Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

to the Great Tree.” His voice was now barely a whisper. Soren and his nephew tipped their heads closer to the old ryb’s beak. “It brings great promise…and great danger. Ignorance is perhaps the source of all evil. Forget battle claws, forget ice swords and ice daggers. Knowledge is the most powerful weapon of all. It is vitally important that you know how we came to be, the stories even older than the cantos, the legends of Ga’Hoole. You must learn from that brilliant prince, that knight in the times of magic, who became our king Hoole, and whose ember, you, Coryn, and you alone, retrieved from the volcanoes of Beyond the Beyond. You must both read the oldest of the legends.”
    “We’ll go to the library at once, sir,” Coryn replied.
    “No, no.” He shook that mangled foot with more vigor than he had shown in a long time. “They are not in the library. They are here in a secret place in this hollow.” He nodded at Soren. “He knows.”
    Yes, Soren did know. Within this hollow, there was a secret chamber that Soren and Gylife had discovered years before. It was where they had found Ezylryb’s old battle claws, the ones that Ezylryb gave to Soren when he made Soren his ward. And there were books in that chamber and ancient scrolls from Ezylryb’s homeland, the ancient Northern Kingdoms.
    “Read them. Read them and learn,” Ezylryb said. “Read them and know where we came from…and what we must guard against. The future is yours if…”
    But he never finished what he had begun to say. His amber eyes slid back in his head. His beak was still. There was one last shallow breath. Then a light breeze blew through the hollow and with it a spirit passed. The old ryb was dead.
    It was not until three days later after the Final ceremonies that Octavia led Coryn and Soren into the small hidden chamber behind Ezylryb’s main hollow. Soren fetched the first of three ancient tomes. The two owls bent over the dusty old book. They had to squint to make out the faded gold letters of the title inscribed on the mouseleather cover. T HE L EGENDS OF G A ’H OOLE , and then beneath this in smaller letters: T HE F IRST C OLLIER .
    Soren opened the book and looked at his young nephew. They would read it together, slowly, carefully. And although they would both be learning together, Soren knew that now he must become the ryb, the teacher, the guide to this young owl who was king.

CHAPTER ONE
Grank I Am
    C all me Grank. I am an old owl now as I set down these words but this story must be told, or at least begun before I pass on. Times are different now than they were when I was young. I was born into a time of chaos and everlasting wars. It was a time of magic and strange enchantments, a time of warring clans and warring kingdoms, a time of savagery and evil spirits, and worst of all, a time of hagsfiends. The days of old King H’rathmore, the High King of all of the N’yrthghar, were dark days, indeed. Lords and chieftains and petty princes raged against him and against one another, fracturing these kingdoms as surely as the summer breaks the frozen seas into the bergs and shards and floes of ice.
    The lust for war carried from one generation to the next until there seemed no escaping it. When King H’rathmore died his young son, H’rath, then became High King. And I, being of noble birth, and dearest friend of King H’rath and his mate, Queen Siv, was drawn in deeperand deeper to this world of blood and battle, of intrigue and anarchy. It was not to my liking—unlike young King H’rath I was not the fiercest of soldiers. But I did serve him well as a confidant, and often as emissary to a restless clan or disaffected lord. I was, in truth, better with words than with the ice weapons with which the owls of the N’yrthghar fought. Better at planning strategy than rallying troops for battle. I had neither an affinity nor a temperament for this world of blood and battle, of intrigue and anarchy. And yet I felt duty bound to stay at my young king’s side to help him unite his fractured kingdom, to resist and perhaps annihilate the hagsfiends and their insidious magic.
    But even chaos has its rhythms and ongoing wars have their idle interludes, their moments of fragile peace. And it was during these times that I often ventured off by myself to explore matters far removed from those of war. You see, Good Owl, you must understand that even though H’rath, Siv, and I grew up the closest of friends and shared so