Read Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning for Free Online

most complete history of the War of the Ice Claws and other wars, too. I need to study the strategy, you know, for the invasion plan of St. Aggie’s. After all, it is my plan that we are going to use and that was why I was sent here by the parliament. They’re counting on us, Gylfie.”
    Us; she said “us.” Gylfie supposed it was nice of Otulissa to include her. But it was Otulissa’s plan that the owls of Ga’Hoole were most likely to implement in the coming invasion. The Chaw of Chaws was not here in the Northern Kingdoms solely to recruit owls to fight, as Soren was doing in the Firth of Fangs, but to study the strategies of invasion.
    If this invasion did indeed take place, it would be thelargest in the history of owlkind—staggering in size, epic in significance. In one night, thousands of owls of all kinds would cross seventy leagues from the Island of Hoole to the canyonlands of St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls. The land of this region was cut by deep ravines. It bristled with rocky spires and needles. It appeared barren of trees, rivers, or lakes. But it was rich in one thing: the deadly flecks that could destroy owls’ minds.
    St. Aggie’s had fallen and was now held by the most dangerous owls on earth, the Pure Ones. The Pure Ones were smart. They knew enough about flecks to be able to destroy any owls that flew against them and challenged their plan for complete dominion over the owl universe.
    Only a massive invasion of the canyonlands could finish their tyranny forever. It would be an invasion requiring the help of many allies. And the very best of these allies were to be found in the Northern Kingdoms. Otulissa had been given the task of studying all she could about fleckasia and the battle strategies implemented during the War of the Ice Claws. And the best place to do that was here in the magnificent library of the Glauxian Brothers’ retreat.
    Life at the retreat followed a fairly unvarying routine. The hours of the night were spent in meditative flight rather than practicing the kinds of skills that were constantly being honed at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. The brothers tradedknowledge and their skills with herbs for live coals from rogue colliers. They rotated hunting chores and had no real need for navigation since they rarely left the region of their retreat. Gylfie was eternally grateful that the brothers’ retreat was not underground like the Glauxian Sisters’ but in the hollows of the ring of birch trees. The evening meal, tweener, was always followed by several hours of meditative flight. When the brothers returned to the retreat, they broke up into the study hollows to pursue their scholarly interests in herbs, literature, and science.
    The silence in the dining hollow on this particular evening was as thick as ever. As Otulissa and Gylfie entered they noticed once again a very peculiar-looking old Whiskered Screech huddled in a corner eating with the help of nurselike attendants, a Short-eared Owl and an elderly Kielian snake who was constantly flicking up some sort of dark red juice from a goblet with his forked tongue. Gylfie was not sure why the snake stuck so close to the old Whiskered Screech. But both Gylfie and Otulissa had noticed that on the meditative flights the Short-eared Owl accompanied the old owl. Gylfie felt there was something vaguely familiar about the decrepit old one, but she could not figure out what. Apparently, the code of silence was not always practiced with this owl, forGylfie often saw the attendant whispering something in his ear. She supposed that perhaps, for the frail and elderly, exceptions were permitted. However, she had never seen the owl speak a word in response. Indeed, the old thing seemed to be lost in a daze, his yellow eyes permanently set on some invisible horizon. The more she saw of this old owl, the more he reminded her of someone. She decided that tonight she would try to fly near him and his attendants during the meditation