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would like a tour of the university. So we fol owed her in a spiraling flight down from the bel tower, winding in and out of the pil ars of a garden where there were stone pictures."
"Stone pictures?" Coryn asked, "Yeah, you've seen some of those scraps of
    paintings of Others that Mags brings around,
haven't you?" Twilight asked.
"Sure."
"Wel , this was sort of the same thing but cut in stone," Twilight replied. "Some were of animals, and there was even a strange-looking bird. And some of the stone figures were of the Others, but they might be missing a head, or a head might be missing a body."
"What in the world?" Coryn gasped. "Were they once alive?"
"Oh, no. It was part of the Others' art, like the paintings." "But that wasn't the most interesting thing at al ," Gylfie said.
"Sounds pretty interesting to me," Coryn replied. "There were these maps,' Soren said. "Maps like we'd never seen before."
"What do you mean?" Coryn asked. A pale lavender light began to suffuse the hol ow. Lavender
    was the
51 63 prelude of twilight and soon it would be First Black. They had told and listened to stories of Bess through an entire day. Coryn almost wished to stay the sun and fend off the night - a most un-owlish response. Owls lived for darkness, for the black pierced, by a sliver of moon, or perhaps the silver disc of a ful -shine floating eerily just above a horizon But now he wanted not the darkness, not the silver, not the joys of flight through a long night, but to remain in the hol ow of this fir tree reliving this fantastic tale of discovery, grief, mystery, and riches that were neither jewels nor gold,
'"These maps"Soren. continued, 'were not ones of the owl kingdoms. There was no Sea of Hoolemere, no Ever-winter Sea. No Northern Kingdoms. No Southern Kingdoms. So I asked. Bess, 'Where at" the kingdoms of owls?'"
"And what did she say?" Coryn tipped forward. "She said they were maps of elsewhere and beyond,"
    Soren said, softly,
"It was even beyond our Beyond! We cal ed it The Elsewhere," Digger whispered. The white feathers that streaked across the Burrowing Owl's brow seemed to intensify Digger's penetrating gaze. It was as if he were imagining this place.
Coryn was astonished. Fie was trying to take it al in.
64 "You mean there is a place that is not here? Not in this owl world? It's like ..." Coryn looked out of the fir tree hol ow and tipped his head toward the sky.
"Yes," Gylfie said. "And even the stars look different there - the constel ations are different. One rarely sees the Golden Talons or the Little or the Big Raccoon. It's just a different world. It's The Elsewhere."
"Have you ever been there?" He looked first at Soren and then to each of the other Band members. They al shook their beads.
"But Bess knows the way there even though the
    stars are different," Gylfie said. She shook her head
in wonder. "Bess is so very smart." "That is why we cal her 'the Knower,'" Soren said. By the time Soren had finished the story of Bess and the Palace of Mists, it was night. The wind had shifted, so they set out on a course for Anibala, But they did not make much progress, for they were tired and shortly after midnight the wind shifted once again and became a fierce headwind with driving rain replacing the swirls of snow.
"No use fighting this," Twilight cal ed out to the rest. If Twilight said it was too much
- beating into this wind - the rest of the Band were quick to agree, for the Great Gray was the largest of them al and possessed
65 the most wing power. They found an ancient cedar with a good-size hol ow. The rain made the pungent scent of the tree even sharper.
"I can't say cedar is my fragrance of choice," Gylfie sniffed, but within two seconds she had fal en asleep.
    Al of the owls were soon asleep except for Coryn.
For him sleep seemed beyond reason. "The Knower." Coryn repeated softly. He began to think deeply about Bess, the Knower.
His mind whirled with notions about Bess and this place dedicated entirely to