Guardians of Ga'Hoole: To Be A King (9 page)

D
elicately, Kreeth wove the feather into Lutta’s plumage. “You see, my dear, it is not enough to look like just any Spotted Owl. You must be a particular one. With this feather from the head of Emerilla’s father you will be able, in a sense, to become her. Yes, you have mastered the call of the Spotted Owls, the long
whuff-whuff.
And you are excellent at capturing that peculiar tilting action of their plummels as they go into a banking turn, and you even think like a Spotted Owl. But now you must think like Emerilla. Because, as your half-hags heard, this new king from the strange tree in the south is searching for her. You are vital to my plan to get the ember. If you can become Emerilla, the ember is mine!

“Now listen and learn, Lutta. Hagsfiends do not really have what owls call a “true gizzard,” but with this feather, well…you will get close to having one. Owl gizzards are strange. They serve no good purpose. It is much better to have a hagsfiend’s gizzard. It is a simple organ that digests
food and does not bother us with the so-called finer sensibilities and emotions.”

“What are emotions exactly?” Lutta asked.

“Silly feelings that get in the way of actions.” She paused and fixed Lutta with a beady-eyed stare. “And this will be the most difficult part of your mission. You must act like an owl with a gizzard, but at the same time you must resist the instincts with which a gizzard might distract you. A gizzard could prove dangerous! Do you understand?”

“Yes, Auntie.”

“In this mission, there is simply no room for emotions. You must do nothing that would jeopardize the mission.”

“No, never! Never!” Lutta felt a strange twinge in her belly. Something squirmed deep within her. She had experienced the first turnings of gizzard, not a true owl gizzard, but nonetheless it was a queer feeling. A sensation that she did not completely dislike. In fact, it was a sensation that made her feel more…more…She searched for the words: more complete.

Her mission was to fly to this island in the south and steal the ember, the Ember of Hoole. She must not let this so-called gizzard distract her.

When Kreeth had first heard about the ember and the great tree ruled by this idiot who wanted to rid the owl
world of all magic, she had started to devise her strategy. She had, thanks to Lutta’s half-hags’ reconnaissance flight, heard the facts. But she realized that what she needed was not more information but knowledge of a deeper sort. She needed to know the nature of this owl named Hoole who was in possession of the most powerful magic in the world, yet wanted to rid the world of it. She plucked a withered gizzard from her collection, which hung on ice picks. Placing it in a solution, she began to mumble peculiar words. It was a dream-sight divination that had to be spoken both forward and backward without a single mistake—“Veeblyn spyn crynik spyn veeblyn Hoole Elooh nylbeev nyps kinyrc nyps nylbeev.”

It took her three tries, but she finally succeeded. She could now enter the dreams of Hoole. Not every dream, and not all the time. Some dreams would prove useless and give no insight into his nature. But others would be quite valuable. For several days as she slept, she was stirred by the dreams of Hoole, but they were, for the most part, unremarkable. The usual ones: a succulent prey that slipped through one’s talons, flying the starry configurations of a night sky to suddenly find it daytime and a mob of crows closing in. There were a few dreams of the Battle in the Beyond, but not as many as she would have liked. These battle dreams yielded a wealth of information about
Hoole’s fighting strategies, and she was intrigued by the strange devices that he and three other owls wore on their talons, which extended them into fearsomely sharp weapons. But then one day, late in the afternoon just before her usual time to rise, she entered a dream that she knew was crucial to her understanding of Hoole and the success of the mission.

Kreeth found herself flying through thick fog that was beginning to thin. It seemed that shimmering stars were suspended in the pearly mist. But they were not stars at all. They were the white dots of a Spotted Owl. Hoole was dreaming of the owl Emerilla for whom they were searching. Nothing unusual about that. She had known that the Spotted Owl was the object of their search. But though Kreeth herself had no owl’s gizzard, she could see that Hoole’s gizzard was in turmoil. He was drawn to this owl, concerned for her safety, fascinated by her courage.

Kreeth snapped awake. “It makes our task so easy!” she exclaimed.

Kreeth stepped to the sleeping Lutta and patted the feather she had earlier woven into her primaries.

“Now, my Lutta,” she whispered. “You will truly become Emerilla. Don’t you feel it?”

Lutta did begin to feel different, but then again she was not sure what it was she was feeling. More than
anything, Lutta was confused, but she dared not ask any more questions because Kreeth was in a highly agitated state, and when she got this way it was not a good idea to pester her. Still, Lutta wondered what exactly she was—Hagsfiend? Owl? Snowy? Spotted, Pygmy, Elf? Or Great Horned, as she had appeared soon after she hatched? She sometimes felt split up into a hundred different pieces. Yes, it could be confusing—and very lonely.

I
n the northern part of the S’yrthghar, winter weather had set in and the night was aslant with a slashing wind of sleet and snow and rain. The wintry weather reminded Hoole of the dwindling number of nights to Short Light and this made him fly all the faster. Every night the darkness lengthened and the sun grew weaker, staggering up over the horizon like some crippled sky creature until finally there would come that morning when it would not appear at all. That would be the Long Night when they must strike.

Hoole flew alone on a northeasterly course. He was unfamiliar with sleet. In the N’yrthghar, it was so cold and dry, there was no sleet, only snow.

“Great Glaux, I’ll wear out my wings flying through this slop,” he muttered as he approached Broken Talon Point. Phineas and the Snow Rose had protested when he said that they must go back to the great tree to report what they had found so far. The Pygmy and the Snowy had wanted to
accompany him, and it took a lot of arguing on Hoole’s part to convince them that he would be quite safe. “It’s more important for you to fly back and share what we have found and to seek out more Rogue smiths who are willing to be slipgizzles.” Finally, they had relented.

The images in the fire had shown Namara—the wolf once called Hordweard—in the harsh and inhospitable region northeast of Broken Talon Point, not in the Beyond where the dire wolves had lived ever since Fengo had led them there. It did not surprise Hoole that Namara had chosen to leave the Beyond. She had lived most of her life there as one of several mates of the demonic wolf called MacHeath. But she had left her clan and shown great courage and endurance in hunting down the traitorous MacHeath and warning Hoole of Lord Arrin’s approach before the Battle in the Beyond. Had it not been for Namara, they would have never been prepared for the attack. Ever since that day she had been regarded as a hero by all the wolves of the Beyond. But hero or not, Namara wanted no part of their society. In her time alone tracking down her old mate, she had become strong again, and confident and beautiful. She had declared that her name was no longer Hordweard but Namara. “I am Namara now. My clan is MacNamara. I am a clan unto myself.” Hoole needed her now and was determined to find her.

He knew the way of the wolves. He had lived in Fengo’s cave, breathing the air that the wolves breathed and smelling their scent marks. But his education was not complete until he had joined a byrrgis, the traveling formation of wolves, and hunted with them. And although he had not become a wolf in his shape or body, he had in his mind. His beak had felt like fangs, his feathers like fur. It was almost as if he could read the wolves as he read the flames.

Those feelings were returning. He knew he was drawing close to Namara. He could feel her hunting nearby—was it a stray caribou? A bobcat? With each beat of his wing, he felt himself becoming more wolf than bird. A confounding but thrilling paradox.

He spotted her just as the moon was sliding down toward the horizon into another night in another world, and the first gray of dawn began to peel away the darkness. It was a winter-thin caribou she was tracking. Hoole settled in a tree to watch the ritual of lochinvyrr that was about to be enacted. He dared not interrupt it. An agreement was being made between predator and prey. The prey, in a silent language, said, “My meat is valuable, my meat will sustain you. I am worthy.” It was not a moment of victory or defeat but one of dignity.

When Namara had finished with the kill, Hoole swept down from the tree. She lifted her blood-soaked muzzle.
“Hoole, dear Hoole!” How odd those soft words seemed coming from that blood-drenched face. “What brings you here, young’un? Oh, forgive me—you are now king.”

“No, I shall always be just Hoole. I care not for such titles.”

Namara laughed softly. “What brings you here to this lonely place?”

“Is it lonely for you, Namara?” Hoole asked.

“No, not really, and if it were, it would be a loneliness of my own choosing. You know me, Hoole. But tell me, why have you come?”

Hoole told her of his encounter with the hagsfiend in Ambala and how he had suspected that others were around. “So I went to the fire to read the flames.”

Namara nodded her head as she gnawed on the caribou. “Yes, you were a flame reader. I remember now. And the flames told you that there were hagsfiends loose in the S’yrthghar.”

“In the Desert of Kuneer to be exact. A perfect place for them, of course. But it told me even more.”

“What was that?” Namara lifted her head. Her tilted green eyes sparkled. Hoole leaned forward into their green light. He knew he was right. This was the light he had seen in the flames.

“Namara, the green light in the eyes of wolves will
destroy the fyngrot. I know this. I know it through the flames. I know it in my gizzard.” He paused before going on. He was frightened of asking the next question but he must. “Namara, I need you to lead a wolf pack into the Desert of Kuneer. You are a loner, I know, but you are a natural leader, too. The wolves of the Beyond hold you in great esteem. I am not asking you to live with them. I am asking you to lead them. This is a battle for the wolves. I will go with you. I shall fight. In the Battle of the Beyond I learned from my mother to resist the fyngrot, but I cannot destroy it. My family’s palace, the Ice Palace of the N’yrthghar, has fallen into enemy hands. And now, in the S’yrthghar, there are hagsfiends. Before I can go north again and lead my owls of the great tree on to the H’rathghar glacier to oust those outlaws and tyrants, I must make sure the S’yrthghar is rid of the hagsfiends.”

“And once this is done, this business with the hags-fiends, will you fly straightaway to the N’yrthghar?”

“No, not straightaway. There is much to be done before we are ready for that war.”

“And what is that?” Somehow things had turned around. Namara was not answering Hoole’s questions but asking the questions. Hoole felt it was important to answer her questions with great care and thought.
This, in some way, is a test,
he thought.

“There is much to be done before the Guardians of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree are ready. We had one success at the Battle in the Beyond, and though it wasn’t mere chance, we must be better prepared next time. Only four of us fought with battle claws then. That was all we had. We must make more and teach others how to fly with them. We need more colliers, more owls to learn the art of smithing who can produce the battle claws because we have few ice weapons in our part of the world and they are difficult to keep. And—” Hoole paused and looked deeply into the tilting green eyes of Namara “—we need to learn to think like wolves.”

Namara seemed to relax now. “This is good, my friend. You are right. You must teach them the way of the byrrgis. And if it is colliers and smiths that you need, well, there are more each day. They are learning quickly how to pick up coals, not from the mouth of the volcanoes as you did, mind you, but the ones that are flung down to the base. And now I even see them heading out for forest fires.”

“Really?” Hoole was amazed.

Namara nodded and continued, “There is even a smith with a forge near here. They are all very devoted to you, Hoole, and I think they would not hesitate to help.”

“And yourself, Namara, will you help?”

“Of course, dear friend. It is the least I can do for the
only creature on earth who believed in me and knew I was not a traitor. We can set out for the Beyond at First Black, as you owls call it. Fengo will help me raise the pack. Don’t worry. Now help yourself to some of this caribou.”

“Oh, no. It is a scrawny thing. You eat the rest. I’m sure there are rats and voles scrambling around here someplace.”

“As you like, Hoole, as you like. But come share my den when you have fed. It is right over there by that old scrub oak. I’ve made a burrow at its roots. It will do fine for a wolf and a Spotted Owl.”

That day, well fed, the owl and the wolf shared a den.

Hoole hadn’t dreamed of the lovely Spotted Owl since that first time. It seemed as if each time he nearly entered a dream about her, something would drag him from it, and so his days remained dreamless.

I
n another part of the owl world, the Spotted Owl of whom Hoole had once dreamed, Emerilla, spoke in a hushed voice to the Great Horned Owl Theo. The two had met in the most unlikely place: the Ice Palace of the H’rathghar.

“Hush! Don’t call me Emerilla. Here I am known as Sigrid,” she said.

Theo had taken his leave of the banquet hollow and his brother’s company as soon as he could without arousing suspicion.

“But you are she, aren’t you?” Theo cocked his head.

“Yes, but how did you know?”

Theo thought for a minute. How did he know? It was just a feeling in his gizzard. It was not so much that she looked like her mother, Strix Strumajen, but that she seemed different from all the other owls in the Ice Palace. “I just knew.”

This seemed to satisfy Emerilla. “Do you know where my mother is?”

“With Hoole,” Theo whispered.

“And you, too, you live there as well?”

“Yes.” The two owls spoke in fragments, half sentences with nods and blinks, daring not to say anything that could give them away. It was amazing how much information they conveyed in such a brief time. Emerilla had been working in the Ice Palace since it had fallen to Shadyk. Luckily, no one had recognized her because the battles she had fought in had, for the most part, been skirmishes in a region far from where Shadyk and his troops had been fighting. There were apparently skirmishes, fights, battles, and clashes raging all over the Northern Kingdoms. It was no longer simply a two-sided war. It was also Lord Arrin’s soldiers against Lord Unser’s near the Bitter Sea where there had never been fighting before. It was sometimes hagsfiends against hagsfiends. “Are any of H’rath’s old troops fighting with these owls?” Theo asked.

“There might be a few, but if they are, none of them are fighting for the kingdom as it once was.”

“What do you mean?”

“The really loyal ones went south to the S’yrthghar. The ones left have forgotten everything the H’rathian dynasty
flew for. There are factions, but really it is each owl for himself.” Emerilla paused, leaned forward, and whispered, “The Ice Palace is rotting from the inside because every code of honor has been violated. There is no H’rathian code here. It has been destroyed. And so the ice melts! It was foretold in ancient prophecies of H’rathmore.”

Then once again, Theo heard the same words that Svarr had spoken: “This place and the entire N’yrthghar is a feast for vultures.”

Theo took to heart what Emerilla had been telling him, but still something did not seem quite right in her explanation.
If it is just a matter of time before the hagsfiends leave and the palace can be taken, why wait to join her mother at the island?
Theo wondered. She was holding something back.

“Why delay? Why not leave now? You know so much about the palace. Your information would be invaluable.” She blinked nervously at him. “What is it, Sigrid? You are not telling me everything.”

She shut her eyes tightly for more than a blink and then opened them and looked straight at Theo. “I am a close fighter.”

“I had heard that from your mother,” Theo replied.

“There is no owl better than myself with a close blade.”

“Yes, go on.” Theo nodded.

“Shadyk is your brother.”

It was not a question, it was a statement. Theo felt his gizzard clinch.

“I plan to assassinate him.”

Theo inhaled deeply. His gizzard quaked.

“He is insane, Theo. He tortures owls for the fun of it. He sits on that rotting throne and dreams of an owl universe. Do you know that it was he who killed your father?”

Theo gasped.

“He tried to kill your sister, the gadfeather, too. He will probably try to kill you as well. You need to get out of here quickly. When he has one of the fits, he has even tried to kill his own guards.”

“How can my mother not see this?”

“He controls himself when she is around. And she treats him like a chick. She is blind to any of his faults.” She paused. “In his own way, he is worse than any hags-fiend, and I shall kill him when the time is right.” She paused again. “You must get out. Get out immediately.”

But Theo resolved to stay a bit longer. He would be vigilant and take care, but he wanted to see more of the Ice Palace. He wanted to be able to send back as much information as possible to Hoole, and he was not sure if they should wait until the hagsfiends left the palace. If all of these factions were fighting in the N’yrthghar, it might
be too late. Another faction might take over. And the Ice Palace was rotting, decomposing as they spoke.

Theo returned to the banquet hollow. It did not appear that he was missed. His mother was excited. “Oh, Theo, your dear brother is offering us the most splendid quarters for the day. The ice hollows in the eastern parapet.”

Shadyk churred and an odd light danced in his amber eyes. He cocked his head. “I am sure, dear brother, you will be most comfortable there. Pleasant dreams.”

Is my mother completely benighted? And what about Wyg? He as well?
Theo looked about the niche in the eastern defense wall. Even here on an outer wall exposed to the cold, the interior of this sleeping hollow had begun to show signs of rot. He could even hear the ice worms stirring. “Mum, Wyg?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Don’t you hear the ice worms stirring?”

“Oh, it’s just your imagination, Theo. You were always so sensitive.”

Am I going mad? How can they not see this?

“You know, Theo, this is where they said the egg of the young prince was first set down by Queen Siv. What an honor indeed to be allowed to sleep here. And just look at the gleam of these walls—like silver. And see? Even the morning stars shine through.”

The walls are melting!
Theo nearly screamed. He felt as if the universe was being turned inside out or upside down—or both. “Wyg,” he said in a gentle quiet voice. “Do you think that there is something wrong with the ice? Doesn’t it seem rather…rather…”—he did not want to use the word “rotten”—“rather unstable?”

“Just a bit, Theo, but come Short Light, it will be solid again.”

“Oh, Theo, you must stay for Long Night. Your brother has planned such a wonderful celebration. And it is less than a moon cycle away.”

Long Night was one of the most festive holidays in the N’yrthghar, for it celebrated the disappearance of the sun and the longest darkness. In the world of owls night was always more valued than day. At Long Night, both young and older owls could fly to their gizzards’ content and waste little time on sleep. There were all sorts of sports and games, and gadfeathers came to sing and do their lively sky jigs in front of the bright plate of moon.

But Long Night with a mad brother?
Theo thought.
Horrible. And yet if I stay I would be the most valuable slipgizzle in all the N’yrthghar.