Guardians of Ga'Hoole: To Be A King (4 page)

A
cry was heard. “He’s sighted! Joss is sighted!” Then Cuthbert, commander of the second watch, flew into Hoole’s hollow. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but we done caught a glimpse of him in the dawn. It’s Joss, all right. He’s back!” Hoole was instantly alert. “So sorry to interrupt your sleep, what with tween time hardly passed.”

“Don’t go apologizing, Commander. This couldn’t have happened soon enough.”

Within seconds, Hoole was at the top of the great tree, peering into the rose-colored dawn. “Bless my gizzard and thank Glaux, he’s back.” Before anyone could blink, Hoole launched himself onto a rising thermal and flew out to greet the faithful messenger, the Whiskered Screech, Joss.

“Let him catch his breath, lad, let him catch his breath,” Grank called from below.

“No need, sir,” Joss replied. “There is much to tell and no time to be wasted.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Hoole apologized. “Here, come to the hollow and rest first.”

“May I begin, sir?” Joss asked as he settled onto a perch in Hoole’s hollow.

“Please. What is the news?”

“You did a right good deal of damage to Lord Arrin, no doubt about it, Your Majesty.”

Hoole interrupted. “Joss, please do not call me Your Majesty. It’s just the three of us here.” Hoole nodded at Grank.

“Oh, certainly…well…sir, many have broken with Lord Arrin. Lost faith, I guess you’d say. But, at the same time, new alliances are being formed. Of that you can be sure.”

“Yes, I feared that. There was always that possibility. But so soon?”

“Apparently.”

“Do you know the nature of these alliances?”

“Well, we know for sure that Ullryck has deserted.”

“Ullryck! Ullryck was Lord Arrin’s best assassin, wasn’t she, Grank?” Hoole turned to look at his counselor.

“Indeed,” Grank replied gravely.

“It’s rumored that she has started her own division of hagsfiends.”

“Just hagsfiends? Nothing else?” Hoole asked.

“Just hagsfiends,” Joss replied.

Hoole and Grank exchanged looks and blinked. This had always been their worst fear. An army of just hagsfiends. And then they both had the same unspoken thought. Though they were both flame readers, the fires had rarely rendered clear images of hagsfiends. It was as if the hags-fiends’ magic in some way inhibited the clarity of the flames. Images became garbled, almost nonsensical, and certainly not trustworthy. But, Hoole wondered, was the answer to turn to the magic of the ember? Was this when he must fight magic with magic? He did not like the notion.

“Tell us more,” Grank urged.

“There are rumors of a young upstart—an owl, not a hagsfiend—from someplace far north of the Firth of Fangs, but no one is quite sure who he is. If he has an alliance with hagsfiends, it is not known at this time.” Joss paused. “And finally, I fear that I have some troubling news for Strix Strumajen.”

“Oh, dear!” Grank groaned deeply. “What is it?”

“Her daughter, Emerilla, has been lost in a skirmish over the Ice Fangs.”

“Lost, you say?” Grank blinked at Joss. “But not killed?”

“Not as far as we know, sir. There were a great number of hagsfiends in the battle and if they had killed her,
well, you know…” Nothing further needed to be said, for they all knew of the ghoulish practices of hagsfiends in battle.

“Call her mother here immediately,” Hoole said.

As soon as Strix Strumajen entered the hollow and spied Joss, she seemed to know. Her feathers flattened and she wilfed to nearly half her size. “She’s dead. My dear Emerilla is dead.”

“Not dead, milady,” Joss said softly. “Missing…for now.”

“There was no…no…head?” she asked quietly.

Hoole’s gizzard clenched. How hard it must be for this owl to suddenly refer to her daughter as simply a head.

“No, ma’am. No head.”

Strix Strumajen recovered a bit. Her feathers plumped up slightly. She turned to Hoole. “She is a dear young owl, and you know, Your Grace, Emerilla’s gift for interpreting weather was—” she hesitated “—is even greater than mine. She would be such an addition to the tree.”

Hoole made a short flight from one perch to another in his hollow. Above this perch was a somewhat crude map that one of the members of the H’rathian Guard had brought with him from the N’yrthghar. “The Ice Fangs, I don’t see it here.”

“It’s off the Bay of Fangs. It isn’t on this map. It was a short but brutal battle that took place there,” Joss said.

Strix Strumajen shook her head. “She wanted to go into battle so badly. I felt she was too young. But then you, Hoole, are about the same age as she. Siv and I laid our eggs during the same moon cycle. Emerilla was determined to fight, after her father was killed over the Ice Dagger. We all thought that she was too small to manage one of the long scimitars. But, by Glaux, if she didn’t go harvest herself a small blade from the issen vingtygg. It took courage to use, for it required close fighting. She was so quick with it. So bold!” Strix Strumajen’s dark amber eyes filled with tears.

Hoole dropped his beak and ran it through the feathers on his chest. He was thinking very hard and coming to the edge of an important idea. He looked up and blinked at the three owls. “I don’t want us to lose another owl to these hagsfiends and tyrants. We must act now. If we do not take the battle to them, they will bring the battle to us, to the tree.”

“Whoever chooses the battlefield wins the battle,” Grank said in a low, gravelly voice.

“Precisely!” Hoole nodded. “But I am choosing more than one battlefield.”

“More than one, sir?” Grank blinked. “Is that wise?”

“Well, you see…” Hoole swiveled his head slowly.
“Not all of them will appear to be battlefields. Not all of them will require the same amount of power or resources, but they will be crucial to our ultimate victory.”

“I don’t follow, sir,” said Joss.

“Let me explain.” Hoole pointed to the map of the N’yrthghar and lifted it with his talons to reveal another equally crude map of the S’yrthghar. “We must deal with three realms essentially—that of the N’yrthghar, the S’yrthghar, and our own realm here at the great tree. In one realm, we must fight,” he said, pointing to the spot where the great palace of the H’rathghar glacier rose out of the N’yrthghar ice fields. “In another, we must train.” He tapped the tiny island in the vast sea of the Southern Kingdoms. “And here”—he swept his four talons lightly across the great expanse of the continent of the Southern Kingdoms, including that westernmost region known as Beyond the Beyond—“we must find out who our friends are, and if there are hagsfiends anywhere.”

Hoole flew to the Spotted Owl’s side and tapped her shoulder gently with his wing tip and even preened her back feathers a bit with his beak. “Strix Strumajen, your knowledge of weather is invaluable, but you also have great skill with a variety of weapons. I saw you practicing with battle claws the other evening. You were superb. You will be a formidable threat on this battlefield.” Once more,
he indicated the place on the map where his ancestral palace on the H’rathghar glacier stood. “I want you to train a new company of owls with the short blade. Teach them everything you know.”

“It will be an honor, Your Grace.”

“Joss, your job is to set up a slipgizzling system in the N’yrthghar. You have been both messenger and spy for years now. It is too much for one owl. We need more information. Find noncombat owls, even gizzard-resisters, who are ready and willing to give it to us.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. That will be most helpful.”

Hoole tapped his head with a single talon. “And why not use polar bears as slipgizzles, too?” Hoole blinked at his own question.

“A wonderful idea!” Joss exclaimed. “I know several.”

“With your contacts up there, Joss, we’ll at least have a chance of keeping track of the new alliances.”

“If I may offer a suggestion, Your Grace?” Strix Strumajen stepped forward.

“Certainly, ma’am.”

“Perhaps gadfeathers might make good slipgizzles because of their wandering ways.”

“Brilliant! The Snow Rose might help us find them!” Hoole exclaimed, and then continued quietly as if thinking aloud, “By Glaux—gadfeathers, polar bears, monks,
who knows? Maybe even wolves!—we will bring the battle to them with alliances of our own, alliances beyond anything they ever dreamed of.”

As soon as Strix Strumajen left, Hoole sent for Phineas and Theo. He was fluttering around in great agitation when the two young owls arrived. Hoole briefly explained his idea for a network of slipgizzles, some of whom might be gadfeathers and polar bears, spread throughout the owl kingdoms. He finished by telling them the sad story of Strix Strumajen’s daughter, Emerilla, who had fought so bravely in the skirmish at the Ice Fangs. Hoole glanced at the ember. “It will take strategy, planning, and cunning to bring war to the enemy—not mere magic.”

“But Hoole,” Grank interrupted. “You should not go to the Northern Kingdoms. It is still too dangerous for you there. But you’re certainly right about the Snow Rose. She might be useful.”

Grank seemed unduly agitated to Hoole. He was perched near the ember and, instead of draining the Spotted Owl’s energy as it had done long ago, it seemed to be infusing him with a nervous excitement.

“Nobody will want the Snow Rose to leave the tree,” said Theo. “They love her voice too much.”

“A small sacrifice for a great cause. This is what we are about here. Phineas, you could accompany her. You are not known in the Northern Kingdoms. And perhaps Theo could go to the Southern Kingdoms.” Grank spoke rapidly.

“And I, as well—to the Southern Kingdoms,” Hoole said firmly. He observed how Grank with this new nervous energy was taking over the planning and could not help but wonder if the ember was somehow influencing him. As he began to speak again, he watched the others to see if there were any noticeable differences in their behavior. “Also, I feel that it would be better if Phineas came with me to the Southern Kingdoms. He is, after all, from the Shadow Forest there. He knows the territory.”

“Yes, you are right,” Grank said immediately.

“And owls in the Northern Kingdoms really don’t know me that well,” Theo said. Theo’s background was somewhat shrouded in mystery. He came from 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 entire
island 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.

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 that discouraged owls of the S’yrthghar Kingdoms from venturing to the N’yrthghar. Theo, however, found the winds bracing and enjoyed the sport they offered. Grank had provided him with the names of the polar bears to contact who might make good slipgizzles. Of special importance was one named Svenka who had been a close friend of the late Queen Siv. She was said at this time of year—autumn—to be making her way from her summer lodge on Dark Fowl Island to a remote firthkin not that far from Theo’s former home in the Firth of Grundenspyrr. His gizzard pinched at the thought of his family. It had not been a happy hollow. His father was so strict. His mum a meek little thing and not that bright. Until his little brother, Shadyk, came along, Theo had
borne the brunt of his father’s rages. His father was a retired H’rathian Guardsman. Although he had never risen to the rank of officer himself, he dreamed that Theo would join the Guard and accomplish what he had not.

But Theo had had no taste for battle or a soldier’s life. Quiet and studious, he had learned to read by visiting a Glauxian Brother. When his father discovered this, he was furious.

“They’re cowards, moon calves, the lot of them! Lazy, good-for-nothing owls. Don’t know an ice scimitar from a pile of yarped pellets.”

“They’re good owls. They just don’t believe in violence,” Theo had argued. “Their nature is that of restraint. Their passion is peace. Their heroism comes from their mercy. Their honor is found in resistance, their dignity in their humility.”

“Oh, shut up, for Glaux’s sake!” His father had raised a talon and swatted Theo across the hollow.

There had not been a word of protest from his mum, just a mournful sigh.

His older sister, Pye, had escaped the hollow as soon as she could and, much to her family’s horror, they discovered that she had joined a troop of gadfeathers. Pye could take care of herself. It was his little brother, Shadyk, that Theo worried about. Undersized, rather clumsy, and with all the
meekness of his mum, he had become the favorite target of his da’s anger, who humiliated him in front of others, often beating him. Theo tried to protect the little fellow as best he could. But one night Theo and his da had a terrible row. Theo decided he could take it no longer and so he flew off.

When Theo had come to the island in the Bitter Sea and met Grank, he had found the father he had always yearned for. Then a few short weeks after his arrival, the egg Grank had kept so carefully sequestered in his hollow hatched and Hoole came into the world. Theo simply could not believe his luck. For him, it was as if he had found a new little brother, indeed almost a whole new family.

But for all this time, Theo had been haunted with guilt for abandoning his little brother to endure the cruelties of their father all by himself. Then he realized with a start that Shadyk would now be old enough to go off on his own. He must have done so by this time.

Theo was concentrating so hard that he did not pick up the haggish stench of crow that was but a whiff on the edges of the tearing winds.

But the hagsfiend of the Ice Narrows rarely missed a creature who passed her way. Kreeth backed quickly into her cave as she saw Theo rounding a bend in the channel.

“Lutta, get out there. Remember the camouflage lessons I’ve taught you?”

“Yes, Auntie.” Kreeth had settled upon “Auntie” as the term of endearment Lutta should use when addressing her.

“Code S-S-S.”

“Snowy-Slender-Still,” Lutta confirmed.

“Get out there and do it. Keep one eye closed, the other a slit, and alert your half-hags. Then report back to me.”

“Yes, Auntie.”

“Be quick about it. He’s almost here.”

Lutta didn’t pause to ask who Kreeth wanted her to watch. She immediately turned as white as a Snowy Owl, then stepped outside the cave and arranged herself on the ice shelf. Intentionally wilfing, she narrowed her body by pressing her feathers close to her sides and stood as tall as possible. She appeared to be just another icicle among the many that hung like a fringed ice curtain in front of the cave. Within seconds, she spied the Great Horned.
A strong flier,
she noticed. He seemed to be accustomed to the north winds. When he had disappeared around another bend, she lifted her wings slightly and dispatched her half-hags to track him. “No poison,” she ordered. A small swarm of them flew forth.

Half-hags possessed the uncanniest abilities to interpret and detect the faintest changes or traces in an air current disturbed by the wings of a passing owl. A tiny
filament of down still spinning in the eddies, the musty odor of a pellet yarped in flight, nothing was too minuscule, too insignificant for the half-hags to detect.

“So what did you find out?” Kreeth asked when Lutta returned.

“Excellent flier. Appears to be used to the katabats. Heading on a course that will take him over the Ice Dagger.”

Kreeth nodded.

“Appears to have come from the south.”

“That’s obvious,” Kreeth said scathingly.

“But wait! The half-hags report that they picked up traces of a very strange sort of tree, one they have never detected from any bird coming out of the S’yrthghar.”

Kreeth’s dark, crowish eyes became little pinpricks of blackness that had the intensity of the brightest light. Excitement stirred within Lutta at the sight of her mistress’s eyes. She knew that Kreeth was impressed. Her half-hags had performed brilliantly. “Very interesting!” Kreeth said in a raw whisper. “You must continue to follow him—discreetly. Send out your half-hags. I want to know everything.” She paused. “I repeat,
everything.”

“Yes, Auntie,” Lutta replied.

“And, dearie?”

“Yes, Auntie?”

“Your mother was renowned for the excellence of her half-hags. I wager that yours will be twice as good.”

There was a slight rustle deep within Lutta’s feathers. It was the murmur of the half-hags stirring in poisonous pleasure.