The War of the Ember Read online

  Guardians of Ga’Hoole

  The War of the Ember

  BOOK FIFTEEN

  By

  Kathryn Lasky

  New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

  I dedicate this book to all of you Guardians of Ga’Hoole readers who have become like citizens in my imaginary world. Imagination is, in a sense, a two-way street. Through your enthusiasm you have made this world much more real for me. I had originally intended to write only six books. This book, the fifteenth, is the last. It is the last not because your fervor has waned but because this is the logical place for the story of Soren and the Band to conclude.

  –KL

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Southern Kingdoms

  Illustration

  Northern Kingdoms

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE The Harvest Festival

  CHAPTER TWO Dumpy’s Dilemma

  CHAPTER THREE Chimes in the Mist

  CHAPTER FOUR Scholar or Warrior?

  CHAPTER FIVE A Wolf and a Bear

  CHAPTER SIX Namara Howls

  CHAPTER SEVEN I’m Here!

  CHAPTER EIGHT Astonishing Visitors

  CHAPTER NINE Tactics

  CHAPTER TEN A Dreadful Mis-hatch!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Stirrings in the Dragon Court

  CHAPTER TWELVE “Glaux Speed!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Proposal or Experiment?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Trace of Doubt

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Splendid Isolation—No More!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN To the Northern Kingdoms

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A Surprise Warrior

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A Distracted Owl

  CHAPTER NINETEEN High Stakes

  CHAPTER TWENTY Standoff at the Great Horns

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A Mustering of Troops

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO A Summit Meeting

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE At the Wolf’s Fang

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR An Old Friend

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Lure of the Ember

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A Slink Melf Swims On

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Second Front

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Hot Gates of the Beyond

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Last Glow

  Epilogue

  OWLS and others from the GUARDIANS OF GA’HOOLE SERIES

  A peek at THE GUARDIANS of GA’HOOLE Lost Tales of Ga’Hoole

  Acknowledgments

  The Guardians of Ga’Hoole

  Copyright

  Southern Kingdoms

  Illustration

  Coryn looked out upon his own troops from his perch on top of the westernmost Yondo, his back to the direction from which the enemy owls would approach. The Band perched on either side of him.

  Northern Kingdoms

  Prologue

  The light of the low-hanging full-shine moon slipped into the cave, making it glow like a lantern of ice above that tiny gut of sea linking the Southern Kingdoms to the Northern Kingdoms. Inside the cave, the shadows of two owls were printed against the radiance of its walls. Was the little puffin imagining it, or did one of those owls have a peculiar tinge, a color like the day sky? Ever since he had found that sky-colored feather he had been obsessed with it. I’m just seeing sky color everywhere, that’s all. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here! I shouldn’t be here. The words coursed through the puffin’s head with a monotonous but persistent rhythm. I am the youngest in a long line of exceedingly stupid birds, he reminded himself silently as he wedged himself more tightly into his hiding place. I wish I could grow thinner, he thought, like the owls do when they get scared. He had stuffed his rather plump body into a narrow crevice in the wall at the very back of the cave, in the shadows, where the moonlight could not reach. It was not the most comfortable situation.

  Little Dumpy, who would be Dumpy the Fifteenth if puffins could count, sensed that what was transpiring in this cave between the two owls was dangerous. I am not supposed to be here. I’m not sure how I know that this is dangerous but I do. I’m not that stupid!

  No, Dumpy was not stupid at all in comparison to the rest of the puffins of the Ice Narrows. Puffins, by and large, thought about only one thing—fishing. They were expert divers and could plunge boldly and accurately into tumultuous waters, returning with a dozen or more capelin neatly lined up in their stubby bright orange beaks to feed their young chicks. But this was about as efficient and precise as puffins ever got. They were generally reckless fliers, and went about the rearing of their young and other matters of the nest in a most haphazard way. When Dumpy had found the sky-colored feather, his siblings and even his parents insisted it was actually white, because they knew the names of no other colors except white and black, the color of their feathers, and orange, the color of their beaks. Therefore no other colors existed in their tiny puffin minds. But Dumpy the Fifteenth’s tiny mind, through some quirk of nature, was often crowded with unusual thoughts. Perhaps it had stretched from being so crammed with these odd thoughts. And he knew this feather was not black or orange. And he knew it was not white. He simply called it sky.

  Owls on occasion flew through the Ice Narrows, but Dumpy had never before seen an owl with feathers this color, and when he came across it he had hoped that someday he might find the rest of the owl to whom it belonged. Now the sky-colored owl was before him, and Dumpy was frightened.

  Dumpy knew of a back tunnel into this cave in the high cliffs of the Narrows and when he had seen the two owls duck into the cave he went around the back just to have a peek. Crushed in this terribly uncomfortable hiding place, he listened. And right now it was not the sky-feathered owl that frightened him but the other one. He guessed it was a Barn Owl but he could not see its face. He supposed it was a female, for it was fairly large and the females usually were larger. That much he knew. This owl had just hung something metal on a spur of ice. Not battle claws. Dumpy had seen battle claws. This metal would not fit on talons. The owl now turned. Dumpy’s heart stood still. The full-shine moon falling into the ice cave lit the Barn Owl’s face. Glowering, pitted, and scarred, it was not a face but a landscape—a landscape of incredible violence. Featherless in patches, the skin on the left side was puckered here and there into dark red bubbles of flesh. Her eyes glared darkly. A scar slashed down across the devastation of her face.

  “So now you see me.” The Barn Owl spoke to the sky-colored owl in a ragged voice that seemed as torn as her face. “I don’t frightenyou?”

  “Madame, yours is a face of glory, of valor. Your face inspires.”

  “Mind you, I don’t try to hide it. After the battle in the sixth kingdom, I decided to wear the mask as a tribute to my dead mate, Kludd. It was forged from the remnants of the very one he once wore.”

  She stepped up closer to the sky-feathered owl and flipped her head so that it was almost upside down, and her eyes now captured the reflection of the full-shine moon so that they were no longer black at all, but loomed like two tiny moons within the ravaged landscape of the cratered face.

  This creature no longer even looked like an owl, let alone a Barn Owl. Dumpy’s guts were in turmoil. Nausea swelled in his gullet, as if the capelin fish he had eaten earlier were swimming back up from his stomach. He clamped his beak shut. This was not the time to throw up!

  “I think, dear Striga, we might be able, you and I, to do business.”

  “I agree, madam.”

  “Madame General,” the Barn Owl corrected.

  “Yes, Madame General, I think that we can do business. I know a great deal about the ember you seek.”

  “Yes…yes…of course,” she replied slowly, “but tell me wha
t you know about hagsfiends.”

  Hagsfiends! The very word sent a horrific shock through Dumpy’s body. Hagsfiends, I’ve heard that word somewhere, someplace. No! the puffin corrected himself. Not heard it, but knew it somehow! Deep within him—Dumpy closed his eyes, trying to remember—there was a dim recollection, a feeling from a time before his time, if that were possible, of an ancient terror. A terror that might have had its very source here in the Ice Narrows, perhaps in this very cave. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the sky-colored owl had wilfed.

  “Now why have you wilfed on me like that?” the Barn Owl snapped. She flipped her head back to its normal position.

  “Hagsfiends vanished nearly one thousand years ago,” the blue owl said.

  “And you think they are gone forever?”

  “Madame General, what are you suggesting?”

  “I am suggesting that nothing is forever.”

  “Please speak plainly, Madame General. I am no good at riddles.”

  “In three moon cycles.”

  “In three moon cycles, what?”

  “It will be Long Night, and a marvelous hatching will occur.”

  “There is an egg?”

  Hagsfiends? Eggs? That can’t be good, Dumpy thought. It could mean more hagsfiends. Isn’t that what “eggs” mean? More chicks?

  Nyra cocked her head. Her eyes glinted darkly. “Not yet. But soon.” She paused, then continued. “You are not the only one who found cracks in the Panqua Palace. How should I put it? There are servants who can be suborned, and dragon owls who have begun to question their pampered existence. Remember, I was taken for dead after the battle in which you helped defeat my forces. I was badly wounded. I had to recover someplace.”

  “Not the Panqua Palace!”

  “Yes. Are you surprised? It’s large. There are secret chambers, dark corners, hidey-holes. But most important, there were restless owls there. Owls like you, who chafed under their routine of useless luxury. You see, Striga, you are now known on both sides of the River of Wind. As Orlando of the Middle Kingdom, you are the dragon owl who learned to fly—the first in a thousand years. You are an inspiration to the other long-feathered owls eager to break the gilded chains that bind them, other blue owls eager for power!”

  There was much that Dumpy did not understand in the conversation that he had just heard. But there were two things that he did understand: The name of the color of this owl was “blue,” not “sky,” and something terrible was coming to his world—and not just to the Ice Narrows but to the kingdoms they linked, and perhaps far beyond!

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Harvest Festival

  Dearest tree, we give our thanks

  For your blessings through the years.

  Vines heavy with sweet berries

  Nourish us and quench our fears.

  And in times of summer drought,

  Searing heat or winter’s cold,

  From your bounty freely given

  We grow strong and we grow bold.

  Let us always tend with care

  Your bark, your roots, your vines so fair.

  Soren and Pelli stood on the balcony with Bell and Bash, trembling with joy as they watched Blythe singing to the accompaniment of the grass harp.

  “Mum, she is really good!” Bell said, her voice drenched in wonder at her sister’s accomplishments. “And you should hear her when she sings one of those old gadfeather songs,” Bash exclaimed.

  “Hymns don’t really do her voice justice,” Gylfie said. And no sooner was the hymn completed than there was a loud twang as Mrs. Plithiver jumped the strings over an octave. “Oh, here it comes!” Gylfie exclaimed. “She’s going to sing that old gadfeather gizzard-acher!”

  When an owl loves an owl

  And your gizzard’s about to break,

  Let me tell you, you can’t do nothin’

  ‘Cept to follow in that wake.

  Don’t turn tail, just go on…

  Halfway through the song, Soren and Pelli turned to each other. Their black eyes were bright with a mixture of joy and alarm. “Great Glaux!” Soren exclaimed. “Do you think she’s courting already?”

  “Oh, Da!” Bell and Bash both said at the same time.

  “It’s just an old gadfeather love song,” Bell said.

  “With a little R and H beat laid in to make it more modern,” Bash added.

  Pelli blinked. “What in Glaux’s name is R and H?”

  “Rhythm and hoots,” Bell said. “And not everybody can sing it. It’s complicated, and Blythe is great, and Mrs. P. said that because of Blythe the harp guild snakes have developed a whole new style of plucking.”

  Soren and Pelli exchanged glances. Their eyes glistened with unshed tears as they gazed at Bell, her sister Blythe’s staunchest fan. But a year before, under the powerful, malignant influence of the Striga, Bell had tried to discourage her sister from singing. Bell had believed, as the Striga had told her, that singing, along with many other artistic and playful pursuits that owls of the great tree had enjoyed, was a “vanity,” a word now rarely heard around the Great Ga’Hoole Tree without causing a shiver deep in one’s gizzard.

  The Striga, this peculiar blue owl from the sixth kingdom, had saved Bell’s life, and Coryn’s and the Band’s, as well, for he had learned of a plan to assassinate them. By saving them, the Striga had earned the deepest gratitude of the owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Little did anyone suspect that this tattered, blue-feathered owl would become a terrible danger. On Balefire Night, one of the most joyous holidays of the owl year, the Striga had finally been driven from the tree. Now singing, and all else the Striga had forbidden as vanity, was once again welcome at the tree. Blythe was singing her gizzard out and no one was happier than Bell.

  “Look at Otulissa and Cleve!” Pelli exclaimed. Cleve had put his wing gently around Otulissa and was crooning softly in her ear slit. From watching his beak, Soren could see that Cleve was repeating the last words of the gadfeather song. Soren had to stifle a churr as it seemed so improbable that anyone could get away with crooning anything to Otulissa. But Cleve was another story. There had never been two owls more different from each other than Cleve and Otulissa. Cleve of Firthmore was a prince from an ancient dynastic line of owls in the Northern Kingdoms who had given up his title and inheritance to pursue a meditative life studying the healing arts at the Glauxian Brothers retreat. He was also a dedicated gizzard-resister. He would not fight nor would he fly with battle claws. Otulissa, although she shared his scholarly nature, was a seasoned warrior. She commanded the Strix Struma Strikers. Could a dedicated soldier and a gizzard-resister find true happiness together? Apparently they could.

  Gylfie noticed Soren observing Cleve. “I would say that Blythe is singing their song.”

  “If it hadn’t been for Cleve,” Pelli said, “I don’t think Otulissa would have ever taken wing again. She would have just retreated into her books.”

  “Out of the way! Out of the way!” Fritha, a young Pygmy Owl barreled through the birds that had crowded the balcony. “I’ve got to go to press. I have to include a review of this concert in the next edition. Your sister was great!” she shouted to Bell as she flew by.

  “I’ll help!” Bell called out, and flew after her. “I’ll make sure you get all the details right.”

  Soren, the rest of the Band, and Coryn enjoyed the night air in silence a moment on a branch just outside of the Great Hollow. The dancing had begun.

  “Quite a difference from last year,” Coryn said. The Band seemed relieved that Coryn had said what was in everyone’s mind—that last year Coryn had been so completely duped by the Striga that the tree had nearly been lost to that fanatical blue owl and his converts. Left unsaid, it would have hung like the last vaporous shreds of a dark storm cloud. The evening, however, was lovely, the air smooth for dancing.

  “The dancing will go on late,” Gylfie said.

  “Good!” Coryn exclaimed with unbridled joy. “Good!”


  By the time dawn broke, the first edition of The Evening Hoot was completed. The owls, tipsy from the milkberry wine or from dancing the glauc-glauc, had long since staggered to their hollows. They would be able to read The Hoot that evening at tweener. The headline screamed HARVEST FESTIVAL BACK IN FULL FORCE: STUNNING SINGING DEBUT! B FLAT? NO WAY!

  Blythe, one of the three daughters of Soren and Pelli, opened the Harvest Festival celebration with the traditional “Dearest Tree” carol. Singing with clarity and lovely expression, she gave a polished rendition of that beloved song. However, it was when young Blythe broke into her next number, an old gadfeather favorite, that we saw what a daring artist this little owl is. Belting out “When an Owl Loves an Owl,” she was all gizzard!

  There was obvious musical chemistry between Blythe and the members of the harp guild, in particular with the brilliant Mrs. Plithiver, who gyrated through those strings, twanging and plucking in her capacity as a sliptween with unmatched precision. After last year’s disastrous festival, this reporter cannot imagine a better way to commence the harvest celebration than with this bold, self-assured young singer and the brilliant sliptween.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dumpy’s Dilemma

  The moonlight in the ice cave had grown faint. It had felt like forever before the two owls left. Their conversation had sent chills through Dumpy, and for a bird hatched and reared in the Ice Narrows to feel chilly was freakish. And what was that word the owl had said? Hagsfiend! It sounded frightening. And then Dumpy realized that the crevice he was lodged in had suddenly become roomier; that a thing he thought could never happen had happened. I’ve wilfed. Actually wilfed. I’ve grown skinny with fear. Owls wilf, not puffins! Oh, dear…oh, dear. I must REALLY be scared. What are these hagsfiends the owls spoke of? And what does their talk of “eggs” mean? Dumpy’s head almost ached as he felt his brain stretching as it never had before. Little slivers of thought, sharp as ice needles when the katabats blew, were storming through his mind.