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

dire wolf clans. Now follow me and I will take you to the Gadderheal, our ceremonial cave.”
    “But I just want to see Gyll…I mean, Namara, in her own den. This need not be so…so formal.”
    “Oh, it’s not a matter of formality.”
    “What is it, then?”
    “It’s the only place you’ll fit.”

CHAPTER SIX
Namara Howls
    Y ou say the puffin said something about hagsfiends.” Namara’s eyes glistened like resplendent twin emeralds in the dark gloom of the cave. Outside, tree limbs creaked in a sudden wind. Sveep nodded. “And then you say the other owl, the blue one, said something about the Ember of Hoole?”
    “Not exactly in that order,” Sveep replied. “First, the blue owl said that he knew all about the ember. And then the other owl said something about hagsfiends.”
    Namara’s eyes became green slits. Her hackles rose stiffly, and her ears stood up straight. She began padding about the cave in a tight circle. “This is bad…very bad.”
    “I know nothing about the ember or hagsfiends,” Sveep said. “This is all owl business, isn’t it?”
    “Yes…” Then Namara stopped and peered at her old friend, who had been so helpful to her in the time of her overwhelming grief. “But it is our business, as well.All of us.” She paused again. “Cody.” Her voice broke as she spoke her son’s name, remembering that last image of him dead atop the Book of Kreeth, his throat slashed. “Cody died trying to save the world from hagsfiends.”
    “But I thought they were just creatures of legends, very old legends, and as the owl said, have been gone for a thousand years.” There was a desperate note in Sveep’s voice as if she were grasping for some small thread of hope.
    “I thought that, too, but Coryn told me that the legends, are not mere legends. This book, the one they called the Book of Kreeth, was an ancient tome that had belonged to an arch hagsfiend. It was thought to have formulas and designs for all sorts of haggish inventions and creations. That is why the Guardians fought so hard in the Beyond, to keep it from Nyra and the Pure Ones, and why we helped them.”
    Sveep knew that Gyllbane and Coryn were about as close as a wolf and an owl could be. It was Gyllbane who had been there when Coryn had retrieved the Ember of Hoole. “And tell me, Sveep,” the wolf continued, “the other owl—what did the puffin say it looked like?”
    “Terrible. The puffin said he wasn’t sure if it was a Great Horned, a Barn Owl, or what. He thought maybe a Barn Owl, but its feathers were dark and raggedy atthe ends. Almost black like a crow’s and when it turned its face, it was terribly scarred.”
    Namara lowered her head and shook it back and forth mournfully. “How has this happened? Cody can’t have died in vain. It can’t be true.” But she knew it was. Somehow an evil had started to seep back into their peaceful universe. What was the word owls used? Nachtmagen? Yes, nachtmagen was… The wolf could not finish the thought. She trotted out of the Gadderheal. A full moon blazed in the sky. She stood in a silver column of its light and, throwing her head back, began to howl the strange mad music of wolves. These were not the cries of mourning. Of this much even Sveep could tell. Savage and untamed, this was a howl of rage.
    Namara’s wolves stirred in their dens, and the wind carried her howls to those more distant clans. No other creatures knew the meaning of the wolves’ howling. They only knew that once it started, it did not end for hours. The grizzly bear, the moose, the caribou, the jack-rabbits, the birds that flew overhead, felt the song drill into every part of their beings. But what did it mean, this wild song? For that is what the other creatures of the Beyond called it. They would whisper to one another in their dens or burrows, “They are wild singing again.” “It’s the moon,” one would say. Then another would argue,“No, it’s not the moon. It can be moonless and still they sing.” “They’re crazy!” another might say.
    But the wolves were anything but crazy. They were among the most organized and methodical of animals in everything they did, from how they hunted to their strategies for traveling to the rearing of their young. Their howling was as systematic as any language, and through it they could convey an enormous range of information. Now on this night hundreds of wolves began to leave their dens and form byrrgises. So the call had gone out to