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

feather. “The Striga’s?”
    Otulissa flew closer and squinted with her only eye. “Oh, dear!” she said softly. Cleve was confused. Otulissa sounded disappointed. “It’s blue, but unfortunately it’s not turquoise enough; it’s not the Striga’s, but that of another blue owl!”
    “You’re saying that there might be more blue owls involved?” Cleve asked hesitantly.
    Otulissa nodded. “On my visit to the Middle Kingdom I noticed that the owls were not all the same shade of blue. Their plumage varied from turquoise to sapphire to emerald. The Striga’s feathers are definitely in the turquoise range. You might have noticed that Tengshu’s tend more toward cobalt.”
    “You think another owl from the Middle Kingdom has come here?”
    “I fear so.” Then the Spotted Owl’s single eye seemed to focus on something. “What’s that?” she exclaimed. She rushed to a corner of the ice cave. From behind, Cleve saw her wilf.
    “Otulissa, dear, what is it?” He rushed to her side and looked down. “Oh, no!” They were both transfixed by the fragments of the shell of a dark and peculiaregg. There was a smear on the ice of some viscous fluid—now frozen—and close by lay a pulpy mass. Otulissa bent closer.
    “Something nearly came to life here—then failed.” Otulissa’s voice trembled. Although the remnants were frozen, a rank odor hung in the air above the mess. “A mis-hatch.”
    “But not just any mis-hatch,” Cleve said. He had taken a sliver of ice and was poking at the half-frozen blob on the floor of the cave.
    “Incipient beak,” Otulissa murmured.
    “Some embryonic feather shafts, rather long,” Cleve whispered.
    “Some ocular cells—but such a bright yellow!” Otulissa’s voice registered shock.
    Otulissa turned slowly toward Cleve. “You’re right. No ordinary mis-hatch. It was to be a hagsfiend! But something scared the ‘mother’ off, if whatever brooded over such an egg can be called a mother. She tried to escape with the egg but it broke.”
    “Let’s hope this was the only egg,” Cleve said.
    “Well, I don’t think we can be sure. They might have rescued others.”
    “Where would they have taken them, though?” Cleve asked.
    “Perhaps to the old Ice Cliff Palace where Siv took the egg of Hoole.” Otulissa spoke in an almost trance-like voice. “Just like in the legends.”
    “Surely they would not know about that, Otulissa,” Cleve said.
    “Why not? You forget that at one time, before we knew how terrible the Striga was, he had Coryn’s confidence and the run of our library. They spent long evenings together. Coryn could have told him the stories of the legends. Siv finding refuge in the Ice Cliff Palace with her egg and her faithful servant, Myrrthe. It was all written down in the first legend by Grank.”
    “Of course,” Cleve replied in a low tremulous voice. “Grank, the first collier.”
    “And as far as the Book of Kreeth, well, I said that I had the book under lock and key, but who knows—perhaps Coryn was reading it and the Striga glanced at it. And for a brief time before the Battle of the Book, it was in Nyra’s possession.”
    “We have to get a message back to the great tree and inform them of what we have found.”
    There was a Jossian unit messenger stationed on the Ice Dagger. Otulissa and Cleve left immediately to report this latest and most dire news.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stirrings in the Dragon Court
    F ar away, in the Middle Kingdom of Jouzhenkyn, Taya, a blue owl who served as a page in the Dragon Court of the Panqua Palace, was troubled. She had been a page for perhaps one hundred years and recently had detected currents of—for lack of a better word—energy among the court owls. She had never before felt such currents there. Was it restlessness? Such disquiet was almost unimaginable amid the thick lethargy of the Dragon Court owls. Their vanity linked with their dullness of wit had kept them subdued. The excessive pride they took in their plumage had led them to grow their feathers to such extravagant lengths that they could hardly fly, and for the most part were towed about the jeweled interior of the palace by bearers. There had been the unfortunate incident of Orlando, who had managed to pluck his feathers secretly untilthey were a reasonable length for flight and then escaped. How he had ever managed to learn how to fly was still a mystery. But as far as Taya knew, the other owls of the Dragon Court were too listless to