To Be a King Read online

  “No sign of Joss?” Hoole asked.

  “No sign, Your Majesty.”

  “Thank you, Cuthmore. Alert me at the first sign of him.”

  “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

  This was deeply troubling. Joss was their most reliable messenger. He had served Hoole’s father, King H’rath, and had kept Grank himself informed during Grank’s long absences from his court. They were dependent on Joss, a tough Whiskered Screech, for any and all news from the Northern Kingdoms. It was urgent that they know how much damage Lord Arrin had sustained. Was he rebuilding his army? And what about the hagsfiends? Had any been killed? Hoole was furious with himself that he had not thought to dispatch Joss first to the Southern Kingdoms to see if any were lingering there. Hagsfiends in the S’yrthghar would prove disastrous. Why did I not do this? Hoole demanded of himself for what felt like the tenth time.

  I must learn to think like a commander, to think like a king. No, Hoole corrected himself. I must learn to be a king.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  To Be a Guardian

  It was a strange word, “parliament.” Hoole had never heard it before. But Grank had explained to him that a parliament was a group of owls that gather together for discussion and decision making. Hoole had decided that a hollow near the base of the tree was the perfect place for the parliament.

  So eleven owls, including Hoole, now perched in a half circle of niches and notches that were scattered around the walls of a hollow in the great tree. Hoole was in the center. He swiveled his head to one side and then the other, taking in each owl. Some, like Phineas, Theo, and Grank, were his old friends. Some he had only recently met. They had been rallied from the remnants of the old H’rathian Guard to fight in the Beyond. He studied these new ones now. There was Lord Rathnik, one of his father’s closest advisors, who had led the Ice Regiment of H’rath in the battle and fought brilliantly. The officers of the Ice Regiment had all been knights, and it was Lord Rathnik who had knighted Hoole.

  For Hoole, this conferring of knighthood was more important than being anointed as king. He had already decided that he would wear no crown. And if Hoole had his way, the tree would not be called the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, but simply the great tree.

  To one side of Hoole, Grank perched. Next to him was Theo, then Phineas. On the other side of Hoole was Lord Rathnik, and beside Lord Rathnik, Sir Garthnore, a Snowy Owl, and his mate, Lady Helling; a Northern Hawk Owl, Sir Tobyfyor (or Toby); Lord Vladkyn, who was a Screech; Sir Bors, a Barn Owl; and finally, a Spotted Owl named Strix Strumajen.

  Hoole blinked at the assembled group. He knew what they were thinking: Where is the ember? This, after all, was the symbol of his power. The owls, perched in their niches, tried not to appear anxious, but there was an undeniable agitation in the parliament hollow as the birds discreetly swiveled their heads, searching for the ember.

  Finally, Sir Garthnore nervously clacked his beak and began, “Er…Your Grace, is something amiss with the ember?”

  “No, no, it is safely tucked away,” Hoole said. “I have set two guards upon it.”

  “Is that wise, Your Grace?” asked Lord Vladkyn.

  “Why would it be unwise, Lord Vladkyn? Are you fearful someone might steal it?”

  “No, Your Grace. But we have sworn allegiance to you because you are the one who retrieved the ember.” A murmur of assent rippled through the parliament as the owls turned to one another and nodded in agreement. “It seems only fitting.”

  “Why?” Hoole asked.

  The Lord Rathnik spoke. “We wish to invest Your Majesty with absolute power. That is what we thought was the point of this gathering. It seems only fitting, therefore, to elevate you—you who hold the ember.”

  Grank was watching Hoole carefully. This would be the test, Grank thought.

  “This is difficult to explain,” Hoole began, “but I have come to you today to tell you that I do not want absolute power.” There was a great stirring and grumbling in the hollow. “Quiet! Quiet!” Hoole seized a stick of wood and rapped on the hollow’s walls. “Listen to me. The time has come for a new order. I shall be your king. But you cannot simply hand over power. True, part of my power comes from the ember. But another part does not.”

  “Your Highness, from whence does it come?” Sir Garthnore bellowed in the great booming tones of a Snowy.

  A surge of voices now called out: “From where does this power come, if not the ember?” “Tell us, sir.”

  “Let him speak!” It was Strix Strumajen. Hoole had noticed that she had not joined in the hue and cry with the others but had remained quite still, with her eyes settled on him.

  “The ember does have powers,” Hoole answered, “and should it fall into the wrong talons, it would be disastrous. I shall do all I can to prevent that. But the powers of the ember come from magen—magic. Magic is not a justifiable reason for power.”

  “Magic is not reason, Your Grace. So why question it with reason?” Lady Helling asked. There was a murmur of approval that passed through the hollow.

  “I do not question magic. But I question your willingness to let it, through the ember, rule over you. You must think of power as a tree. The roots of a tree are what anchor it to the earth and let it soar, like this tree, into the sky. They are the reasons a tree grows. And I tell you now that the roots of power for us who live in this great tree must be the ideals of goodness, equality, and nobility. I have chosen to have our parliamentary hollow here, near the roots of the tree, as a constant reminder of the true sources of power. Do not give me power that I have not earned. Do not make me an absolute ruler. I am your king, but we must come together as equals to discuss and decide our course. It is not birth or magic that makes one noble. We are only as noble as our actions prove us to be. I hope to rid the owl world not just of nachtmagen, but of all magen—both good and bad. I am an owl first, a king second, but never a mage. Never.”

  The owls had quieted. Grank looked at the young king with wonder and thought, I am in the presence of great Ga’.

  “Now, let me tell you my plan…” And so Hoole began to explain his vision to the knights of the great tree. “When I was very young on that island in the Bitter Sea, Grank told me stories of owls in the early part of my grandfather King H’rathmore’s reign, tales of owls who came together for sport to display their skills and learn in small groups called chaws. So, what I propose is that we divide the members of the tree into different chaws that will come together to learn new things.”

  “New things? What new things?” Sir Bors asked.

  “We have many great talents here among us. Sir Bors, I have heard that you understand how the stars move across the night sky, and that your knowledge is far beyond the navigational abilities of most owls. Could you not teach this better way of navigating?”

  “S’pose I could… Yes, s’pose I could, Your Grace.”

  “And Strix Strumajen, I heard that you are particularly sensitive, like many Spotted Owls, to changes in the weight of air, and that you can interpret these changes in pressure to guess what weather might be coming in.”

  “It is not a guess, sir. It is a type of reasoning that has proven very accurate for forecasting and interpreting weather patterns.”

  “Could you not lead a chaw that would train other owls to interpret the weather?”

  “Well, yes, Your Grace, I could. I would be most happy to. But should it be just Spotted Owls?”

  “I think not. I think any owl should be able to learn about this if he or she is truly interested. We shouldn’t let our kind, how we were born, limit us.”

  There was real excitement in the hollow now as the young king shared his vision for the new things owls would be learning. Grank would lead a colliering chaw, and Theo would teach owls the secrets of shaping metal. Best of all, none of this was magic. None of it depended on anything but an individual owl’s own skills and effort.

  The meeting of the parliament was drawing to a close. It was time for Hoole’s last stroke
, his finishing touch to the new order. “We have come together as knights in battle, and we shall come together again in battle to vanquish the hagsfiends and the legions of Lord Arrin, the usurper. But now, here, we have come together in a new way.” Hoole paused and regarded each of the ten other members of the parliament. “You have already taken your oaths as knights and now I am going to ask you to take yet another oath.” There was a look of keen expectation in the eyes of the owls. What kind of oath would this be? they wondered.

  “Fear not,” Hoole said. “We shall guard the ember ferociously, but I have told you that the ember is but one source of power. The deeper and stronger power is the one we have established here today. It, too, must be guarded and tended like the roots of a tree that burgeons from the earth and soars into the sky. And those roots are nurtured by goodness, equality, and nobility. We must become the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. I am asking you to take this oath along with me.”

  There was a great stillness in the hollow. And then ten voices began to repeat the words their young king spoke: “I am a Guardian of Ga’Hoole. From this night on, I dedicate my life to the protection of owlkind. I shall not swerve in my duty. I shall support my brother and sister Guardians in times of battle, as well as in times of peace. I am the eyes in the night, the silence within the wind. I am the talons through the fire, the shield that guards the innocent. I shall seek to wear no crown, nor win any glory. And all these things I do swear upon my honor as a Guardian of Ga’Hoole until my days on this earth cease to be. This be my vow. This be my life. By Glaux, I do swear.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Hagsfiend of the Ice Narrows

  Deep in a cave of the Ice Narrows, that channel of water connecting the Southern and the Northern Waters, the hagsfiend Ygryk watched as an egg trembled. She was not alone. Another, a Great Horned Owl named Pleek, stood behind his mate. Some might call their union—hagsfiend and owl—unholy, but in their own peculiar way, they did love each other. And yet they could not have chicks, for unions such as theirs were barren. But Ygryk, despite her haggish ways, had an obsession to mother. She was desperate for a chick and so driven that she dared fly over open water, which could prove fatal to hagsfiends because their feathers lacked the natural oils of many birds. If their crowlike black feathers came in contact with salt water, they became sodden and their weight dragged them down into the sea. But despite this hazard, she and Pleek had come to live in the Ice Narrows with Kreeth, an immensely powerful hagsfiend who dared to live above the open water of the Ice Narrows. Her reason for this, she stated simply: “Water is my enemy. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

  Kreeth had spent a lifetime in her cave above the churning waters of the Narrows, studying to divine a charm that would render her and all hagsfiends immune to the ravages of seawater. So far, she had not succeeded. Nonetheless, she had developed powerful charms and could claim a nachtmagen unequaled among hagsfiends. But she had always worked alone. A recluse, she had vowed never to mate, nor would she become a tool for the likes of Lord Arrin, to fight his stupid battles for a stupid throne and a crown of ice. Just as Ygryk had a peculiar and un-haggish urge to mother, Kreeth herself possessed an odd and un-haggish sense of honor. It was not that she was against war. Kreeth entertained no reservations about killing. She was opposed to war because she thought it was stupid, and dependent on brute force and coarse strategies rather than on charms and spells. And there were very few charms or spells, save for the fyngrot, that worked on a battlefield.

  At this moment in her ice hollow, Kreeth tried not to listen as Pleek went on about the defeat of Lord Arrin’s forces in the Beyond by young King Hoole. Once again, Ygryk sighed with regret. She had so desperately wanted Hoole for her own chick. She and Pleek had tried to capture him, and nearly had him with a special fyngrot spell that Kreeth had given her. But they had been attacked at the last minute, their one chance lost. Both she and Pleek had been gravely wounded.

  “Stop sighing, Ygryk. What’s done is done. You keep this sighing up and you’re never going to get your half-hags back. They don’t incubate well if their host has her feathers in a twist over something,” Kreeth scolded. Half-hags were the minuscule, poisonous creatures who lived in the small gaps and narrow slotted spaces between the feathers of hagsfiends. In battle, they could dart out with their toxic load and attack. But perhaps the best service that half-hags could perform, with the proper nurturing and training, was that of tracking.

  “Now pull yourself together, Ygryk,” Kreeth cautioned, “I have something coming here that, well—how should I put it—might fulfill your motherly desires. Although why anyone would want to mother anything is beyond me. Creating creatures in one’s own image is completely boring in my way of thinking. I only create new life to study it. To see the possibilities.”

  Pleek looked around the cave nervously as Kreeth spoke. On the walls, suspended from ice hooks, were the heads of owls killed in battle. It was the practice of the warrior hagsfiends to cut off the heads of their victims, impale them on the tips of their ice swords, and then fly off with them triumphantly from the battlefield. Kreeth offered handsome rewards for several heads. She also collected the ashes of those burned in final ceremonies. But final ceremonies were a ritual of the S’yrthghar, where owls knew how to handle fire. In the north, these ashes were hard to come by. Kreeth craved them for their extremely powerful effect in her haggish recipes.

  With her spells and foul ingredients, she had created some truly monstrous forms of birdlife. Some of their shriveled carcasses hung on the ice cave walls, like trophies of creations gone wrong, along with the neatly dried gizzards and strings of withered eyeballs of birds she had murdered. But one of her creations was alive. Looking at it caused alarm in Pleek’s own gizzard, or what was left of his gizzard after his union with Ygryk. As soon as an owl begins to consort with hagsfiends, a slow deterioration would set in on that once noble organ. So the sad remnants of Pleek’s gizzard quivered slightly at the sight of Kreeth’s puffowl, a cross between a puffin and a Snowy Owl. It was the vilest thing Pleek had ever seen. It waddled around with the pure white face of a Snowy disfigured by the garish markings and the big, fat, blunt beak of a puffin.

  Kreeth had originally felt that it was best to use transformational charms and spells on a hatchling or very young bird and not try to do anything with the egg itself. But she had recently changed her thoughts about this, or rather her “philosophy,” as she liked to say. For Kreeth preferred to think of herself not merely as a practitioner of nachtmagen, but a scientist and a philosopher, as well.

  “Pleek, Ygryk!” Kreeth called. “Its egg tooth is pecking out!”

  The egg that was now about to hatch was that of a Great Horned she had stolen, which she had then “touched” with a crow feather. Touched in this case did not literally mean touching, but involved an incantation during what she called the primary spell phase.

  Excitement coursed through the ice cave. Ygryk and Pleek pressed closer. One thought gripped them both. This could be ours! A chick at last! Kreeth heard a shuffling from a dim corner of the cave and swiveled her head quickly toward the puffowl. “Get away from those hearts. I’m marinating them. Get out of here.”

  “Yes, Mummy!” the puffowl said, and waddled away in dejection.

  “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t call me Mummy! I’m not your frinkin’ mummy! You’re my experiment.”

  Then she turned to Pleek. “It should be hatching any second.”

  There was a big cracking sound, then a blob of a tiny bird flopped out. “What is it?” Pleek whispered.

  Kreeth cackled. “We’ll just have to wait and see. You ordered a Great Horned, didn’t you?

  “Yes, but is it?“

  “Could be this. Could be that,” Kreeth replied slyly.

  “It does look like an owl, Pleek,” Ygryk said. “Bulgy eyes.” She and Pleek were bending over the little creature.

  “Are you disappointed, dear? Did you want it to
be more haggish?”

  “No, no, Pleek. All I want is a nice little chick.”

  What they got was indeed a chick. Whether she would be a nice little chick was doubtful. But the real question was: What species did she belong to? All chicks look very similar at the time of hatching. Nearly bald, their eye color murky, the newly hatched creatures are shapeless and fairly indistinguishable. But when they begin to fledge and their eye color becomes clearer, they bear all the features of their species.

  For several days after hatching, it did appear to Pleek that the chick had all the first signs of being a Great Horned like Pleek. Her eyes were becoming the bright yellow of a Great Horned. It did make Pleek nervous, though, how Kreeth seemed more interested in observing himself and Ygryk than the chick. There was a cunning about Kreeth that he found very unsettling and every time he would say something about how it looked as if the chick were indeed turning out to be a Great Horned Owl, he swore he could hear Kreeth snort under her breath. It was right after the chick had lost her downy fluff and fledged her first feathers, which looked so much like Great Horned plumage, that something odd occurred.

  Pleek and Ygryk were returning from a short hunting flight and had just flown into the ice cave to deposit their prey.

  “How’s our little one?” Pleek boomed. Then he heard a sharp cry from Ygryk.

  “What happened? My baby!”

  “Has she been hurt? Is she dead?” Pleek spun his head toward Kreeth. “What have you done, you crone?”

  “Nothing,” she cackled, “except to create a masterpiece.”

  “Pleek, look at her!” Ygryk gasped.

  He lofted himself over to where the chick was poking around for some ice worms. The little chick looked up at her da and blinked. Pleek felt his withered gizzard give a lurch. He was looking into the black eyes of a female Barn Owl, but her body had the coloration of a Great Horned. “Wh—wh—what happened? How could this be?” And then her face started to lose the tawny feathers of a Great Horned and to turn white. Even her shape seemed to lengthen a bit and widen slightly at the top so that it appeared more like that of a Barn Owl. “A Barn Owl! I never!” Pleek gasped in disbelief.