Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue by authors_sort Page A

way connected with Ezylryb’s disappearance. Soren wrestled with his question all through their daytime sleep and finally, just before First Black when he noticed that the Snowy was stirring, he decided he just had to ask.
    He flew down to where the blacksmith was taking some coals from a niche in the wall to build up her forging fire.
    “I knew you’d come and ask,” the Snowy Owl said. Soren blinked. “You want to know if Metal Beak had something to do with Ezylryb.”
    “Yes. How did you know?”
    “Never mind that,” she snapped. “The fact is I’m not sure, but Ezylryb, well, how to explain? Ezylryb has a past. He is a legend. He does have enemies.”
    “Enemies?” This was unbelievable to Soren. Ezylryb never went into battle. This was a well-known fact at the great tree. He might be gruff, but he was the most nonviolentowl imaginable. How could such an owl have enemies? He didn’t even own battle claws. In fact, he once said he despised them. Thought the owl kingdoms were becoming much too dependent on them. “Give them books, give them tasty milkberry tarts, teach them to cook, teach them the ways of Ga’Hoole,” he had said to the owl parliament, “and every cantankerous owl will be on our side.” Ezylryb violent! It’s absurd.
    “One last question,” Soren said.
    “Yes?”
    “Why do they call that owl Metal Beak?”
    “He got half his face torn off in a battle. A rogue smith had to make him a mask and a new beak.”
    Soren felt as if he might be sick.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Flint Mops
    I t’s the part about Octavia not being born blind that absolutely blows my gizzard,” Gylfie was saying.
    “It’s the enemies thing for me,” Digger said. “It’s unbelievable that the rogue smith told Soren that Ezylryb has enemies, and that’s why Metal Beak might be connected to his disappearance.”
    “I know,” Soren said, “that’s what gets me, too.”
    They had returned to the great tree. No one seemed to have missed them and now, in their hollow, Gylfie, Twilight, Soren, and Digger were reviewing and telling Eglantine all they had learned from the rogue smith of Silverveil. They really weren’t sure if they had learned that much. They were, in truth, still quite mystified. Were they any closer to Metal Beak? Was there any chance of them actually being able to do something about the scrooms’ warning?
    “Tell me about the rogue smith’s forge again?” This was about the fourth time Eglantine had asked. For some reason,she was fascinated by their description of this place. So Soren began once more to describe how the stones were stacked in walls, walls that the Snowy thought might have enclosed a garden.
    “Did she say anything else?”
    Twilight sighed as if he was extremely bored with this conversation, but Soren felt that answering Eglantine’s interminable questions was the least he could do for his little sister after making her stay back at the tree.
    “What do you mean by anything else?”
    “Did she say what it might have been other than a garden?”
    “Well, now that I remember she actually did say that it could have been a walled garden that was part of a castle.”
    “A castle!” Eglantine’s eyes blinked.
    “You know, one of those things that the Others built.”
    “Yes, I know…” Eglantine responded in a tremulous voice.
    She suddenly seemed very agitated. “What’s wrong, Eglantine?” Soren asked.
    “I’m not sure. It’s just that the way you described those stones, those walls remind me of something.”
    Soren suddenly remembered that when Eglantine was still in her state of shock after her rescue and could not even recognize him, her own brother, that it was a colorfulpiece of isinglass, or mica, as it was also called, that had jolted Eglantine out of her numbed state. Mags, the magpie trader who sometimes came to the tree with her odd bits scavenged from various journeys, had brought the fragment. When someone had held the isinglass up to the moon, the thin,