Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue

He made the Sooties and theMasked Owls and the Grass Owls do all the worst jobs. Oh, and yes, before we could become true members of the Way of Purity, we had to sleep in stone crypts with the bones of the old Tytos that they called the Purest Ones.”
    “The Purest Ones?” Soren said, perplexed.
    Gylfie had remained very quiet, but when she heard about the little owls being put in the stone crypts, she began to speak. “I think that they did to Eglantine with stone what the owls of St. Aggie’s did to us with the full moon.” Gylfie was referring to the horrendous moon-blinking process during which the young owlets at St. Aggie’s were forced to sleep with their heads directly exposed to the scalding light of the moon. It disturbed their gizzards in a profound way and seemed to destroy their will, along with any of the individual characteristics that made up an owl’s personality.
    Gylfie continued, “Only instead of being moon blinked, they were stone stunned. I think I’ve heard of it. In the Desert of Kuneer, there are a series of deep, blind canyons—a maze really—and if one gets lost in them, the stone can affect the brain. If the owls come back, they are a bit odd, you know, weird in the head.” But there was something else that Gylfie felt in her gizzard but did not mention. She was almost sure that the bones in thosecrypts were not the bones of owls, but of the Others. The thought, however, was too chilling, too sickeningly terrifying to even mention.
    Soren’s eyes fastened on Eglantine’s wing where she had suffered her most severe wound from the Great Downing. The feathers had grown back, but patchily. He felt swollen with anger at this vile owl Metal Beak. “I can’t believe how he hurt you, Eglantine. It makes me want to kill him. No wonder Mum’s and Da’s scrooms warned me.”
    “But you don’t understand, Soren. It wasn’t the Tyto owls of the castle that did this to my wing. Oh, they did plenty. Feelings in my gizzard are just really coming back now, but it was the other owls, the ones who raided the castle and snatched us. That is really how I and all the rest of us got hurt. They nearly got away with us but the owls from the castle, the High Tyto and the Pure Ones, followed. There was this huge battle as they tried to snatch us back, and I dropped. So did a lot of us because something came along and scared them all. I was surprised that I survived the fall. But then I was worried that I would be snatched again. That is why I dragged myself to hide under that bush where Digger and Twilight found me.”
    “Were the owls who snatched you, Barn Owls as well?” Gylfie asked.
    “Oh, no. All sorts. There was a raggedy-looking Great Horned, and she had a huge bare patch on her wing that made her fly all funny.”
    “Skench!” Gylfie and Soren both blurted out at once. Skench, whose cruelty knew no bounds, the Ablah General of St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls had just such a patch on her wing.
    “So they were from St. Aggie’s!” Soren said.
    It had all come back so clearly to Eglantine that now she could hardly stop talking. But meanwhile, one thought prevailed in Soren’s mind. Were they actually any closer to finding Ezylryb? Could Eglantine remember where this castle was with its odd rituals that celebrated the purity of Barn Owls in such an awful way? Was Ezylryb there, or had he simply gotten lost? Had he been stone stunned? Or was he dead?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Chaw of Chaws
    I n times of trouble, however, there can come a certain closeness, a kind of coziness of spirit. It was never so true as in the hollow of Soren and his mates, Gylfie, Twilight, Digger, and now Eglantine. The stories that Eglantine told held a peculiar fascination for the owls in the hollow. Finally, it was Digger who asked, “Eglantine, can you remember what the ground was like around the castle? I mean, was it like Silverveil or The Beaks?”
    “I’ve never been to The Beaks, but how do you mean, Digger?”
    “Well, were there tall trees, or was it scrubby with short bushy plants? Was it hard-packed earth, bare, or maybe sandy like a desert?”
    “Oh, none of those, I think. I can’t remember exactly, for they hardly ever let us out. Although from the broken walls, I could catch a glimpse. They didn’t permit us to fly up high. I think there was grass, though. And they used to speak of a meadow. But I don’t think there were big treesor trees with leaves, because I can remember when