Guardians of Ga'Hoole: To Be A King (7 page)

T
he Firth of Grundenspyrr was as crooked as a wolf’s hind leg, and it was one of the few firths that had trees. Just as the dawn was breaking, Theo spotted the N’yrthfyr birch that had been the tree where his family had its hollow. Theo was unsure exactly how to announce his arrival. His mother was a frail sort and he didn’t want to shock her. He wondered if Shadyk was still there. He thought it might be best to fly around to the back of the tree where there was a tiny hollow that had not been used in years. If it was empty, he would just slip in and listen to what was going on with his own family for a while.

He could hear voices as he approached the back of the tree: one male and one female. He squashed into the hollow, which was more suitable for an Elf or Pygmy owl than himself. His mother had always had a tiny, meek voice, but now there was an earsplitting din coming from his family’s hollow. And shrill peals of laughter.

“By my butt feathers, that’s the funniest thing I ever heard,” the female said.

“But Philma, it’s true!”

Philma! That was Theo’s mum’s name, but he had never heard her laugh, let alone speak so coarsely. And the other voice was definitely not his father’s, nor was it Shadyk’s.
What in Glaux’s name is going on here?
Theo wasted no time in wondering. He immediately flew out of the tiny hollow and around the tree, lighting down on a branch. “Mum!” The word was swallowed in gales of raucous laughter. “Mum! Mum!” he shouted out. The laughter stopped. Two bright, sparkling yellow eyes peeped from the hollow. Atop her head were the fluffy ear tufts that his mum was so proud of because they were fuller and lovelier than those of most Great Horned Owls. It was indeed his mum!

“Theo!” she hooted. “Theo, lovey! I can’t believe it! Theo’s come home! Wyg, get out here. It’s Theo!”

Wyg? Who’s Wyg?
Theo racked his brain. Theo’s father’s name was Hakon. Another Great Horned stepped out onto the branch. “Mum, where’s Da?”

“Oh, dear. How to break this to you.”

“Now, now, Philma.” Wyg was preening her ear tufts with what seemed to Theo an overly familiar gesture.

“Your da, I regret to say”—although there did not
seem to be much regret in her voice—“has done passed on, Theo.”

“You mean died? He’s dead?”

“Yes, dearie. I know how much he meant to you.”

She’s got to be kidding!
thought Theo.

“What happened?”

“Well, when Shadyk went off to fight in the wars…”

“What? Shadyk went off to fight?”

“Yes. Can you believe it? He’s made quite a name for himself. But I’ll tell you about that later. Come on in the hollow. We just got some fresh-killed lemmings.” She turned and blinked rapidly at Wyg. “Wyg is such a hunter.” She flew up and tweaked one of his ear tufts. Then they nuzzled a bit. At this point, Theo could have been knocked over by a feather.

“You were saying about Da?” Theo asked.

“Oh, yes, dear. I do get distracted.” She giggled.

Has there ever been a jollier widow?
Theo wondered.

“Well, when Shadyk went off to the glacier battles, your father, you know, never one to be outdone—especially by a son whom he’d always considered the runt—well, he decided to go, too.” She paused and tried to rearrange her merry face into a somewhat more doleful expression.

“Yes,” Theo said, “and what happened?”

“So he went off and got himself killed—right off the
twig, practically. Hardly had a chance to raise his ice blade.” She cast her eyes down mournfully, made a sound halfway between a whimper and a sigh. Then she looked up, her eyes beaming as Theo had never seen them. “But now I have a new mate. And he don’t swat me—no, not never—like your da sometimes did.”

Theo was astonished beyond anything. “Well, I’m so happy for you. And what’s this about Shadyk? You said he’s gone off to the wars?”

Now Philma’s eyes grew large. “Oh, my goodness, he certainly did. And he’s not so little anymore.” Her voice dropped. “Theo, dear, you’re not going to believe this, but Shadyk started himself up a regiment. And guess what?”

“What?” Theo was afraid to ask.

“They have captured H’rath’s old Ice Palace.”

This was truly beyond belief. Theo blinked his eyes several times. “The Ice Palace of the H’rathghar glacier?”

“The very one.” Philma nodded.

“But Mum, that was King H’rath’s. He was a good king.”

“Well, you know how these things go, dear,” his mum replied.

“No, Mum. I don’t know.”

“Well, King H’rath was defeated, and that awful Lord Arrin came and took it over. But he doesn’t know how to
run anything, Shadyk says, and it’s a shame to let that beautiful palace go to waste.”

“To waste? Mum, Shadyk has to be a king to live there. What in the world does Shadyk know about running anything?”

“He’ll learn, dear. He’ll learn. And you know he has the nicest group of young hagsfiends.”

“Hagsfiends! He has hagsfiends?”

“Why, yes, dear. You know, they’re not as bad as you might think, especially the young ones. He’s training them, bringing them up right and proper.”

Proper hagsfiends? Madness!
There were tens, hundreds of questions Theo was dying to ask. Had Shadyk or his mum no loyalty to Siv or H’rath? To Hoole? They had certainly heard about Hoole and the Battle in the Beyond. Had Shadyk no reservations about hagsfiends? But as soon as Theo found out about his brother’s alliance with the creatures he knew that these questions could not be asked. And even more important, he knew that he must not under any circumstances reveal that he was an ally and close friend to King Hoole, the rightful heir to the throne of the N’yrthghar.

“We go up there all the time to the Glacier Palace,” his mother continued. “They treat us like royalty.”

It was all Theo could do to keep from yarping. But
suddenly, he realized this was his chance. He composed himself as best he could. “I would love to see Shadyk again.”

“Well, we could all go for a visit. What fun!” Philma lofted herself straight up into the air and beat her talons together in a gesture of utter joy. Theo was stunned.
Imagine celebrating a son who was consorting with hagsfiends.

“
K
eep a sharp lookout for smoke,” Hoole said as he, Phineas, and the Snow Rose flew in a southeasterly direction over the Forest of Ambala. The three owls had been in the Southern Kingdoms almost two moon cycles now. At the moment, they were looking for the telltale signs of a blacksmith’s forge, or Rogue smith, as these independent ironmongers had already come to be called.

The news had quickly spread throughout the S’yrthghar of the powerful new weapons that Hoole and Theo and a few others had fought with in the Battle of the Beyond. In the few moon cycles since then, Hoole was amazed to see several of the hireclaws who had fought for Siv trying their luck diving for coals and building fires. A few of them had actually become proficient at it. But then they were faced with the harder task of trying to figure out what seemed like magic to them—melting rock into metal and making weapons from it. But most important, the new Rogue smiths and colliers were all passionately
devoted to the late Queen Siv. Loners by nature, they avoided settling down. That did not mean they were completely unsociable. They genuinely liked it when visitors stopped by their forges and admired their fires or their ironwork. And they became positively chatty when discussing blacksmithing.

Hoole quickly ascertained that Rogue smiths would make excellent slipgizzles. Every owl now craved battle claws and came to them in hopes of procuring a set, so the smiths heard plenty of news. A forge could yield as much information as a grog tree these days. Hoole decided early on that they would not directly ask the owls if they wanted to be slipgizzles. He would first determine a smith’s loyalties and secondly assess if he or she had the wits and instincts for collecting information and passing it along. Invariably, they did have these qualities and were thrilled to be of service to the noble young king. Hoole recognized many of them from the battle, but luckily they did not recognize him in his gadfeather disguise.

As he, the Snow Rose, and Phineas flew into the night, Hoole reflected on what he had learned so far. There definitely were hagsfiends around. But no one knew quite where. There were stories of a black feather here and there, or a rank crowish scent carried on a breeze. There were sightings of the queer black pellets they yarped.

But it was not only the information that Hoole and his friends picked up that was important. While they had been traveling, Hoole had the sudden inspiration that some of the more promising smiths should be encouraged to fly to the great tree to train under the watchful eye of Grank and Theo, when Theo returned to the tree. He let this information be revealed in a casual chatty way. “I hear,” he said to one Rogue smith in Tyto, “that at the great tree, the one they call the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, which was named for the king, that one can learn colliering and smithing from the masters themselves.” In this way Hoole managed to send a half dozen promising Rogue smiths and colliers to the tree to begin their training. There would be battle claws aplenty when the time was ripe!

On the border of Silverveil and The Barrens, Hoole, Phineas, and the Snow Rose had a rendezvous with Joss. Joss reported that Grank was delighted with the influx of smiths and colliers. There were now four forges going, with two smiths to a forge, so the supply of battle claws had quadrupled. New recruits for the invasion were arriving every day, and Lord Rathnik and his lieutenants were training them in the use of ice weapons. The ice weapons themselves were surviving well due to the cool weather and the preservative powers of the milkberry vines.

Hoole and Phineas, who for so long had watched Theo at his forge, learned to discreetly throw out suggestions and pointers while still being careful to conceal their true identities. It was in this way that Hoole, Phineas, and the Snow Rose forged their own strong bonds with these owls. Most important, they wanted to know if any hags-fiends had been spotted in the Southern Kingdoms who were known to be aloof, reluctant even to reveal their name. Repeatedly the answer was no. Not one had been spotted. But in his gizzard, Hoole had twinges of doubt.

“But we would have smelled something if they had been around,” Phineas said.

“Oh, that crowish odor!” exclaimed the Snow Rose. She would never forget the terrible stench of hagsfiends in the Battle of the Beyond. “You never get used to it.”

“But owls don’t have the best sense of smell,” Hoole argued.

And then one night when they were visiting a Rogue smith in Ambala, Hoole saw something in the fire there that made his gizzard lurch. It was a hagsfiend! Hoole knew it as certainly as he had known anything.

Phineas immediately realized that Hoole had spotted danger in the fire. The Rogue smith was looking at Hoole peculiarly. “What’s wrong with your friend?” In that same moment, the first wave of the crowish stench filled the
darkening night, and then the blackness of that night began to fade into yellow, and the yellow grew stronger as the outer edge of a fyngrot rolled in like a rising tide.

“We have no weapons!” Phineas whispered. They must do something before the hagsfiend launched its half-hags with their poisonous loads. To do that, however, the hagsfiend had to be in range. It was the fyngrot, which was cast like a deadly net, that brought a victim into range and stilled the victim so the half-hags could take aim.

“No ice sabers,” said the Rogue smith.

Hoole seized a poker from the forge. It had the sphere of molten iron at its tip. Time seemed to slow and events happened in a dreamlike, liquidy way. But Hoole’s thoughts came clearly and distinctly. With his mother, he had escaped a fyngrot in the Battle of the Beyond. “Hold steady, my prince. Hold steady,” Siv had said then. In an unparalleled act of willpower she rendered them both impenetrable to the effects of the fyngrot.

And now it was Hoole’s turn. He did not have his father’s ice scimitar, but he had the image of his mother, and in his talon the poker with the molten iron at its tip. He raised the poker and charged through the yellow light, slashing at the hagsfiend. The stink of singed feathers now mixed with the crowlike smell. Then the hagsfiend suddenly looked quite ordinary. The fyngrot faded, and
there was a soft plop. No more yellow—just a pile of black feathers on the ground in front of the forge.

“Look!” Phineas said in a stunned voice. “It’s just like an ordinary crow.”

“It’s so small,” whispered the Snow Rose.

“I’d never believe it,” said the Rogue smith. “It ain’t even half the size it was.” Hagsfiends’ wingspans were enormous, three times that of the largest owls, and now this bird seemed the same size—if that—of a crow.

“So finally we find one, after all the rumors,” Hoole said. “Must have come by a land route. Not enough ice this time of year to risk a sea crossing.” And once more Hoole thought how they must be ready to invade by Short Light.

Hoole stepped toward the body and prodded it with the poker so that it turned over. The four owls gasped. There was a shallow disc-shaped depression where its face should have been. But there were no eyes, no beak, and in the depression was a thin yellow liquid that was quickly evaporating to dust. It was shocking and horrible.

“However did you bring this creature down, Hoole?” Phineas asked.

“Hoole!” The Rogue smith gasped. “You are King Hoole?” The other three owls looked at one another as the Rogue smith fell to his knees. “I should have known.”

“Rise up, smith,” Hoole said. “Yes, I am the king.”

“You saved us with your magic. A magic greater than the hagsfiend’s. But you do not have the ember with you. The one they call the Ember of Hoole.”

“It was not magic,” Hoole said sharply. “It was the power of my will, my gizzard. I used no magic at all. Good smith, you are right. I do not have the ember with me. I had a poker forged in your own fires, with a hunk of molten white-hot metal at its tip. But smith, promise me this: Tell no one that I am the king.”

“Your Majesty, I give you my word of honor.” He paused. His pale yellow eyes locked with Hoole’s deep amber ones. “I give you my name and such is my honor: Rupert is my name.”

Hoole knew after his time in the Southern Kingdoms and having met a score of Rogue smiths that the knowledge of a smith’s name was a trust not lightly given.

So the young king bowed his head to Rupert and said simply, “I am honored, Rupert.”