Guardians of Ga'Hoole: To Be A King Read Online Free PDF Page B

urged.
    “There are rumors of a young upstart—an owl, not a hagsfiend—from someplace far north of the Firth of Fangs, but no one is quite sure who he is. If he has an alliance with hagsfiends, it is not known at this time.” Joss paused. “And finally, I fear that I have some troubling news for Strix Strumajen.”
    “Oh, dear!” Grank groaned deeply. “What is it?”
    “Her daughter, Emerilla, has been lost in a skirmish over the Ice Fangs.”
    “Lost, you say?” Grank blinked at Joss. “But not killed?”
    “Not as far as we know, sir. There were a great number of hagsfiends in the battle and if they had killed her,well, you know…” Nothing further needed to be said, for they all knew of the ghoulish practices of hagsfiends in battle.
    “Call her mother here immediately,” Hoole said.
    As soon as Strix Strumajen entered the hollow and spied Joss, she seemed to know. Her feathers flattened and she wilfed to nearly half her size. “She’s dead. My dear Emerilla is dead.”
    “Not dead, milady,” Joss said softly. “Missing…for now.”
    “There was no…no…head?” she asked quietly.
    Hoole’s gizzard clenched. How hard it must be for this owl to suddenly refer to her daughter as simply a head.
    “No, ma’am. No head.”
    Strix Strumajen recovered a bit. Her feathers plumped up slightly. She turned to Hoole. “She is a dear young owl, and you know, Your Grace, Emerilla’s gift for interpreting weather was—” she hesitated “—is even greater than mine. She would be such an addition to the tree.”
    Hoole made a short flight from one perch to another in his hollow. Above this perch was a somewhat crude map that one of the members of the H’rathian Guard had brought with him from the N’yrthghar. “The Ice Fangs, I don’t see it here.”
    “It’s off the Bay of Fangs. It isn’t on this map. It was a short but brutal battle that took place there,” Joss said.
    Strix Strumajen shook her head. “She wanted to go into battle so badly. I felt she was too young. But then you, Hoole, are about the same age as she. Siv and I laid our eggs during the same moon cycle. Emerilla was determined to fight, after her father was killed over the Ice Dagger. We all thought that she was too small to manage one of the long scimitars. But, by Glaux, if she didn’t go harvest herself a small blade from the issen vingtygg. It took courage to use, for it required close fighting. She was so quick with it. So bold!” Strix Strumajen’s dark amber eyes filled with tears.
    Hoole dropped his beak and ran it through the feathers on his chest. He was thinking very hard and coming to the edge of an important idea. He looked up and blinked at the three owls. “I don’t want us to lose another owl to these hagsfiends and tyrants. We must act now. If we do not take the battle to them, they will bring the battle to us, to the tree.”
    “Whoever chooses the battlefield wins the battle,” Grank said in a low, gravelly voice.
    “Precisely!” Hoole nodded. “But I am choosing more than one battlefield.”
    “More than one, sir?” Grank blinked. “Is that wise?”
    “Well, you see…” Hoole swiveled his head slowly.“Not all of them will appear to be battlefields. Not all of them will require the same amount of power or resources, but they will be crucial to our ultimate victory.”
    “I don’t follow, sir,” said Joss.
    “Let me explain.” Hoole pointed to the map of the N’yrthghar and lifted it with his talons to reveal another equally crude map of the S’yrthghar. “We must deal with three realms essentially—that of the N’yrthghar, the S’yrthghar, and our own realm here at the great tree. In one realm, we must fight,” he said, pointing to the spot where the great palace of the H’rathghar glacier rose out of the N’yrthghar ice fields. “In another, we must train.” He tapped the tiny island in the vast sea of the Southern Kingdoms. “And here”—he swept his four talons lightly