Guardians of Ga'Hoole 10 - The Coming of Hoole

speak of them once. She had thought they were some kind of gadfeather, but these owls were speaking as if they were something else entirely.
    “They say that old Screech who used to fly with us went kraal last summer.”
    “They be a nasty lot.”
    “I heard they were settling down somewhere on the glacier.”
    “Naw, you got it mixed up. It’s them Glauxian Brothers who are on the glacier.”
    “No, Mac, them brothers picked up and flew off. Started a retreat somewhere, like the sisters have.”
    This was news to Siv. She knew for a fact that the brothers had lived in the scattered holes on the glacier. Indeed, the brothers had often visited the Glacier Palace during the periods when they were permitted to speak. Throughout the year the brothers kept long periods of silence. And even during the rest of the year, each day had certain hours in which they kept the rule of silence. They had always been welcome at the palace, for both Siv and H’rath had enjoyed them greatly. They were most learned owls, and it had been Siv’s hope that if she and H’rath ever did have a chick, one of the brothers might be convinced to come and tutor it. She had often heard them speak of their longing to have a retreat, a place where they could all live together in what they called a community of learning instead of living scattered. They dreamed of starting a library in which they could keep records of all they had learned. So, it seemed at last they had done this.
    “It’s peaceful over there in the Bitter Sea. Hasn’t been touched by the wars. That’s probably where they’ve gone.”
    “Not much to fight for over there. Not like around here. I heard tell the hagsfiend Ygryk had been spotted not ten leagues from here.”
    Ygryk! Siv’s gizzard froze. Ygryk near here? The thought was too terrible. She would have to be extra careful. She would need more gadfeatherish bits and pieces to tuck in. Nearby was a pile of reindeer moss. She had noticed one gadfeather had swathed some around her head, lending her a rakish air but also obscuring her face. She went to the pile and plucked some up and while arranging it, continued to listen to the two gadfeathers that had been talking.
    “Bitter Sea never freezes up. You ain’t gonna get Lord Arrin over there now that he’s cozied up with the hagsfiends. Too much open water. Salt water. Odd how it be only salt water that gets them hagsfiends, and not rainwater so much.”
    “Lose their half-hags from the salt. Salt usually makes things melt. But when it gets mixed with that poison of the half-hags it makes them freeze up, then the feathers of the hagsfiends start to freeze and down they go. No oil in their feathers, either, like the rest of us, which helps us shed salt water.”
    The terrible half-hags! Siv remembered them vividly. They had never reached her for she had successfully blocked the fyngrot. However, she would never forget the image of them swarming over her mate as he fought Lord Arrin. Nevertheless, H’rath had fought on as thepoison coursed through his hollow bones, dissolving them and then flooding into his bloodstream. But it had been Lord Arrin who had delivered the fatal blow. And then the hagsfiend Penryck had sliced off H’rath’s head, jammed it onto his ice sword, and swooped off into the night. The hagsfiends were known for their ghoulish ritualistic ways of murder. Siv clamped her eyes tightly shut against this rush of memories.
    “‘ Too much open water ’!” The words rang now in Siv’s brain. Her gizzard tingled. Why had she never thought of this before? The Bitter Sea would be the perfect place for Grank to have taken the egg on that night when they had been attacked by the hagsfiends in the Ice Cliff Palace. She would go there immediately!

CHAPTER SEVEN
A Deadly Plan
    A s Siv plied her way west toward the Bitter Sea against a headwind that made her barely healed port wing throb with pain, Lord Arrin was meeting with his band of hagsfiends and commander owls in a cave on the H’rathghar glacier. There were twenty owls with the rank of commander, each of whom had a company of no less than ten owls. Every one of the twenty units had a hagsfiend attached to it. And there were some units composed entirely of hagsfiends. The cave was crowded with the twenty commanders and six hagsfiend captains. And on each hagsfiend, unseen, lurked scores of miniscule half-hags. They lived in the interstices and narrow, slotted spaces between the hagsfiends’