Read Online The Siege by Kathryn Lasky - Free Book Online

course, had been planned with this in mind. If they arrived near the end of the dwenking, the Chaw of Chaws would have four dark nights before the moon would, as it began once more to fatten and grow bright, batter their exposed heads, dull their brains, and make still their gizzards. These four days would give them some time to figure things out.
    It was different being an almost mature owl as opposed to an owlet, as Soren and Gylfie were when they had last been at St. Aggie’s. There were only two stone pits fornewly arrived larger owls, whereas there were least a dozen pits to accommodate the hundreds of owlets. Four members of the Chaw of Chaws were together in one pit, and three in another. Twilight, Soren, and Ruby were in a stone pit watched by an Eastern Screech who had just received his name, Mook, and had dispensed with his number. He was quite full of himself, strutting around snapping commands and making dire threats about the consequences of asking questions. Wh words— what, why, when, where, or any question at all—were strictly forbidden at St. Aggie’s. But that did not prohibit Skench from calling the seven owls out of their stone pits at various times day or night to ask them endless questions about the Northern Kingdoms. During these sessions, Soren noticed Otulissa’s struggle to contain her vast knowledge of those kingdoms and their ways.
    Soren had been given the number 82-85. He couldn’t remember what his previous number had been. He did remember, however, his old pit guardian Finny, or Auntie, as she had insisted on being called. She had turned out to be the most brutal owl Soren had encountered at St. Aggie’s. He dreaded meeting up with her again.
    Finny had caused Hortense’s death. Hortense was the most courageous owl Soren and Gylfie had ever met, butwhen they had first arrived, it appeared that Hortense was the most perfectly moon blinked of all the owlets. Her number had been 12-8.
    Odd, Soren thought. He could remember Hortense’s number and not his own. It had turned out that she was not an owlet at all, but a fully mature Spotted Owl, small for her years, with slightly crippled wings. And she was a double agent. Assigned to the hatchery as a broody, she had been sneaking some of the eggs snatched by St. Aggie’s patrols and delivering them secretly to two huge bald eagles who returned them to the forest kingdoms—in some cases, the very nests from which they had been taken. But then she had been discovered. From a split in the rock where Soren and Gylfie hid, they had witnessed the terrible battle that had raged between one of the eagles against Finny, Skench, Spoorn, Jatt, and Jutt. They could not see it all, but they could hear the horrendous fight. Soren would never forget the voice of Hortense growing dimmer and dimmer as she fell from the high outcropping, pushed, they knew, by Auntie. And then Auntie’s words in her cooing voice, “Bye-bye, 12-8, you fool.” The last two words had become a snarl that scalded the night.
    Oh, Glaux! Soren did not want to see Auntie ever again.
    But that was not to be the case.
    Four days passed. Then came the first evening of sleep marches. Along with the hundreds of newly snatched owlets, the older owls were herded into the glaucidium. Each member of the Chaw of Chaws knew by heart and by gizzard his or her own saga of the Ga’Hoolian legend cycle. They knew, perhaps not as well, the sagas of others. Martin stood near Soren and looked up at the newing moon.
    That I would ever fear the moon? Martin thought. How extraordinary! He tipped his head up. There would be new constellations in this part of the world, for they were far to the south of Hoolemere and the Island of Hoole. He had learned about these constellations in navigation class with Strix Struma, the navigation ryb, but had never actually seen them or traced them with his wing tips as they did in class with her.
    It did not seem long before the sleep alarm sounded and the owls