Read Book 12 - The Golden Tree for Free Online

battle gear clanking in the right ,"Twilight said.
    "Only you,Twilight, would think that!"Digger
sighed.
"But was it chimes? A bel tol ing?"Coryn asked "In a sense ,"Soren spoke softly. Coryn felt a shiver pass through him. This was going to be a scroom story, he thought.
"We had fetched up just beneath one of the stone towers in a silverdrop pine. It took me about three seconds to identity the sound. It was Boreal Owl! You know how the cal of those owls often sound like chimes in the night? Wel , Boreals believe that if a Boreal dies in a bel tower beneath the clapper of a bel , then its scroom wil go straight to glaumora. Or at least that was the tale that our friend Grimbie told us."
"You mean," said Coryn, now aghast, "that it was a dying owl making this beautiful chiming noise?" "It was not a dying owl but the sound was very mournful,'"' Gylfie sighed. Her wings seemed to quiver at the memory of it. al
    "And desperate," added Soren. "We decided we
should go to her."
"Her? It was a female?" Coryn asked. "We were prettv sure it was a. female. So," Soren 56 continued, "we took off and flew toward the spire from which the sound were coming.As we drew nearer, the sounds because louder-as Gylfie said the most mournful yet beautiful sounds any of us had ever heard.
"A strange sight greeted us a we lighted down on the windowsil of the bel tower,"Soren continued. "There was a large bel that hung in the tower and from within it came the chimelike sounds mixed with the wing beats of an owl.On the stone floor were the bleached bones of another owl,one long dead." Coryn felt as if the line between past and present were blurring, k was as if he were actual y living within the story; it was as real to him as it was to the Band. Sorens storytel ing voice slid through the dim light of the hol ow as smoothly as the liquid ribbon, of a river flows toward the sea. Coryn felt its current.
    "We were perched on the window ledge of the
bel tower,' Soren said, "'Now, we had al experienced, scroomish, peculiar things in our days. Things that stil ed our gizzards and sent quivers through our bones, but this was one of the strangest situations ever. From the bel we heard a beautiful song, a song that seemed to be made of silver. I cannot sing it but the. words were so lovelv." "What were the words'" Coryn pressed. 57 "I hope I can remember. Say them with me." Soren looked at Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger. The four owls began to recite the song.
I am the chimes in the night,
the sound within the wind.
I an: the tol ing of glaumora
for the souls of long-lost kin.
I shal sing you to the stars,
where your scroom shal final y rest
'neath the great hel of the sky
    in a tower of cloudy crests....
"When the song in the bel finished," Gylfie said, "a beautiful owl flew from the bel and lighted down." "I'l never forget that first glimpse of her," Soren shut his eyes. "She was the color of tree bark with lighter brown and creamy streaks. Her face was grayish-white with flares of smal white feathers radiating out from her eyes. Her wings had five rows of white spots. And on top of her head there was a starry spray of smal white feathered dots. The thought burst in my head and Gylfie s, too. She looked exactly like her father, Grimble!" "Grimble, the owl who helped you. escape St. Aggie's?" Coryn whispered excitedly. 46 58 "The very one!" Soren replied. "She was not young. I didn't need to ask her her name. I knew immediately she was Bess, Grimble's favorite daughter. She was astonished that we knew who she was. Then she looked down at the bones at her feet. 'And those are the bones of Grimble,' I said. I knew this in my gizzard as surely as I had ever
    known anything in my life."
Gylfie continued the story. "We told Bess how we had come to know her father at St. Aggie's and how he had saved our lives by teaching us how to fly and how we also knew that Bess was his favorite daughter." Gylfie paused before going on with the story. "Bess could hardly believe this,