The Siege (5 page)

O
wl to downwind.” Twilight had just caught sight of an owl emerging from a thickening fog bank.

“Great Glaux! It’s Otulissa!” Soren hooted in amazement. The other owls spun their heads to look. Their beaks dropped open in utter surprise at what they saw. Power-stroking against a strong headwind was Otulissa, a fierce scowl in her eyes, her beak set in an angry clamp. In another few seconds she had banked, turned, and glided into the windward flanking station, her usual flight position in the Chaw of Chaws.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said.

“What happened?” Soren asked in a stunned voice.

“You won’t believe this, but Dewlap caught me.”

“Caught you? How?” Gylfie asked.

“Caught me reading a book, the book that Ezylryb gave
me. She made me do a flint mop.” Otulissa paused. “Well, I did it for a while.”

“And then what?” Gylfie asked.

“I threw a dead ground squirrel in her face and flew off. So here I am.”

“You what?” Ruby said.

But Soren cut in, “Now see here. We have to keep flying and we must keep our minds on our business. These winds are getting worse. Otulissa can explain it all to us when we fetch up on the other side. For now, keep flying. Gylfie, give us a course check.”

“Two more degrees of easterly, then turn due south.”

Good,
Soren thought. Turning east would put the wind just off their tail quarter and ease their flight. They wouldn’t be working against it so much.

The plan had been simple. After turning south, they would be on a direct course for The Beaks. Heading west and skirting the coastline of The Beaks, they would enter the mouth of the River Hoole, flying straight upriver until it joined a tributary that flowed out of Ambala. They would then fly across the southern portion of Ambala, still heading west, and onto the far border of the St. Aegolius Canyons, where they would fetch up for the next
day. It would make for a long night, but since it was winter, the dawn would be slow to break, and therefore there would be no danger of crow mobbing in the daylight hours. They would then wait until the following evening when they would make their approach and entry into the St. Aegolius Canyons where, at the very center, St. Aggie’s lay deep in a stone maze of chasms, jagged gulches, shadowy clefts, and ravines.

Where they had fetched up for the day the woods were thin, and in the distance they could see the stone spires of the St. Aegolius Canyons etched against the horizon. Otulissa had just finished her story. The owls were in awe of the Spotted Owl. She was known for her ferocity of wit and intellect, but not for such unseemly outbursts, and never ones that involved raw power. Imagine, flinging a bloody ground squirrel into the face of a ryb!

“Glaux knows what flint mop awaits you, Otulissa. A major one, no doubt,” Gylfie sighed.

“I know,” said Otulissa solemnly. “But I’m still glad I did it.”

Soren clattered his beak a couple of times, a habit that he had developed when he was thinking hard, as he was now. He didn’t like what he had heard. He found it disturbing that Dewlap had used Otulissa to serve her, literally
having her go out and hunt for food. That did not seem right. He also felt that this could provide a major distraction for the seven of them. He did not want the Chaw of Chaws thinking about flint mops for some boring old owl.

“You know,” Digger began to speak slowly. “I don’t think there will be a flint mop for Otulissa.”

“Why not?” Ruby asked.

“Well, think about it. Major flint mops have to be approved by the parliament. So for her to receive one, Dewlap is going to have to explain too much,” said Digger.

“You’re right!” Gylfie said suddenly.

Digger continued, “Dewlap would have to tell Ezylryb that she tried to take away a book that he had given to Otulissa. She would also have to admit that she had been asking Otulissa to hunt food for her while on this flint mop. I mean, the whole thing is not going to put Dewlap in the best light. She’s going to appear as exactly what she is—a tedious old owl who went against the most revered ryb of the entire tree. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want Ezylryb against me. I would much rather have Dewlap against me and Ezylryb on my side than the other way around.”

Soren breathed a sigh of relief. What Digger had just said made perfect sense. Now the owls would not be distracted
by thoughts of flint mops. They were all very tired from their long flight, which had been mostly against headwinds. They were ready for sleep, and soon they were all snoozing peacefully.

Except for Soren and Gylfie. They were still wide awake and discussing the strategy for their entry into the St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls.

“I think we should go to the Great Horned entrance,” Gylfie was saying. “I remember Grimble once talking about how mature owls, owls like himself, always came through the Great Horned entrance.” Grimble, a Boreal Owl, had been captured as an adult by St. Aggie’s patrols and held as a hostage with the promise that his family would be spared. He was a strong fighter. That was why Skench, the Ablah General of St. Aggie’s, and Spoorn, her first lieutenant, had wanted him. But Grimble had been imperfectly moon blinked, and something in him responded to the plight of Soren and Gylfie. He taught the two young owlets how to fly so they could get away. On the harrowing night of their escape, Grimble had died, murdered while trying to help them go free. Soren could not think of Grimble without a quiver in his gizzard and an ache in his heart. But he had to put all that aside now. Such feelings would only be a distraction. This mission
was going to require everything that he and Gylfie had, plus more. They must successfully resist moon blinking, convince the owls that they had come to join the horrible evil that was St. Aggie’s, and to gather the information that Boron and Barran desperately needed in order to preserve peace in the owl kingdoms.

Boron, Barran, and Ezylryb had been very precise about the kind of information they needed. First, the Chaw of Chaws must determine if any of Kludd’s followers, the Pure Ones, had infiltrated St. Aggie’s. If so, were they sneaking flecks out of the library, where the flecks were stored? Second, they were to find out if the rulers of St. Aggie’s had learned anything more about flecks. Previously, they had known hardly anything. When Skench had burst into the library as Gylfie and Soren were about to escape, it was only her ignorance that saved them. The Ablah General had not known to take off her metal battle claws and full battle regalia before entering, and she, pulled by magnetic force, slammed into the wall of the library where the flecks were kept.

Although it was tempting to stay together once they were in St. Aggie’s, Soren and Gylfie knew that this was not the best strategy. To achieve their goals, the group would have to separate and spread themselves throughout the
academy. There were many divisions, including the pelletorium, the hatchery, the eggorium, and the battle claw repository.

Finally, toward noon, as a dim winter sun hung in the sky, Gylfie and Soren fell asleep. The short days of brief light would afford them only a few hours of rest before the sky would begin to darken and it would be time for them to rouse themselves and face the unthinkable—the return to the most dreadful place on earth: St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls.

B
elow them, the landscape began to bristle with rocky spires and needles.

“I’ve never seen anything uglier,” said Martin, who came from the wild and gloriously green forest of Silver-veil. Silverveil was a forest where immense trees hung with ivy and were clad in a thousand different kinds of moss, where oceans of ferns trembled in the ground breezes, where streams made their own sweet music as they laced their way through ancient, wooded lands. Some said that the forests of Silverveil were so beautiful that it was as close as a living owl could ever get to Glaumora, the owl heaven, without dying.

Whereas St. Aggie’s might be the closest an owl could get to Hagsmire, the owl hell, without dying. Soren scanned the rocks below, looking for the Great Horned entrance. This entrance was an immense boulder that
perched precariously on an outcropping and was said to resemble a Great Horned Owl.

“All right, ready?” Soren asked the six other owls. They all nodded. They lifted off and headed for the boulder of the Great Horned entrance. As they approached, two Long-eared Owls lifted off the two peaks, the horns of the boulder, that rose against the colorless winter sky.

“Here they come,” said Gylfie quietly. It wasn’t Jatt and Jutt, two St. Aggie’s warriors, for they had been slain in the desert more than a year ago when they had attacked Digger. But it was the Long-eared Owls who had always served as the main guards at St. Aggie’s.

Now these two owls banked and came up in a flanking maneuver, one on each side of the seven owls’ flight formation.

“You are flying into a no-fly zone. This is the territory of St. Aegolius. You are now under our escort. You break formation under risk of severest penalties. You shall proceed with us into the interrogation crevice,” said one Long-eared Owl.

“Yes, sir,” Martin answered. They had decided that Martin would be the spokes-owl. Soren knew that both he and Gylfie had changed greatly since they had first been snatched and brought here as captives, but they did not
want to risk the slightest chance that some owl might hear a familiar note in their voices or catch a recognizable glint in their eyes. It had been Soren and Gylfie’s intention to fade into the background of the Chaw of Chaws and to do as little as possible to attract any attention at all.

“Steep bank to…uh…uh…this way,” the other Long-eared Owl commanded.

Glaux, these owls don’t know port from starboard!
The thought exploded in Soren’s mind and it gave him great joy. He realized how much he had learned since arriving at the great tree. It would be brains and not brawn that succeeded here, and this was a comforting thought.

Within a minute, they were sliding into the dense shadows of a deep crevice. Down, down, down they plunged, until they lighted on the gritty floor. Above, only a thin sliver of the sky was visible. There were enough bad things about St. Aggie’s, but perhaps one of the worst was that in the deep canyons, stone wells, pits, and crevices, the sky seemed so far away. Oftentimes it was not even visible. In just a handful of places did the sky cut through. One of these places was the glaucidium and the moon-blazing chamber, where the horrible moon-blinking procedures were endured.

“Wait here!” one of the Long-eared Owls barked, and
then waddled off into a stone slit. Soren saw Twilight’s and Ruby’s eyes blink in wonder.
Get used to it,
Soren thought.
This is the world of St. Aggie’s.

It was a stone world riddled with seams, slits, and slots through which owls seemed to simply disappear. Soren was looking around when he sensed that Gylfie was quivering. He looked down and saw that the little Elf Owl had edged in closer to him. Her eyes were blinking open in a staccato rhythm. Emerging from another crack was a Great Horned Owl and it was none other than Unk, Gylfie’s old pit guard! Surreptitiously, Soren extended one wing ever so slightly, so it barely grazed Gylfie’s head. He felt her calm down.
We’ll get through this, Gylfie. We are smarter than they are. We’ll get through it.
He willed the words that took shape in his head to somehow get through to his best friend. He knew how scared she must be. He was terribly frightened of meeting up with Aunt Finny, the old Snowy Owl who had been his pit guardian.

Although the pit guardians were not considered the highest level of guards, there was something dreadful about them. They were, of all the owls of St. Aggie’s, the slyest and the most duplicitous. They were masters of falsehood. They pretended to be warm, but it was all part of their strategy to suck a young owlet into their power.

But now it seemed that Unk was no longer a pit
guardian. His words, no longer jollied and honeyed, sliced the shadows of the crevice. “How did you come here? How did you know about us? What is your purpose?”

Martin took a tentative step forward. In a quavering voice he began. “My name is Martin.”
Oh, racdrops!
Soren thought.
Why’d he have to say that?

“Names mean nothing here. You shall be given a number designation. Someday you might earn a name. Until then, I repeat, names mean nothing. Continue.”

“We came from the Northern Kingdoms.”

A shiver seemed to pass through Unk and, at a slight, almost invisible signal, the other Long-eared Owl vanished through another crack. Hardly a minute had passed before a Western Screech stepped from the same crack, followed by an immense and ragged Great Horned Owl. It was Skench. Soren and Gylfie felt their gizzards almost split with fear.

“I am Skench, the Ablah General. I am told you come from the Northern Kingdoms—and yet two of you are desert owls. Now tell me how desert owls found their way to the Northern Kingdoms.”

“Well, Your Ablah,” Martin nodded in his most obsequious manner. And he began to tell the story they had concocted of williwaws and violent winds. Soren looked on with amazement. Martin was doing a magnificent job.
He even threw in the Lobeleian current, which the St. Aggie’s owls knew nothing about, but they nodded wisely for they were too embarrassed to admit ignorance. In a brief time, Martin had laid the perfect groundwork with his cover story. The Chaw of Chaws appeared smart, but not too smart. They were owls who had seen a lot of the world and become disenchanted with the Northern Kingdoms. Although they had not known one another before they had been sucked up into the Northern Kingdoms, they found that they had shared their dislike for the place. “The clan system doesn’t work,” Martin said.

“Not for racdrops!” Twilight added.

“There’s no real leader. Everything’s in a constant state of confusion,” Martin said.

“Yeah,” Twilight said with just the right mixture of gruffness and meekness. “We want a real leader. We are humble owls.”

Great Glaux, he’s overdoing it! Twilight—humble?
Soren tried to imagine such a thing. But here he was, the Great Gray dipping his head submissively to Skench. And most incredible of all, Skench was buying it!

“This is all very interesting,” Skench said, turning to Spoorn, who had emerged from another crack in the canyon wall while Martin was speaking. “These owls will all need to be debriefed, and then we shall decide on their
number designations and their work assignments. But first they must begin the processes of the glaucidium.”

By “processes of the glaucidium,” Skench meant moon blinking. Soren now hoped fervently that the owls remembered all that Gylfie and he had taught them about the strategies of resistance.

Already the other five owls had begun remembering their portions of the Ga’Hoolian legend cycle. Ruby began to think of Grank and the time of the endless volcanoes. She pictured the first collier flying high over the exploding cone of the volcano and fielding the fiery debris that scored the sky. Twilight thought of the Battle of the Tigers that happened in the time of the long eclipse when the huge cats that roamed the world in those ancient days went yoicks from lack of sun and began a murderous rampage. It had been a Great Gray named Long Talon who had plunged down from the black one night and killed their leader—a tiger one hundred times his own size.

The Chaw of Chaws was ready. Ready with their legends burning feverishly in their brains, ready with their courage, ready to fight the evil that was held in this dark, shadowy, skyless place. Their blood boiled, their wits were keen, and their hearts grew bold.