The Burning

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Us,” Soren said quietly. “She’s telling about us. What we’re doing here. Why we have come. But I wish I knew the end of the story.” Soren sighed.

  Meanwhile, hiding in the shadows of a distant cliff on Dark Fowl Island, a raggedy old Whiskered Screech Owl perched. At his feet, a snake coiled. “You mean to say that my brother still lives?” This was at least the hundredth time in two days that Ifghar had asked this question. “Yes.” Gragg nodded with infinite patience.

  “And that these owls are commanded by him, for some…some…” Ifghar tried to arrange his thoughts. It had been such a long time since he had felt that there was anything worth thinking, let alone speaking about.

  “An invasion,” Gragg prompted.

  “An invasion of what?”

  “I’m not sure. Something called the canyonlands that are being held by some force called the Pure Ones.”

  “I thought Lyze had stopped fighting. Hung up his claws.”

  “He’s not doing the fighting. Those owls out there are. And they’re trying to recruit owls and snakes from the Kielian League.”

  “Hrrruh!” Ifghar made a growling sound. “Good luck,” he said acidly.

  This is good! This is good! Gragg thought. He’s feeling something. It had been years since Ifghar had experienced any emotion. It was as if in his envy and his jealousy of his brother, Lyze, he had spent every shred of feeling, of anger, of hate, of anything. He was simply resigned to being towed around by that stupid old Short-eared Owl, Twilla. Twilla had, of course, accompanied them on this flight to Dark Fowl Island, but Gragg had sent her off hunting for lemmings. She had gone without a word of protest for she was simply ecstatic that the old Whiskered Screech had, for the first time in all the years she had been taking care of him, shown any eagerness to do anything at all. But Gragg had been careful to say nothing to Twilla of Lyze or who these owls were.

  He waited, then began to speak in a slow voice to Ifghar. “Now listen to me very carefully, Ifghar. Do you want the glory that was to be yours—and I don’t mean Lil. I am not talking about love. I am talking about glory, power, respect.” Ifghar blinked. Gragg continued, “Supposing we find out information, good information, valuable information about when these Guardians plan to invade, and suppose we go to the Pure Ones with it and because of this information they are able to defeat your brother and the Guardians? Well, do you not think that they would restore the glory that was stolen from you?” On the word “stolen,” Gragg uncoiled himself and lay flat on the rock so Ifghar could better see what he wanted him to see.

  Now Ifghar leaned farther out on his perch and looked toward the owls practicing fighting techniques. He cleared his eyes with the thin transparent membrane that allowed owls to swipe anything away that might interfere with their vision. “No!” he gasped.

  Oh, but yes! Gragg thought. This was precisely what he wanted the Ifghar to see. The brightly polished, unmistakable battle claws of his brother, Lyze, on the talons of another owl—a Barn Owl, of all things! Gragg had first seen them two days before when he had hitched a flight on the back of a Great Gray, an old hireclaw friend of his who had turned pirate.

  “No!” Ifghar said again in disbelief. “The claws! My claws. Those battle claws should be mine. He stole them!”

  “Indeed, my liege.”

  Ifghar turned toward the snake and blinked. My liege, he called me “my liege.” A shudder of joy passed through his gizzard. The dim yellow eyes were set a-kindle, like two small sparks that were about to burst into flame.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Stuck on a Dagger

  One can think of katabatic winds as the fuel for williwaws.”

  “Oh, great,” muttered Gylfie as Otulissa held forth on the fierce and peculiar winds that had now pinned them onto a shelf on the east side of the Ice Dagger.

  “You see, the density of cold air is higher than that of warm air, thus in the wintertime…”

  “But it’s not really winter yet,” Soren said. There was a twinge of regret in Soren’s voice. He felt terrible. It was Soren who had pushed their departure to the last possible date, hoping that the parliament might decide to meet earlier. The dwenking had come and gone and now a thread of the moon, as fine as the thinnest filament of a downy feather, hung in the pale lavender sky. They had tried to fly out twice already but had been slammed back each time. The winds added insult to Soren’s already deep injuries. He had failed so completely, it would be unimaginably hard to face Ezylryb. It was bad enough that he would be returning—if indeed they could return—with no assurances, but now with these winds he was really endangering the Chaw of Chaws. It was stupid of him to have waited. And if they did return, what would be waiting for them? There was no hope of victory without the Frost Beaks.

  There was a chance that the four owls of the weather chaw—Soren, Ruby, Martin, and Otulissa—could make it out. They were experienced in flying in any kind of wind. Twilight, because of his size and strength, would have been able to fly it. But for the others it was unlikely. They did not possess the skills of sparring with such tumultuous and violent winds. But all of them were flying heavy, with their botkin bags full of ice weapons, ranging from scimitars to swords, from ice splinters to daggers.

  “Believe me, that owl has more wind than any katabat or whatever in hagsmire you call it,” grumbled Twilight. “Put a mouse in it, Otulissa,” Twilight barked.

  “If only she could,” Ruby sighed. “If only we all could.”

  For three days now they had been virtual prisoners on this narrow shelf of the Ice Dagger. The only food that was available were the fish that were kicked up from the raging sea below them and landed on the so-called hilt of the Ice Dagger. And these owls did not care for fish any more than they had cared for sour lemmings.

  “Good grief, what is that thing that just rode in on the crest of that wave? Look at it flailing its claws down there. It’s been tossed on its back or something.” Digger was staring straight down from the shelf, where they perched, to the hilt.

  “Oh, it’s a lobster—crustacean, of the animal kingdom but part of the subphylum of Arthropodea, as opposed to us, who are of the phylum Chordata, meaning that members of our phylum often have a head and tail, a digestive system with an opening at both ends…” Otulissa began lecturing.

  “Oh, whoopee! Would you kindly put a big fat phylum in your big fat beak, Otulissa! You are frinking me off!” Digger shouted.

  Soren blinked. Things were deteriorating rapidly if Digger, the calmest and the most tolerant owl of them all, was reduced to shouting and cursing. Digger never cursed. Hollow fever was obviously setting in. This happened when owls had been cooped up for too long a time in their hollows. But this was not a hollow with nice fluffy down and moss. They were eight owls crammed onto this narrow shelf with their botkin bags of weapons. Icicles from above seemed to grow longer by the minute. The icicles hanging down over the shelf made it seem as if they were looking out from the inside of the fanged mouth of some major carnivore. Not pleasant. But then again, what were they to do? Icy, slopping winds were throwing up an amazing array of sea life, none of which looked particularly appealing as food.

  “Now, tell me,” Digger said, regaining some of his usual equanimity. “how do you eat something like that?” He was looking down on an octopus that had just been flung up.

  “Where to even begin?” Eglantine sighed.

  “Eight legs. Absurd,” Gylfie said. “She should trade in four of them for a pair of wings.”

  “How do you know it’s a she?” Ruby asked.

  “Interesting that you should raise the question of gender in reference to an octopus,” Otulissa began.

  Please shut up. Oh, please shut up. I shall not resort to violence. I am the leader of this mission. I shall not resort to behavior unbecoming a leader. Soren had shut his eyes in an attempt to quell his anger and concentrate on not batting Otulissa over the head with an icicle. He felt something small nudge his foot. It was Gylfie. “Soren, what�
�s that out there? It doesn’t look good.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Pirates

  It certainly did not. Silence fell upon the owls. Out across the water, in the spume-spun darkening night, a dozen or more owls flew toward the Ice Dagger. They were not from any of the forces of the Kielian League that they had met on Dark Fowl. There was not a Frost Beak or a Glauxspeed owl among them. But they were certainly armed, and they were most peculiar-looking. Their feathers were not black or white or gray or any of the tawny brown colors of normal owls but had been dyed bright and garish hues. Some had patches of orange and purple, others had red and yellow, still others were iridescent greens and blues. “Holy Glaux, have you ever seen an owl that color?” Martin gasped.

  “What do they think they are—parrots?” Twilight muttered.

  “They’re kraals,” Otulissa said.

  “What?” Soren asked.

  “Kraals,” Otulissa repeated. “That’s Krakish for pirates.”

  “Pirates!” the seven other owls gasped.

  But at least Otulissa had the grace not to launch into a lecture on their phylum, genus, or species. They were, after all, owls. She had first read about pirate owls in the long narrative poem the Yigdaldish Ga’far, which related the heroic adventures of the Great Snowy Owl, Proudfoot, and an Eagle Owl called Hot Beak. No, it was not necessary to know what class or group these pirates belonged to. They were simply the thugs of the Northern Kingdoms. They fought for no side. They fought to kill, sometimes to capture, and always to steal. They were more dangerous than hireclaws, who fought for any side that would pay them, because basically these pirates stuck together as a band, and thus had become much more skillful in their strategies.

  “This does not look good,” Ruby said.

  “But I’m a bad baaaad owl!” Twilight hooted at the top of his lungs and, just as the pirates were closing in, the Great Gray broke from the prison of icicles. Then, seizing the largest icicle he could manage, he launched himself on a ferocious gust of wind. Ruby followed, then Soren, but before he flew off, he turned to Gylfie, Eglantine, and Digger. “You all stay here. You’re not in the weather chaw. You won’t be able to fly in this turbulence. Just keep us supplied with weapons.”

  “Yes, sir!” they all said. Soren knew that with his strong legs Digger would be great at prying off fresh ice shards for them, and he had been trained to do this on Dark Fowl by the snakes. Where are those snakes now? Soren wondered. If only the Glauxspeed unit or the Frost Beaks would show up. If only there were a tree. If only they had fire. But there was no time for if onlys. They had to fight. Otulissa and Martin were sparring with a glaringly bright yellow-and-purple owl. Martin darted through the winds, his ice splinter flicking in the night. Otulissa carried not one but two daggers in her talons.

  It was an odd sight: a dozen-plus owls whirling around the Ice Dagger that jabbed out of the sea. The dyed owls looked like a rainbow gone berserk. They were here, there, and everywhere. However, Soren had never seen anything so small fly as fast as Martin. There was suddenly an agonizing screech and one bright blue owl plummeted into the raging waters. Twilight flew in. “Hey, Martin, gimme four!” And struck out his talons toward Martin in a joyous hoot of victory. But victory was to be short-lived.

  “Watch it, Twilight, on your tail!” Soren shrieked. Twilight dove in a masterful twist through a gust of wind and escaped the tail-feather attack. He then whirled up and, dancing on the ragged edges of the cutting winds, the Great Gray began to squawk.

  Gimme four, gimme five

  I’ll take you live.

  I’m a bad bad owl

  I’ll make you dive.

  Make you howl

  For your momma and pop

  Chase you around

  Till you drop.

  Now you goin’ to hear my thunder

  Next you goin’ to start to wonder

  He’s here

  He’s there

  He’s everywhere

  This big bad owl

  He don’t scare.

  A glittering arc of ice flashed in the moonlight and Soren gasped as he saw four brightly colored wings separate from two different owls. Agonizing screeches cut through the roar of the wind and blood splattered the night.

  “Ruby, Great Glaux in glaumora!” Soren heard Otulissa’s stunned voice. Ruby looked equally stunned. As she flew, she stared in disbelief at her ice scimitar, with which she had so deftly de-winged two of the larger owls in a single stroke.

  Suddenly, the population of pirates had decreased dramatically. The owl that Soren had been sparring with vanished.

  “I think they are in retreat,” Otulissa said.

  Soren blinked. Yes, he could just barely make out their tail feathers as they flew back in the direction from which they had come. What is that one carrying in its talons? It didn’t look like an ice dagger. Not big enough. Soren blinked again. Did it have a vaguely familiar shape? And just as Soren was wondering, a hoarse cry split the night.

  “Gylfie! They got Gylfie!” Otulissa yelled.

  Soren spread his wings ready to lift off in pursuit, but just at that moment a thick fog rolled in. It was the thickest and the quickest-moving fog Soren had ever seen. It was as if lichen or gray moss had suddenly crept over the blackness of the night. It was absolutely impenetrable. When it rolled back and the night had turned black once more, they knew that by now Gylfie was too far away for them to find in these vast frozen lands.

  The stars stuttered in the sky. Soren knew if he had been flying he would have gone yeep as the horror crept through him. For the first time since he had been a tiny orphaned owlet, he was separated from his dearest friend. It was as if an irreplaceable part of him had been removed. Might as well cut out my gizzard, he thought. He turned his head completely backward so the others would not see him weeping.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Pirates’ Lair

  Most peculiar, Gylfie thought. The pirate who had snatched her now released her from his talons, and Gylfie was flying, although it seemed to require very little effort. And yet escape, she soon realized, was impossible. She regarded the formation of the owls that surrounded her. The band had once done something similar to this for her when they were flying in very rough winds. They had created a still place amid them to block the heaviest winds. But this was something much more advanced. She began to realize that through this configuration of owls and the rhythmic beat of their wings, they had created a kind of vacuum that literally sucked Gylfie along, leaving no possibility for escape.

  Truly an airtight prison. Clever. Very clever. Gylfie felt a very deep tremor shake her gizzard. This did not bode well. She had hoped that these owls would not be so clever; that she would have a chance to outwit them. But any owl who could invent this flying vacuum was not dumb. Well, she would just have to quietly observe them. Listen and watch. Even though they spoke a very rough kind of Krakish, Gylfie was surprised how much she understood. Her Krakish must have improved quite a bit from the time she had spent in the retreat of the Glauxian Brothers.

  They had been flying now for a while, and the night had begun to fade. Gylfie took a fix on the last of the stars and the position of the rising sun and knew that they were flying in a northeasterly direction. She figured that they were somewhere between the Bitter Sea and the Bay of Fangs. Beneath them, the ice fields spread out. They had definitely left the Everwinter Sea behind them. As she looked down in the growing light of the dawn, she could tell that the cracks in the ice fields were a greenish-blue that was quite different from the bright blue of the seawater. Suddenly, Gylfie realized that they must be flying over the Hrath’ghar Glacier. The rising sun began to take on a peculiar color of green—sharp and minty—and then jagged peaks loomed up. They were an impossible color of indigo blue. This, Gylfie thought somewhat sourly, must be their inspiration for color. Perhaps when one was this far north in a snow-covered, ice-clad, completely white world, the very air and light itself became a prism and the whiteness
of everything—ice and rock, peaks and land—shattered into all of the colors of the spectrum.

  She wondered where the pirates roosted. Most likely in some icy crevices, for there was not a tree in sight. I’m going to be tree sick again, she thought morosely. But she knew that this was the least of her problems. She did wonder, however, why they wanted her. Was she a hostage? What value could she possibly have for these pirate owls, these kraals?

  The pirates’ lair was not in the icy cliffs of the high peaks but rather was a series of ground nests in dens between and underneath boulders. Gylfie was kept in a rock cell and guarded at all hours of the day. She was surprised to see that the land was not all glacier but a vast spongy surface covered with mosses and lichens and low shrublike plants. She had read about land formations like this; she thought it was called tundra. Beneath the tundra, the land was frozen solid and never melted but on top there was a short growing season when berries could be harvested. At night, the wolves howled, which she found very unnerving being confined to the ground and never allowed to fly. She could, however, peer out into the main dens of the pirates’ lair and what she saw intrigued her. These pirates might be clever with their windless vacuums for transporting prisoners but they were also incredibly vain. Plates of what they called in Krakish “issen vintygg,” or “deep ice,” had been polished to a mirrorlike finish, and the pirates spent endless hours painting their feathers and admiring their reflections in these ice mirrors. The dyes they used were made from the berries and the few sedges and grasses that grew in the summertime on the tundra.

  Gylfie began to think hard about vanity and mirrors. She and the rest of the band had had some experience with mirrors, and she knew that vanity deceived, and was not a strength but a weakness. Long ago, when Gylfie, Soren, Twilight, and Digger had been on their long and arduous journey to find the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, it had been the Mirror Lakes in the region known as The Beaks that had nearly been their undoing. Transfixed by their own images reflected in the lakes’ surfaces, the band had almost forgotten how to be owls. They had forgotten their purpose, their goals, and all that they had risked and nearly died for simply because they had fallen under the spell of vanity. If Mrs. Plithiver, Soren’s old nest-maid snake from Tyto, had not been there and given them a blistering scolding, well, there was no telling what might have happened. Then a phrase came back to Gylfie from a book by Violet Strangetalon she had once read: The folly of vanity is the curse of the peacock, a nearly flightless bird, happy to remain so and to strut about for the admiration of earthbound creatures. Their appalling ostentation is equaled only by their appalling stupidity. There was also something else from that book that was quite haunting but Gylfie could not remember it.