Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

Lyze y Octavia.”
    “Aaah, Octavia y vingen Brigid!” the skog softly exclaimed, and Moss’s eyes grew misty, as if focusing on something long ago in a distant, unreachable time. The two Snowies continued to talk. Soren not only wondered what they were saying but what had been written in the sealed messages from Ezylryb. He knew that Ezylryb had written about the Pure Ones and requested recruits from his old division, the Glauxspeed, for the invasion, as well as the fearsome Frost Beaks. But there were other things contained in the message that he knew nothing about.
    Moss looked directly at each one of the owls as if to take their measure, a kind of measure that had nothing to do with size.
    “So you are the Chaw of Chaws,” Moss said.
    Soren almost gasped. Moss was speaking with just theslightest burr of a Krakish accent. The Snowy noted the Barn Owl’s surprise.
    “Ja, ja, I speak a bit of Hoolian. So does Snorri.” He nodded at the skog.
    “Yes, we are. At least, most of the chaw…” Soren said with a tremble in his voice.
    “And this,” Moss looked toward Snorri and said something in Krakish, “this business with the Pure Ones is, I am not sure the words, a bad business—a nachtglaux, as we say here in Northern Kingdoms. It means ‘against Glaux.’ An offense to the Glaux from which we all come.”
    “Oh, definitely,” Soren said. “It is even more than an offense.” Soren took a deep breath. How would he say what needed to be said next? Moss and Snorri lived far away from the Pure Ones and flecks. It might be hard for them to grasp the urgency of the situation.
    Soren plunged into a history of the siege and the fall of St. Aggie’s to the Pure Ones. “They will consolidate their power,” he went on. “They will bring in thousands of hireclaws from the territory known as Beyond the Beyond, and they will launch another attack, first against the great tree, and then against every other owl kingdom on Earth. And they will not stop at owls.” Soren now looked over at Svall. “I know it is hard to believe that a creature as huge asSvall could be affected by something as infinitesimally small as a magnetic fleck, but he could be. Imagine if animals as big as Svall became the witless instruments of one of the greatest forces of evil in the universe. Just imagine.”
    “So Ezylryb wants the Glauxspeed division and the Frost Beaks.” Moss unfolded the paper again and regarded it. “Ja, ja, and he wants ach, hordo.”
    “Hordo?” Snorri repeated.
    “Ja, ja.” Moss nodded. “And,” he said, looking up from the paper at the young owls again, “he wants that you should be trained in the art of the ice sword.”
    “Ice sword!” Twilight nearly jumped out of his feathers. “Great Glaux, ice swords! I can’t wait. He really said that?” Twilight craned his head so he might better see the paper that Moss held.
    “Ja, ja, and he said that the Great Gray would be particularly excited, he did.” He paused again and looked at Twilight. “And so you are, I see. We shall go to Dark Fowl Island for the training.”
    “Dark Fowl! Where the rogue smith Orf lives?” Twilight said. “I thought we were only going there for battle claws. But training with ice swords!” Soren thought Twilight would burst with excitement.
    It is all starting to make sense, Soren thought. That’s what the rest of the letter must have said. We are not here just to get recruits for the invasion but to learn how to fight like the owls of the Northern Kingdoms, with ice swords.
    “Yes, you are to be trained. We can go now,” Moss said.
    So he has agreed to train us, but we are so few, Soren thought. What about the Frost Beaks and the Glauxspeed division? Dare I ask?
    “But it’s almost dawn,” Digger said. The nights were so short this far north at this time of the year that there was hardly time to fly. The sun was already glimmering on the horizon. “What about crows?”
    With this, Moss, Snorri, and Svall began to laugh. When the polar bear laughed there was a great deal of sloshing in the water. Ice floes crunched against one another and waves broke over the rocks on which the owls perched. “Very few crows around here, and if they come we fly low, and—Svall, show them what you do.”
    A glint sparkled in the bear’s dark brown eyes. And then with a mighty roar that shook icicles from the cliffs, the bear broke from the water and waved his arms and immense paws. The owls’ beaks dropped open in