(GoG Book 08) The Outcast (11 page)

“Certainly, my lord.”

The wolf returned in no time and set down a bundle of what looked like scraps of leather.

The wolves of the MacDuncan clan crowded closer to have a look.

“What is it?…Never seen anything like it.” The MacDuncan wolves were puzzled.

“Art, they call it. Paintings. They are eyes of the Others, and all green at that!”

“Maybe the Others had a little wolf in them,” Duncan offered. There was hearty laughter at this.

It was at precisely this point that Coryn began to have uneasy feelings in the Gadderheal. He could feel the heat of the fire and yet he resisted looking at it. At that moment, a scruffy wolf pup missing a tail lurched into the Gadderheal. It was obvious that the tail had been bitten off and, as Coryn looked more closely, he noticed that the reason the pup limped was because there was something wrong with one of his footpads. A sickening sensation washed through Coryn. He felt he might yarp a pellet any second, which he knew was not the thing to do in a ceremonial cave like a Gadderheal. But it was clear that, as Hamish had told him, this pup had been maimed on purpose so that he could become a gnaw wolf.

“Ah, Cody,” said MacHeath, “our little gnaw wolf. Show Lord Duncan your bones.”

Cody waddled to a corner and dragged out a few bones.

Coryn noticed a cream-colored female watching the lame pup and saw her then shift her gaze to him. He had never seen eyes brimming with such sadness. For a minute, she seemed to study him. Was she staring at his scar?
She could never know that I was maimed by my own mother, never!

“He gnaws beautifully, as you see, Lord Duncan.”

“Yes, I can see.” Duncan MacDuncan could hardly conceal his disgust.

“His great-grandmum was a MacDuncan, you know.”

It was in the midst of this conversation in which Lord MacHeath was obviously angling for the maimed pup to be considered for the Sacred Watch that Coryn, desperate to turn his eyes from the pup, caught a glimpse—just a glimpse of the fire. But in that instant he knew he could deny the flames no longer. He swiveled his head. He watched the flames first and then his gaze penetrated the glow of the embers. He saw a face, covered in soot, as black as a Rogue smith fresh from the forge. And beneath the ash and grime, glowing as fiercely as that moon perched and trembling on the edge of the Beyond, was an immense white face with a scar just like his own. He felt his gizzard grow still and then lock.
Nyra has been here! She has been right in this Gadderheal. She is the visitor who brought the green eyes as gifts.

W
hy didn’t you tell me all this before, Coryn?” Hamish demanded.

“I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I can’t explain it.”

Hamish thought a while and then said, “I think I can explain it. You have special powers. Fire sight, you call it. It’s just like with gnaw wolves. Powers separate you from other creatures of your kind. Everyone thinks that to have power is wonderful, but we know it isn’t. We know it’s a lonely existence. We are both outcasts.”

“Yes, exactly. But it is not just my fire sight that separates me. It is that my mother and father were the worst owls on Earth. They were brutal, horrid owls. This scar that you see on my face is the work of my mother’s talons.” Coryn thought this would shock Hamish but it didn’t. “How would you like it if your mum did something like that to you?”

“Oh, she did something just as bad, far worse really, except she had no choice. It is the wolf law.”

Coryn blinked. He had assumed that Hamish’s mother had died giving birth to him, because there was no older female that he seemed to have anything to do with.

“You have a mother?”

“Oh, yes.” Hamish nodded.

“In this clan?”

Hamish nodded again.

“What did she do to you?”

“When wolf pups are born, we are born naked and blind and deaf. We begin to hear within a few days, but our eyes will not open for almost eleven days. On the night I was born, when my mother saw my crooked leg and how ugly I was, she did not even lick off the birth sac but took me in her mouth and walked out into the cold night. She turned her head toward the highest ridge and began climbing. Never breaking stride, she slid through the night with her loathsome bundle. She put me on the ridge where the wolf birds would find me and eat me. My birth sac full of the juices and slime of birth might summon the wild cats that roamed or even the grizzlies. Or if I should wriggle enough, I might tumble down and crush my thin skull on a rock.”

“How could she do that? That is so cruel.”

“Not really. That is simply the way it is with wolves. If
the pup lives, that means it is marked to be a gnaw wolf and is taken back into the clan.”

“And you lived.”

“Yes, Duncan came to see if I had lived or died.”

“So when you came back, did she nurse you?”

“She was no longer there, nor my father.”

“But why?”

“It is a law: When a wolf gives birth to a deformed pup, both the mother and the father must leave the clan forever.”

“Where do they go?”

“Some try to go to other clans. But news travels fast among wolves, and they are usually not admitted. No one wants wolves who give birth to deformed pups.”

Coryn didn’t say anything. But he did think that as awful as what Hamish’s mother had done to him, it was not quite the same as what Nyra had done.

“Now, Coryn, the problem is that you, in fact, might meet your mother.”

“Yes, it is a problem. More than just my problem. She’s probably here trying to get hireclaws. It’s her dream to rebuild the Tytonic Union of Pure Ones. She wants to control the owl world.”

“Well, that might not happen.” Hamish knew Coryn
was upset and decided to change the subject to one he knew his friend loved: the old legends. “They said that in the time before Hoole, the owl world was in terrible chaos. But when he came here to the Beyond and when Grank, the first collier, taught him how to dive for coals, he one day was seized by a vision. Some say it was the fumes from the volcanoes that gave him this vision, but suddenly he went straight for one of the Sacred Volcanoes. It was as if the volcano had turned to glass, and he could see right through it. He dived in and found the Ember of Hoole.”

“But how did he not burn up?”

“No one knows. But when Hoole was dying, he returned to the Beyond and buried the ember. No one knows in which volcano, and for years after his death, many a collier died trying to dive for it. That was part of the gnaw wolves’ job, to keep the wrong kind of owls away from the craters of the volcanoes. The volcanoes still attract colliers, because the rivers of coals have the kind they love, the bonk coals, the ones that burn so strong. And the colliers love to ride the she winds.”

“ ‘She winds’?” Coryn asked. “What are they?”

“They are the hot drafts that come off the volcano. I
guess if you fly, they are considered a very sporting wind to ride. You’ll see.”

The first glimpse of the Sacred Volcanoes came at midnight. The Star Wolf, the wolves’ name for the constellation that owls call the Little Raccoon, had not yet risen in the sky. But the sky itself was slashed with flames and the flames drenched the moon like blood. “It’s like the whole sky is bleeding,” Coryn whispered to himself as he perched on a very high ridge.

“Bleeding? An interesting word to use. Yes, perfect, I would say.”

“Who’s that? Who’s there?” Coryn thought he was alone. He started to tremble uncontrollably. What if it was his mother? But it didn’t sound like his mother. Who could it be? He was frightened. Should he fly or what? There was a cleft in the rock behind him, perfect for a young Barn Owl his size to hide in. He stepped backward and began to wedge himself in.
Not so perfect.
He really had to push himself in hard. He turned around and tried going in headfirst. He was sure his tail was sticking out. He then heard a nearby flutter. Something touched his tail.

“What in the name of glaumora are you hiding from? I’m not going to hurt you. I just thought we could have a nice little conversation. Creatures here are rather brusque.
Or let’s just say they have not mastered the fine art of conversation. Now turn around, and let’s have a little chat. I’m here on a mission—vague, I must say—not quite sure what—but give it time, Strix Struma said, give it time.”

This owl sounded friendly enough and nothing like his mother. Her voice had more the sound of a Spotted Owl, if anything. And it was interesting that she, too, was on a mission and wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be.

“Yes, I am on a mission as well and am a little bit confused about what it is I am supposed to do,” Coryn replied.

“Turn around and tell me.”

“Well, actually.” Coryn churred a bit. “I’m kind of stuck.”

“Would you feel that it was overly familiar if I pulled on your tail a little?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” said Coryn.

“I’ll try not to yank any rudder feathers.”

“Don’t worry, some are about to molt, anyhow.”

“You’re certainly a well-spoken young man.”

Coryn didn’t quite know what to say to that. “So, can you tell me a little bit about your mission?” Coryn asked.

“Oh, it’s so nice to find someone interested in real conversation. It’s almost like a code here—don’t ask any names, don’t ask about anyone’s business or where they
come from. So, yes, I’ll tell you.” She began pulling on his tail feathers, and Coryn felt himself budge slightly. “Now, don’t think I am totally yoicks, but the scroom of a dear friend and teacher of mine appeared to me one morning.”

“What?” Coryn wheeled around, freeing himself in the process. Could she be speaking of the kind old scroom who had haunted him and told him about the owl he was supposed to wait for in the spirit wood? The one who never came? The one called…

“Otulissa!” Coryn shouted. This was unbelievable. But then a terrible scream split the night.

“NYRA!” the Spotted Owl in front of him screeched. Her wings dropped and folded. She went into a yeep state and began to plummet from the ridge.

“Oh, Great Glaux, I’ve killed her!” Coryn exclaimed.

At that moment, a large Masked Owl intercepted the free fall of Otulissa.

“Pull yourself together, ma’am. Come on, get those wings pumping. Atta girl.”

“I am not a girl! I am a commander of the Strix Struma Strikers and a ryb of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”

The two owls had lighted down on a shelf that jutted out beneath the ridge. Coryn glided in quietly.

“Is she all right?” he asked. Then he blinked his eyes in amazement. “Gwyndor!”

“Nyroc, lad! Oh, Nyroc! You’re here. I hoped you would come.”

“Nyra!” Otulissa screamed again.

“No, no, ma’am,” both Gwyndor and Coryn were now saying.

“It’s not Nyra, ma’am. Can’t you see he’s a male not a female Barn Owl?”

“But the face…the face.” Otulissa was hysterical at this point. “I put that scar there myself with my own battle claws in the Battle of the Siege just after she killed Strix Struma. I’d know that face anywhere.”

“No, ma’am, you did not put this scar here. My mother, Nyra, clawed me.”

Otulissa stared at the young Barn Owl and saw that, indeed, he was not Nyra. “Your own mother!” she said with a mixture of horror and awe.

“Yes,” Coryn said, “when I tried to leave the Pure Ones. You must believe, ma’am, that I am nothing like my parents. And my name is not Nyroc, Gwyndor. I am now called Coryn.”

“Coryn,” Otulissa said softly and thought to herself how close the name was to “Soren.” Indeed, once over the initial shock of his face, she saw a great resemblance to Soren in the young’un.

“But how did you know my name?” Otulissa asked.

“I heard it first in a dream. And then a scroom came to me.”

“A scroom?” Otulissa said. Her voice was taut. “What did she look like?”

“She was old. A Spotted Owl like yourself. I met her in the spirit wood.”

“In the spirit wood,” Otulissa said softly.

“Yes, she said that we should wait for you. She said your name, Otulissa, and I remembered the name from my dream.”

“Why were you waiting for me?”

“I think you were supposed to take me here to Beyond the Beyond. But you never came.”

“I am sorry. I had doubts. And I think I was frightened, young ‘un.”

“Yes, I was, too,” said Coryn.

And so here we both are,
thought Otulissa.
Now what?
And she swiveled her head as if scanning the air for her old mentor, the scroom of Strix Struma.

H
e has fire sight, ma’am.”

“You know that for a fact, Gwyndor?”

“Yes, I seen it meself when I did the Marking ceremony for his father. I could tell that he was seeing things in the fire. I tried him a few more times and could tell then, too. He saw the whole bloody history of his parents.”

“Poor dear.”

“And guess what else he saw?” The two owls huddled closer. They had been traveling now with Coryn and the MacDuncan clan. Coryn was roosting below with the yearling Hamish in a small cave. But Gwyndor, knowing of the superior hearing skills of Barn Owls, took no chances. He had found a ledge far from that cave. One could never be too careful around Barn Owls. So pressing even closer to Otulissa, he whispered directly into her ear slit. “He has seen the Ember of Hoole.”

Otulissa felt her gizzard still.
Is this a surprise?
she thought. When she had read that last canto from the Fire
Cycle that dawn, after the scroom of Strix Struma had appeared, the meaning of it had come to her in a whole new way, a new light. It seemed to be talking about another owl, not Hoole at all, as she had always thought. But someone else. The words of the canto came back to her.

So bring him back with flames of gold

Bring him back with burning fire

For he reads what flames have told

And his will is Hoole’s desire.

He shall not cease his endless flight

He shall fly on through days and nights

Though an outcast in despair

He has a gizzard that is so fair.

He shall return at summer’s end

With a coal in his beak

A shadow king no more

Tempered wise and brave for war.