The River of Wind (8 page)

T
he 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 Ones 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.

Then two terrible words slithered up through the rock. “Slink melf.” Eglantine and Primrose felt their gizzards turn to stone. Slink melf was the Pure Ones’ expression for assassination squad. Eglantine signaled Primrose. In wing talk she indicated that now, while Nyra and her cohorts were in the burrows, they should make a brief reconnaissance of the nearby region. “To determine how far this encampment goes and pick up on other voices,” Eglantine signaled. They would have to find out what kind of force Nyra had in readiness and somehow get word to Soren and the others.

They again flew low and close to the ground. Primrose, like so many tiny owls, was an expert low-altitude flier. Her skimming flight could take her mere inches above the ground. Eglantine flew a few feet higher. The combination was formidable. Between Primrose’s skimming flight and Eglantine’s superb hearing, they gathered a wealth of information not only pertaining to the extent of the Pure Ones’ encampment but also to the intentions of their leader. Nyra had lusted for the Ember of Hoole since Coryn retrieved it from the Beyond. To have the Chaw of Chaws separated from the tree in a far and distant land was perfect. It was obvious that she had somehow raised a substantial army and hidden them here. Kuneer
was riddled with bunkers. As Eglantine and Primrose listened carefully, they picked up the hum of throngs of owls chattering beneath these desert sands in this, the most isolated region of Kuneer. It had to be the Pure Ones.

If Nyra follows Coryn, Soren, and the others to this faraway place of blue owls, and attacks them
…Eglantine cut off the thought. She signaled Primrose. “We have to warn them.”

“But how? We have no idea how to get there.”

“The Palace of Mists!” Eglantine signed. “Soren said if anything happened, we should go and seek Bess at the Palace of Mists.”

“We have to get out of here now! We have to warn Soren.” Eglantine’s wings trembled as she tilted them to signal.

“What about Bell?” Primrose signed back.

“We can’t take her back, just the two of us. They’re not going to hurt her now. They’ve got their information. They’re going to hold her hostage. She’s going to be their bargaining chip, but hopefully we’ll be able to get her soon. We’ll need to send a message back to the tree.”

“Through Gwyndor?”

“Whomever we can get.”

Just at that moment they spotted a Great Snowy overhead—a Great Snowy sporting a black feather.

Doc Finebeak!

They took off immediately to tell him what they’d discovered.

Several minutes later, behind a cluster of cactus a good distance from the rock, Doc Finebeak listened to Eglantine and Primrose’s story. When they had finished, he blinked and sighed, then plucked the black feather from his back and broke it in half. “Here, take this, I can always get another. It will protect you. You’re going to have to fly night and day.”

They said a quick good-bye. As the three owls lifted off in flight, Finebeak heading back to the great tree to raise troops and Eglantine and Primrose to the Palace of Mists, they all had one thought: They had beaten the Pure Ones in the canyonlands in the Battle of Fire and Ice. They had beaten them in the Beyond. Although this would not be as big a battle, for the forces would be fewer on both sides, it could be the most significant battle of all. The question was not the size of any army. They had to act now and with great force in a place that was strange to all of them. Could the Guardians do it again? Never had so much been at stake—the ember, the king, and an owlet!