Book 12 - The Golden Tree by Kathryn Lasky Read Free Book Online

learning, with many libraries. The Band had said they had never seen such maps and star charts. Coryn knew that the Others were thought to have been very7 advanced, but not so advanced as these stories of the Palace of Mists seemed to suggest. From the stonework to the star charts it seemed beyond belief, almost magical. Coryn's eyes began to droop. His last thought was, Magic, or nachtmagen?
Then Coryn began dreaming of stone gardens with the fragments of the Others and stone animals, and the strange-looking stone bird that Soren had described. In his sleep he saw a head. It was the head of the strange bird. But no, not just any strange bird - Kreeth!
He woke up immediately. "Why would I ever dream of Kreeth?" he whispered to himself. Kreeth,
    the infamous
54 66 hagsfĂÂŹend of the legends, was long dead. Surely if the strange stone bird looked like Kreeth, the Band would have said something. Although they had not known about the hagsfiends of the legends when they had first gone to the palace of Mists, they had first gone to the Palace of Mists, they would have remembered now. This is total y irrational! Coryn thought to himself. Kreeth was a hagsfiend through and through, but she cal ed herself by al sorts of other names -a philosopher , an experiment, a scientist. It wasn't, however, science she practiced. It was
nacthmagen. Although he had begun to suspect that beneath the plumage of a Barn Owl his mother might be a hagsfiend herself, a grotesque thought occurred to him again -that Nyra might be even worse than haggish. She might be some
descendant of a remnant of Kreeth's experiments with natchtmagen. It was al too frightening to imagine. Coryn blinked. But imagine he must. He was a King leader. He must lead! And to lead was to imagine boldly.
    He looked at the Band sleeping soundly around
him. Outside the sun was high in the sky. He must go. He must risk being mobbed by crows. He must find out the truth about his mother. Hagsfiends were thought to have become extinct sometime long after King Hoole had retrieved the ember. And yet shadows of hagfiends much less potent stil lingered. And was that not what
67 made the ember so puzzling? For with al its many blessings, there was always the lurking fear that, with the good magen, nachtmagen could return and real hagsfiends could slip back through what Otulissa cal ed the ether sreil of the owl universe. The ether was a windless layer of air in the upper regions of the. sky that enveloped the entire universe of owls. The ancients believed that infinitesimal y smal tears in this layer could permit the intrusion of alien matter such as nachtmagen, the magic of hagsfiends. The ember could seal up these tears as wel as open them, And if the ember came into the possession of a bad owl, or graymalkin as they were, sometimes cal ed, the ether could be ripped to shreds.
Coryn. was fairly sure that no such thing had
    Coryn. was fairly sure that no such thing had
happened to the ether veil - yet. According to the legends, Kreeth had died. But were al her kind extinct? Like the Others? Perhaps not, if Nyra lived. Coryn knew what he had to do. He had to go to the Shadow Forest. However he did not need to see Bess. The Knower would not know what he needed to know, There was, however, a rabbit who might. And he needed to find that rabbit. Fie quietly stepped to the rim of the hol ow. He looked back at the Band. They're just going to have to understand, he thought, and spreading his wings, he took off. 56 CHAPTER EIGHT
Otulissa Perplexed
Can you feel it, Mrs. Plithiver?" Octavia asked. The elderly nest-maid snake was coiled on an upper limb of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree.
"Yes, they're flying in unison. I can feel the wing beats."
And indeed a surge of vibrations rol ed up through the tree. The slender branch upon which they had
    arranged themselves was almost like a tuning fork,
at least for nest-maid snakes. These snakes had extremely refined sensibilities and despite their blindness, they