Guardians of Ga'Hoole 14 - Exile

crucial to our success during the siege. I think we must call upon you again. We need to move the ice weapons from their cold storage burrow. I don’t want these new owls knowing anything about them. Any ideas, Sylvana?”
    “Yes,” she replied. “There is an old tunnel in the roots, on the other side of the tree from where we are now. I’ll get it cleaned out.”
    “Does Coryn know about the ice weapons?” Poot asked.
    “He might know about them,” Sylvana said. “But since he has been at the tree we have never fought with them. The last time was in the Battle of the Burning.”
    “Precisely,” Martin said. “And that could be a problem. Ruby, Otulissa, and I are the only owls here right nowwho have ever fought with the ice weapons. We were on that first expedition to the Northern Kingdoms where we trained with old Moss and the Glauxspeed and the Frost Beaks units. We’re out of practice.”
    “Get in practice.” It was Quentin, a grizzled old Barred Owl who, as long as anyone could remember had been the quartermaster of the great tree, in charge of weapons and military equipment. “I’ve been tending those ice weapons like they were new hatchlings all these years, just exactly according to Ezylryb’s instructions. They are in perfect condition. The ice picks sharp as talons. The ice scimitars got as keen an edge as anything Bubo could forge. What they need are owls who can wield them.”
    “But when can we practice? Where?” Martin asked.
    Pelli looked at Sylvana. “Sylvana, is that tunnel big enough for owls to hone their ice weapons skills in secret?”
    “I suppose so. But how do we train enough owls without being noticed—even in secret?”
    Martin, who was particularly gifted with the ice splinter, having trained directly under Colonel Frost Blossom of the Frost Beak division, stepped forward. The little Northern Saw-whet looked at the owls. “When it comes down to it, we’ll be fighting in tight quarters, around, perhaps, or even in the tree. We don’t need ahuge number of fighters. All we need is a few good owls. I’ll teach them.”
    The owls crammed into the small, confined chamber of roots looked at one another. A few good owls! The words stirred their gizzards and made their hearts beat stronger. They were those owls!

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Singed Blue Feather
    N ever for the rest of his life would Cory forget stepping outside the burrow he shared with his sister, Kalo, and her family in The Barrens that tween time and catching sight of the singed blue feather quivering in the light breeze. He wilfed and felt his gizzard turn to stone. “We’re marked!” Then he silently cursed his sister, the owl he loved most in the entire world. Her frinkin’ books! Racdrops! Why has she clung to them so long? Why after the burning did she salvage the scraps of paper and try to piece them back together? When he had confronted her with this and asked her how, as a mother, she could have done this, she had replied, “Simply because I am a mother. I owe it to my hatchlings to learn all that I can.”
    There was no arguing with Kalo. Her husband, Grom, was a quiet, reflective owl, who rarely contradicted his mate. Marked by the blue feather! This was the limit, in Cory’s mind. Now she had done it. They would all haveto go into hiding. A singed blue feather was the death warrant. Once a hollow, nest, or burrow had been marked with it, an owl would stand trial—trial by fire—for keeping an unclean habitat, a home profaned by the “vanities” and “skart” literature that they had refused to yield up. It was an odd test. If the owl could escape the strong fibrous green vines that bound them to the stake, and fly away while reciting the Glaux creed rejecting all vanities, then that owl was declared innocent of all charges. But so far no owl had escaped.
    Cory knew of two burnings and suspected more. The creed itself was controversial. No one had ever heard of it before the Blue Brigade had appeared. It was a jumble of words about the hagsfires, lustrous pearls, rich fabrics, and the dark and haggish ink of skart pages printed by the “monster”: the printing press. More and more charred piles of these so-called vanities littered the landscape on the mainland. And with the Blue Brigade patrolling everywhere, owls stayed in their burrows and hollows whenever possible. Cory stumbled back and headed toward Kalo’s burrow. He heard the soft crying before he got there.
    “Grom!” he