The Siege. Kathryn Lasky

of Ezylryb that he had nearly died in this last battle. “I thought the Northern Kingdoms were known for their warriors, not their pilgrims.”

      “Owls of the Northern Kingdoms are very fierce, but one can be fierce in love and in peace as well as in hatred and in battle.”

      Glaux, this owl frinked him off. Made him want to yarp a dozen pellets right in his ugly face. “I see,” Kludd said. But of course he didn’t see at all. Still, sometimes diplomacy was necessary. And this was what Kludd considered a diplomatic response to an owl that made his gizzard turn green.

      “Well, why don’t you fly off and get me some good red meat, nice and furry, good bones — my gizzard needs something to grind.” And I need time to think.

      The Northern Kingdoms! The mere mention of them by the disgusting Brown Fish Owl had set Kludd’s mind ablaze. He had to plan carefully now. The capture of the old Whiskered Screech Ezylryb had failed miserably. Of course, one could hardly have called it a great scheme. No, the great scheme had been to build a force large enough to lay siege to St Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls, better known as St Aggie’s. The academy had been snatching owlets for years and training them to mine flecks, among other things. With flecks, one could create weapons of unbelievable power. Not simply weapons that killed, but weapons that could warp the minds of owls. St Aggie’s had the largest known supply of flecks. But the owls of St Aggie’s didn’t know what to do with them.

      Still, ignorant as they were, they had found the stronghold of the Pure Ones in the castle ruins and tried to make off with the owlets that Kludd and scores of Tytos had captured. The Pure Ones, of course, fought back to recover what was in their minds rightfully theirs. This resulted in the Great Downing. Scores of baby owls dropped while the two powerful and lawless forces battled it out. And it was the Great Downing that had alerted the owl world – in particular, those noble owls known as the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, who rose in the darkness of the night from the Great Ga’Hoole Tree – that there was something out there more fearful than St Aggie’s.

      Before the Great Downing, the organisation of the Pure Ones had been secret, and this state afforded them valuable time and opportunity to build their forces and develop their strategies. The Great Downing had brought the Ga’Hoolian owls out in full force. And, most significantly, it had brought out the legendary warrior from the Northern Kingdoms, known there as Lyze of Kiel and now in the Southern Kingdoms as Ezylryb. But it was not Lyze of Kiel the warrior who had interested Kludd. It was Ezylryb the scholar. It was said that this owl had the deepest knowledge of everything – from weather to fire, from poetry to the very elements of life and the earth. And this owl best understood the lurking powers of the flecks.

      So when the Pure Ones had lost the owlets, their source for new owl power, Kludd had abruptly decided to change tactics. The capture of one owl like Ezylryb would be worth more than one hundred baby owls. The only way he could think of capturing the old one was through a Devil’s Triangle. By placing three bags of flecks in three different trees to form a triangle, Kludd had laid a trap that had ensnared the old Whiskered Screech by causing massive disruptions to his powers of navigation. The flecks set up a magnetic field. That this field had been broken was not only unexpected, but disastrous. And it had been broken. Other owls had come to Ezylryb’s rescue. They had snapped the power of this field as if it had been no more than a brittle twig. Higher magnetics! Ezylryb knew these dark sciences. And that was why Kludd had wanted him.

      There had been a fierce battle with the owls who had come to rescue Ezylryb. Much to Kludd’s horror, one of them had been his own baby brother, Soren, whom he had pushed out of the family’s nest when Soren was an owlet too young to fly. At the time, Kludd thought that he had been delivering up his younger brother to the Grand Tyto Most Pure, for that had been the requirement – to sacrifice a family member and thus assure one’s own admission to the highest ranks of the Pure Ones. But something had gone wrong. St Aggie’s had shown up and taken his brother. Now this very brother had nearly killed him. And not only had the Pure Ones had their new recruits stolen from them, not only had they lost Ezylryb, but their stronghold had been discovered. They needed to find a new place to roost, a headquarters from which to plan their war for supremacy.

      Well, no need to think about all that now. There were other more important matters – like higher magnetics. All this time, Kludd thought, I have dreamed of flecks, of controlling the owl universe and making it pure. I have dreamed of conquering St Aggie’s, with its great reservoirs of flecks and its thousands of owls to mine them. And then I dreamed of capturing Ezylryb. But now I know what I must do. I must lay siege to the great tree on the Island of Hoole, in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere. Yes, the Great Ga’Hoole Tree must be ours, with its secrets of fire and magnetics, with its warriors and its scholars, it must be ours. I shall bide my time. I shall gain my strength. I shall find my scattered army and then we shall rise – rise a thousand times more powerful than we ever were, against the Guardians of Ga’Hoole.

      “A nice plump vole for you, sir. Strong bones and plenty of fur. Its winter pelt is fully grown. That should set your gizzard grinding just fine.” The Brown Fish Owl pilgrim had just returned.

      Yes, and so will you, pilgrim. For Kludd had decided that upon regaining his strength, he would kill this owl immediately. His own survival must remain a secret for some time if all his plans were to work. Yes, by tomorrow with the vole’s bones like grist in his gizzard, he would be ready to kill the stinking Brown Fish Owl. Kludd, like the best of killers, was patient.

CHAPTER TWO

       The Watcher in the woods

      Some might have thought her a scroom, a ghost owl, but she was not. Her feathers had turned a misty grey colour with spots of white. She was, indeed, a Spotted Owl, but an odd one. She had perched in a tree not far from the sycamore. Her wings, slightly crippled, made long flights difficult and, when she did fly, her path was often crooked. Nonetheless, she went out scouting every day.

      She was almost invisible to the others in Ambala. When they saw her, which was seldom, they called her Mist. But although she was not often seen, she seemed to see all. When she sensed danger or saw something disturbing, she flew to the eagles with whom she shared a nest. In the past, there had been slipgizzles to keep an eye on such things. But since the Barred Owl who had watched in the borderlands between The Beaks and Ambala had been murdered, there had been no one. Now the owl called Mist sensed that there was great peril nearby.

      She had watched the strange sight a few nights before when a smouldering owl had plunged into the lake. She had seen the pilgrim owl rescue it and had been amazed when she observed the pilgrim flying out to fetch leeches. She could not imagine how that owl had survived its plunge, let alone the embers that encrusted its face. But it must have, for the next day she had seen the good pilgrim go out hunting, and had heard him fretting over finding a vole. He was muttering to himself in a taut voice that the injured owl had demanded meat and not fish. Mist could not imagine how that owl could be so demanding of the pilgrim who had saved his life. And now she watched as the pilgrim went out several times each day and always for red meat – rat, vole, squirrel, but never fish.

      She had become more and more curious about the owl recovering in the hollow of the sycamore. How close did she dare come? Most animals in this forest, especially owls, never really saw her. They looked through her. To them she appeared like fog or mist. But even when they did see her, they never seemed to recognise her as an owl, or as any creature they knew. And this was fine with her. The only ones who did know her were the eagles with whom she lived, Zan and Streak.

      So she crept forwards on the branch of the fir tree where she perched. It was a short flight to the spruce that grew next to the sycamore where the wounded owl was recovering. A few minutes later, she lighted down on to the spruce. There was one branch that extended further than the others and nearly touched the sycamore. From this branch she had a perfect view into the hollow where the wounded owl rested.

      The Spotted Owl gasped at what she saw. The injured owl was immense