The Keepers of the Keys

by Kathryn Lasky

  “No, not at all. The Namara does not believe, particularly with visitors sent from the Great Tree, that submission rituals should be required. Not when urgent business is to be discussed, and most particularly anything to do with the MacHeaths. We have a long and troubled history with them.”

  From the moment they stepped into the gadderheal, the bears knew that they were in a very different place. There was an order to the seating as there had been in other gadderheals with the members of raghnaid, the high jury of any clan, seated close to the chieftain; then came the captains, top lieutenants, sublieutenants. But most astonishing was that the majority of these high officers of the clan were female!

  The Namara stepped down. “Welcome to our clan and the gadderheal. I understand from our scout that you bring tidings from the noble owl Soren of the Great Tree.”

  Froya came forward. “Yes, Namara.”

  “And it concerns urgent business.”

  Froya inhaled deeply. She took a moment to reply. “Yes …”

  “You hesitate. I sense you are, what … fearful?”

  “The truth is, Namara, that the urgent business you referred to has become extremely urgent. We had planned to come here after stopping at some of the other clans but …” Oh, how to explain? Froya thought about how her brother was a dreamwalker and had seen somehow the death of Alasdair.

  “Take your time, my dear, I can see you are quite upset.”

  “Yes. We came directly because of the scout Alasdair.”

  “Oh yes, I know Alasdair. The MacDuncan scout. A talented and especially intelligent wolf.”

  “I am sorry to report, madam, that Alasdair is dead.”

  “What?” the Namara barked. The other wolves began to stir and whisper to one another.

  “We found her dying in the cave of the Sark of the Slough. As she lay dying, she had one command for us. These were her exact words: ‘Quint … go … go to the Namara … the Namara!’ ”

  “Quint!!!” all the wolves barked at once.

  “Quiet!” the Namara ordered. There was an instant hush. She stepped closer to Froya. “Tell me, bear. Her neck was slashed, right? And then a deep tear on her chest?” Froya nodded. The Namara then turned to the rest of the wolves in the gadderheal. “She has been murdered. Murdered by a slink melf of the MacHeath clan! ”

  “Heya. Heya,” the wolves softly snarled to one another, nodding as if in agreement with what their chieftain had just said. The Namara paused for a long time, then turned her eyes to a high-ranking she-wolf who wore the bone chain necklace of the raghnaid. They seemed to exchange a silent thought and then nod.

  “Our suspicions are confirmed,” the Namara said softly. “But tell us more about your talks with the other wolves and owls you have been sent to on this mission.”

  Briefly, Stellan summarized their successes with the MacNabs and then the owls of Ambala and Silverveil, and their setback with the MacDuncan clan. Then he told the Namara about how Third had been nabbed by the imposter bears who had dyed their fur brown. Just as Stellan was reciting this, he was suddenly aware of something stirring in his sister’s head. He stopped abruptly and looked at her. “Jytte, you have something to say?”

  “Just remembered something. I read it in Ezylryb’s diary—the one I read for extra credit. Ezylryb said that he suspected during the War of the Ice Talons that a MacHeath might have visited the dye pots of the kraals for a camo operation.”

  “Camo operation?” the Namara asked.

  “Yes, camouflage. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that at the time we were attacked and Third was snatched.” Jytte opened her eyes wide. “Do you suppose that …”

  “Heya! Heya!” The air stirred with the soft snarling of the wolves.

  The Namara leaped up. “Gloyschnyrr!” she rasped in a deep voice.

  Jytte slid her eyes toward Glyncora. “Rough beast from hell—a traitor. That’s what it means,” she told Jytte. “You young’uns have revealed a traitor. Lupus bless you for your studies of the papers of the great warrior Ezylryb.”

  “It is not simply the MacHeath clan that is traitorous,” Third said suddenly. There was a flickering light in his eyes, the same light the bears sometimes saw when he emerged from a dream. But he had not been asleep, not been dreaming. “There is another gloyschnyrr.” The old wolf word rolled off his tongue as if he had always spoken that ancient language.

  “Another traitor?” the Namara asked.

  “Indeed,” Third said.

  “Who might that be?” The Namara leaned forward and fixed the smallest of these bears in her gaze. She appeared to be sniffing him as well.

  Third drew closer and tipped his head slightly to one side. His eyes and the Namara’s seemed to lock.

  “Duncan MacDuncan.”

  In that instant, Stellan knew that Third was right. He had not awakened from a dream, but this knowledge had suddenly come to her. Why had Stellan not been able to riddle this treacherous chieftain’s mind? Perhaps he hadn’t even tried. It was, after all, their first encounter with the wolves in the Beyond. They had been amply prepared to deal with owls, for they had lived and learned from them. But the wolves were different entirely. Hadn’t Otulissa said they were … oh, what was the word she had used … inscrutable! And now Stellan realized the fear that had flooded his mind when he tried to riddle Alasdair’s. She sensed that Duncan MacDuncan knew she might leave. Turn scout for another clan or become an outclanner, and that he would do anything to stop her, even murder.

  The Namara began to talk crisply. “We are all poor since our return from the Distant Blue. We know that there has been trouble now for a long time between the Hoolian world, the territories that we call Before the Beyond, and these strange bears from the Far Ice, the place called Nunquivik. Duncan MacDuncan has been one of the most aggressive in reclaiming old MacDuncan territory.” The Namara now turned to a silvery wolf. “First Scout Almina, did you not say that you saw Duncan MacDuncan, or you thought it was he, the during the Caribou Moon far outside his territory?”

  The silver wolf stepped forword. “Yes. In the time of the Caribou Moon, I saw a wolf, similar to Duncan MacDuncan but without the usual badges and bone crests that would identify him as a chieftain, and I think he was tracking Alasdair.”

  “But why?” Froya asked. “Why would he be tracking his own scout?”

  “Exactly!” chuffed the Namara. “But I’ll answer that. For a long time, there had been rumors that Alasdair, whom many wolves called the Scout of All Scouts because of her incredible sense of smell and her extraordinary hearing, might be leaving the MacDuncan clan to become an outclanner. She was an independent-minded wolf. Duncan MacDuncan is a tightpawed wolf. What he has he wants to keep only for himself. It is my notion, mind you, it’s only a notion, that he was fearful that another clan might try to claim her. This idea was intolerable to him. It would work against his plan to gain more territory. Now, I had already put a watch on the MacHeath clan because if this threat from the bears of the Far Ice came to be true, the first collaborators with the enemy would be the MacHeath clan—lawless, uncivilized, ungovernable wolves if there ever were ones. Duncan MacDuncan wanted to stop Alasdair from going clanless, but he also wanted to make a pact with these egregious, unspeakable wolves of the MacHeath clan.”

  At that moment, a wolf bolted into the gadderheal.

  “A falcon has arrived from the Great Tree.” The bears looked at one another in alarm as a peregrine falcon from the first alert emergency team swept into the gadderheal. Peregrine falcons were the fastest flyers in the bird universe.

  “Two leaders of the free Hoolian world are feared captured—Svern of the Northern Kingdoms and Soren of the Great Tree.” A wailing rose up in the gadderheal. Jytte and Stellan fell into each other’s arms. They were stunned beyond disbelief. They felt as if the world was collapsing. They had spent so long looking for Svern, and now this!

  “This is war!” the Namara growled deeply. “We must send a message back with the fa
lcon that we suspect the MacDuncans along with the MacHeaths clans of collaborating with the bears of the Ice Clock!”

  Three bears, one fox who had been a bear, and two owls had figured out the grand plan of the bears of the Ice Clock. And it was a most fiendish plan that would destroy thousands upon thousands of creatures as the waters of the bungvik would be unleashed through the mechanism of the clock. It was as if Uluk Uluk, Illya, Svern and Svenna, Soren and Otulissa each held in their paws or talons a piece of a puzzle and had fitted them together into a scheme foretelling the worst catastrophe ever and the guarantee of the triumph of evil.

  Otulissa now perched in the parliament with a large map and a pointer branch.

  “This is where Soren disappeared, was swallowed, if you will, by a crack in the ice.” She felt a shiver pass through her gizzard as she recalled the clawed paw snaking out of that crack to grab her. It was a miracle that she had escaped. She had to show herself as steady. The owls gathered in this parliament were in a state of shock. It would not do for them to pick up in any way these gizzardly quivers that racked her body.

  “Is the crack still there?” asked a great gray named Elvind, a member of the ministry of war.

  “No, and that is the interesting thing,” Otulissa replied. “I was really so panicked on my flight back to the tree that I couldn’t quite figure it out, but just in the last few minutes, it struck me. The patterns that I described from our perspective of the land when flying over were very similar to what we called in old Krakish mydlsvarls, or frost tunnels, also called gongs. This came to me when I did another flyover and saw no evidence of the crack. There is only one thing that could cause a crack like that to seal so quickly. And that’s a low frost-density permeation rate.”

  “Huh?” said several owls.

  “Don’t ask me to explain it. When I was a young’un, as you know, I studied quite a bit under the tutelage of our great sage Ezylryb. One focus of my studies was the physics of frost density and evaporation rates, FDER, analysis. The perfect balance between the two forms frost tunnels. And though they are shaped differently than Yinqui listening dens with their ice conditions from the old smee holes and myldsvarls, both have excellent sound-conducting qualities.”

  “But are you saying these frost tunnels are natural or that these bears of the Nunquivik made the tunnels?” asked Peanut, an elf owl, also in the ministry of war. She had flown in the Frost Beak unit in the last great war.

  “Absolutely not. Those bears of the Far Ice might know about clocks, but they could no more make these frost tunnels than … than …”

  “Fly?” Elvind ask. There was a subdued churring from the owls. But this of course was no time for jokes.

  “The realization I came to is that not only is Soren stuck in one of these frost tunnels, but these frost tunnels can and probably will direct all the water from the rumored bungvik to us! The bears of the Ice Cap did not build them, but they discovered them, and realized how helpful they could be to their master plan.”

  “Great Glaux,” several owls muttered.

  “Yes, we are in the crosshairs of possibly the greatest deluge known in our history,” Otulissa said somberly. She did not add that she had read about another such deluge in the time of the Others in one of Ezylryb’s volumes. It was so fantastical she hardly could believe it when she first read about it. An Other who went by the name of Noah had gathered up several animals of all species and took them off in an ark, a kind of Other’s invention that floated across seas. “But here’s the thing. I feel that they know that we have the key. Before they make their move to wipe us out, they want to have the key in their possession, for we could stop the clock that would then stop that torrent of water. Because of the studies that I previously mentioned, the FDER analysis, they must release the waters of the bungvik on the very edge between the Moon of the White Rain and that of the Silver Rain. Or in the bear lunar schedule the third of the Seal Moons and on the cusp of the First Cracks Moon. That will be the ideal time for the proper frost density and the phase of the moon. The pull between the moon and the sun at that time will be the strongest and cause massive flooding.”

  “That gives us almost two moons to stop the clock.”

  Otulissa nodded and at the same time seemed to wilf. In an instant, she was half her size. “And less than that to save Svern and our dear king, Soren. Within that short time, we must amass an army and invade. I want to meet with the ministry of war immediately following this gathering. Understood?”

  “Yes, General!” several of the older owls replied. Otulissa glanced at her mate, Cleve, and saw that he too had wilfed. It must have been the older owls calling her general. This would be difficult for him. Cleve simply did not understand conflict, war, of any kind. He was a gizzard resister, a healer. In his mind, everything could be mended. Then she saw him lift a talon to speak.

  “Yes, Cleve?”

  “And I shall meet with the medics and discuss medical transports for the wounded.”

  What a dear old soul he was. He might be a gizzard resister, but how many wounded owls had he saved in the time of the owl wars? He had designed the ingenious air vacuums called krokenbots for transporting wounded soldiers from the field. But she did doubt that these devices could manage a wounded bear.

  All through the rest of this terrible day and long into the night, the owls planned, gathering in the ministry hollow and other hollows as well as in the tree. Colliers were alerted that certain kinds of coals would be needed. Buster and his son Arvid had begun forging new battle claws and helmets. A boreal owl called simply Q for Quartermaster went over the inventory lists of all weapons, both metal and the ice ones that were stored at the tree and on the Ice Dagger and other secret stashes in the Northern Kingdoms.

  Little could those owls at the Great Tree pursuing their plans for war imagine that their own king and the Yinqui Svern would most likely be the very first to die when the bungvik waters were released. And that at the very moment Svern was studying his fellow captive, the barn owl, in a deep frost tunnel where they were both imprisoned. He refrained from speaking to him until the Roguer bears left. They would disappear for short periods of time, but Svern knew there was no getting out.

  Svern had of course recognized the owl immediately, but he was not sure if the Roguer bears did. They were basically fairly stupid bears. All the Roguers were. They could not compare in intelligence to those at the Ice Clock. Nevertheless, they were dangerous. They basked in their brutality, their power. And although Svern recognized Soren, he dared not say his name out loud. That would be too risky if the bears knew the prize they had—the king of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.

  “You know, it could be worse,” Svern said.

  “Really?” Soren blinked.

  “Yes, it’s not a black ort.” He tipped his head down. “You see this?” He lightly tapped the nubbly hardened blisters where his ears had been.

  Soren gasped. “Then I know who you are!”

  Svern nodded. “But let’s refrain from calling each other by name. Although these bears know who I am.”

  “Of course,” Soren said.

  “Have you figured this place out?” Svern asked.

  “I think I have. Frost tunnels, right? Myldsvarls.”

  “Yes, the last earthquake was a blessing for the bears of the Ice Clock,” Svern said. He sighed. “And I’ll bet we’ll be their test case when they break the bungvik.”

  “Not necessarily,” Soren replied.

  “What? You see a way out of this place? No one knows where we are. We don’t even know where we are, exactly.”

  “You don’t know Otulissa,” Soren said.

  “Otu what … ?” This is one coolheaded owl, Svern thought.

  “Otulissa, the spotted owl I was flying with. She wasn’t caught.”

  “No, I don’t know her.” But Soren was not looking at Svern.

  Soren paused and shoved his head close to Svern, who was sitting down. Soren’s beak and Svern’s muzzle were just
inches apart. “But … um … what do you think of the ice here, Yinqui? You think you could reach my daughter?”

  Great Ursus! Blythe. The owl was right. Why had he never thought of this? The frost tunnels were so similar to Yinqui listening dens. There was only one way to tell. He stuck out his tongue and licked the ice. His tongue didn’t stick. Perfect frost dew point.

  Svern began to lightly tap his code name onto the ice. Soren tipped his head first this way, then another.

  “Hurry, they’re coming back!”

  “It froze!” Jytte exclaimed as the four bears led by Glyncora stood on the very tip of Broken Talon Point that jutted out into the Sea of Hoolemere. The deep green sea that they had swum through in the time of the Copper Rain now stretched white before them. The winter moons, the moons of the White Rain, had finally come.

  “Look!” Froya said. “I think I can see the island of Hoole and maybe even the Great Tree.”

  “With this wind and this ice, you should be there before dawn,” Glyncora said. Then she lifted her muzzle. “You see that constellation there and the very bight star low on the horizon?”

  “Yes,” Froya replied. “The owls call that the Little Raccoon.”

  “Well, we call it the Caribou’s Antlers. You keep two points easterly between that star and the third star in what the owls call Grank’s Anvil and that will be your most direct route in this wind.” She paused. “So off you go!” And the gray wolf, her pelt now silvered by the rising moon, bent down on her front knees, then lifted her tail, which blew like a bright comet in the wind, as the yosses slid down the slope of the talon and onto the ice. Stellan was the last to leave, and before he did, he reached out with his immense paw and touched the wolf’s shoulder.

  “Auforaida, my friend.”

  “Auforaida,” the other three yosses cried.

  The ice was slick. It was fast. When they were halfway there, they began to see the shadows of owl wings printed against the night.

  They soon heard the distinctive trill of a pygmy owl.