Guardians of Ga'Hoole 15 - The War of the Ember

when he had knocked it from her talons. A clear shot, that’s all I need. One clear shot. Bess began to drive the owl out from the narrow alleys between the stone coffins. There was a bay at the back of the crypt. If she could get him to fly there, he wouldbe trapped. She must make him think the ember was in that bay. That was it! She stopped her flight and reversed her direction suddenly, and began to carve a turn toward the bay. The owl took the bait. He thought she was flying back to defend the ember.
    And now an odd thing transpired. Bess felt as if she were actually becoming two owls. There was Bess the warrior, the strategist who swiveled her head back and tried to muster a fearsome look in her eyes, and then there was Bess the observer. The Bess she knew. Bess now pretended to dart from her course, but gave her opponent ample berth to block the move. It’s working! It’s working! They were almost in the bay. There were a few niches in the walls where candles had once burned to light the crypt. She flew directly toward one, then did an inside-out loop and hovered against the niche with her wings spread wide as if she were protecting something—something precious.
    “Let me at it or I’ll tear you to pieces,” the intruder screeched.
    Bess said nothing. She continued to hover against the stone wall. Now she did not have to feign fear. She was frightened. Her gizzard twitched in spasms of pure terror. But she must hold steady and draw him closer. She heard the click of the battle claws as he extended them.The serrated edges gleamed and then blurred as the Boreal charged. Bess bunched her shoulder and raised her talon, and the air glinted as bits of mica embedded in the arrowhead flashed like shooting stars.
    And then it was over.
    Bess blinked. Beneath her, the Boreal Owl had fallen. From its breast, an arrowhead protruded. And now the owl was truly gasping its last breath on earth. Bess bent over the dying owl.
    “I suppose now you expect me to toll you to glaumora.”
    The amber eyes growing tarnished as life seeped from him suddenly brightened with a horrifying glint. “I am in hag’s cradle now. Hagsmire is my glaumora. You will see. Just wait…just…” But the words evaporated as the owl met death.
    “Death profane,” Bess whispered. She was no longer Bess the warrior. She had stepped back inside her own body and only now realized that she was shaking uncontrollably.

CHAPTER FIVE
A Wolf and a Bear
    S veep trundled along the overland route. She had never been out of the Northern Kingdoms before. And perhaps it was insane not to be swimming. But the katabats had begun to blow earlier, as Svarr had predicted, and the pack ice was being driven down faster than she had anticipated. She was not sure that the puffin would get up his nerve to go to the owls. She had told him to go, but would he? She felt she had to do something despite the weariness, the lethargy that afflicted all polar bears with the coming of winter. A backup plan was needed. The backup plan was the she-wolf, Gyllbane, her old friend. She would go to her and tell her what the puffin had seen.
    There was one thing of which she was certain. She was not carrying babies this season. It was nice to have a rest. Beneath the call of winter’s long sleep, she felt a new energy. And who would want to bring young cubsinto such a world, anyway, if what she could piece together from the puffin’s jumbled narrative was true?
    She had made Gyllbane’s acquaintance perhaps three summers ago. The wolf was racked with grief over the loss of her son and, as she said, needed to get away. Sveep had just given birth to her second set of cubs, and Gyllbane proved herself remarkably helpful with them. Auntie Gyll, the cubs had begun to call her almost as soon as they could speak. Sveep knew that Gyllbane had been very close to Coryn, the monarch of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. She had shared so much with Gyllbane, and Gyllbane with her. And she knew she must share this, too.
    Sveep had been traveling two days and was now approaching Broken Talon Point. The landscape had begun to change contrasting sharply with the treeless world from which Sveep had come. There was not a trace of snow, and what had been a sprinkling of trees soon thickened into groves of tall firs and spruce. Sveep had little use for trees but she could appreciate the quiet grandeur with which they rose from this otherwise barren landscape. She knew that farther into the Beyond, the