Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

that moment they spotted a Great Snowy overhead—a Great Snowy sporting a black feather.
    Doc Finebeak!
    They took off immediately to tell him what they’d discovered.
    Several minutes later, behind a cluster of cactus a good distance from the rock, Doc Finebeak listened to Eglantine and Primrose’s story. When they had finished, he blinked and sighed, then plucked the black feather from his back and broke it in half. “Here, take this, I can always get another. It will protect you. You’re going to have to fly night and day.”
    They said a quick good-bye. As the three owls lifted off in flight, Finebeak heading back to the great tree to raise troops and Eglantine and Primrose to the Palace of Mists, they all had one thought: They had beaten the Pure Ones in the canyonlands in the Battle of Fire and Ice. They had beaten them in the Beyond. Although this would not be as big a battle, for the forces would be fewer on both sides, it could be the most significant battle of all. The question was not the size of any army. They had to act now and with great force in a place that was strange to all of them. Could the Guardians do it again? Never had so much been at stake—the ember, the king, and an owlet!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Dragon Court
    W e treat them like children.” Tengshu spoke in a whisper. “They don’t know any better. This…this way of life, this passivity has been bred into them. It is better this way, believe me.”
    “They don’t mind?” Ruby asked, for what she was seeing was to her mind simply outrageous. Ruby was dumbfounded as she looked on the scene before her. The nine owls were perched on a glistening crystal balcony. Indeed, the entire Panqua Palace of the dragon owls was made from what the sage called geodes—mysterious rocks split open to reveal cavities lined with crystals of luminous colors ranging from pink to sapphire blue to purple and white. Each color was a precious stone with names that the owls had never before heard, like jasper, chalcedony, and agate. The inhabitants of this resplendent, jeweled hollow were known as the dragon owls.
    Like Tengshu, their plumage was composed of varying shades of blue. But unlike the sage, they never seemedto have molted. This lack of molting had allowed their feathers to grow to such extraordinary lengths that they swept behind them like cloaks. Flight was impossible. In fact, there were only two ways these owls could travel through air, which was either with assistance from smaller owls who appeared to be servants or with the help of the qui. By hanging on to the string with their talons, they could lift into the air. But if by any chance they were to be separated from their qui, it meant instant death. Their wings were so laden with long heavy feathers they would immediately plummet to the ground. Mostly they walked slowly back and forth across the floor of the palace, with bearers lifting their trains of feathers.
    “How did this happen?” Soren said. There was something awful, perverse about seeing owls in this condition. They were dazzlingly beautiful, but their beauty was in such stark contrast to the true nature of owls, or any bird: They could not fly, and despite their splendor, there was something revolting about them.
    “It is complicated to explain, but they do not molt naturally.”
    “But how do they prevent molting?” Otulissa asked. “And why?”
    “It is not simply that molting is prevented. That is only part of it. As you know, we owls all have a preen glandat the base of our tails, which provides the oil with which we preen and clean our feathers and that keeps them supple. These particular owls have been cursed with abnormally large preen glands. The extra oil makes their feathers grow faster, but this growth seems to slow actual molting. See how long their tail feathers grow? Quite dazzling, aren’t they? It’s as if these dragon owls have become transfixed by their own beauty. To maintain it, they are required to stimulate this growth even further by a very complicated method of pruning their undertail coverts. It’s almost an unwritten law, a law enforced by their own vanity really, that they do this.” Indeed, many of the dragon owls’ tail feathers grew to unbelievable lengths.
    “Do they like to be this way?” Otulissa asked.
    “They don’t mind. They accept it. It is part of their phonqua.”
    “Phonqua?” Digger asked. “What is phonqua?”
    The sage shook his head. “It is difficult to explain