Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

flying like an owl possessed.
    “Get back into formation, Ruby,” Coryn barked. “This isn’t a game of scooters.” Scooters were land breezes that spilled off the edges of the island of Hoole at certain times of the year and provided great sport for its owls.
    A sudden loud boom rang out. Soren felt his ear slits contract against the sound. The noise shook all the owls right down to their pinfeathers and reverberated throughout their hollow bones.
    “Don’t worry!” Tengshu shouted. “It’s just the wind bong.”
    “Wind bong?” Martin asked, still shaking.
    “In our language it translates to ‘last shriek of a mighty wind.’ It bursts through that notch directly below us and then is free again.”
    A high plain now rose beneath them. At its far edge, ranks of peaks rose even higher than the ones they had just left behind. These peaks cut the sky like the teeth of a serrated knife. The air was so clear, they could immediately pick out in the far distance owls rising in the night, and above them colorful qui danced in the shafts of moonlight.
    “They can fly, can’t they?” Ruby asked.
    “Oh, yes. Those are prayer qui. It is the third hour of the death of day and the first quarter of the hatch of night, so they offer the prayers to the wind gods and the ones of night hatch.”
    “Night hatch? Wind gods?” Soren asked. “Are they like Glaux?”
    “Oh, they are all Glaux. In our language, we call them the khyre of Glaux. Which means…”
    “‘The many faces of Glaux,’ in old Krakish,” Otulissa whispered to herself. What in the world awaits us?
    A gong thundered through the mountain passes as the owls landed on a platform of the owlery outside a cavelike opening in the mountain. A group of whatTengshu called pikyus had flown out to greet them. These owls could not have been more different from those of the Panqua Palace. Their plumage was tightly clipped, and the top of their heads nearly bare except for one bright blue feather that stuck straight up.
    “I don’t see how they can even fly,” Gylfie whispered to Soren. But they did, and without any aid from the qui. It was obvious that they flew the qui and not the reverse—the qui definitely did not fly them. The pikyus all stood now with their qui beside them. They came up and first bowed deeply to Tengshu.
    One pikyu, who except for his blue color resembled a Boreal Owl, stepped forward. “Hee naow, qui dong Tengshu.”
    “He’s welcoming Tengshu, the knower of qui,” Otulissa whispered. The pikyu then turned to the owls of Ga’Hoole, bowed, and welcomed them as honored guests. He indicated that they were to follow him.
    “We now go see the H’ryth.” They entered the mountain. Everything was completely different from the resplendent jeweled hollows of the Panqua Palace. There were no luminous colors, and the only crystals were those formed by the ice. But because of the large torches of yak butter, much of the interior had melted down to reveal lovely gray stone swirled with streaks of white quartz.
    The owls flew through long, twisting corridors in an ascending spiral. Other corridors meandered off the central one, and it was clear that within the Hollow Mountain, or Mountain of Time as they called it, there was a bustling community. But it seemed quieter than most communities of owls. It was understandable that this place would be called the Hollow Mountain—but why a Mountain of Time? Was it because the lives of the owls who lived here stretched across so many centuries that the mountain itself was thought to be a receptacle of time? There were perch-loads of chanting owls. Surrounding them, the qui painted with the various gods or faces of Glaux hung. More like a mountain of prayer than a mountain of time, Soren thought as they flew through the vast caverns that formed the interior of the mountain.
    They finally reached the highest point. Above them, portals opened, through which they could see streaming clouds driven by incredibly fierce winds. They were directed to settle on a perch that appeared to be as hard as the rock around them. “It’s not rock,” Otulissa whispered. “It’s petrified wood. Millions of years old, I think.” Another gong sounded. A small pikyu flew forward and in very good Hoolian but with a definite Krakish accent began to speak.
    “Welcome,” he said. “I present His Holiness, GupTheosang, the seventh H’ryth of the Owlery of the Mountain of Time.”
    At that moment, a pale blue owl