The Outcast

by Kathryn Lasky

  Guardians Of Ga'hoole #8: The Outcast : The Outcast

  Book Jacket

  Series: Guardians of Ga'hoole [8]

  Rating:

  Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, General, Action & Adventure - General, Children's Books, Action & Adventure, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, Animals, Ages 9-12 Fiction, Children: Grades 4-6, Short Stories, Birds, Animals - Birds, Good and evil, Juvenile Science Fiction, Science Fiction; Fantasy; Magic, Science Fiction; Fantasy; & Magic, Legends; Myths; Fables, Owls

  SUMMARY:

  Nyroc has exiled himself from the Pure Ones. He flies alone, feared and despised by those who know him as Kludd's son, hunted by those whose despotism he has rejected, and haunted by ghostly creatures conjured by Nyra to lure him back to the Pure Ones. He yearns for a place he only half believes in -- the great tree -- and an uncle -- the near-mythic Soren -- who might be a true father to him. Yet he cannot approach the tree while the rumor of evil clings to him. To prove his worth, Nyroc will fly to The Beyond the Beyond seeking the legendary Relic and bring it, a talisman of his own

  Guardians of Ga’Hoole

  Book Eight

  The Outcast

  By

  Kathryn Lasky

  New York Toronto London Auckland

  Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Maps

  Illustration

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE Outcast Without a Name

  CHAPTER TWO Venomous Visitors

  CHAPTER THREE The Eagles’ Nest

  CHAPTER FOUR Sky Writing

  CHAPTER FIVE A Decision Is Made

  CHAPTER SIX A Cry in the Night

  CHAPTER SEVEN A Heartbeat Calls

  CHAPTER EIGHT A Fiend Comes to Life

  CHAPTER NINE The Egg Restored

  CHAPTER TEN A Namesake

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Listening to Legends

  CHAPTER TWELVE Wolves in the Moonlight

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN A New Friend

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN From a Distant Land

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Violence in Silverveil

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN A Green Eye

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Of Sky and Trail

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Treating With the MacHeaths

  CHAPTER NINETEEN An Eerie Feeling

  CHAPTER TWENTY A Spotted Owl Goes Yeep

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Who’s the Teacher?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Basic Colliering

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE A Blood Oath

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A Gnaw Wolf in Training

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE From the River’s Mist

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX In the Eye of the Wolf

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Glass Volcano

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Uncle Soren and the King

  OWLS and others from the GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE SERIES

  Preview

  The Guardians of Ga’Hoole

  Copyright

  Maps

  Illustration

  The wolves stood back as Hamish came forward and tucked in next to Coryn on the hindquarter. “I’m not used to this much meat. I mostly gnaw bones.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Coryn replied.

  Prologue

  “You are a mask. You are nothing more! There is nothing behind your mask, not a face, nothing! I shall fly in the fullness of the night. Under the moon and the stars I shall hunt the vole, the rat, even the fox. I shall become part of owlkind, no matter where I have to go. But I shall go! And I shall never ever return to the Pure Ones. I defy you. I HAVE FREE WILL!”

  Shouting, Nyroc flew directly at the mask that hung over the still water of the small lake. It was the mask of his father’s scroom, Kludd, who had haunted him ever since Nyroc had fled the Pure Ones. And now the glaring mask seemed to grow dim and tarnished. Silently, it shattered. Shards of the once-burnished metal that had hidden Kludd’s war-mangled face fell without a splash into the water. Nary a ripple disturbed the placid surface of the pond.

  Gone? Is he gone at last? It seemed too good to be true. Once, twice, three times Nyroc flew over the lake, peering into its amber depths, but all the young owl could see was the reflection of the full-shine moon trembling on the water’s surface.

  Nyroc flew without direction away from the pond. Who am I now, without a home, without even the scroom of a father? And with a mother from whom I must flee? What is to become of me? Where shall I go? Where shall I find happiness? Perhaps happiness is too much to ask for. Peace. Yes, peace will do.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Outcast Without a Name

  But this was not to be, Nyroc realized as he flew into the night. Neither peace nor happiness would be his yet. He was supposed to do something first. He just couldn’t remember quite what. Since he had fled the Pure Ones, so much had happened. These last few days seemed like a tangled dream in Nyroc’s brain. First, there had been the fire in Silverveil. It had been terrible and yet beautiful. And something very dangerous had happened. Nyroc, who could read fire, had become transfixed—firedazed. He could not move to escape the heat and flames that were pressing closer and closer to him. Finally, he had broken free. It had been a name from some half-forgotten dream that had jolted him from the grip of flames just in the nick of time. The name was “Otulissa” and though he had no idea who this Otulissa was, he felt, for some reason, that she was a Spotted Owl.

  He had flown from those flames as hard and as fast as he could and soon found himself being guided by a good scroom toward a strange ghostly forest. He hadn’t known that there were such things as good scrooms, but he immediately sensed that this one was good. She, too, was a Spotted Owl, but quite elderly, not the one he had dreamed about. They had settled on one of the silvery branches of the white-barked trees that grew thickly on a peninsula that jutted out into the Sea of Hoolemere. It was the closest he had ever been to this sea and he remembered longing desperately to fly across it to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. But no, he couldn’t, he recalled. The scroom had said he must do something first, that there was some task to complete, or journey to make, but before she could tell him exactly what it was, she had dissolved into the morning mist.

  So where was he now? He looked over his starboard wing to the forest below. It was not as beautiful as Silverveil, but still a lovely forest. Thick green moss, a mixture of hardwood and softwood trees. Plenty of hollows! Nyroc was done with stumps, with holes in the ground, with crannies in cliffs like the one he had shared with his mother. No, he wanted to live in a nice hollow, high up in a sturdy tree where he could hear the wind in the branches, see the sky. He would fit it out with rabbit-ear moss if he could find any. Make it all cozy. And then he would hunt, hunt like a normal owl. He would bring his prey back to the tree and eat it in the coziness of his own hollow.

  He had had enough of hiding out, of always hunting in daylight, of keeping this un-owlish schedule for fear of being tracked down by Nyra or rejected outright by the nearby owls because he resembled his vicious parents.

  He was bigger now, braver, smarter. He would simply explain himself, tell owl folk that he was nothing like his parents.

  So, a task to complete, a journey to make, but first things first, Nyroc thought. I must look for a hollow.

  He was half a league away now from the lake haunted by his father’s scroom and he saw a nice grove of fir trees beneath him. Fir trees, he had heard, often had excellent hollows. He circled over the grove several times to look for a good tree. But just as he was about to begin his banking turn, three of the hugest owls he had ever seen swooped in on him. Nyroc felt his gizzard lurch. They were Great Grays. Every owl knew about Great Grays. They were among the biggest and most ferocious of all owls. It had been a Great Gray who had killed his father, Kludd.

 
“What’s your name?” demanded the Great Gray on his port wing.

  “Nyr—” But before he had even finished, the three owls were screeching at him.

  “What did I tell you, Silvertip? It’s him. Looks just like his mum, right down to the scar!”

  Great Glaux, thought Nyroc. Not only my scar has branded me but my name as well!

  “You’re outta here, owl!” one of the Grays shrieked.

  The three owls were pressing in on him, so that he could barely control the direction of his flight. “Look, I’m alone,” Nyroc told them.

  “You better be!” said another. “There’ve been rumors that your mum’s fixing for another attack. Hireclaws flocking to her!”

  “I’m not with her. I fled from her. I hate her!” There. He had finally said it.

  They were now driving him down toward a lake and steering him to a sycamore tree. As they lighted down on a branch of the tree, the third and oldest of the three Great Grays stepped forward.

  “Look, young’un, how do we know you ain’t a slipgizzle for them Pure Ones?”

  “A slipgizzle?” Nyroc had no idea what a slipgizzle was.

  “A spy,” the owl explained.

  “I can’t stand the Pure Ones, I tell you. I can’t stand them.”

  “Why should we trust you?” the owl called Silvertip demanded.

  “Why should we take your word?” the smallest of the Great Grays said. He was still much bigger than Nyroc.

  The older one spoke again. “Perhaps, young’un, you’ll prove yourself someday. But until that day, we suggest you leave. Yes, leave, or if you want…”

  “He’s got to leave Ambala, now, Tup.”

  “Ambala? I’m in Ambala?”

  “Yes,” the one called Tup said. “We are a peaceable place. We have suffered a lot through the years, first from the owls of St. Aggie’s when they stole the eggs from our very nests, and then from the Pure Ones. But since the last great battle when the Guardians of Ga’Hoole defeated them, we have had peace. We don’t want any more trouble.”

  “I promise I won’t be any trouble.”

  “Promises aren’t enough, young’un,” Tup said. There was a tinge of sympathy in his voice. He looked to his companions. “But seeing as it’s getting on to breaklight, why don’t we let him stay another day?”

  There was some grumbling from the other two.

  Then Silvertip spoke. “Well, as long as he agrees to stay right in this sycamore. There’s a hollow farther up the trunk that’ll do for the night.”

  “Thank you,” Nyroc said meekly. “That is very kind of you.”

  The third Great Gray added, “Well, you might change your mind about staying in that hollow. It’s haunted, you know.”

  “Hortense, no need to frighten him.”

  “Well, I just thought he should know,” Hortense said.

  “What’s haunted?” Nyroc asked and looked at the owl called Hortense, an odd name for a male owl, he thought.

  “The hollow,” Hortense replied.

  “Haunted by my father’s scroom?” Nyroc asked in alarm. But the scroom had appeared only over the lake. Never had his father’s scroom followed him into a nesting place.

  “Oh, no. It’s haunted by a Fish Owl named Simon. Your father killed him many years ago,” Hortense replied.

  “What happened?” Nyroc asked with a sick feeling stealing over his gizzard.

  “It was horrible.” Tup spoke now. “You see, Simon was a pilgrim owl who had come here from the Glauxian Retreat in the Northern Kingdoms to do good, help the weak, serve the poor. Your father, Kludd, had just been in a bloody and fiery encounter with the Ga’Hoolian owls. His mask was actually melting on his face. It was Simon who rescued him and nursed him back to health.”

  “And he killed this Simon?”

  The three Great Grays nodded.

  “But why? Why would he kill an owl who helped him?”

  Tup stepped forward on the branch and fastened his gleaming yellow eyes onto Nyroc’s black ones. “Because he was a brutal, insane owl. Simon knew he had survived, and Kludd wanted everyone to think he was dead. It would work to his purposes.” Tup paused, then added, “Of course, now he is dead.”

  “But your mother is far from dead,” the owl called Silvertip said. “She is alive and well, and flying about getting hireclaws and Rogue smiths. They say she wants to have them make her fire claws.”

  “But Gwyndor refused,” Silvertip said.

  “Gwyndor! I know Gwyndor,” Nyroc said. “He’ll tell you that I’m not like my parents.”

  “Gwyndor ain’t here to tell us any such thing, young’un,” Tup replied. “He’s gone to Beyond the Beyond.”

  “You might consider going to Beyond the Beyond yourself,” Silvertip said in a thoughtful voice. “They don’t ask questions there about who you are or where you come from. They don’t care.”

  “It’s a place for outcasts like yourself,” Hortense added.

  “Outcasts like myself,” Nyroc whispered softly. Is that what I am? Is that all I am ever to be? An outcast, destined to live in a desolate place full of creatures so desperate they have nowhere else to go?

  Was this to be Nyroc’s great destiny? The sum, the end result, of his so-called free will? His gizzard twisted in confusion.

  Without Nyroc noticing, the three Great Grays silently lofted themselves into the air and were gone.

  For three dreary days, Nyroc slept in the fishy-smelling hollow that had been Simon’s, and hunted in the patchy gray-violet light just before dawn, the dismal hours that owls called the “dregs of the night.”

  How Nyroc had hoped against hope that the journey about which the good scroom had spoken so vaguely would be to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree on the Island of Hoole in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere. What could be farther away or more different from the great tree where the noblest owls on Earth lived than Beyond the Beyond? That barren landscape with fiery mountains and enormous four-legged animals running in packs, that place of desperate creatures, the outcasts of a civilized world?

  Nyroc felt as if he had been chasing his own tail feathers around in an endless argument. He finally rushed out of the hollow and swooped down by the lake’s edge. He tipped his face toward its shining surface just as the sun was beginning to rise, turning the dark waters a pale rose color. He stared at his reflection. He did look like his mother! Am I not so much more than feathers and bones, talons and wings? But what? An answer began to come to him: I am of the same blood as my parents but not of the same gizzard, brain, or heart. The egg that held me came from the body of my mother, but I am not my mother’s son, nor my father’s. I am more. I know that with all my heart and with all my gizzard. I reject all that they were. I have no parents. I have no home. I am what I am but I shall never call myself Nyroc again. I have no name.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Venomous Visitors

  Nyroc had the eerie sensation of someone watching him, following him perhaps. He now realized he had felt this since first arriving at the sycamore tree. And when he had been by the lakeside, almost swallowed by despair, in the back of his tattered gizzard he had sensed this presence watching. But he had been too distraught to care.

  Now, as Nyroc approached the sycamore, he noticed a curious green glow emanating from the hollow. Cautiously, he poked his head in, then gasped in disbelief. Two luminous, bright green snakes were suspended by their tails from a ridge in the hollow. Nest-maids? No, these are not the nest-maid snakes he’d heard civilized owls often had. They can’t be.

  The snakes’ eyes glittered turquoise. Their fangs were long. Nest-maids would never have such fangs! Nyroc thought. Their tongues flicked about as if tasting the air, and they were the strangest tongues imaginable. They were forked like most snakes’ tongues, but one side was pale ivory and the other was crimson. It suddenly dawned on Nyroc! He knew what kind of snakes these were. His mother had spoken of them. He had heard her talking about them to her top lieutenant, Stryker. She had wanted t
o recruit these snakes for a special elite unit in the Pure Ones. These were the flying snakes of Ambala. The most venomous snakes in the world!

  “She sent you, didn’t she?” Nyroc asked.

  “Yesssssss,” one hissed.

  “I knew she would find me one way or the other,” Nyroc whispered. “Here.” He stepped into the hollow and thrust his chest out. “Just do it now. Do it quickly.”

  “Do what now?” the other one said. The words seemed to slither off the snake’s tongue.

  “Just kill me, quickly. Here, right to the heart.” He nodded his head and with his beak poked the feathers on his chest.

  “What issssss he talking about?” said the first snake to his companion.

  “We didn’t come here to kill you,” said the other snake.

  “But I’m not going back with you. I will never go back to her, to the Pure Ones.”

  There was a flash as both snakes, in one quick green fluid motion, slipped from their perches to the floor of the hollow where they arranged themselves into neat coils. With their heads waving hypnotically they spoke in unison:

  “We are not emisssssssssaries from the Pure Ones. We detesssst the Pure Ones.”

  “You do?” Nyroc blinked in amazement.

  “We do,” answered the first snake. “My name is Slynella and this is my mate, Stingyll.”

  “But you said that she sent for me?”

  Both snakes nodded, looping their heads into figure eights and then resting them in a knot on top of their coiled bodies. It was rather dizzying to watch.

  “So who is ‘she’?” Nyroc asked.

  “She is Misssssst,” Slynella replied.

  “She is the watcher in the woods,” said Stingyll. “She has been watching you ssssince you arrived in Ambala.”

  “She has?”

  Both snakes once more went through the elaborate nodding procedure, unknotting their heads from the figure eights and then knotting them again.

  “But who is she? Why does she care about me?” Nyroc asked.