The Fengo was awaiting. He was old and grizzled, a veteran of the trek to the Distant Blue and back, Conall had told them. He welcomed them to the ring. His voice was ragged, and his fur streaked with soot. But what drew the bears’ attention was the spectacle on the towering bone mounds. Atop each one was a single wolf leaping high off the top of the mounds that they called drumlyns as they twisted and turned in the air. It was a dazzling spectacle.
“Ah,” sighed the Fengo. “I see you are intrigued by these airborne wolves, who might even challenge the owls in their antics. There is a purpose to this seeming madness. With each leap, they monitor the plumes of ash and observe minute changes in the glow of the volcanoes’ eruptions. This is valuable information, for it tells them when the coals are ripe, ready for harvesting, and they signal the colliers.” He looked about and nodded to a gruesome figure that was on top of a smaller drumlyn. It was an owl cast in lava. “A stupid creature,” the Fengo went on. “Caught in a molten flow.” He then turned to Conall.
“And why have you brought these young bears here?”
Conall looked toward Stellan. “You see, sir, although the Nunquivik and the Ice Clock are far from the Beyond, all of us are in grave danger if the clock is not stopped. The clock is worshipped. And young’uns, or what they call Tick Tocks, very small cubs, are sacrificed to appease and honor it. A blood sacrifice to a false god. And the appetite for those young’uns could spread. All the creatures of these lands could be swept up for this monstrous clock’s hunger. You see, it feeds on fear, not faith.” Stellan spoke calmly, but Jytte was roiling inside. Their mother was a prisoner in that Ice Clock. Coals, they knew, were important to owls as weapons. They fought with coals. Coals could ignite flame swords that they carried into battle along with metal cutlasses and ice weapons that were part of their arsenal and had been from the time of the War of the Ice Talons. Coals were the fuel for their forging fires.
“So the true colliers will come back and perhaps teach these young’uns how it’s really done.” He tipped his head toward the owls flying over the volcanoes. “They haven’t visited much since our return.” He sighed wistfully. “I suppose Soren and Otulissa are too old now to dive the coals.”
“A bit, sir,” Stellan replied.
“And,” Jytte added, “Otulissa lost one eye in the battle with the blue owls from the Middle Kingdom.”
“Oh yes, those were hard times. That was not long before our evacuation to the Distant Blue. And now we are on the brink of a new war.”
Stellan felt glad that at least the Fengo had used the word we unlike Chieftain Duncan MacDuncan, who did not seem to feel that the threat of the Ice Clock was any of his clan’s concern.
The bears were soon directed to a den for the night, but in truth, they were so mesmerized by the dazzling sight of the flames and the rivers of lava that they could not sleep. They had come from a place of ice and now they were in one of fire. Spectacular fire, where flames and wolves gyrated in a wild dance against the night.
It was almost dawn when they finally fell to sleep. Flames painted their dreams with fountains of hot glowing coals and cascades of sparks sizzling in the night—all except for Third, whose dreams took him far from the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.
The terrain was unlike any Third had ever set a paw on since being in the Beyond. The ground was soft. He was in that marshy region, the Slough that Alasdair had described when they were listening to the skreeleen. The words that Alasdair had uttered when they were listening to the skeeleen now echoed in his dream. The Sark of the Slough. She toyed with fire, disturbed the order … disturbed the order … disturbed the order … disturbed the order. It was as if Third had entered an echo chamber of his own dream. But this was no “chamber.” I am in the Slough, Third thought. I am in the cavern of the Sark of the Slough. He wound his way through the tangle of connecting dens in the cavern. There seemed to be dens within dens that led to other dens. Skin bags stuffed with herbs hung on antlers jammed into cracks in the walls. And everywhere there were clay pots and vessels. He finally came to one in which the ragged figure of an ancient she-wolf bent over a jug. Instinctively, Third knew that this jug did not contain herbs or any material, really. Not like the skin bags when he had walked into the first den of the cavern. The wolf was sniffing. Sniffing a dream? No, this was something different—something real. A memory! This is a memory jug! The she-wolf looked up. She had a strange skittish eye that seemed to look everywhere but nowhere at once. But she fixed Third with her single good eye. Yes, this is real, she seemed to say to Third. But I am not.
A ghost?
Call me what you will—gillygaskin, scroom … I’ve mounted the star ladder, but it is too soon for … too soon.
She whispered into the jug. Her voice seemed to break.
Third sat straight up. “What is it?” Stellan asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a gilly.”
“I have and I don’t want to see another! Alasdair!”
By this time, Jytte and Froya were awake.
“A dream about Alasdair?” Froya asked.
“We have to save her,” Third said. His voice seethed with fear. “There is a slink melf …” His throat seemed to lock on the words.
Lago and her sister, Illya, had just entered the den with the words Bear Containment Facility printed above the doorframe. Illya turned to Lago.
“Follow me to cell block six.” She then swiped her long, luxuriant tail across her muzzle as a signal for complete silence.
The only illumination when they entered cell block six was that of a sliver of a new moon that passed through the bars. There was a pile of what appeared to be tattered old pelts in one corner. But gradually, Lago realized it was a bear with its back turned toward them. This must be Uluk Uluk. He was unaware of their presence. Hunched over, he was muttering to himself. “Him and his cursed overcoil … never a good idea. Never was! Never will be … always throws off the action between the crown and the ratchet wheel. Brequet, will you ever learn? Yes … yes. I know you made the queen watch. And look what happened to her. Lost her head, she did. Too bad … Of course you’ll never learn. You’ve been dead for thousands of years.”
Tears came to Illya’s eyes. He was lost in the mists of clock history. He was indeed a shadow of his former self—a raggedy shadow at that. He must have lost his sense of smell, for surely he would have picked up their scent by now. She dragged the sharp claws of one paw against the stone floor. Lago looked at her in alarm, for the sound was distinct, yet Uluk Uluk did not betray the barest hint that he was alert to their presence. He must be almost deaf as well, Illya thought.
She now coughed loudly. He turned around slowly.
“You!” That was all he said, and the monocle fell from his eye. It was as if he didn’t even see Illya. He held a tiny spring in one paw and a small notched disc in the other.
“Still fiddling with the Brequet, I see.” She sighed. “Nothing changes.” The old bear did not wear his years well. He was bent with age. His paws trembled, but Great Ursus she still loved him. What a foolish thing I am!
Uluk Uluk turned his head slowly around. Blinked, then roared.
“EXCEPT YOU! You seem to have a gift for that. For changing.” He stood up, glaring at Illya. He was so thin and frail that his stained and tattered pelt seemed four times too large for him. It draped in ripples over his gaunt frame. “Why are you here, and who’s this?”
“My sister, Lago,” Illya replied calmly.
“Eh?” He cupped his paw to his ear.
“Lago, my sister!” she said louder.
“Oh, now she’s fallen in love with me too.”
“Hardly!” snapped Lago.
“Why are you here?”
“I went to the Ice Clock.”
“You what?”
“I went to the Ice Clock.” Her voice almost broke as she said this. Has he nothing but contempt for me? thought Illya.
“How’d you do that?” Uluk Uluk asked scornfully.
Il
lya took a deep breath. “I went as my other self, my Ki-hi-ru self, a bear. I now realize that is no self at all, but I went as Galilya. I took all that I had learned from you about clockmaking and timepieces and I became Galilya, the Mystress of the Chimes.”
“You? The Mystress of the Chimes!”
“Inga died. She was stupid.”
“She was stupid, so you say? And you, I suppose, were smarter,” he said scathingly.
She was determined to not let him provoke her and replied evenly, “Indeed. I figured out the bungvik.”
His monocle, which he had just replaced moments before to get a better look at the two foxes, dropped from his eye. “You figured out the bungvik?”
“Not only that, I figured out how they are planning to funnel it through the baffles.”
Uluk Uluk lifted his muzzle into the air. He could be such an arrogant bear. “Now, how would you know this, Galilya?” It annoyed Lago that he called her sister by this name. She wanted to yell, Call her Illya! But she dared not.
“I swam through it.”
“You swam the baffles!”
“I did, and here is their plan.”
Uluk Uluk blinked and once more his monocle fell out.
“Get me some sealscap parchment. I’ll show you.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” The change in Uluk Uluk was remarkable. Although his shape hadn’t shifted, when he returned with a sheet of sealscap and a charred stick for drawing, it was as if he was a new bear, if not a new creature that had emerged.
“Show me!” he said eagerly as he spread out the sealscap on a table.
Illya climbed up on the table. She gripped the charred stick and began to quickly sketch a latticework of lines. “You see, this is the central matrix of the baffling system.”
“Yes, yes, the matrix!” Uluk Uluk boomed.
“We always assumed that when the bungvik broke, it would flood everything below the Ice Cap of the Ublunkyn—everything to the south. But not so.”
“How not?”
“Have you ever heard of mydlsvarls?”
“The old legends of the mydlsvarl serpents from the time of Svree?”
Illya nodded.
“Yes, of course, they are like tunnels, gongs, they called them in Old Krakish. Not quite frost and not quite mist.”
“There is a natural network of these mydlsvarls in the outer part of the Nunquivik Sea. They connect conveniently with the N’yrthghar Straits. The pouches of the serpents are called bungs. The Grand Patek plans to direct the bungvik waters through the baffling system to the—”
“To the N’yrthghar Straits,” Uluk Uluk finished her sentence.
“Exactly. But he has to wait until the conditions are perfect—the tides, the state of the ice, the winds, the phase of the moon. The clock can reveal this perfect time. That is what all the calculations are for—not to predict the next Great Melting but to determine when the most favorable moment is for releasing the waters of the bungvik.”
“So how do we stop this?” Uluk Uluk asked.
Illya raised a brow slightly. “We,” she thought. He said “we”! “Two possibilities. Somehow we get someone to redirect the baffles. But too many blue seals have already been killed just making sure the baffles work as the Grand Patek wants them to work.” She thought of Jameson. “Or we get the key.”
“The key to the clock? But it’s in the Den of Forever Frost.”
Illya nodded. “But there have been rumors that it no longer is.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Rumors that a rebel bear called Svern—”
“SVERN!” Uluk Uluk exclaimed. “Svern is active again?”
Illya nodded.
“If any bear could get the key, it would be Svern.” And then Uluk Uluk’s eyes grew misty. He recalled two young bears. Cubs they were when he first met them. There was a scent that seemed familiar to him. Now what were their names? Jytte and Stellan—that was it! Extraordinarily bright. He had sent them to the clock. Most likely dead by now, he thought wistfully. But he had sent them for a good cause. Why did he think of them now when he thought of Svern? Could they have been his cubs?
Svern raced as fast as he could to the site where Svenna awaited him. Admittedly, he had thrown caution to the wind. Svenna did not have the coding skills to inform or expand on how she had come to be there. He just knew she was there. She was there, and Blue Bear was not. He didn’t understand why he was not there. But right now he had only one focus in mind. Svenna! He couldn’t wait to tell her that their cubs lived! Not only lived but had achieved the impossible—penetrated the Den of Forever Frost and retrieved the key!
A thick mist had swept in from the north. He tipped his head up to the sky. It was as if a veil had dropped over the Great Bear constellation. He wanted to identify her star, the heel star for which she was named, as he was named for the knee star. Heel follows knee, she would always say. But now he was following her. He tipped his head up again. How he had looked forward to pointing out the skipping stars, Jytte and Stellan, from which their cubs had taken names. But he moved on. There was no time to waste. He couldn’t travel fast enough to get to her. His beloved Svenna, whom he had never loved enough, treasured enough. All that he wanted was for Svenna, the cubs, and himself to be together again in this world. But would this world last? The key was safe in the tree, but soon they must consider going to war.
The details he received from Blythe so far were scant. She had to be very cautious in her coded transmissions. It wouldn’t do to have any of these messages picked up by a slipgizzle. And there were slipgizzzles throughout the Hoolian kingdoms. Of this he was sure. There was a suspect he had heard about from other Yinquis in the Beyond. The Beyond was what Yinquis called “porous.” The clans newly returned from the Distant Blue could be easy to infiltrate. One would have thought their rigid order and protocols might be difficult for an enemy operative. But wolves were also known to carry old grudges for decades. The best slipgizzles were creatures with grudges. However, there was also another aspect to wolf culture that could account for a wolf turning spy. Wolves were obsessed with hierarchies and order, and there was a lust with some wolves to belong to the most inner circle within the clan chieftain’s pack. They wanted desperately to believe that they were just a wolf’s whisker away from an exclusive group that held the real power. And for that they would sell their wolf souls. With this passion for power, an animal could be lured into doing very evil things.
But now, just now, he saw a figure in the mists. Svenna!
The mists suddenly cleared. The stars shone. Svern lifted his arms high. With one paw, he pointed at two stars skipping behind the heel star. “Jytte, Stellan!” he cried out. “Our cubs!”
Svenna roared with happiness. “Dearest Svern.” She began rushing toward him.
But suddenly he was gone. He simply vanished. It was as if the ice had swallowed him. Svenna looked about stunned. How could this have happened? She began to beat the ice furiously. Pounding on it with all her might, crying out, “Svern, Svern.” She raged, her voice became hoarse, and the name of her beloved turned ragged in the night.
“Let her pound,” a bear said with a soft snarl.
“You don’t want me to go up and get her, Captain?” another bear said. He had a stripe of blood proudly displayed across his chest. He was holding an ice club with which he had knocked Svern unconscious. “I mean, I thought she’d come through that trap with him.”
“No.” The other bear inhaled sharply. “Well, I’ll be swoggled.” He looked up at the bear with the club. “Byornyk, we got ourselves a real VIB here.”
“A what?”
“VIB—very important bear!”
“Really?”
“Yes, look at the top of his head. See that bubbly black skin.”
“Yeah, looks burned.”
“You bet, Byornyk. They were burned off in a black ice ort before he escaped. We got ourself a Yinqui. Not just any Yinqui, I would say.” He paused a moment. “A
nd you know what else?”
“What, Captain?”
“He killed my brother—Dark Fang.” He chuckled. “Oh, we’re going to have fun with this one.”
“He’s not dead, is he?”
“Oh, no, what fun would that be if he were dead? You gave him a good blow. He’ll come to in time.”
What the two bears didn’t realize was that Svern had already come to. His first thought of course was one of relief. Relief that they had not caught Svenna. His next thought was that these two bears, though not the brightest—especially Byornyk—had booby-trapped him. He wondered if they had booby-trapped Blue Bear as well. Ursuskadamus, he prayed they would not get Svenna. He had to banish any thoughts of her right now. He had to get out of here. But what was here? That was the question.
Beyond the scent of these two bears—Captain and Byornyk—there was nothing. But he actually could feel some dewy drops of moisture forming on his nose. Odd in such a dry place. He had to think about this for a while. The two Roguer bears were busy eating a piece of dried seal liver. Svern opened one eye just a slit. It was all he could do to keep from gasping. This was a mydlsvarl—a gong. He had no idea there were such tunnels beneath the ice in in these parts of the Hrath’ghar. This did not augur well. It suddenly dawned on him what this could mean. It was not simply a Great Melting that the Ice Clock could predict. That was all nonsense. What it was would be a great flooding engineered by the bears of the Ice Clock. A devastation created specifically to destroy the world beyond the Nunquivik to the south—the world of Ga’Hoole. In the time of the legends, it was said that there was a coiled serpent called Mydl that held vast amounts of water in pouches—or bungviks. When the earth quaked, the Mydl writhed and uncoiled. The pent-up waters would spill from its pouches. There must be an enormous pouch beneath site of the Ice Clock. A true bungvik! And in the right season—say, between the last of the seal moon and the first of the Ice Cracking Moons—it gave the bears of the Ice Clock a very direct route for these pent-up waters of the bungvik—unless, of course, the clock was stopped!
The Keepers of the Keys Page 15