The Rescue (Guardians of Ga'hoole) (15 page)

We shall dissect every pellet with glee.

Perhaps we shall find a rodent’s knee.

And never will we tire

in the sacred task that we conspire.

Nor do our work less than perfectly

and those bright flecks at the core,

which make our hearts soar,

shall always remain a mystery…

This was the song that Soren and Gylfie had been forced to sing as they worked in the pelletorium of St. Aggie’s. Now it began to roar silently in their heads as they stood in the ruins of the castle and looked up at the empty shrine. Eglantine’s dreadful words, “the sacred flecks,” still rang in their ears.

“The flecks!” Soren and Gylfie both exclaimed again and stared at each other. The other owls were silent. Finally, the mystery of the flecks, which they had never unraveled, had begun to reveal itself. The image of Skench storming into the library in full battle regalia came back to them in all its terror. They had been just about to fly out of the library, the highest point in the stone maze of St. Aggie’s, which offered the best escape route, and Skench, twice their size, advanced toward them, battle claws extended, a fearsome, horrific figure. And then suddenly, for no explainable reason, she slammed into the wall, drawn by some incredible force, and was rendered helpless. Thus, they had escaped. Now Soren remembered one of his very first conversations with Bubo as to why the blacksmith was “drawn to live in a cave.” Bubo’s words came back to him:
It be a strange and most peculiar force. It’s as if all these years working with the iron, we get a bit of the magnet in us. Like them special metals—you know, iron. It’s got what we call a “field.” Well, you’ll be learning this in metals class, in higher magnetics, where all the unseeable parts are lined up. It makes this force that draws you—same thing with me—I get drawn to the very earth from which them little flecks of iron come from.

Now, finally, Soren realized what the force was.

“The flecks were stored in that wall in the library,” Gylfie said.

“Yes, and Skench was wearing metal. There was a strange interaction. But she was so stupid, she didn’t know,” Soren replied.

“It’s simple,” said Otulissa.

“Simple?” Digger asked.

“It’s higher magnetics. The second volume of Strix Emerilla focuses on disturbances and abnormalities in the earth’s magnetic fields. The St. Aggie’s owls might not have known what they were doing with flecks but, believe me, these owls of the castle know exactly what they are doing.” Otulissa paused dramatically.

What are they doing?
The question hung silently in the air.

“Should I go on?” Otulissa asked. She was clearly relishing her superior knowledge.

“Oh, for Glaux’s sake, yes!” roared Twilight, seeming to swell to twice his size.

So Otulissa explained how an owl’s brain could become muddled to the point of complete directional confusion so that it would be impossible for him to navigate. She was talking on and on, becoming increasingly technical, when Soren finally interrupted. “Eglantine, how many sacred flecks were there?”

“Three golden bags full.”

“How big were the bags?”

She thought a moment. “Oh, about the size of”—she hesitated—“an owl’s head, say, a Great Gray.” She looked at Twilight.

“But how, if the sacred flecks were kept in this shrine, as you call it, how did the owls here protect themselves against the disturbances?”

“Especially Metal Beak,” Gylfie added. Soren hadn’t thought of this, but why wouldn’t Metal Beak slam right into the bags in the same way Skench had in the library?

“I don’t know,” Eglantine said. “But we never felt anything.” She hesitated again. “But maybe we did. When they forced us to sleep in the crypts. Sometimes I felt a strange buzzing in my head, and I would get very confused.”

“Aha!” Otulissa exclaimed. She had flown up to the shrine and was investigating the doors that shuttered it closed. “Just as I suspected.” She tapped her beak on the lining of the doors. “Mu!”

“Mu?” All the owls said at once.

“Mu metal—magnetically very soft. Surround a magnetic object with it, and it blocks the field. That’s what protected you, Eglantine.”

“Except when I was put into the crypt.”

“And that is what protected Metal Beak,” Gylfie said. “His mask and beak must be made of mu metal.”

“Precisely,” Otulissa nodded sagely.

Soren had said nothing. He was listening and thinking. “There were three bags, Eglantine, right?”

Eglantine nodded.

“But now they are gone.” Soren turned toward Otulissa. “Otulissa, what would happen if you set up these three bags of flecks at certain points?”

Otulissa began to tremble, then in a barely audible whisper, she spoke. “There would be a Devil’s Triangle.”

“So the mu metal protects one from the magnetic disruption. But is there anything that can actually destroy the flecks, the magnetism itself forever?”

Otulissa nodded solemnly. “Fire!”

“Fire…mu…fire, fire!” Soren spread his wings and rose in flight. He swept from one corner of the castle ruins to another. It was the owl manner of pacing. To fly, to move, helped him to think. Gylfie soon lifted into flight. How often during their long imprisonment at St. Aggie’s had the two of them plotted and planned together? Soren felt the comfort of Gylfie’s presence as the Elf Owl fell into flight beside him. The other owls were very still except for the smooth turnings of their heads as they followed the two owls’ flight with their eyes. Several minutes later, Gylfie and Soren lighted down.

“Is there any way we can get that mu off the doors of the shrine?”

“That shouldn’t be hard, especially if it’s soft metal,” Twilight said, and flew toward the niche. Then with a force that would have torn a fox in half, he ripped off the metal.

“Good!” Soren said. “Now we must leave our battle claws behind and fly out to find that forest fire that Gylfie spotted earlier. Twilight, seeing as we have no coal-carrying buckets, could you somehow bend one of those sheets of mu metal into something like a bucket?”

“Sure thing, Soren.”

Thus, a plan had been devised by Soren and Gylfie with the mu metal to protect and shield them. Since the bags were missing, it might be very easy for the owls to accidentally find themselves smack in the middle of a Devil’s Triangle. As an ultimate precaution, they intended to first fly to the forest fire and collect burning coals. And, if they did fly upon the bags of sacred flecks, they could, with the coals harvested from the forest fire, destroy the flecks’ power. If this triangle existed, they must destroy it. It would be a hazard to all bird life—owls, eagles, seagulls—yes, even crows—as much as they loathed that latter species. Something like this simply could not exist in nature.
Otulissa thought that because she was indeed so sensitive to changes in atmospheric pressure she might be able to sense the perimeter of the triangle. So it was decided that Otulissa would fly in the point position.

They had been in the castle a long time. The light was seeping out of the day. Soon it would be First Black. The owls perched on the jagged edges of the north wall of the church and watched the smudge of smoke from an immense forest fire roll up to meet the coming darkness of the night. Gylfie stood beside Soren, hardly reaching his breast feathers. Six owls they were, Soren thought as he slid his head around to look at them. Six strong, quick-witted owls about to fulfill a destiny. They had indeed become a band of owls who would rise into the blackness and embark on the last part of a dangerous quest—to find the lost, to mend the broken, to make the world a better place, and to make each owl the best he or she could be. Soren knew that he was in fact the leader of the best of the best. And so he vowed that no matter how difficult this was, he would do all in his power to not only rescue Ezylryb, but to bring each one of these owls home safe to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.

I
t was, of course, Soren and Otulissa who, as trained colliers, would plunge into the forest fire to retrieve the coals. They had found a high rock ledge downwind of the forest fire that offered them the best point of observation. All the owls were massed on the ledge and listened carefully as Soren began to speak.

“Now, you understand that it is only myself and Otulissa who will go into the fire.”

Twilight, Digger, Gylfie, and Eglantine nodded gravely. There would be no argument, not even from Twilight. They all knew that only these two owls had been trained in this very dangerous work that demanded skills far beyond the ordinary. From breathing and flying, to the beak work of seizing a live coal, these owls had received the most specialized of instruction of any chaw.

“If there is a problem, an enemy approaching or whatever—yes, come fetch us. I think it should be Gylfie or Eglantine, because Twilight and Digger, being larger,
might have to remain to deal with an enemy. If either of you have to come to us, you must fly what we call the fringes of the fire.”

“But what if you’re not there when we come?”

“One of us will always be flying lookout, watching for the one below who is retrieving coals on the ground.”

How he now wished that Ruby was here. The Short-eared Owl, being the best flier of them all, was particularly skilled in catching airborne embers. There would really be no one to fill that spot tonight. And how he missed Martin, who often performed the wide coal reconnaissance surveys that gave information as to the size and location of various rich ember beds. In addition to that, Martin was very good at finding glowworms. A glowworm was a particular kind of coal that was especially valued by Bubo for his forge. No one had the slightest idea why it was called a glowworm, but there were extra points for those who found them.

“Otulissa?” Soren said.

“Yes, Soren?”

Glaux, he hoped she didn’t give him trouble. “Otulissa, you and I shall make alternating dives once we find an entry point, a good shoot. The rest of you must stay with the mu bucket once we find a place to stash it.” It did not look exactly like a bucket but rather a shallow pan. It might be
hard keeping the coals in it, but if they flew steady, he felt they could work with it. “Now, the good news is that we don’t have to harvest nearly as many coals as we normally do. Remember, we don’t need coals for a forge, but just for these three bags of flecks.”

For the first time, Soren realized he had not cringed as he usually did when he said or heard the word “flecks.” Perhaps this was because he was beginning to understand flecks. Yes, they had power, but at the same time, their power was not absolute. He and the band could damage this power and possibly destroy it. Soren realized suddenly that with this small bit of knowledge he had acquired in the last few hours, he knew a great deal more than the brutal owls of St. Aggie’s. Whether he knew as much or more as the Pure Ones, as Eglantine had called them, and this horrendous owl called Metal Beak, remained to be seen.

A few minutes later, Soren and Otulissa were shredding the fringes of the forest fire. Shredding was a flight maneuver in which they darted in and out of what they called the dead places at the edge of the fire to find which points would be the best to actually dive in from. This was now Soren’s job. Usually Elvan, the co-ryb of colliering, along with Ezylryb led the shred. But Ezylryb had insisted on Soren flying directly behind Elvan enough times that
Soren thought he could do it now. Often they had to make as many as twenty shreds before they found a point of entry. They had made four shreds so far. Now, on this fifth one, Soren felt “a shoot,” or a good passageway open up.

“I think this might be it,” he said to Otulissa. They made one more pass at the shoot. “All right, let’s find a place nearby to stash this mu bucket and then get to work.”

When they had found the place for the bucket, Soren and Otulissa left the other owls to guard it and flew toward the fire. Its roar was deafening as it gobbled the trees below. Soren fervently hoped that Eglantine would not have to come to warn them of anything. For an owl not accustomed to flying in forest fires, it was the roar rather than the heat that was often the most intimidating. And now Soren gave the command.

“DIVE!” Otulissa went into a dizzying spiral plunge. Soren kept his eye glued to her as her spots blurred. How often had he done this, flown surveillance not for Otulissa but his chaw partner, Martin? He remembered so well the first time. He had been frightened for Martin but frightened for himself as well. They had imagined every kind of horror that a forest fire could serve up. The rogue winds, the crowning when the fire in an unbridled rage would leap from treetop to treetop, creating fuel ladders that
sucked up everything in their deadly heat—including owls on the wing. Yet, nothing really had scared him as much as that hurricane that had caused Martin to plummet into the sea.

Soren kept his eyes on Otulissa below as he recalled all this. He saw the Spotted Owl rising now on a stack of heated updrafts. She whirled in next to Soren, her once-creamy white spots dark with soot. A glowworm sparkled in her beak as she flew to where the mu bucket had been stashed. Now it was Soren’s turn. Down he plunged. The coal beds were rich and the size of the sizzling nuggets, although smallish, burned hot. He managed to harvest two at once and flew directly back to the mu bucket.

It only took four more rounds each for Soren and Otulissa to gather enough coals. Well before midnight they turned back to the ledge where the other owls awaited them by the bucket.

Soren and Eglantine carried the mu bucket between them now with dozens of glowing coals. Twilight, being the largest and strongest of the owls, carried in his talons the piece of the mu metal, which had not been turned into a bucket, as a shield against the flecks if they should encounter any of the missing bags. Otulissa was still flying the point position.

Gylfie, the tiniest owl, flew a few feet from the ground
for close surveillance. And Digger would do what he did better than any owl—walk.