The First Collier (5 page)

“Indeed, young’un,” the Great Gray answered.

Hengen, Hag of Mylotte, was one of the most savage knight warriors of a chieftain who had allied himself with Mylotte, a powerful hagsfiend. While H’rath was looking at the ice sword, I was looking at the lemming. It was plump and succulent and its fur glistened in the pale twilight of this late winter day. I could feel my gizzard rumble with hunger.

“Let your prince eat first,” said the Great Gray. I grew very still. I felt my eyes blur as they often did right before a vision came, but this time, there was no fire and no sunlight. I was standing very still. “Eat up, lad!” the Great Gray was saying.

“No,” I said.

“What’s wrong? It’s a perfectly good lemming,” the owl replied, a nasty edge to his voice. But when I stared at the lemming, I saw something green coiled within it.

“No!” I shrieked this time, and with my talons kicked the lemming off the edge of the ice shelf. A terrible hiss scalded the air as a bright eerie green thing slithered through the gathering darkness.

“A flying snake!” H’rath shouted, and we backed ourselves against the wall of the ice shelf. The snake coiled at once as if to strike.

I rose straight up into the air. And although I scarcely remembered it later, I was told that I spoke in strange words and at once the snake appeared to go yeep but then turned and glided off into the night.

The Great Gray was gone by the time we recovered.

“He tried to kill us!” H’rath said in stunned disbelief.

“He tried to kill
you
,” Siv said.

“You’re right,” H’rath said. “He said that the prince should eat first.”

And we all knew which prince he meant. At that moment they both turned to me. “Grank,” H’rath whispered. “You saved my life. How did you know?”

“I’m not sure. I just see things sometimes.”

“But never quite like this!” Siv said.

She was right. Never quite like this.

“Yes,” I said softly. “Never quite like this.” For I, too, was mystified.

“Grank,” Siv said again, and stepped toward me, her lovely amber eyes glistening. “Are you a mage?” This sent a tremor through me, as well it should have.

How exactly does the magic of a mage differ from a hagsfiend’s magic? When I was young, there was really only one kind of magic, nachtmagen, or bad magic, the magic of hagsfiends. But it was rumored that there were mages who practiced good magic. Some said the owl we called Hoole had been a mage. But most owls thought that this was pure invention. Good magic was something longed for but few believed it truly existed. I was not sure what had happened to me in that instant when I had lofted into the air and spoken those unintelligible words to the snake. When I came back down onto the ice shelf to face Siv’s questions I was in a daze. I tried to reply honestly.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. It was not like firesight at all. It was much more. But if I have magic…”

In that instant I saw them both wilf. They seemed to shrink, and their feathers lay close to their sides.

“Please,” I begged, “don’t be frightened of me. If you fear me I shall have no one.” I could too easily imagine my friends making the sign with their talons to avert the evil
eye when I came near, as was the custom if one was suspected of having magical powers.

It was at that moment that Siv stepped forward. “Never, Grank. We shall always be your friends.” H’rath, too, came close and touched my wing with his talon.

“Always,” he said. “And we shall speak nothing of these powers of yours. We promise.” And then on that same ice shelf, where the sword, which was supposedly stained with the blood of Hengen, had lain, both Siv and H’rath struck off an ice splinter and pricked the meatiest part of their talons and pressed them together. It was a blood oath.

“I, H’rath…”

“And I, Siv…”

“Do hereby swear,” they spoke in unison, “never to reveal what happened on this ice shelf, and to keep to ourselves the powers that our dearest friend, Grank, possesses. By Glaux, we swear this blood oath.”

I was deeply touched. There was a slight shiver in my gizzard. I blinked and felt myself rich to have such friends. But yet again I had that awful feeling of being separate. Their loyalty was unquestionable, but as I perched on that shelf of ice watching these two wonderful young owls, I realized that they would always be together and I would always have to be apart. And yet, I thought, perhaps the sum of us would be great.

I had many questions about what the three of us had experienced on that ice shelf in the twilight. Was the warrior indeed a hagsfiend in disguise? It was said that hagsfiends, very powerful ones, could change their appearance. Become more owl than crow, but that even in disguise they still carried the lingering scent of crow.

After that encounter with the warrior and his evil designs, my explorations into a deeper understanding of my visions would begin in earnest. I wanted to know what good magic was and how it differed from the magic of hagsfiends. They were creatures of rage and malice in a lawless time. If there was such a thing as good magic could the hagsfiends be countered? Or did any use of magic lead one into an unholy alliance with evil? There was at that time a small group of owls—called the Glauxian Brothers—who believed that hagsfiends existed because owlkind had somehow lost its faith in Glaux, and in reason. They believed that this loss of faith and reason had created a tear, a rip in the very air of the owl universe, and it was through this tear that these creatures of rage and superstition and nachtmagen had entered our world. I worried, too, what would happen to me if other owls discovered I had these powers. I began to think very hard about the lemming with the venomous snake embedded in its body. How had I been able to see that? There had to
be some connection between my firesight and this magic, my vision and the enchantment I had mysteriously cast to make the snake flee. All these long-ago memories swirled through my head as I flew back to the N’yrthghar, at the behest of H’rath, my friend and king.

Back to the N’rythghar, where hagsfiends were once more on the rise. How odd that such a short time ago I had attended the lemming hunt and negotiated so skillfully with Lord Arrin. What had transpired in the meantime? What haggish bargain had the vain lord made with the fiends? And would it spread like some disease? For if all the deceitful lords and rebellious princes and rancorous chieftains began to join with the hagsfiends, would it not spell the end of owlkind as we knew it? Would time wind back to that most ancient of all eras, the time of the crowls? Would these remnant birds ascend and rule the world of owls? Nachtmagen would reign and chaos would shake the air, the winds, the clouds, the very foundations of the sky.

I
t was tiring winding in and out of the timber trying to shelter myself from the adverse winds. When I reached the border between the Shadow Forest and Silverveil, I stopped at a grog tree for some refreshment.

It was a rowdy scene indeed, with hireclaws back from the wars in the N’yrthghar. Some were well beyond tipsy, and many of them were flat-out trufynkken on the juice of the strong berries. I stopped not only to refresh myself but also to pick up information. One couldn’t do better than a grog tree for finding out the latest news, gossip, and stories of the owl kingdoms. Before I came even close to the tree, I was careful to stash the few coals that I had brought back in a clever sling that Fengo had fashioned for me from the horn and sinew of a moose that he and some of his clan had brought down. It was perfect for carrying coals, being completely fireproof. I didn’t want anybody getting too curious about where I had been or where I was heading.

Of course, that was the first question I encountered. A trufynkken Great Gray tumbled off a branch and nearly whacked me on the head. A huge belch ripped from him and then he yarped the most enormous pellet I had ever seen.

“Oh, what a prince you are!” a voice exclaimed behind me.

I nearly took straight off. The last thing I wanted anyone to know was my true identity. But I quickly realized that the owl who said this was referring to the Great Gray.

“Sorry, mate.” The Great Gray dipped his head in apology and then fell flat on his beak.

“Out cold, the old sot.” It was a rather pretty Barred Owl who had spoken. “Lovely, ain’t he?” She looked at me, her amber eyes a bit bleary with grog.

“Now, what be your name, handsome, and where be you heading?”

I had no intention of giving an accurate answer. “Falen,” I answered, with the first name that popped into my head. If I had said Grank or Ragfir, Ifghar or Brakvik, or any one of our harsh names in which sounds grind up against one another, it would have been a dead giveaway that I was from the N’yrthghar. “And I am going toward the desert,” I told her.

“Oh, now, what do you want to go there for, lovey? No
trees, bunch of low-class owls? Why, you know them owls, they dig holes in the dirt and live in them!”

Now, Good Owl, perhaps you have already guessed that this Barred Owl, whose name turned out to be Maisy, was not of noble origins herself, and hardly what one might call a high-class owl.

“Come share a cup with me, lovey,” she said.

The last thing Maisy needed was another cup of the berry brew. We hopped upon the trunk of a fallen tree. A one-eyed Great Horned was setting out chestnut cups filled with a mash of berries and juice. “What’ll it be, Maisy?” By this time, Maisy was leaning hard against my port wing. “The usual.” She hiccuped softly. “Sorry,” she said to me with what I am sure she thought was a coquettish giggle. She tried snuggling up closer to me but fell over. She picked herself up and muffled a burp. The Great Horned winked his one eye at me.

Another Screech Owl came up to the trunk. He had a nasty gash on his starboard talon. I could tell immediately that it was a wound made by an ice dagger.

“Back from the north wars, eh, Flynn?” the Great Horned asked.

“Yeah, and I got this to prove it!” He held up the wounded talon.

“Hope you got more than that.”

“Aye, they pay well, them norther owls.”

“Where were you fighting?”

“Up in the Firth of Fangs,” he answered.

“Any fighting up on the glacier?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. A lot.”

“How’s the king doing?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t know what to believe. Some say he’s dead. Others say he and the queen have fled. They say she done laid an egg. That there be an heir on the way and they be ‘fraid the hagsfiends will get it.”

“Dead? Dead, you say?” I demanded of him.

“I don’t say. But it’s what I hear.”

I wondered how I had not seen this in the ember. Perhaps it wasn’t true. A Burrowing Owl who had been listening now interrupted. “Oh, the High King is dead, all right. I seen it,” the stranger said.

“You saw it? How’s that?” I asked, trying to mask my emotions.

“I come up to fight for the king,” the stranger went on. “You see, me brother was an ice harvester. He done got killed by them hagsfiends that Lord Arrin mustered for the first attacks a while back. I came to fight my brother’s murderers. So I was there at the last battle of the king. I seen what they did to him. Lord Arrin got him cornered,
all right, but it was them hagsfiends that finished him, the one called Penryck gave the final…” He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “You know what they do, sir, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied weakly. I knew Penryck. He was a hideous hagsfiend with extremely long tail feathers that stropped the air like razor ice. That and a crest of spiky tufts that grew along his spine gave him an almost reptilian appearance. Indeed, some called him Sklardrog, which in Krakish means “sky dragon.”

“I saw the King’s head on the scythe. Yes, sir, I did, indeed. On Penryck’s scythe. I believe the lady, good Queen Siv, saw it, too.”

“Oh, my Glaux!” I gasped. The very thought of Siv seeing this grisly spectacle made my gizzard lock. The stranger went on to give details, which I was too stunned to take in but would remember later.

And it was too easy to imagine Siv now, the most beautiful Spotted Owl in the world, desperate, possibly alone, and terrified that her first egg, the egg of H’rath and herself, would be seized, or worse, destroyed. I had to get flying. I started to move away from the grog tree.

“Oh, darlin’.” Maisy tipped over and lay with her head on the trunk. “Where you be goin’?”

“The desert, remember?’

“Need company?” she asked.

“I thought you didn’t like the desert. Full of low-class types. Remember?”

“Did I say that?” Her eyes blinked shut for a long time. And I was already moving off.

As I spiraled up and over the Shadow Forest, clawing against that hard northeasterly wind, I tried to think where Siv would have fled to in the N’yrthghar. Would she have gone farther north and west, deep into the range of the Hrath’ghar mountains? But if troops had been massing on that ridge, as I had seen in the flames, the way might be blocked. Perhaps she had flown straight west toward the Bitter Sea or the Bay of Kiel. Then I remembered that Siv had a cousin who had decided to begin a spiritual order, like that of the Glauxian Brothers, on the Island of Elsemere. Surely that would be a safe haven for Siv and her egg.

What I did not know, Dear Owl, and would not learn until later was that at the same time I was flying, clawing my way against that haggish wind toward the Glauxian Sisters Retreat, Siv was hiding from them. Indeed, the unthinkable had transpired! The retreat of the Glauxian
Sisters had been infiltrated by hagsfiends, and these fiends had used their most evil magic to cast a peculiar spell on the pious sisters of Glaux. It had been Myrrthe, Siv’s faithful servant, an elderly but still-keen Snowy Owl, who had sensed that something was deeply amiss.

“
B
egging your pardon, madam,” the old Snowy Owl said. “But could you offer some refuge to a poor gadfeather who has worn her plummels to a fray and has not tasted a decent lemming in the half cycle of the moon?”

Both Myrrthe and Siv had disguised themselves, weaving bits of moss, winter berries, and dried flowers through their feathers, imitating the gaudily adorned plumage distinctive of gadfeathers. Myrrthe mimicked, as well, the singsongy voices of these birds. The disguise had served them well but the two had decided it was best if Myrtthe went alone to Elsemere to make sure Siv’s cousin, the mother superior, was still there. Some years before, Siv and Myrrthe had spent a delightful summer visiting with Siv’s cousin and the sisters.