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

devise a mighty strategy for smashing the combined forces of Nyra and the Striga, for those two were not settling down to raise a family but to conjure an army from hagsmire itself. So Coryn had plunged into reading every account he could find of past wars that the Guardians had fought. He analyzed battle strategies, the deployment of forces, and the use of NCWs—Non-Clawed Weaponry. He even reread the legends for the battle lore. Coryn sensed, as had Soren, that it was not a battle but a war they were heading into. Yes, it would be wonderful if they could get the ember to safety. But what did that mean finally? Could the ember ever truly be safe? Unless… He did not finish the thought.
    He suddenly felt the need of company and summoned Mrs. Plithiver to his hollow.
    “Ah, Mrs. P., good to see you,” he said when she arrived.
    “Always my pleasure, sir.” She made a waggling little dip with her rose-colored head.
    “Mrs. P., can I offer you some milkberry tea?”
    “Oh no, sir. No, thank you.” Mrs. Plithiver was an old-school nest-maid snake. She did not believe that servants should indulge in such liberties as dining at the same table as their masters and mistresses.
    “You had something to discuss, sir?”
    “Oh, Mrs. Plithiver, I wish you would just call me Coryn.” It had taken Coryn forever to stop her from addressing him as “Your Majesty.”
    “Yes, Coryn.” Just the manner in which she said his name made it sound like Your Majesty.
    “Mrs. P., I have been reading Ezylryb’s account of the War of Fire and Ice. I found the part about owlipoppen and how they were used to dupe the enemy amazing.”
    “Yes, very effective, sir…I mean, Coryn.”
    “I was wondering how they ever made so many of the little dolls.”
    “Oh, it was Audrey’s doing. She is head of the weavers’ guild, although all of us helped out.”
    They sipped tea in silence for some minutes. Mrs. P. sensed that he simply needed quiet company and his talk of owlipoppen was of no import. She saw him glance more than once at the flames in his grate.
    A small thrill went though Mrs. P. when she realized her company was essential to him. She had worried that when the others had gone off he might feel left behind and sink into the gollymopes. Coryn was an owl whose gizzard had a melancholy turn. Mrs. P., like all blind nest-maid snakes, had developed her other sensibilities to a level of extreme refinement, and she was relieved to detect in Coryn no melancholy at all during the last few nights, but a new energy, a concentration, and a resolve. And yet, did she not sense just now, as she slithered from the hollow while Coryn stepped over to poke the fire in the grate, a trace of doubt hovering somewhere in his gizzard?
    Small flames leaped up, casting shadows throughout the hollow, but Coryn kept his eyes focused on the rich central planes of one flame in particular. He knew he would not find any answers to his questions. The flames rarely yielded definitive answers. They could only suggest possibilities: truths, but confusing ones. He remembered his very first experiences in looking into a fire and realizing that there was some kind of meaninghidden there. It was in the flames over his father’s bones that he had first seen the shape and the flickering colors of the Ember of Hoole. Of course, at the time he did not know the meaning of what he’d seen. But later those same flames revealed a truth he half suspected—that his father, Kludd, had not been murdered savagely by Soren, as his mother had told him, but had fallen in battle, and that Twilight had delivered the fatal wound in a war that was entirely the fault of the Pure Ones. Nyra had told him nothing but lies—lies about his father, lies about the Pure Ones, and most of all, lies about his uncle and the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. Now, as he stared into the fire once again, he knew he was looking for simple answers to questions he could not help asking. What, he thought, shall I do if the H’ryth refuses to let us bring the ember to the owlery at the Mountain of Time? What then?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Splendid Isolation—No More!
    Y ou expect us to give refuge to this ember?”
    Tengshu had never seen the H’ryth in such a rage. The stream of green light flowing from his eyes, which signified deep wisdom, had intensified. “Do you know what has happened since you’ve been gone? What I have just this morning been informed of?” The plumage on the H’ryth’s head had been