nyra rasped.

“To tomorrow. You’ll know…you’ll know. There is a hole in the wind…when day turns to black…the death of day…then up the windkins and into the central trough of this river of air. It will swiftly take you to the other side. Then down, down, down the windkins to the other side. Follow the qui lines of the sage. They will lead you down…down…down…”

The drugged ramblings of the blue owl raised more questions than they answered. But once again Sergeant Tarn proved himself of invaluable service. He fetched a rather tattered map of the Beyond that he had kept from his days as a hireclaw seeking Rogue smiths who made weapons in the land of volcanoes.

“I think he means to go here.” The Burrowing Owl pointed his talon at a region north of the volcanoes.

“But there is nothing there,” Nyra said.

“It doesn’t show on the map because it is far from the volcanoes where the Rogue smiths set their forges. It’s just barren to the north, few ever fly there. But the vast sea
scrapes the edges. I think this is where we will find the inlet he speaks of.”

“But what about this flying to tomorrow?” Stryker asked.

“That I am not sure of,” Tarn said.

“And the windkins?” Nyra asked.

“They must lead to this very swift current, I would guess a very high-altitude wind.”

“Get set to fly before the moon rises,” Nyra barked at her owls. “And let me make one thing perfectly clear: This mission is a slink melf. That means we go in not with a division or a regiment—not even a platoon or a squadron. We go in light, armed but low in the number of owls. This is an assassination—the targets are the so-called king and his uncle. They are our immediate goals. There are not many Guardians—just the Chaw of Chaws. Our scouts saw them heading across the Beyond on a northwest course. Now we know for sure. An entire division of owls flying over Kuneer, through Ambala, and all the way to the Beyond will rouse suspicion. We do not want to rouse suspicion. Understood?”

“Yes, General Mam.”

“We will fly with eighteen owls including yourselves.” She nodded at Wort, Stryker, and Tarn. “And one other
thing.” She looked directly at Lieutenant Stryker as she spoke. “I would like to announce a promotion.” Stryker swelled up with excitement. “I am promoting Sergeant Tarn to Captain.”

“What?” Stryker gasped.

“You have a problem with that, Stryker?”

“Uh…no…uh…b-b-but…”

“But what?”

“Nothing, General Mam.”

“Oh, one other thing.” She paused and looked at the officers gathered around her. “The owl who kills Soren, or the king, will win an immediate promotion to adjunct general.”

There was a gasp among the owls. Not since the time of Kludd had there been an adjunct general, and at that time the AG had been Nyra herself. In Nyra’s mind, there was more than just the death of these two owls at stake. With them gone, the Band would weaken, and when the Band weakened, the Chaw of Chaws weakened, and when the Chaw of Chaws weakened, the Great Ga’Hoole Tree would be vulnerable, and the way to the ember, the powerful Ember of Hoole would be clear. It was the ember she wanted, that she lusted for. With it, all the kingdoms of owls would be hers.

The owls wasted no time. They flew off immediately
and left a light guard behind with the blue owl and the little Barn Owl.

Cuffyn blinked as he listened to all this. The brutality of these owls, their evil, knew no bounds. Well, he was a healer, not a fighter. His life had been dedicated to helping the weak through the herbal arts. And he was determined to help this strange blue owl and the little owlet. He would not countenance owl-napping. He did not dare open flight right now, but returned through the network of tunnels to his cactus.
Bingle juice
, he thought,
laced with a heavy sleeping draft. That’ll do it.
He knew these owls drank spirits when the top lieutenants were away, especially the old one called Ifghar and his snake, Gragg. They were loyal to this moonfaced owl mostly out of fear, but discipline lapsed when she was away with her high-ranking officers. They were small of gizzard, the lot of them, and had no imagination. Cuffyn might be a quarter their size, but he could outwit them, and that was exactly what he planned to do.
Desert trash, the lot of them!

The blue owl blinked his eyes open. “Striga, are you all right?” Bell asked.

“What did I say? What did I say?” he asked urgently, though his voice was shaky.

“Oh, nothing much. I mean it was kind of hard to understand. Something about flying west. I think you meant to the Beyond and the Unnamed Sea and finding a hole in the wind.”

“I said that? I said all that?!”

“Yeah, but it sounded like nonsense. You know, like it really didn’t mean anything.”

“But it does,” he said frantically. “It does.”

“Hey, shut up in there.” A Sooty Owl stuck his head in. “You want another whack?” Bell cowered in the corner. The blue owl wilfed, then slowly swiveled his head toward Bell.
How could I be so weak? How could I have said all that?
And then feeling a deep twinge in his gizzard, he thought,
And how could I have let this dear little owl down? I want to save something. I know it is my phonqua to save something. I am a good owl. I am a good owl
…

He turned toward Bell and blinked. “Come here, little one. These desert nights are cold, aren’t they? Tuck under my wing.”

Bell nestled under the blue wing. “Your feathers are so long. Don’t you ever molt?”

“Very seldom. They just keep growing.”

“No wonder you have so much trouble flying.”

“Yes, it is a…a…” He searched for the right word.

“We call it a wingicap.” Bell yawned.

“That’s a good word, yes, a wingicap. But I’m going to grow stronger. You’ll see.”

“How did you ever fly all the way here from the Northern Kingdoms?”

“Very favorable winds—very favorable.”

It wasn’t quite a lie, but the blue owl did not feel good about what he had just said.

Eglantine and Primrose, following Soren’s instructions, had sought out Bess. Now, deep in the Shadow Forest where the trees dipped steeply behind the gossamer spray of the great waterfalls, they huddled with the Boreal Owl over some very ancient-looking charts in the library of the Palace of Mists.

“I so regret,” Bess was saying, “that I had not completed these calculations when your brother and the others left for the Middle Kingdom. For a long time after they left, I just had some…how should I call it? Some vague inklings about these windkins. They are more treacherous than I had originally thought, with very deadly wind shears. You must avoid these tumblebones that can pop up unexpectedly in the midst of a windkin. Now you understand the key and its symbols, but these symbols cannot tell you
everything.” Through finding further documents, Bess had discovered evidence of the same phenomenon that Mrs. P. had sensed. When explaining it to Eglantine and Primrose, she even used words similar to those of Mrs. Plithiver. “You see,” she said, “I believe that central stream of air—think of it as a river of wind—begins to influence time, perhaps because it carries us so fast, to where a new night, a new day begins.” Then, with words so identical to Mrs. Plithiver’s as to be astonishing, Bess said, “Look, the earth is round. Here, it is day right now. On the other side of the earth it must be night. The sun cannot be everyplace at once. Tomorrow has to start somewhere, and I think it begins out there, far over the Unnamed Sea. It all makes so much sense now. The way into the windkin is easy if you can find this point. And if you start now, you’ll be well ahead of Nyra.” She smoothed the chart with one talon and set down the key, then began tracing a path. “Due west. I think if my calculations are right, there will be sudden blackness and then you will be blown into tomorrow.”

Blown into tomorrow?
Whatever did that mean? both Eglantine and Primrose wondered. “You have the crow feather. It’s broad daylight but you’ll be safe to fly now. You should go immediately.”

“What do you want?” Bell jerked awake. Someone was outside the burrow. She nudged the blue owl. “Striga, someone’s out there. Not one of those Pure Ones. Someone else,” she whispered.

It was a new voice. One they had not heard before. “Your commander, General Mam, sent for these potions. Tonic for her gizzard. She’s been taking it for a moon cycle now. It goes down best with some bingle juice. So I brought some of that as well. But of course the bingle juice doesn’t keep that long. I’d hate to have to fly all the way back with it.”

“Well, she won’t be long. We’ll take care of it until she returns,” one of the guards answered.

I am sure you will,
thought Cuffyn as he handed over the pouch of bingle juice that he had laced with a powerful sleeping draft.
I am sure you will, idiot owls!

O
tulissa ruminated,
What of this owl who now leads us, this three-hundred-year-old owl who is flying almost as strongly as Ruby, whose mother had traveled to our kingdom, perhaps in the time of Theo?
It was all so mystifying. Tengshu had said that the owlery was located in the Mountain of Time. He had explained that it was also called the Hollow Mountain, as the word “time” and “hollow” in their language were one and the same—hulong. There was no Krakish word that even vaguely resembled it.

Blades of moonlight stabbed through the clouds, illuminating rank upon rank of icy peaks ahead. From the ground, however, there was a sudden swirl of the smell that they had learned to associate with the lamps that these owls burned in their hollows. “It’s a buttery below!” Tengshu called back. “The yaks gather to yield their milk that pikyus churn into butter.”

Soren swiveled his head toward Twilight, who was flying next to him. “Amazing!”

“I’d like to bring some back,” said Gylfie, who was flying in Twilight’s wake for protection against the strong icy gusts.

“Are you yoicks?!” Twilight said. “It stinks!”

“I’m getting used to it,” Gylfie replied. “You have to get a little more adventurous in your taste.”

“I don’t want to taste it.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You don’t call this adventurous? Flying behind a three-hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old blue owl—from a jeweled palace full of dragon owls who can’t fly—to this ‘owlery’ to consult with a whatever they call it—you don’t call this adventurous?” Twilight spoke with exaggerated wonder drenching his every word.

“H’ryth,” Otulissa broke in. “I just figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” asked Martin, who was flying under Otulissa’s port wing for protection.

“The word. What it means.”

“Yeah?” said Twilight. “So, what does it mean?”

“Innermost part of the gizzard in old Krakish. These owls’ connections with the Northern Kingdoms are much greater than we ever imagined,” Otulissa said.

The wind was now shrieking through a corrugated
landscape of ice cliffs and spires, not dissimilar from parts of the Northern Kingdoms, especially before the time of the first Great Melt, which was a period just after the era of the legends. At that time, a warm maverick wind from the south had blown for moon cycle after moon cycle, year after year, and the vast glaciers and towering icy peaks had begun to dissolve. But now as they flew, they could feel a wind snaking through narrow valleys, piling up amid ice and rock ridges and escarpments, creating a violent high-pressure strata of air in which their flight became quite tumultuous.

“Be careful here!” Tengshu called out.

“Careful!” Ruby said. She, however, was mad for this air and was flying like an owl possessed.

“Get back into formation, Ruby,” Coryn barked. “This isn’t a game of scooters.” Scooters were land breezes that spilled off the edges of the island of Hoole at certain times of the year and provided great sport for its owls.

A sudden loud boom rang out. Soren felt his ear slits contract against the sound. The noise shook all the owls right down to their pinfeathers and reverberated throughout their hollow bones.

“Don’t worry!” Tengshu shouted. “It’s just the wind bong.”

“Wind bong?” Martin asked, still shaking.

“In our language it translates to ‘last shriek of a mighty wind.’ It bursts through that notch directly below us and then is free again.”

A high plain now rose beneath them. At its far edge, ranks of peaks rose even higher than the ones they had just left behind. These peaks cut the sky like the teeth of a serrated knife. The air was so clear, they could immediately pick out in the far distance owls rising in the night, and above them colorful qui danced in the shafts of moonlight.

“They can fly, can’t they?” Ruby asked.

“Oh, yes. Those are prayer qui. It is the third hour of the death of day and the first quarter of the hatch of night, so they offer the prayers to the wind gods and the ones of night hatch.”

“Night hatch? Wind gods?” Soren asked. “Are they like Glaux?”

“Oh, they are all Glaux. In our language, we call them the khyre of Glaux. Which means…”

“‘The many faces of Glaux,’ in old Krakish,” Otulissa whispered to herself.
What in the world awaits us?

A gong thundered through the mountain passes as the owls landed on a platform of the owlery outside a cavelike opening in the mountain. A group of what
Tengshu called pikyus had flown out to greet them. These owls could not have been more different from those of the Panqua Palace. Their plumage was tightly clipped, and the top of their heads nearly bare except for one bright blue feather that stuck straight up.

“I don’t see how they can even fly,” Gylfie whispered to Soren. But they did, and without any aid from the qui. It was obvious that they flew the qui and not the reverse—the qui definitely did not fly them. The pikyus all stood now with their qui beside them. They came up and first bowed deeply to Tengshu.

One pikyu, who except for his blue color resembled a Boreal Owl, stepped forward. “Hee naow, qui dong Tengshu.”

“He’s welcoming Tengshu, the knower of qui,” Otulissa whispered. The pikyu then turned to the owls of Ga’Hoole, bowed, and welcomed them as honored guests. He indicated that they were to follow him.

“We now go see the H’ryth.” They entered the mountain. Everything was completely different from the resplendent jeweled hollows of the Panqua Palace. There were no luminous colors, and the only crystals were those formed by the ice. But because of the large torches of yak butter, much of the interior had melted down to reveal lovely gray stone swirled with streaks of white quartz.

The owls flew through long, twisting corridors in an ascending spiral. Other corridors meandered off the central one, and it was clear that within the Hollow Mountain, or Mountain of Time as they called it, there was a bustling community. But it seemed quieter than most communities of owls. It was understandable that this place would be called the Hollow Mountain—but why a Mountain of Time? Was it because the lives of the owls who lived here stretched across so many centuries that the mountain itself was thought to be a receptacle of time? There were perch-loads of chanting owls. Surrounding them, the qui painted with the various gods or faces of Glaux hung.
More like a mountain of prayer than a mountain of time,
Soren thought as they flew through the vast caverns that formed the interior of the mountain.

They finally reached the highest point. Above them, portals opened, through which they could see streaming clouds driven by incredibly fierce winds. They were directed to settle on a perch that appeared to be as hard as the rock around them. “It’s not rock,” Otulissa whispered. “It’s petrified wood. Millions of years old, I think.” Another gong sounded. A small pikyu flew forward and in very good Hoolian but with a definite Krakish accent began to speak.

“Welcome,” he said. “I present His Holiness, Gup
Theosang, the seventh H’ryth of the Owlery of the Mountain of Time.”

At that moment, a pale blue owl flew forward. He looked no different from any of the rest of the pikyus except that from his eyes streamed a pale greenish light. “It is,” whispered Tengshu, “the gleam of deep wisdom. It comes from a life of complete dedication to the basic values of owlness. You might detect subtle glints of green in some of our eyes, but none as vivid this.”

“Theosang?” Otulissa whispered.

“It comes from the name of our first H’ryth—Theo,” Tengshu replied.

Theo!
The name hung in the air like the echo of a chime, a chime in the Mountain of Time.