Guardians of Ga'Hoole: To Be A King (13 page)

A
nd so they waited for the Short Light. Waited through the thick darkness of the night and then the thinning of the black into deep gray. They watched as that gray dissolved, becoming a pale transparence before the dawn. Hoole swiveled his head toward the east and watched as a blush crept over the horizon. The pink reddened and the sky became hectic with color as the sun began to rise. He could feel the tension of his army. He counted quietly to himself and at precisely one hundred twenty-two seconds after the sun was over the horizon, Namara leaped high into the air. The sun flared off her silver coat. This was the signal.

“Hi-yaaaa!” Hoole roared. First off the ridge were the Hot Claws of Hoole, commanded by the king himself, then the Sivian Guard led by Strix Strumajen. Next came the Ice Regiment of H’rath, captained by Lord Rathnik. The other squads, platoons, and regiments followed. All flew low so as not to block the fiery blades of
the sun from the enemies’ eyes. A ranger owl slid in next to Hoole. “Your Majesty, Theo and a small squadron have been spotted coming from the south.”

Hoole was tempted to look south, but he could not let himself be distracted. He and his forces had the advantage now. He could see the enemy troops in chaos. Even the hagsfiends were having trouble mustering a fyngrot in the growing brightness of the Short Light. Hoole knew that he and his troops must not squander the advantage bestowed by the sunrise. The enemy would fly out and then, blasted by the glare, come to ground where the Sky Dogs—the wolves and the tiny owls of the Frost Beaks—would attack. While training the troops on the island, Hoole tried to adapt some of the strategies that the wolves practiced for his owl armies, in particular, the subtle signaling system used by the wolves in their byrrgis formations. Hoole cocked his tail feathers and that signal swept through the Hoolian troops. The army split into four divisions and took command of four strategic ridges, two of which had been occupied by the enemy. On these four ridges, Hoole’s troops would rest and reinforce. Scouts were sent out to count the dead and collect discarded ice weapons. The report was promising. The hagsfiends’ fyngrot had been useless in the glare of the Short Light, and now scores of hagsfiends lay dead. Lord Arrin’s troops had been pushed
back farther than Hoole had dared hope for, but they were still a threat, not yet near full retreat. In the Long Night to come, Hoole knew that the battle would rage on. Hoole touched the vial with the ember. He could feel its glow.
Magic will not win a battle,
he thought. But magic might restore the Ice Palace of his forebears, the once magnificent structure that appeared to be in watery shambles. What had taken a thousand N’yrthghar winters to build, from warping winds, raging blizzards, and ice storms, had collapsed within a few short cycles of the moon. Hoole blinked as he saw a lone owl in a jagged flight over the last standing turret. “Who is that mad owl?” Hoole spoke to himself.

“My brother, sir,” Theo said.

“Theo!” Hoole was stunned. “Theo, you are here!”

“Yes, my squadron is on that next ridge.” He indicated with a twitch of his head.

“And that owl you say is your brother?” Hoole did not even know that Theo had a brother.

“Yes, he took over the Ice Palace with a ragtag army of idiots and hagsfiends. He is completely mad. He tried to kill me. He is the cause of the rotting ice.”

Hoole touched the vial and felt once more its heat.

“By the way,” Theo began, obviously wanting to change the subject, “your lessons from the wolves are good ones.”

“I’m glad.”

“We are using the byrrgis formation and the wolves’ signaling system. Oh, I nearly forgot. I have found Emerilla. I must tell Strix Strumajen. She saved my life, you know.”

“What?” Hoole was thoroughly confused. “You found Emerilla?
She saved your life?
When?”

“Yes, when my brother tried to assassinate me.”

“But that is impossible!”

At that precise moment, there was a cry from Lord Rathmik. “They’re coming! They’re coming!” And the last drop of light slid beneath the horizon to another morning somewhere far away. The Short Light was finished.

“Great Glaux!” Hoole blinked wildly. He had never seen anything like this. A hundred hagsfiends followed by hundreds of owls. Hoole had never expected them to recover so quickly, and where had these additional troops come from?
Oh, the Long Night has come!
thought Hoole.
And we must fly out to meet it!

T
he night was torn with blood and the flash of ice swords and battle claws in the moonlight. In his starboard metal-clawed talon, Hoole carried the ice scimitar of his father, the very same one his mother had used in the Battle of the Beyond. More than the ember, it was this ice scimitar that emboldened him. And just as the scimitar had infused Siv with a concentration that seemed to resist the paralyzing effect of the deadly yellow light, so now did it sustain Hoole. But it was not the scimitar alone that inspired him. It was the memories of his mother’s valor. He felt the gallgrot rise within him as he slashed through the fyngrot, cutting a swath for his troops to follow.
What cowards those traitorous owls are to hide behind the yellow glare,
he thought.

“Fight like an owl of honor!” Hoole cried out. Elgobad and Arrin with their flanking captains, Snowy, and an immense Great Gray, melted from behind the last remnants of the glare. Strix Strumajen and Theo rushed in behind Hoole. The three advanced upon the two lords and
their captains. Three against four. The four enemy owls all fought with long swords so it was difficult to get close with only battle claws. The ice weapons that Theo, Hoole, and Strix Strumajen carried were shorter than the long swords of the enemy, but they were also sharper. Hoole had anticipated this when training the owls on the island. He silently gave the signal for the parry-and-feint maneuver. All three began a forward skipping motion with an abrupt swerve, and then a violent backstroking of the wings. The long swords of the enemy pointed here, then there, trying to keep up with this odd aerial jig. This maneuver was used to open a clear space for attack with short weapons. Once, twice, three more times, a very small space opened.
Too small!
cursed Hoole, but suddenly there was a spray of blood. Lord Elgobad plummeted. From the corner of his eye, he saw a young Spotted Owl peel off to port.

“Emerilla!” The name exploded in the night, and in that moment Strix Strumajen realized that here was the real Emerilla, and the creature who had called herself her daughter was guilty of a most heinous deception.

That false creature now perched on an icy peak with her creator and regarded the battle that raged. Kreeth narrowed her eyes and saw the bouncing movements of the vial that Hoole wore around his neck. “There is your ember,
Lutta.” As the old hag watched, she saw isolated patches of fyngrot scattered through the battlefield. The owls of Lord Arrin were now exposed. More fyngrot was needed, and although Kreeth herself did not care which side won or lost this stupid war—for all she wanted was the power of the ember—she now saw that it would be to her advantage to reinforce the existing fyngrots with her own. She knew that her own fyngrot had an intense potency because she had not recklessly squandered it in silly wars. This, however, would not be reckless, nor would it be squandered. She had one goal in mind: to seize the ember.
Then leave them to fight over that rotting palace,
she thought.

Lutta herself had remained in her hagsfiend form. Kreeth had to admit that Lutta was a beautiful fiend. The blackness of her feathers had a hint of deep blue and her plumage poured off her body like dark glistening flames. But now it was time for the transformation back into a Spotted Owl, a close fighter, as was her true counterpart, Emerilla.

Lutta shut her eyes tightly and began to concentrate. In her mind’s eye, she saw the spots that spiraled out like small galaxies from the center of the top of her head. She swore she felt the streaks of white begin to break up the dark plumage of her breast.

“What’s wrong with you?” Kreeth muttered.

Lutta blinked and looked down at her breast feathers. There were white spots and streaks but the rest of the feathers were still blue-black. She peered into Kreeth’s eyes and gasped at the reflection she saw in them. There were smears of white on her head, but again the feathers were not the tawny browns and ambers of a Spotted Owl. She was, in fact, half hagsfiend and half Spotted Owl. The owl part of her winced now at her own malodorous breath.

“You’re not doing it!” Kreeth cursed and dark spittle ran from her beak.

“I know! I know! I don’t know why—I don’t understand.”

But in truth, Lutta did understand. She was sick; sick of being half: half crow, half owl, both hagsfiend and Spotted Owl. She was, she realized, nothing. She was nothing and yet she loved. “I have a gizzard!” she screamed at her creator.

“You do not have a gizzard, you fool, you idiot. I created you.”

“You created me, but I created this gizzard.”

Kreeth was stunned. “No!” she exploded and gave Lutta a thwack that nearly sent her tumbling from the peak. Lutta rose up in pain and hovered above Kreeth. “You don’t understand, Kreeth! I feel pain. Real pain.”

“It’s a phantom gizzard.”

“What difference does it make, be it phantom or real? I love him. I love him.”

“You must kill him,” Kreeth hissed. Then a narrow beam of yellow light sprung from her eyes. Lutta felt herself go yeep.

“Down you go, dearie. Down, down, down. Right here by my talons. Nice soft landing.”

On a distant ridge, the eyes of a large Great Horned Owl and his hagsfiend consort were fixed on the scene that was transpiring.

“She used the fyngrot on Lutta. I can’t believe it!” Ygyrk gasped. “It’s wrong. Wrong to use it on one”—she hesitated and then said the next words with great vehemence—“one of your own.”

Pleek blinked at her in surprise, which for some reason irritated Ygryk. “Yes, Pleek, she is ours,” she hissed. “Even monsters can have some honor.”

“You’re not a monster, my dear,” Pleek replied. Ygryk’s hard black eyes bore into him. She knew exactly what was going through his mind, which he was too afraid to say:
You are not a monster. Lutta is. She’s a freak.

“No, Pleek.”

“No what?”

“The problem is not with Lutta. The problem is with us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She is not the freak. We are.” She paused. “We don’t know how to love.”

When Lutta woke up, she looked down and saw the tawny brown feathers of a Spotted Owl.
So she’s done it. Made me Emerilla again. Cast a spell, I suppose. But what am I really?

She watched as Kreeth rose in the night; beneath the moon a yellow glare began to spread. The H’rathian Guard felt their wings still, then the Sivian guard wavered in flight. Hundreds of troops were brought to ground—to ground for slaughter. Hoole suddenly sensed the quietness on the glacial battlefield. He turned and flinched. This indeed was a powerful fyngrot. He rose, holding high the scimitar of his father, King H’rath, of his mother, Queen Siv. He knew that he must fly directly into the yellow glare. He had done it before. He would do it again. The hagsfiend who hovered as she cast her light was immense and old and ragged. He saw her wing feathers stirring with half-hags, and then he thought he saw a Spotted Owl flying close to her, but he was not sure. Hoole’s gizzard clenched as he saw the noble Lord Rathnik fall in flight and a swarm of half-hags fly from the
hagsfiend’s plummels to nibble on the falling lord. He was dead by the time he hit the ground.

Not one more owl of honor must die,
Hoole thought. He raised the scimitar and charged the light. He cut through it, but weakly.
Glaux, this is a tough fyngrot,
Hoole thought.

Suddenly, there were slits of green in the night. The wolves! Hundreds of wolves raced to the top of the ridge and though not commanded, the green of their eyes began to crisscross the fyngrot, weaving through the warp of the yellow glare like a shuttle with threads of green.
It’s breaking up! It’s breaking up!
Hoole silently rejoiced. At last, the fyngrot ripped. And the black trail of the Long Night ran through it. All over, feathers began to rustle and stir—spotted, tawny, pure white. Primary feathers began to stiffen, and owls who had been brought to ground spread their wings to rise, and those who had begun to go yeep regained altitude. The fyngrot was no more.

Then out of the unsullied darkness a Spotted Owl flew.

“Emerilla!” Hoole gasped.

A shriek tore through the night. “The ember, Lutta! Get the ember, or I shall curse you forever!”

A wolf, one Duncan MacDuncan, leaped high into the sky where a gnarled and screeching hagsfiend and her half-hags had begun to go yeep in the fierce blades of the
green light. The lone wolf yanked her to the ground, ripped out her eyes, which were pulsing a dim yellow, and sank his fangs into the hagsfiend’s neck.

A huge cheer rose from the armies of Hoole. “To the Ice Palace!” Hundreds of owls surged over the last ridges, followed by still more wolves. Then Hoole caught sight of Theo’s battle claws shining under the moon, summoning him. “King Hoole!”

Hoole forgot Emerilla and in a quick flip reversed his direction and flew toward the crumbling palace, leading the divisions of his armies; below the wolves clambered up the ice-sheathed ramparts.

“
E
merilla?” Hoole blinked at the owl who perched beside Theo in the dripping walls of the throne room. This owl looked like Emerilla but even more so. How could that be?

“You know me?” the Spotted Owl asked. She was confused. Why was this owl, the king, studying her so?

“Of course I know
you,”
his voice was soft and intimate. “I was concerned that something had happened to you when you came through the Ice Narrows.”

“Ice Narrows?” Emerilla was confounded. “I was never in the Ice Narrows.”

“But
I
did fly through the Ice Narrows.” The voice came from behind him. A silence fell on the crowd of owls and wolves. Only the drip…drip…drip of the rotting ice could be heard. Another Spotted Owl stood in a puddle of melted ice.

“Emerilla?” Hoole turned around and saw an owl almost identical to the one he had just spoken to. She
looked exactly like Emerilla. No…no…not quite exactly. The tips of her tawny wings were beginning to turn black. Lutta was changing before his very eyes. The owl he thought he knew as Emerilla was dissolving into a dark crowlike thing that was now flying directly toward him. He felt himself suddenly skid across the ice and slam into the melting throne. His eyes closed momentarily, and when he opened them, he saw Strix Strumajen hovering over a strange heap of black and brown feathers. The puddle of water was turning red with blood. Little gnatlike creatures floated dead on its surface.

“Half-hags!” the two words swept through the throne room.

“I had to kill her,” Strix Strumajen said. “She pretended to be my Emerilla. I knew from the start that something was not right about her. A blood deception she was—a hagsfiend.”

“No!” a whispery voice rose from the pile of feathers. Hoole flew over to her.

“What are you?” he asked, peering down at the dying creature.

“I am nothing, and yet I loved…”

The vial of the ember dangled from Hoole’s neck. She lifted a talon.

She wants the ember!
Hoole thought.

“No, it is not the ember I wanted.” Lutta whispered, and died.

From the pile of feathers a foggy shape rose, like a shadow made of mist. It rose and then dissolved as the spirit of Lutta passed away.

“To hagsmire,” muttered Strix Strumajen. She turned to the real Emerilla. “Oh, daughter,” she sighed and folded her into her wings.

Hoole gazed at Emerilla. Her spots shimmered like a galaxy of stars. It was as if glaumora had come down to earth.

At last,
thought Hoole. And his own gizzard quaked with something warm and genuine and new.

There was a sudden quietness in the throne hollow. “Nothing is dripping,” Theo whispered with excitement.

“The melting has stopped,” Phineas said.

“Look at the throne!” The Snow Rose lofted herself into the air and flew over the ice throne.

“To the throne, Your Majesty. To the throne!”

So Hoole took his rightful place, and the moment he perched on the throne of that noble family of the N’yrthghar, the throne stopped melting and began to glow with new ice. Hoole felt the warmth of the ember against his chest. And he knew that although the ember’s magic could not win a war it could restore a kingdom with a
righteous ruler. This was the lesson of the ember. He flew to the highest ice spindle on the throne. He held the vial with the ember that now glowed an iridescent, mysterious green. “Just as the stars do not hold our destinies, this ember holds not our fate. We are masters of our own fate, dear friends. The days to come will be ones of hope and glory.” A great cheer rose up.
Yes, hope and glory,
thought Hoole.
And perhaps love, as well.

And indeed the days and the years that followed were ones of hope and glory and love. Emerilla and Hoole found happiness together as mates. They had owlets, one of whom, H’rathruyan, became the regent of the Ice Palace of the N’yrthghar. But no one called it the N’yrthghar any longer. It became known as the Northern Kingdoms as the S’yrthghar was known only as the Southern Kingdoms. And the southern sea became the Sea of Hoolemere and the island became the Island of Hoole. And it was in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree that the king lived with his queen, Emerilla, and together they grew old.

Then one day, King Hoole said to Emerilla, “I have something to tell you.”

“I know, Hoole,” she said quietly.

“You know? How is that, my dear? What do you know?”

“I know it is time to take the ember back to Beyond the Beyond.”

“Yes. I promised Grank I would do this when he lay on his deathbed, but I would have done it, anyway. The magic is too powerful even for our own sons and daughters, who are strong and noble of gizzard. It is simply too dangerous to leave in this world. It must be buried in one of the volcanoes.”

And so, telling no one, the two elderly Spotted Owls who now were almost as white as Snowies flew without ceremony or escort from the island across the Sea of Hoolemere to Beyond the Beyond. And when they got there, an ancient wolf was waiting.

“Namara!” Hoole hooted.

“Yes, Hoole.” Beside her stood the offspring of those wolves who had fought at the Battle of the Ice Palace. “Many of these wolves are MacDuncans, pups of those who fought so valiantly in the Battle of the Ice Palace and kin of Duncan who killed Kreeth. They will keep watch on the ring of the volcanoes, to guard the ember for that owl whose destiny it is to retrieve. Among themselves they have decided to call the chief of their watch Fengo.”

Hoole blinked, and in that blink so many memories
flooded back to him—his earliest days on the island in the Bitter Sea, Grank’s passionate care for him, the lessons he learned from Fengo, his friends—Phineas, Theo, the Snow Rose, whose great-granddaughter now sang for the tree. What a life he had led.

Hoole spread his wings and lofted into the air. He carried the ember—not in the teardrop container that Theo had made for him—but in his talons as he first had carried it when he retrieved it from the volcano of H’rathmore. All the volcanoes began to erupt in a fury, and the sky was scorched with their flames and, in the flames, images began to emerge. Hoole could see a patch of white and two coal-black eyes. A Barn Owl? Yes, definitely a Barn Owl. But hundreds of years, maybe a thousand years from now. He let the ember drop into the flaming mouth of a volcano. He watched as the ember, with its lick of blue at the center surrounded by the green of a wolf’s eyes, sparkled, then winked and was gone, swallowed by the bubbling lava.

But a Barn Owl will come…

Or so we believe, but by that time I who have told this tale shall be long gone to glaumora.