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a remote firth, the Firth of Grundenspyrr off the Firth of Fangs, and only rarely mentioned his family.
    Grank, appearing somewhat calmer, began to speak again. “If you are to be gone all that time, we will need to set up a system so I can get messages to you.”
    “How would that work?” Phineas said. “You won’t know where we are.”
    “Dead drops,” Grank answered.
    Hoole and Joss blinked. Neither of them had even heard the words before.
    “Dead drops?” Phineas asked in almost a whisper. “Aren’t they dangerous? Haunted, some say.”
    “Nonsense! Just old owl tales. Dead drops”—Grank turned to Hoole and Joss to explain—“are seemingly healthy trees that fall in the prime of their life for no particular reason. Many owls are very suspicious of them—nachtmagen, they think. It is no such thing. I have made a study of dead drops, which I shall not bore you with now, but there are structural reasons for them to crash. In any case, they are the perfect spot for coded messages to be left. I will make up a map of the ones that I know throughout the various forests of the S’yrthghar. You must check them regularly. Cuthbert and Gemma on the watch branch are strong fliers. We can use them as messengers in addition to Joss.”
    “Excellent ideas, Grank. Thank you so much.” Hoole was relieved that his old friend seemed to be himself once again. But when he regarded the others, they seemed to have a somewhat distant look in their eyes. Were they daunted by the task he had set for them? They appeared to be not quite focused. They needed to pay attention to what he was about to say. It was of vital importance.Hoole inhaled sharply, then began to speak slowly and most gravely. “But there is one thing.”
    “What is that?” Grank asked.
    “Time is not on our side. We must strike first, and by Short Light at the very latest. The Long Night will be our best ally.” Long Night was the longest night of the year and it was preceded by the shortest day, Short Light. During the time surrounding these two days, the sun never rose more than a sliver above the horizon.
    “But Short Light is hardly three moon cycles away,” Joss said.
    “I know,” replied Hoole. “There is much to be done. And it will be done.”
    “By Short Light, then.” Grank nodded.
    “By Short Light,” the other owls echoed.
    They echo my thoughts but do they really agree? Hoole wondered. There was something mechanical in their response. Was this how subjects of an absolute ruler conducted themselves? He needed thinking owls, not owlipoppen, the little doll owls that parents gave their chicks to play with. Was the ember destroying their ability to think like individual owls, to question, to challenge? This was frightening. Perhaps, Hoole thought, I should tuck the ember away. He remembered the first night they had come to the island after the Battle in the Beyond and how the entireisland and the tree seemed enveloped in a luminous light. He had wondered then if it was the moon or the ember that had cast that light and had questioned the limits, the reach of the ember’s power. But there was no time for pondering right now—no time at all if they were to invade by Short Light.
    So it was settled. They would depart on their missions the following evening. Grank would stay behind to act as Hoole’s regent in his absence. He would inform the parliament of the plan and, while Hoole was gone, he would work on the secret chamber he was constructing with a Burrowing Owl in Grank’s hollow. For it was there that Hoole had decided to hide the ember. Not in his own hollow, but in Grank’s. Whom can I trust if not Grank — Grank my mentor, Grank my foster father, Grank my guardian.

CHAPTER EIGHT
A Mission for Half-hags
    T he katabats were just beginning to blow, and for Theo they were a robust, windy welcome to the kingdom that had once been his home. Some said that these tricky and tumultuous drafts from the north were the invisible wall