The First Collier (4 page)

When I finally returned to the Beyond after the lemming hunt, I had every hope that this would be an extended stay, for a fragile peace still reigned in the N’yrthghar. I had negotiated extended ice rights in the Firth of Fangs for King H’rath; at the same time, there was a sharp decline in hagsfiends’ insurgencies, which Lord Arrin claimed credit for. All this boded well. Or so I thought.

Shortly after I had come back, I was flying over a volcano on the northwest side of the ring. This particular volcano had not been active for some time, and Fengo and I were thinking of moving one of our fires close to it as there were some good sand beds nearby, and sand was the main ingredient of gloss. I had not thought of the owl ember for a long time. I had truly cleared my mind of it. But as I was circling around this volcano, I saw a peculiar transformation taking place. It appeared as if the sides of the volcano were beginning to turn to gloss. I could see right through it. Was I having a vision? I knew that my firesight had become much keener since I had been coming to the Beyond, but this was very odd, not simply a
vision. I was seeing something deep within the volcano itself. It was orange with a lick of blue at its center, circled with green. My gizzard flinched. It was the Ember of Hoole!

I forgot the sand beds I had come to examine, altered course, and flew directly over the crater. When I looked down, I saw a sea of boiling lava, but it suddenly grew still and calm. Then in a bubble of the lava on the surface, I spotted the ember rocking gently. It was as if it were beckoning to me.
Mine!
I thought.
Mine for the taking.
I began to fly up. I was looking for a cool gap, or a downdraft to power my spiraling plunge. I quickly found it, laid back my wings, and dived into the crater. I felt no heat. I felt nothing.

Within seconds I climbed the thermals back out of the crater and landed in a nearby sand pit. I was exhausted. Exhausted but exhilarated. I had the ember in my talons. The power of the thing seemed to surge through me. I don’t know if I fell into a sleep or into some unconscious state, but when I awoke Fengo was standing over me.

“So you have it,” he said drily. He did not sound joyful. Indeed, there was something dismal in his tone. But I ignored it. I would not let any creature mar this moment, tarnish my joy, my elation, my power. If I’d had powers before, they now felt magnified a thousand times over.
“Look,” I said, “it continues to glow just as hot as when I first got it, even though it sits in sand and not fire.”

“That is the nature of the ember,” Fengo said. There was a dullness to his voice, a dullness tinged with regret. I could not stop staring at the ember. My obsession was not satisfied, my fascination not dimmed. I felt the ember’s magic niggle into my gizzard and take hold of me. Thus, began my strange interlude. I still worked with Fengo to discover new things we could do with fire and rocks, fire and sand, and even fire and water. But we did not make much progress. It was not simply that my gizzard wasn’t in it. It was as if I had slipped into a trance. The exposure to the ember had increased my firesight incredibly, but it seemed I could not act upon what I saw. It did not move me.

And here is what I saw, beginning with my first glimpse into the coal. I know not how long this vision went on, for once more I had entered a timeless place.

I saw one of King H’rath’s most skillful ice harvesters, a Burrowing Owl named H’rooth, suddenly plummet in flight. I saw a hagsfiend slice off his head, raise it on an ice blade, and fly off into the dark sky with blood streaming through the night air like a wild river, turning the stars and the moon red. I saw other ice harvesters falling, their severed heads caught on the sharp points of curved ice
scythes, the kind always carried by hagsfiends. And the hagsfiends flying off screeching, with gruesome trophies of murder, their ragged dark wings blacker than any night.

What could this mean? I had thought the hagsfiends had retreated, particularly from the Firth of Fangs where Lord Arrin claimed to have put down their insurrections so successfully. But then it all suddenly became clear to me: I saw Pleek, a Great Horned Owl, long an enemy of Hrath’s and known to consort with hagsfiends. Indeed, it was rumored that Pleek had taken one as a mate. Her name was Ygryk. In the ember, I saw them flying with Lord Arrin’s knights.

It was unthinkable that Lord Arrin, the chieftain I had so recently visited, was attacking King H’rath’s ice harvesters, the very ice harvesters for whom I had negotiated ice rights. Had it all been a trick to lure these owls into Lord Arrin’s realm so he could kill them and thus deprive the High King of weapons and able knights? I saw all of this but I was not moved. I felt no alarm, not even the mildest stirring of my gizzard. It did not touch me. I did nothing. I saw Lord Arrin’s troops of vassals, knights, and even hireclaws massing on a northern point of the Firth of Fangs with Pleek’s fiercest lieutenants leading them. I saw Lord Arrin himself dispatching hagsfiend scouts in
the direction of the Hrath’ghar ridge. And this could mean only one thing. Invasion.

For all my ability to see the treachery of Lord Arrin in the present and to glimpse the disasters in the near future, I did nothing. I was suspended in a kind of void. When I was not looking into the flames of the fires that Fengo and I built, I was staring into the ember. This went on for some time. I knew deep in my gizzard that my inaction meant disaster for my two closest friends, King H’rath and Queen Siv, and still I did nothing.

For nights and nights, moon cycle after moon cycle, I remained in that peculiar numb state. In truth, I was no longer a creature of time. For all my powers, I was not aware of its passage. I drifted apart from Fengo. Or perhaps he left me out of boredom and disgust. I heard him sneer one day when I had become too lazy to try a new rock in the fire, “Go on, go stare at the ember.” He would never say “your ember.” It was always just “the ember.” This alone should have given me a hint.

Then one night, Joss came with a message from the N’yrthghar. He arrived, breathing hard, his feathers shredded on their leading edges from the harsh weather that had set in.

“It’s a message from your king!” Fengo growled. I continued to stare into the ember. “Your king is calling you, Grank.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Joss asked, staring at me.

Fengo did not answer him but walked up between the ember and me. He butted me with his head, then pointed his tail straight out and the hackles on the back of his neck stood erect. He was threatening me again. Humiliating me in front of a servant of the king. For me, the king’s closest advisor, to be treated this way was unthinkable. But did I care? Not really.

Joss gave me the message scrawled on a piece of lemming hide. Few owls read, so there was very little danger of anyone understanding the message if Joss had been captured, but still I was warned to “burn this missive after you finish reading it, burn it in those fires you are always studying.” The message was from H’rath, my king and friend. It began:

“These are most grievous times. I sense a deep and devious plot against me. My ice harvesters have not returned from their expedition to the Firth of Fangs. I do not know whom to trust. I fear that some of my oldest allies have joined ranks with hagsfiends. Fragile coalitions with neighboring clans are disintegrating. They all lust for nachtmagen.”

Ha! I almost laughed out loud. Nachtmagen! Hagsfiends’ magic could not compare to mine. It is astonishing that it did not occur to me even then that I had done nothing with my new power except to gaze deeper into the ember to see more and more terrible things. I read on:

“Siv has set an egg.”

I felt a twinge in my gizzard for the first time in a long while.

“Promise me, dear Grank, that if something happens to me, you shall protect my family. Protect Siv, her egg, and when the time comes, the hatchling. But now you must come home. We need you desperately. Should anything happen to me—” The writing broke off. Something must have interrupted him. I dimly remembered seeing something in the fire earlier in the evening—a flood of hagsfiends sweeping down off the ice fortress of Hrath’ghar ridge. Blood.

I took the thin piece of hide and dropped it into the fire. I watched the flames. Yes, a battle was raging. It did not look good for the H’rathian troops. I yawned. I saw Joss look around the camp. It was littered with my yarped pellets. I was living in squalor. I blinked. Then I looked at Joss. “I know all this that is in the message.”

“You do?” Joss said, shocked. “Then why have you not come?”

“I don’t know,” I replied blandly.

Fengo stepped close to me. “Return the ember to the volcano, Grank. It is not for you. Its magic is too strong. You are a good owl, perhaps a mage, but you are not powerful enough to bear exposure to the ember.”

I blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“It is too strong for you and it is too dangerous to chance it falling into the possession of a hagsfiend or an evil owl.”

“Would it not be too strong for them, too?” I asked.

“Yes, but they would use it. And it would magnify their evilness, their nachtmagen. But if by chance a good owl, a noble owl of great grace and great strength would find it, the ember would not be too strong, and he or she would use the magic for the good of all owlkind. You are good, dear friend, but you are not that owl.”

“Then who am I?” I said in a frail voice, and looked around. For just then I seemed to realize I had somehow mislaid my very self.

“You will find yourself when you put the ember back.”

“Put it back?”

“Fly back to the volcano, Grank. Drop the ember into the crater and let it lie buried until an owl is hatched who will use it well.”

And so I did. I felt the power of the ember slip from me the moment I dropped it into that bubbling cauldron of lava. I felt my gizzard expand and realized that for many long days and nights it had been pinched and hard. I felt my self, my real self, seep back. My gizzard quickened. I was ready. The volcano had erupted. The flames scoured the night, turning the moon and the stars crimson. And in those flames I saw terrible things. Things that I had ignored too long. I knew that I must fly back to the N’yrthghar as quickly as possible.

I
t was the season of the N’yrthnookah, which meant that the winds were on the beak. It would be a long trip back, a tough claw-flight. I would have to fly off the wind and claw against the easterly current to keep from being set too far west. The trees grew thickly in the Shadow Forest, so I flew low between them where I would gain some protection from the wind.

I was flooded with memories of H’rath and Siv as I flew back to the N’yrthghar. The three of us had known one another since we were mere hatchlings skidding about on the glaciers, not yet able to fly. We were all of noble birth: H’rath a prince, son of the High King, Siv the daughter of a chieftain, and I myself a prince, though my father was not a High King. It was obvious from the start that H’rath was born to rule. I, however, was not. Nor did I have any desire to become a king or a chieftain. I was of a studious nature, and I realized that I could best serve owlkind not as a chieftain or a warrior but as an advisor. I
sensed from the time that I had my first vision that this strange sight of mine would separate me from others, that it would be as much a burden as a gift.

It did not take long before word of my visions got around. My parents had been proud that I had learned how to fly so quickly and, as all proud parents, they bragged a bit, talked about how I had seemed to see “sunspots with pictures” was how they put it. I soon felt other young owls in nearby ice hollows withdrawing from me. All except for H’rath and Siv. As soon as we learned how to fly we became inseparable, the three of us. I loved Siv from the start, but I could see that I was no match for H’rath. He was a big handsome Spotted Owl, always joking, but with a fine spirit and, yes, a natural talent for leadership.

Still, I tried my best to keep my visions to myself and did not discuss them even with my two closest friends. Sometimes, however, I could not stay silent. And once my vision saved H’rath’s life.

We were still quite young and had been gleeking about on the spring drafts that rake the cliffs of the Hrath’ghar mountains. It was great fun and we were doing all sorts of acrobatic flight tricks. The three of us loved showing off for one another. We made up names for our different moves. There was the kukla spiral, “kukla” being
the word in Krakish for crazy. There was the hag’s swirl, but if anyone knew we had used that word—or even part of that word—in jest, we would have had our ear slits boxed. And then there was dizzy-izzy, which was quite comical looking. We would rotate our tails in one direction and then tilt our primaries into the wind and go spinning up and up and up until we could go no higher, often yarping up what we had just eaten. We had just finished a spectacular set of dizzy-izzies when we heard a call from a nearby ice shelf.

“Some flying!” a Great Gray Owl called to us. He was perched on the shelf and was picking over a lemming he had just caught.

“He’s a warrior,” Siv whispered. She could tell from the long blood-streaked ice shard at his side.

“He must be returning from the campaigns in the south!” H’rath said, his voice absolutely bursting with excitement. H’rath loved warriors. He dreamed of ice shards and ice swords and all the weapons that the owls of the north fought with.

“Come on over. This is a fat lemming, plenty for everyone.”

We, of course, flew over. If he was in this part of the Hrath’ghar glacier, he was not an enemy. The enemy in those days was in the southern and eastern parts of the
N’yrthghar Kingdom. And Hrath’ghar was the stronghold of the H’rathians, followers of King H’rathmore, H’rath’s father. So we flew over and settled on the shelf.

H’rath eyes were immediately drawn to the ice sword. “It still has blood on it,” he said with wonder in his voice.

“Course it does. Blood of a Screech Owl, one of Hengen’s knights.”

“Hengen, Hag of Mylotte?” H’rath asked.