Guardians of Ga'Hoole 08 - The Outcast

Nyra. “This, Madame General, is a grave promise, one that could endanger you. It is most noble of you to do this.” There was chuffing and growls of agreement. “A pledge such as this is usually undertaken with a blood oath.” Again there were noises of agreement.
    “By all means, fetch the oath bone, Lord Fleance,” the chieftain ordered.
    Lord Fleance quickly returned with a bone that had been gnawed to a deadly point.
    More scars, Nyra thought. Well, she had been wounded in battle before. She could endure this scratch. The chieftain trotted forward. He was quick about it. Taking the oath bone in his mouth, he stabbed it quickly but not deeply into his front paw. There was a trickle of blood. Hethen dropped the bone in front of Nyra. It was finely honed, sharp as battle claws! If she could get these wolves to gnaw weapons like this! Nyra picked up the bone. Her hesitation was nothing to do with fear. There simply was not that much blood in owls’ feet. But between her talons she might be able to get a few drops. She stabbed and a fair spurt came out.
    Nyra and MacHeath then pressed talon to paw and swore an oath of loyalty.
    “I, Madame General and Supreme Commander of the Tytonic Union of Pure Ones, do solemnly swear on the blood of my talons that I shall protect the rights of the clan MacHeath and shall pursue and kill the owl Coryn if he retrieves the sacred Ember of Hoole. And upon his death, I vow to return that ember to the Lord Chieftain of the MacHeath clan.”
    “And I, Dunleavy Bethmore MacHeath, Chieftain and Lord of the MacHeath clan, do solemnly swear to join in armed alliance with the Supreme Commander of the Tytonic Union of Pure ones, to aid and abet them in all of their battles as they seek to restore our own clan to glory. Their friends are our friends. Their enemies are our enemies.”
    “Hear! Hear!” All the wolves growled.
    But Gyllbane hung back, for now she was sure ofsomething the rest had either not noticed or ignored. She was certain that the owl named Coryn was the son of Nyra. The resemblance was so great that she could not believe that the others hadn’t noticed it. Perhaps they were too caught up in this owl’s promises of restoration—yes, restoration and revenge could blind even a wolf’s eyes. Not Gyllbane’s, however. She knew that the owl called Nyra had just sworn by her blood that she would kill her own son. What kind of owl is that? What kind of oath is that? She defiles the oath bone. There will be no honor, no glory for the MacHeaths.
    At that moment, the little pup Cody waddled in unevenly on his maimed foot pads. Gyllbane’s eyes filled with tears as she watched him. And to think he does not even know I am his mother.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Gnaw Wolf in Training
    D unmore, Morgan, Hrath’ghar, Kiel, and Stormfast: These were the names of the five volcanoes of the Sacred Ring. As a member of the Sacred Watch, Hamish was being trained to learn the behaviors unique to each volcano. The periods of their eruptions, the fine distinctions of tone as well as the scents of the sulfurous steam that was spewed into the sky. When lava poured forth, which was seldom, he was learning to recognize what kind of lava it was and the course that the thick black roiling rivers would take down the steep slopes of a volcano. Most important, he began to learn from the older members of the watch the subtle signs that warned when any owl—Rogue collier or otherwise—approached the volcanoes with ill intent. They called such owls “graymalkins,” a bad owl that might be making an attempt to capture the Ember of Hoole.
    For his training, Hamish had been assigned to the south slope of Dunmore and at the very moment that Corynhad begun his spectacular flyby retrieval of bonk coals, Hamish’s taiga had been crunching sheets of the black glass to familiarize the young wolf with that sound of alarm. “It will be louder, of course,” Banquo was saying. “You hear the brittle sounds, don’t you?”
    Hamish was just about to say yes when a roar came from the owls around the south slope. Both wolves looked up.
    “It’s Coryn!” Hamish exclaimed as he saw his friend swooping through the storm of airborne coals.
    “By my uncle’s knees, look at that owl catch!” Banquo said.
    The Rogue smiths on the ground had stopped haggling over the price of coal. The gnaw wolves on the cairns began to howl their approval, and the wolf birds squawked.
    It had been a few days since Hamish