(GoG Book 08) The Outcast (4 page)

“And you have chosen to do this of your own free will?” Mist asked.

“Yes, of my own free will.”

And so it was planned that Coryn would leave the next night.

“I must tell you one more time, Coryn, of the rumors.”

“Yes, Mist, I know.” She had told him that Zan and
Streak had reported rumors and sightings of the Pure Ones gathering new troops and capturing young, defenseless owls.

“They’ve even gone in for egg stealing like St. Aggie’s did years ago in Ambala,” Streak said. “But this time it seems to be up in the borderlands between the Shadow Forest and Silverveil.”

“Yes, of course, they have the old eggorium at St. Aggie’s there in the canyonlands. I suppose they could start that up again. There is yet another rumor,” Mist continued, “that one of Nyra’s top lieutenants has deserted her. They are out tracking him, too. You must be careful, young’un,” Mist said.

“I promise I will.” Coryn wondered if his mother’s old lieutenant, Uglamore, was the deserter. He had had his doubts about how loyal Uglamore was to Nyra and the whole idea of the Pure Ones. It had been Uglamore who had tried to intervene and save Phillip from being killed in the ritual known as the Special Ceremony. But Uglamore was old now. Where in the world would an old broken-down lieutenant for the Pure Ones go?
Beyond the Beyond. Of course,
Coryn thought.

He left at First Black. The two eagles and Slynella and Stingyll accompanied him as far as the border of Ambala.
He had said his good-byes to Mist privately. Mist, never a strong flier, had chosen to stay behind.

“Glauxspeed!” Streak called out and Zan signaled. The two flying snakes had been joined now by two other snakes, and the four of them wrote across the silver of the full-shine moon:

And to think, Glaux is not even the spirit of their kind. How good of them to wish me well in the name of a spirit that is not theirs.

C
oryn set a course due west. The constellation of the Little Raccoon was just climbing out of its burrow beyond the horizon and into the sky. To keep this course, Coryn must fly two points off the first claw of the raccoon’s port front paw. How glad he was to have learned navigation. The Pure Ones navigated by certain dim instincts that were not nearly as accurate as star navigation. On this course he would fly over The Barrens, skirt the edges of Silverveil, then angle his flight north by northwest and take a straight line into Beyond the Beyond. It would be a long trip. Not all the winds were favorable this time of year. He did not fly by day, for he wanted no encounters with mobbing crows. He had nearly been mobbed once when he and Phillip had fled the Pure Ones. He did not want that to happen again. He would try to avoid owls altogether since there had been sightings of Pure Ones in some places and rumors abounding in others. He knew
that at all costs he must avoid them and, as for other owls, he knew they would still treat him as an outcast.

His new name had not really changed him, either inside or out. He knew he still must prove himself as Coryn. And perhaps part of that proving was to endure—for a time—being an outcast. He could not yet even hope to go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. But there was no denying that he desperately wanted to go there. He wanted to hear the great harp, the strings through which the blind nest-maid snakes wove themselves to make the music that the famous old Snowy, Madame Plonk, sang. He wanted to see the parliament where the most noble owls on Earth met. He wanted to see the magnificent great hollow where the owls feasted and danced. And most of all, he wanted to fly through the great library and read the wonderful books. Coryn thought about this as he flew. In his gizzard he knew that he had made the right decision but, in truth, he was flying away from all he yearned for.

He had been traveling now for four nights, and the first sliver of the full-shine moon had been shaved off as the dwenking began. Slimmer and slimmer it would grow, and if these northerly winds strengthened by the time he reached Beyond the Beyond, it would most likely be
no thicker than the thinnest filament of a down feather. But right now he was approaching the far edge of The Barrens and would soon be crossing the border into Silverveil.

He looked down. The territory was familiar. When he had first fled from his mother he had flown over just this same corner. It was in the very spot now beneath him that he had been mistaken for his mother, Nyra, by a young Burrowing Owl. It was the first time he truly realized that he had been branded by the scar and the meaning it would have for him. The young Burrowing Owl had screeched in terror when she saw him. Her mother had come out and begun screeching as well. The two owls were hysterical with fear. It had been useless to explain to them that he was not Nyra. But now as he flew over he could hear, like an echo from that night months ago, owl voices filled with fear and panic.

“You say it’s gone? Was it Nyra?” A searing cry came from the burrow.

“But how could it be?”

“It wasn’t Nyra. It was a male. But Mum, it was so scary! The owl said he would kill me!”

“Kill you! Great Glaux, what has this world come to?”

Coryn realized that what he thought was an echo of his past encounter was no such thing. This conversation
was happening now, underground in the depths of the Burrowing Owls’ burrow! Because of his acute hearing, Coryn was able to pick up much of the conversation. He cocked his head one way and then another in the same manner as when he was stalking very small prey. Something terrible had happened to the family and he knew it was the same family because right now the mother was crying, “Harry! Harry! What shall we do?”

Harry had been the name he had heard the mother call before when she had first seen Coryn. Harry was her mate. But what was happening now? Shrieks and lamentations seemed to spill from the hole of the burrow. They were underground. They would not see him. So he decided to continue flying in tighter circles over the burrow. He scanned for a variety of sounds and honed in precisely on the source. Contracting the muscles of his facial disk, the words began to pour into his ear slits clearly, succinctly.

This family was in trouble. An egg that was very close to hatching had been stolen by a Pure One.
So
they
were here!
Coryn listened more closely. He wanted to find out the identity of the owl who had done this.

“It’s not your fault, Kalo,” the father was saying in a soothing voice. “There’s no way you could have fought them off.”

Them? More than one? Who was it? Had Nyra gotten hireclaws?

“We’re not the first family to be attacked,” the mother was sobbing. “It’s happening all over Silverveil. But I never thought they’d come this far into The Barrens. I mean, our burrows are hard to find.”

“They probably have slipgizzles,” said another voice.

“No, they probably followed us here from Silverveil. Harry, it’s all your fault. I knew we shouldn’t have spent the summer in that stupid tree in Silverveil. Burrowing Owls do not belong in forest trees. They belong in burrows in barren lands like this or in deserts.” She began to wail again.

This was exactly the same argument Coryn had heard them having a few months before. The father had wanted to spend the summer in Silverveil. The mother had not, and now she was blaming the father for the stolen egg. Coryn’s gizzard trembled in sympathy, and his heart went out to the family even though they had screeched the most horrible imprecations and insults at him when they had thought he was Nyra. But what was to be done? He had better get out of here right away before they all stormed out of the burrow ready to wreak vengeance on the first Pure One they saw—for which he would undoubtedly be mistaken.

But wait!
Coryn thought. Perhaps there was a way he could help them. Maybe he could find that egg. If the rumors of Pure Ones’ activities in Silverveil were true and if they had been followed, as the female Burrowing Owl had claimed, maybe he could try to retrace their flight path. Instinct told him that the Pure Ones would not be flying these eggs back to the canyonlands one at a time. Since there had been so many tales of them in and around Silverveil, this might be where they had temporarily taken the eggs. Furthermore, since the female Burrowing Owl had been so reluctant to spend the summer in Silverveil, the family most likely had gone to a part of the forest that was closest to The Barrens. This might not be far off his course to Beyond the Beyond. It would certainly be worth it if he could retrieve their stolen egg.

T
he border between The Barrens and Silverveil was a long one, stretching from the Shadow Forest to the west, all the way to the Sea of Hoolemere in the east. As Coryn flew, he gave further thought to the Pure Ones’ strategy for snatching eggs. If Nyra was anything, she was practical. She would have her lieutenants set up a cache for the stolen eggs. Then she would borrow or steal a coal bucket from a Rogue smith for transport so that several eggs might be taken at once.

By Coryn’s reckoning, the egg cache would be limited to a triangle at the juncture of Silverveil and the Shadow Forest, right at the northern corner of The Barrens. He would have to be careful. He was wondering if he should return to his old ways of flying in daylight rather than night. In daylight, he would risk mobbings by crows. At night, he would risk encounters with the Pure Ones.
Some choice!

He flipped his head straight up as he flew, then rotated it in the widest arc possible. Clouds were coming in. Low
woolly ones. And the moon, being just a sliver, was not bright. He could fly above or even within the clouds. They would camouflage him perfectly and every now and then he could poke his head out to survey the territory. He had flown this country before, and he realized that he had very good instincts for memorizing flight routes and land. No matter what the weather might be, each territory generated its own peculiar wind currents. Not only that, the sounds were different depending on whether they came from the hardscrabble part of The Barrens or the vast prairies, which were covered in grass that made the wind sing. It was the same with the forests. Each forest had its distinct sounds.

And perhaps most important of all, he was very familiar with the flight sounds of the Pure Ones. They flew fast and they flew noisily. Their plummels, those soft fringe feathers that edged the wings of most owls, were stiff and ratty from lack of care. He had learned from Mist how to take proper care of his plummels, and he remembered swelling with pride when she had told him that he finally was flying as quietly as a Guardian of Ga’Hoole.

So Coryn began to spiral upward and penetrate the low, scudding clouds. But he had forgotten one thing. Clouds were wet. He plumped up his feathers to disperse the fine droplets. It wasn’t a downpour but he had to give
a bit of a shake every once in a while to shed the moisture that was building up.

He hadn’t been flying long when he sensed a distinct change in the landscape beneath him. Sounds softened. He knew he was over the lush green valleys and thick stands of trees of Silverveil. The silence would grow even denser the closer he got to the Shadow Forest, where evergreens covered most of the land, climbing up the steepest hills of the deepest valleys. And the wind would have a different sound when blowing through the needles rather than ruffling through leaves or the bare branches of deciduous trees. He once again cocked his head, but this time he was not after prey. He was listening for predators, predators most vile, most despicable, predators who preyed on the unhatched young of decent families like the Burrowing Owls of The Barrens.

He began to hear something. Voices whispering directly below him. The words were almost indistinguishable, but he thought he heard another sound running beneath the words. An odd sound that he had never in his life heard before—almost as if something were swishing, but it was not a pond. He had roosted in stump hollows by ponds before. He knew the sound their waves made lapping the shore when the wind rippled the surface. This was not the same at all. This was a muffled rushing
noise—like a river? No. Like an ocean?
But I have never heard the sounds of an ocean. I have never been that close to Hoolemere.
Besides, oceans were vast and this sound was small. Very small, like a tiny ocean in…
an egg!
The realization seemed to burst in his brain and sent a sizzle through his gizzard. And within the depths of that miniature ocean, he heard something else. A heartbeat!

He drifted out of the clouds, scanning the sky below and the forest for any sign of the Pure Ones. He was a good half league from the source of the sound he had identified as that of not just one egg but several. He realized now that even if he did get to the eggs, he could rescue only one and it had to be that of the Burrowing Owl. How would he know which one was the Burrowing Owl’s egg? He’d never seen any owls’ eggs in his entire life.

Well, first things first,
Coryn thought again. He had to get closer to the source. One thing gave his gizzard a boost: He had not recognized any of the voices he had heard guarding the cache of eggs. That meant his mother was not there. Nor was Stryker, her fiercest lieutenant. In fact, the voices sounded rather young. Not much older than himself. Probably the rumored new recruits, so perhaps they might not recognize him. Oh, but of course they would! He looked so much like Nyra and then there was the cursed scar. How could he have forgotten? Even if
they had never seen him, they had probably heard about…

Coryn stopped. A realization seized him mid-flight and sent a jolt to the deepest part of his gizzard. He lighted on the branch of the tree directly beneath him, a creaking old oak draped in thick moss. Small bits and pieces, mere fragments of ideas, began to link together in his mind. Perhaps for once his resemblance to his mother, scar and all, could work in his favor.

Coryn’s brain worked faster. He could do this, he knew it. He stared hard at the scrim of moss hanging from the limb in front of the one where he was perched. It reminded him of something. Yes, of course, those hagsfiends that had swooped down on him when he had first fled from The Barrens the last time. They looked like tattered owls, shrouded in shreds of gray mist. They were hagsfiends, the hellish witches from the owl hell known as hagsmire. His mother had told him frightening stories of these fiends, and now this moss reminded him of them.