Guardians of Ga'Hoole 08 - The Outcast

pounded. She would do this. She had only two thoughts. She would not let this mother owl kill her own son, and she would do everything in her power to destroy the alliance, even if it meant her own death. I won’t let this happen. I won’t let this happen. It became a song pounding in her blood, the rhythm of her stride, the cadence of her beating heart. Her ruff swept back in the wind. Her eyes were like two blazing green stars, her hackles were raised with the anger that coursed through her and drove her. On that night, she was the angriest wolf in the Beyond. She had all to gain and nothing to lose. She had lost her son. She had lost her mate. And she would lose her clan if she had to.
    She stepped onto the ice to cross the river. If it cracked and she fell in, she could swim. She was as strong a swimmer as she was a runner. But the ice didn’t crack until she got too close to the opposite bank. She fell in, but just for a second, and then clambered out onto the bank androlled herself on the ground to dry. When she rose to her paws, she saw an owl. Not just any owl. The owl: Coryn, trembling on a nearby rock.
    “I thought you were my mother.”
    Gyllbane blinked in dismay.
    “Never mind. I heard the noise, and I was thinking about her and you scared me. I mean, I didn’t really think you were her.”
    Gyllbane was panting hard. Never had she run so fast or for so long. “Your mother, the Supreme Commander of the Tytonic Pure Ones, she is…” She stopped to catch her breath. “She is coming to kill you. There is not much time. You must act fast.” She paused to gobble breaths of air. “You must get the coal, the ember, the Ember of Hoole.” Her breathing was ragged. The words tumbled out in painful chunks.
    “Rest, rest just a little while,” Coryn implored her.
    “There is no time, Coryn. It all depends on you. She wants the ember. She has promised it to my clan, the MacHeaths. It will give them the power they have always been desperate for. In exchange, they will join her in an alliance to rule the owl world.”
    “But why are you doing this? You are a MacHeath.”
    “They took my son. They mutilated him. So badly did they want a MacHeath in the Sacred Watch, they cut offhis paw pads and his tail. They drove my mate from the clan. How can I have anything but hatred for them? And if your mother succeeds, they will become more hateful and powerful beyond imagining.”
    “Cody is your son?”
    She nodded. She was now drooling long silver strings of saliva, but she seemed to have recovered her breath. “Cody is my son but he does not even know it. I was not allowed to nurse him. But really, Coryn, there is no time. You must claim the ember. It is yours, I know it. I know it.” Coryn looked deeply into her sparkling green eyes. His own reflection looked back at him with a steady gaze. Yes, there was fear in his own eyes, but there was daring as well. At last, he believed in what he saw reflected in that wolf’s green eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Glass Volcano
    I n many ways, it was a night not unlike all the others. The Sacred Ring was wind-ripped once again. Red volcanic sparks and snowflakes were locked in a mad dance, blurring together to the music of the savage she winds that had returned in full force. On the ground, there was the usual bustle of Rogue smiths and Rogue colliers haggling over coals. The gnaw wolves of the watch patrolled their trails. The senior ones who were perched on the towering cairns of bones howled into the night a secret code of instructions, alerts, and commands that only they understood. A few of the bolder colliers were flying the higher and wilder layers of air in attempts to emulate the brilliant catches they’d seen Coryn make.
    No one seemed to notice Coryn as he returned and began a wide circle in a survey of all the volcanoes of the ring. Gyllbane had settled herself in the shadows of weathering bone piles. She examined one closely. It was true these gnaw wolves were great artists. A wolf bird had beenincised on the one she was looking at. It was perfect, down to the fine lines depicting its feathers. Would it have been so bad for Cody to be here on the watch? To become an artist, to become one of the most incredibly strong wolves on Earth and yet forbidden to mate, to be doomed to a completely solitary life without family or clan.
    She looked up at the stars. Was it true what they said, that after a gnaw wolf of the Sacred Watch died and climbed the