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it was a Great Horned, a Barn Owl, or what. He thought maybe a Barn Owl, but its feathers were dark and raggedy atthe ends. Almost black like a crow’s and when it turned its face, it was terribly scarred.”
    Namara lowered her head and shook it back and forth mournfully. “How has this happened? Cody can’t have died in vain. It can’t be true.” But she knew it was. Somehow an evil had started to seep back into their peaceful universe. What was the word owls used? Nachtmagen? Yes, nachtmagen was… The wolf could not finish the thought. She trotted out of the Gadderheal. A full moon blazed in the sky. She stood in a silver column of its light and, throwing her head back, began to howl the strange mad music of wolves. These were not the cries of mourning. Of this much even Sveep could tell. Savage and untamed, this was a howl of rage.
    Namara’s wolves stirred in their dens, and the wind carried her howls to those more distant clans. No other creatures knew the meaning of the wolves’ howling. They only knew that once it started, it did not end for hours. The grizzly bear, the moose, the caribou, the jack-rabbits, the birds that flew overhead, felt the song drill into every part of their beings. But what did it mean, this wild song? For that is what the other creatures of the Beyond called it. They would whisper to one another in their dens or burrows, “They are wild singing again.” “It’s the moon,” one would say. Then another would argue,“No, it’s not the moon. It can be moonless and still they sing.” “They’re crazy!” another might say.
    But the wolves were anything but crazy. They were among the most organized and methodical of animals in everything they did, from how they hunted to their strategies for traveling to the rearing of their young. Their howling was as systematic as any language, and through it they could convey an enormous range of information. Now on this night hundreds of wolves began to leave their dens and form byrrgises. So the call had gone out to break summer camp and meet in the Gadderheal of the Sacred Ring of volcanoes. The owl kingdoms were imperiled and so was the world of every living creature.
    In a rocky redoubt near the volcanoes of the Sacred Ring there was a masked owl, a Rogue smith by the name of Gwyndor. He looked up from his forge, where he had just put to use the excellent bonk coals he had acquired from one of the colliers. Namara’s first howls were too far from the volcanoes for any creature near them to hear at first but as the byrrgises made their way toward the Sacred Ring, the howling continued and the approach of the wolves was known.
    Gwyndor had spent more years than any other owlin the Beyond. And he had become a student of wolves. Although he did not know even the very general meaning of the howls, he could recognize the voices of many of the clan chiefs. The wolf who led the howling varied, depending on the situation, and that wolf was called the skreeleen. This time the skreeleen was Namara. He was sure of it. And if it was Namara, Gwyndor knew it was not an ordinary situation. Not a herd of caribou migrating through the MacNamara territory, or a wolf sick with the foaming-mouth disease, or a grizzly fishing in the river. She would let another high-ranking wolf of her clan convey that type of information. But when Namara howled, which was rare, it was about owls. And although Gwyndor did not know the meaning, he detected a vibration in the timbre of her cries that hearkened back to that dreadful night when owl and wolf fought flank to wing and her only pup had been killed. He felt a dread build in his gizzard. The byrrgises of the clans that were converging on the Sacred Ring were still several hours away. It would be daybreak when they arrived. Should he wait or fly out to meet Namara, get her awful news, and then fly on to the great tree to deliver it? He had been a slipgizzle for the great tree for some time now. The Sacred Ring was a good