Guardians of Ga'Hoole 11 - To Be a King

and so his days remained dreamless.

CHAPTER TWENTY
A Rotting Palace
    I n another part of the owl world, the Spotted Owl of whom Hoole had once dreamed, Emerilla, spoke in a hushed voice to the Great Horned Owl Theo. The two had met in the most unlikely place: the Ice Palace of the H’rathghar.
    “Hush! Don’t call me Emerilla. Here I am known as Sigrid,” she said.
    Theo had taken his leave of the banquet hollow and his brother’s company as soon as he could without arousing suspicion.
    “But you are she, aren’t you?” Theo cocked his head.
    “Yes, but how did you know?”
    Theo thought for a minute. How did he know? It was just a feeling in his gizzard. It was not so much that she looked like her mother, Strix Strumajen, but that she seemed different from all the other owls in the Ice Palace. “I just knew.”
    This seemed to satisfy Emerilla. “Do you know where my mother is?”
    “With Hoole,” Theo whispered.
    “And you, too, you live there as well?”
    “Yes.” The two owls spoke in fragments, half sentences with nods and blinks, daring not to say anything that could give them away. It was amazing how much information they conveyed in such a brief time. Emerilla had been working in the Ice Palace since it had fallen to Shadyk. Luckily, no one had recognized her because the battles she had fought in had, for the most part, been skirmishes in a region far from where Shadyk and his troops had been fighting. There were apparently skirmishes, fights, battles, and clashes raging all over the Northern Kingdoms. It was no longer simply a two-sided war. It was also Lord Arrin’s soldiers against Lord Unser’s near the Bitter Sea where there had never been fighting before. It was sometimes hagsfiends against hagsfiends. “Are any of H’rath’s old troops fighting with these owls?” Theo asked.
    “There might be a few, but if they are, none of them are fighting for the kingdom as it once was.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The really loyal ones went south to the S’yrthghar. The ones left have forgotten everything the H’rathian dynastyflew for. There are factions, but really it is each owl for himself.” Emerilla paused, leaned forward, and whispered, “The Ice Palace is rotting from the inside because every code of honor has been violated. There is no H’rathian code here. It has been destroyed. And so the ice melts! It was foretold in ancient prophecies of H’rathmore.”
    Then once again, Theo heard the same words that Svarr had spoken: “This place and the entire N’yrthghar is a feast for vultures.”
    Theo took to heart what Emerilla had been telling him, but still something did not seem quite right in her explanation. If it is just a matter of time before the hagsfiends leave and the palace can be taken, why wait to join her mother at the island? Theo wondered. She was holding something back.
    “Why delay? Why not leave now? You know so much about the palace. Your information would be invaluable.” She blinked nervously at him. “What is it, Sigrid? You are not telling me everything.”
    She shut her eyes tightly for more than a blink and then opened them and looked straight at Theo. “I am a close fighter.”
    “I had heard that from your mother,” Theo replied.
    “There is no owl better than myself with a close blade.”
    “Yes, go on.” Theo nodded.
    “Shadyk is your brother.”
    It was not a question, it was a statement. Theo felt his gizzard clinch.
    “I plan to assassinate him.”
    Theo inhaled deeply. His gizzard quaked.
    “He is insane, Theo. He tortures owls for the fun of it. He sits on that rotting throne and dreams of an owl universe. Do you know that it was he who killed your father?”
    Theo gasped.
    “He tried to kill your sister, the gadfeather, too. He will probably try to kill you as well. You need to get out of here quickly. When he has one of the fits, he has even tried to kill his own guards.”
    “How can my mother not see this?”
    “He controls himself when she is around. And she treats him like a chick. She is blind to any of his faults.” She paused. “In his own way, he is worse than any hags-fiend, and I shall kill him when the time is right.” She paused again. “You must get out. Get out immediately.”
    But Theo resolved to stay a bit longer. He would be vigilant and take care, but he wanted to see more of the Ice Palace. He wanted to be able to send back as much information as possible to Hoole, and he was not sure if they should