Guardians of Ga'Hoole 11 - To Be a King

asked.
    “We have many great talents here among us. Sir Bors, I have heard that you understand how the stars move across the night sky, and that your knowledge is far beyond the navigational abilities of most owls. Could you not teach this better way of navigating?”
    “S’pose I could… Yes, s’pose I could, Your Grace.”
    “And Strix Strumajen, I heard that you are particularly sensitive, like many Spotted Owls, to changes in the weight of air, and that you can interpret these changes in pressure to guess what weather might be coming in.”
    “It is not a guess, sir. It is a type of reasoning that has proven very accurate for forecasting and interpreting weather patterns.”
    “Could you not lead a chaw that would train other owls to interpret the weather?”
    “Well, yes, Your Grace, I could. I would be most happy to. But should it be just Spotted Owls?”
    “I think not. I think any owl should be able to learn about this if he or she is truly interested. We shouldn’t let our kind, how we were born, limit us.”
    There was real excitement in the hollow now as the young king shared his vision for the new things owls would be learning. Grank would lead a colliering chaw, and Theo would teach owls the secrets of shaping metal. Best of all, none of this was magic. None of it depended on anything but an individual owl’s own skills and effort.
    The meeting of the parliament was drawing to a close. It was time for Hoole’s last stroke, his finishing touch to the new order. “We have come together as knights in battle,and we shall come together again in battle to vanquish the hagsfiends and the legions of Lord Arrin, the usurper. But now, here, we have come together in a new way.” Hoole paused and regarded each of the ten other members of the parliament. “You have already taken your oaths as knights and now I am going to ask you to take yet another oath.” There was a look of keen expectation in the eyes of the owls. What kind of oath would this be? they wondered.
    “Fear not,” Hoole said. “We shall guard the ember ferociously, but I have told you that the ember is but one source of power. The deeper and stronger power is the one we have established here today. It, too, must be guarded and tended like the roots of a tree that burgeons from the earth and soars into the sky. And those roots are nurtured by goodness, equality, and nobility. We must become the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. I am asking you to take this oath along with me.”
    There was a great stillness in the hollow. And then ten voices began to repeat the words their young king spoke: “I am a Guardian of Ga’Hoole. From this night on, I dedicate my life to the protection of owlkind. I shall not swerve in my duty. I shall support my brother and sister Guardians in times of battle, as well as in times of peace. I am the eyes in the night, the silence within the wind. I amthe talons through the fire, the shield that guards the innocent. I shall seek to wear no crown, nor win any glory. And all these things I do swear upon my honor as a Guardian of Ga’Hoole until my days on this earth cease to be. This be my vow. This be my life. By Glaux, I do swear.”

CHAPTER FIVE
The Hagsfiend of the Ice Narrows
    D eep in a cave of the Ice Narrows, that channel of water connecting the Southern and the Northern Waters, the hagsfiend Ygryk watched as an egg trembled. She was not alone. Another, a Great Horned Owl named Pleek, stood behind his mate. Some might call their union—hagsfiend and owl—unholy, but in their own peculiar way, they did love each other. And yet they could not have chicks, for unions such as theirs were barren. But Ygryk, despite her haggish ways, had an obsession to mother. She was desperate for a chick and so driven that she dared fly over open water, which could prove fatal to hagsfiends because their feathers lacked the natural oils of many birds. If their crowlike black feathers came in contact with salt water, they became sodden and their weight dragged them down into the sea. But despite thishazard, she and Pleek had come to live in the Ice Narrows with Kreeth, an immensely powerful hagsfiend who dared to live above the open water of the Ice Narrows. Her reason for this, she stated simply: “Water is my enemy. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
    Kreeth had spent a lifetime in her cave above the churning waters of the Narrows, studying to divine a charm that would render her and all hagsfiends immune