Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

fiercest of the Ga’Hoolian warriors when they were suddenly forced into a cave by the backdraft of the fire. They didn’t know that a larger band of Ga’Hoolian owls was already in this cave and they were caught completely by surprise. In a maddened frenzy, Soren flew directly at your father and sliced his back through the spine with an ice sword. It happened so quickly, there was no time for any of the Pure Ones to…to…” She was searching for the word.
    “Think?” Nyroc asked.
    Nyra gave him a poisonous look. She did not like the way this conversation was going. Not at all.
    “There was no time for orders to be issued and obeyed,” she said coolly.
    Can a soldier only act when a command is given? Can soldiers never think or act on their own? Nyroc thought. However,he knew better than to ask such questions. And, in fact, he did not need to ask. What he had seen in the flames of the fire was nothing at all like what his mother had just described. Either the flames were lying or his mother was. It was time for him to find out the truth.

CHAPTER TWELVE
Blood in the Flames
    T he night had thinned into the dawn. Mist pearled the charred landscape below as Nyroc flew to the hollow in the cleft of the rock wall. He alighted on the ledge outside. What he had seen in the fire was unbelievable, some of it so unbelievable that the images within the flames had made no sense at all. Well, he must find out for himself. It was the only way. He knew Gwyndor was right about this.
    He stepped into the hollow. His mum had fluffed up the lichen she used instead of moss for his bedding and plucked some fresh down from her own breast. Nyra was sleeping soundly in her corner. He looked at the tufts of down, then at his mother. He remembered the first time he had ever seen her pull out tuft after tuft from beneath her breast feathers. It had amazed him.
    “Doesn’t that hurt?” he had asked as he watched her.
    “Not when you do it for your dear hatchling,” she had replied.
    And Nyroc knew that because he had no father andthis burnt land no longer had the soft moss used in nests, his mum had to pluck twice as much of her own down. He had wondered if he could ever do such a thing. He didn’t like pain and could not imagine that it would be any less painful if you were doing it for someone you loved. He had complained bitterly when his first flight feathers had begun to bud. The shaft points of the primaries hurt as they poked through his tender skin.
    He wanted to whisper out to her now, Mum, what I saw in the fire—this isn’t true. The first time he had looked through the flames, at the Marking ceremony in the cave where his father had died, he had seen a place he did not recognize, a strange landscape where weird creatures with four legs and strangely colored eyes loped through swirling mists and vapors. And then there had been the curious thing like a flame made of stone, orange in color with the lick of deep blue at its center, and between the inner blue and the outer orange what he thought might be the color green. This reminded Nyroc that his mum had promised to take him to see a tree after the Special ceremony if he performed it well. Nyroc’s gizzard gave a sickening twist. A darkness seemed to flood through it as it did every time he thought of the Special ceremony. He quickly pushed all thoughts of it from his mind.
    He remembered instead how oddly his mother hadlooked at him when he had told her Oh, Mum, I love you sooo much, almost as if she didn’t know the word “love” or what it meant. And then with dread in his gizzard, he remembered her other words to him: “You must learn to hate, Nyroc. I shall help you learn to hate.”
    Gwyndor was right. He must find out the truth for himself. What he had seen in the fire was a strange and bloody history. It began with his father when he was even younger than Nyroc, pushing his brother, Soren, from the nest. And then he saw his mother trying to kill another owl who looked remarkably like Soren, possibly a sister. He had seen quick flashing images of murderous rampages. Finally, Nyroc saw the cave where his father had died, and it was not his uncle Soren trying to kill his father, but quite the reverse, his father trying to kill his uncle Soren. Then another owl had flown in. It looked like a Great Gray and in one powerful stroke with a glittering sword, he had broken his father’s back. The fire had roiled with blood and murder.
    He needed to get away from