The Coming of Hoole
“Where there are legends, there can be hope. Where there are legends, there can be dreams of knightly owls, from a kingdom called Ga’Hoole, who will rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds. Owls who speak no words but true ones. Owls whose only purpose is to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud, and make powerless those who abuse the frail. With hearts sublime, they take flight…”
GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE
Book Ten
BY
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CHAPTER THREE Theo’s Discovery
CHAPTER SIX A Gathering of Gadfeathers
CHAPTER EIGHT The Passion of Ygryk
CHAPTER TEN A Distressed Pygmy
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Snow Rose Meets Elka
CHAPTER TWELVE So Near But Yet So Far
CHAPTER THIRTEEN “I Know You!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Hagsfiend of the Ice Narrows
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN At Last, the Beyond
CHAPTER NINETEEN What Hoole Saw
CHAPTER TWENTY Two Wolves Head North
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE On the Island of Dark Fowl
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Svenka’s Trek
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Into a Smee Hole
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A Wolf Waits
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Scimitar and the Ember
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Ember Beckons
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Into a New Night
OWLS and others from the GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE SERIES
A peek at THE GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE Book Eleven: To Be a King
Octavia, the pudgy, elderly, blind nest-maid snake, slithered out onto the branch outside her old master’s hollow. “Look. I might be blind, but I know that you’ve been out there all morning. Why aren’t you in your hollows sleeping?” She wagged her head at the three owls—Gylfie the tiny Elf Owl, Twilight the Great Gray, and Digger the Burrowing Owl. Together with Soren, a Barn Owl, they were known as “the Band,” and they had been waiting since dawn for Soren to emerge from Ezylryb’s hollow. Octavia coiled up as a Spotted Owl alighted on the branch. “Oh, and now Otulissa! What are you doing here?”
“The same thing they are doing.” Otulissa tipped her head toward the Band. “Waiting for Soren to come out. He’s been in there reading for days now!”
Suddenly, two owls stuck their heads out from the hollow. “What’s this all about?” It was Soren and his nephew, Coryn, the new king of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.
“It’s about us, Soren.” Otulissa stepped forward. It might appear that Otulissa was somewhat bold in her approach to the king
and his closest advisor, and also somewhat lacking in the deference due Coryn, but he didn’t seem to mind. After all, Otulissa had known him before any of the others of the tree. It was she who had found him in the Beyond after he had fled from his evil mother, Nyra, and the Pure Ones. It was Otulissa who had taught him how to catch coals. It had taken him about one minute to master that skill. She had not taught him, however, how to retrieve the Ember of Hoole. He did that by sheer instinct.
“What is it, Otulissa?” Coryn asked.
“We want to hear the legends, too. We want to read them with you.”
Gylfie turned to Digger and whispered, “I thought it was just going to be us? How did she horn in on it?”
“You know Otulissa,” Digger said with resignation.
“Look, Soren,” Otulissa continued, “I am the one responsible for teaching the legends and the cantos to the young’uns here at the tree. I am the ryb for Ga’Hoology, which includes the natural history of the tree and its owl history.”
Soren looked at her. What she said made sense but it was really not for him to decide.
Coryn now turned to his uncle. Since he first arrived at the tree a few moon cycles ago, he knew immediately that Soren would be more than an uncle to him. He needed Soren as his mentor and guide, as he assumed this new and often confounding role of king.
“I think you should hear the legends, Otulissa…” Coryn looked
at Soren once more and then nodded at the other three owls. “And you as well. It is only fitting. But let me warn you that there is strong stuff in these legends. There are truths that will make your gizzards quake.” He began to say more, but then hesitated.
Let them find out for themselves,
he thought.
Let them find out the truth about my mother, Nyra.
Then he continued briskly. “Come back at midnight.” Turning again to Soren, he said, “Would it be possible to end night flight early and begin reading the second legend then?”
Soren blinked. The young’un was not used to being king. He need not ask such a question. He could decide the matter himself. Soren gave a barely perceptible nod. Coryn immediately sensed that it was his decision and yet he knew that the Band would always turn to Soren, who had been their leader for so long. Though he might be king, Coryn wanted to do nothing that could be judged as a lack of respect for Soren. Yet, at the same time, he himself must be king, must lead. It was a difficult line to fly. “Yes, we shall end early, and Soren will meet with you first to tell you what we learned in the first legend before we read the second.”
And so just after midnight, the six owls gathered in the small, cramped, hidden chamber in the back of Ezylryb’s hollow, where three ancient books—secret books—of the legends of Ga’Hoole had been kept for countless years. Ezylryb only revealed their existence on his deathbed when he had insisted that the new young king
read them with his uncle Soren. They watched in silence with quivering gizzards as Soren brought forth the second book, a worn and dusty old tome. He blew the dust off the mouse-leather cover and wiped it with his wing. The once-dim gold letters now seemed to gleam, like ancient stars whose light finally has reached the earth:
THE LEGENDS OF GA’HOOLE
.
Beneath this in smaller letters were the words:
THE COMING OF HOOLE
.
Soren opened the book, then looked up from the page. “Before I begin I should tell you that neither Coryn nor myself is sure who wrote this second volume of the legends.”
The Tilt of Ice
I
n a distant icebound firthkin far up the Firth of Fangs as stars swirled in the longest night of the year, a lone Spotted Owl stood trembling on the frozen sea. She stood with scimitar raised, prepared to fight to the death. The owl was Siv, queen of the N’yrthghar. The ice scimitar was that of her dead mate, King H’rath. Facing her was Lord Arrin, her enemy. The ragged shadows of hagsfiends tore through the moon-blazed night above her. She had been brought to ground by them but she had escaped their dreadful fyngrot, the peculiar searing yellow light that streamed from their eyes. Over the vastness of time and despite their primitive brains these relic creatures had acquired strange powers, the powers of nachtmagen, a destructive evil magic. That Lord Arrin, a clan chieftain and one-time ally of King H’rath, had allied himself with these ghoulish birds was unthinkable. And yet it had happened.
Siv was fully prepared to die. But if she had to die, she
would die fighting. So with one wing crippled from her previous encounter with hagsfiends, she stood in a pool of moonlight with the raised scimitar. Lame and exhausted, she was threatening Lord Arrin!
“You can’t be serious, milady,” Lord Arrin said.
“I am deadly serious. Stand back.”
“My dear.”
“No ‘my dears.’”
“All right, milady. Save yourself and save your young’un. Join us. You can be my consort, my queen, the queen of nachtmagen.”
“I am already a queen. Queen of the N’yrthghar. I need no other court, no other kingdom.”
Lord Arrin stepped forward on the ice and swept a ragged wing toward the half dozen hagsfiends who were now closing in on her from above. “But this is your court.”
“Never.” And in her gizzard at that second, Siv knew that somewhere in this vast kingdom an egg was beginning to crack and a chick would soon hatch. And that chick was hers. A prince, the rightful heir of the N’yrthghar, was about to be born, and she would do all in her power to protect him from Lord Arrin and his hagsfiends who so desperately craved to possess him and the power that would be his.
“I ask you again, milady. Has the egg hatched yet?”
Siv remained silent.
“Where is the egg right now?”
Still only silence.
The egg was with Grank, somewhere far from Siv, and though separated from it, she still felt a deep connection. Lord Arrin’s questions began to blur in her mind. She was in another place. Yes, the egg was hatching now, just as the night grew even darker. A shadow began to pass over the moon. She saw Lord Arrin wilf slightly and heard the harsh whispers of the hagsfiends. Their fyngrot was being swallowed by an immense shade. They hovered in flight and then alighted on the field of sea ice. Their huge wings hung like dark rags on the gleaming white.
It is a magic greater than theirs,
Siv thought, as the moon began to vanish and a thick darkness enveloped them.
And yet not magic at all. They will never understand it.
As the earth passed between the sun and the moon, an eclipse was beginning, and little by little the earth’s shadow bit slices from the moon. Within a matter of seconds there would be no moon.
Just darkness, complete darkness,
Siv thought,
and that will be my chance.
But would her badly mangled wing be strong enough to let her escape?
At the exact moment of complete darkness when all had grown utterly quiet, there was an immense cracking noise, and then a roar.
“The moon’s shell is breaking!” one hagsfiend screeched.
Idiots!
Siv thought.
It was not the moon. It was the ice. Svenka’s massive polar-bear head poked up through it. All became topsy-turvy as the ice began to tilt, and water suddenly flooded over the jagged edges, swamping the sheet of ice.
“Quick, Siv, on my back!” Svenka called.
Siv quickly hopped onto her old friend’s back and nestled herself deep in the ruff of fur around her neck.
As Svenka swam away, Siv peeked through the fur and saw one hagsfiend slide, shrieking, into the water. No one would come to its aid. Despite all their powers, hagsfiends feared one thing: water from the sea. The salt water saturated their oil-less wings making flight almost impossible. Siv watched as the hagsfiends tried to take off from the madly tilting ice fragment that was now awash with seawater. Three managed. Two others, however, skidded into the ocean. There was a searing howl as a hag’s port wing was grabbed by the water. Siv blinked to see more clearly who it was. Then silently prayed,
Glaux, may it be Ygryk! Let it be Ygryk!