The War of the Ember Read Free Page B

palace dwelled a Boreal Owl named Bess. Less than a dozen owls in all the kingdoms knew of this palace or the Boreal Owl. To these owls, the Boreal Owl was not just Bess, but Bess of the Chimes—or the Knower, one of the most learned owls in the six owl kingdoms. To the few owls who knew of this place, it seemed odd that it was called a palace. It was more like a vast library, with books, and maps, and charts, and ancient scientific instruments. Bess herself never left the Palace of Mists. She had arrived yearsbefore with the bones of her father, determined to mourn him in the time-honored tradition of Boreal Owls.
    On this particular night, she was just finishing her evening ritual. The bones of her father, Grimble, had long since crumbled to dust and blown away, but the place they had lain in the bell tower, beneath the bell, had become a hallowed place for Bess, and every evening at tween time she flew within the confines of the enormous hood of the clapperless bell and sang her song in the chimelike tones unique to Boreal Owls. The last verse always gave her hope that someday she would join her beloved father, Grimble, in glaumora, so she always sang it with a robust spirit.
Glaux ring in this noble owl,
    Sound the clapper made of mist.
    Ting ting, I hear it now.
    How can a scroom resist
    This lovely tolling sound,
    Which calls you from on high?
    Fly on, dear Da, fly on.
    Owl angels wait and sigh.
    As she finished the last verse of the song, she sensed a presence near the tower. It would not be the Band.They knew better than to intrude during her prayers. She settled uneasily on the window ledge of the tower and swiveled her head around. She heard a gasp from a niche in the circular stone wall. A soft violet light suffused the tower, and she thought she saw a lump of feathers in the niche. They billowed, then settled, then billowed again in long intervals. A ragged breath escaped. “Great Glaux!” she whispered to herself and swooped down. She saw on the narrow floor of the niche a Boreal Owl in grave distress. He attempted to lift his head, but it flopped back down.
    Bess was stunned. This owl was a stranger. It had been years since a stranger had found its way to the Palace of Mists, let alone a sickly stranger. The intruder spoke.
    “I have come…to…die.” The words were delivered in breathy little puffs. “Die beneath the bell.”
    “But you are alone.” Bess said.
    “No matter…You shall sing me to glaumora, shall you not? I have been poisoned.”
    “But surely there are antidotes.”
    “No…The poison is in my gizzard. You shall sing me to glaumora,” the owl repeated, “shall you not?”
    Bess knew that she could not refuse. There were covenants, unwritten laws particular to each kind ofowl. In general, these concerned acts of owl kindness that were to be performed selflessly. They were blessings not to be bestowed by Glaux but any ordinary owl. For a Boreal Owl to refuse to help one of its kind to die under a bell and sing them to glaumora was a profound violation of this unwritten code. So she helped the owl, dragging and pushing it as gently as possible, to the spot beneath the bell where her own father’s bones had once rested. “What is your name?” She asked. But the sick owl had sunk into a delirium and was speaking gibberish. So now for the second time that evening, Bess rose and flew in the deep shadows of the bell’s hood.
I am the chimes in the night,
    The sound within the wind.
    I am the tolling of glaumora
    For the souls of long-lost kin.
    I shall sing you to the stars,
    Where your scroom shall finally rest
    ’neath the great bell of the sky
    In a tower of cloud crests.
    When she came to the last verse for this nameless owl, she felt none of her usual hope. It was hard to singfor an owl one did not know. But she sang on. He would be dead by morning, she was sure, but she would have done her duty. After finishing the ritual song she alighted near the Boreal’s still form. The