The First Collier (7 page)

But then something strange began to happen. It felt as if the air in the burrow was vibrating. I knew immediately what it was. Two powerful forces of magic were grazing up against each other: the nachtmagen of the hagsfiends and my magic, for which there was not yet even a word. Invisible sparks between these two forces began to fly. Suddenly, an overpowering flare burst from the eyes of the Glauxess. The burrow flashed with yellow light. She stepped closer.
She is trying to blind me,
I thought.
I will not flinch. I must let her come closer and closer.
I felt myself going yeep, but I was not flying. How could one go yeep if one was already on the ground? It was my gizzard. Glaux, no!
Not my gizzard,
I thought. Panic welled up in me. I felt myself slipping into some sort of trance. I blinked. This was oddly similar to that strange time in Beyond the Beyond when I
was entranced by the ember. I had sworn I would never let that happen again. I had failed to act then.

But now something even stranger happened. In my head, there flashed a vision of Fengo and the ember as I had first seen its reflection in that dear wolf’s beautiful green eyes. The glare of yellow in the burrow began to dim.
Now!
I thought.
Now is the time!
And I lunged toward the Glauxess with my ice sliver and plunged it deep. And then the yellow receded, the world darkened, and I fell unconscious.

W
as I dead or was I dreaming? I seemed to be flying outside my body, high in the winter sky. Where? I was not sure. I do remember seeing the moon suddenly obliterated by what at first I thought were bats in flight. But their wings were too big, and their feathers too long and shaggy. They had to be hagsfiends, yet I felt no fear. When I looked down I saw that they were hurling themselves from the Island of Elsemere. And then I woke up. I was in a burrow. The burrow of the Glauxian Sisters on that same island. I looked around. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. They burned as if they had been seared, as sometimes happens to warriors who fight in daylight and encounter ice glare. But this I knew had not been the case with me. I blinked several times and was soon able to make out dark lumps scattered across the floor of the burrow.
My Glaux!
I thought.
The sisters are dead! The hagsfiends have killed them all.
As if proving this, the heavy stench
of crow suddenly assaulted me and here and there a black bit of feather floated down from the burrow’s ceiling.

But then I heard a stir from the owl closest to me. It was the Glauxess. She raised her head, then dropped it again with a small gasp. I saw the glint of the ice sliver. Cautiously, I approached her. “Rorkna?” I whispered gently.

“Yes, I answer to that name. What has happened to me? What has happened?” She raised her head again. Then, looking around her, she gasped. “Oh, my dear sisters!” She gave an agonizing cry.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. They are not dead,” I assured her. “If you are not dead, they are not.”

“I have the most awful pain deep in my gizzard.”

“I can help you,” I said. I hoped I could. I knew I would have to try to remove the ice sliver or else her shattered gizzard would never heal properly.

“Here,” I said, grabbing a small rock. “Put this in your beak and bite down hard while I remove this ice sliver.”

“An ice sliver!” She gasped. “Why am I not dead?”

“I’ll explain later. Just bite down now.”

She did, and quickly I nipped at the tip of the ice sliver that protruded from her gizzard through her flesh. She gave a yelp of great pain and swooned. But as she did so, I heard the first rustling of the other owls. The Nacht Ga’ had been broken for all of them. They were rousing
themselves now, one by one, shaking their heads as if they had been in a long, deep sleep. As the Glauxess was restored, so were they. She had been the key upon which the Nacht Ga’ turned.

“How many moons have we been gone?” asked one.

“Gone?” asked another. “I think we have just been asleep.”

At that moment, the Glauxess came out of her swoon. She was as perplexed as the others. “Something strange has happened here,” she said.

Now, Dear Owl, I was faced with a difficult decision. I could not explain outright to the sisters what had happened to them. As you might recall, I earlier wrote that the orders of the Glauxian Sisters and Brothers believed that hagsfiends existed due to owlkind’s desertion of reason and loss of faith in Glaux, that it was this loss of both reason and faith that had allowed the hagsfiends to enter into our world. If I told them how a spell had been cast upon them by a powerful hagsfiend, it might have destroyed them. They might believe they had wavered and this occurred because of their lack of faith. I decided I could not tell them what had happened. It was evident that they were oblivious to the stench of crow. I was probably aware of it because of my newly enhanced senses. No, it was best to keep my own counsel about this. I simply
could not reveal to these selfless sisters of Glaux that they had fallen prey to the powers of the hagsfiends and their magic. So I made up a story about the weather. I told them that when the N’yrthnookah blows, a deep, trancelike sleep can afflict some owls. It was a complete lie, but a lie told with the best intentions.

We talked for a long time. I had things I needed to know. And of course, they had questions, too. It was with great patience I explained who I was and where I had come from.

“So,” the Glauxess finally said, “I do believe I remember Siv talking of you that summer she came to visit. The three of you were great companions, is that not so?”

“Yes, indeed, Sister, and that is why I have now come. You have heard that good King H’rath died in battle?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. And I grieved for my dear cousin’s loss. Might you know where she has gone?”

“I was about to ask the same of you, madam.”

“Me?”

“Yes, did you know that she and H’rath were expecting their first chick?”

“No!” Rorkna gasped, and there was a soft tittering among the other sisters.

“Yes, it is true. I thought she might have sought
refuge here, but she didn’t?” I paused. “As far as you can remember?”

“I don’t think so. But what with this odd sleep that overtook us”—she looked about—“do you suppose that those berries we stored from last summer could have gone bad on us, Sister Lydfryk? I mean, I know Grank thinks it was the N’yrthnookah, but it could have been the berries.”

I tried to steer her gently back to the subject. “But you don’t think that Siv could have come here recently with her egg?”

“Oh, no.” She twisted her head. “I certainly would have remembered if my cousin had shown up here with an egg.” She gave a soft churring sound of laughter. But then a tiny little Elf Owl spoke up.

“You know, I don’t remember Queen Siv, but I do seem to have a dim recollection of a gadfeather coming here.” She turned to a Barred Owl who stood beside her and who was still a bit bleary-eyed. “Do you, Sister?’

“Now that you mention it, yes. And didn’t she sing us a song?” This seemed to cause a ripple of excitement among the sisters.

They began remembering the gadfeather with a lovely voice coming and singing them a song.

“Something about the sky is my hollow,” said one.

“Yes, and how they need no perch, no home. Very pretty. Slightly impractical, but a beautiful song,” said another.

So Siv had not been here. How had I been so wrong? I turned now to Rorkna. “You knew Siv well, madam. Where would she go if she were all alone and with an egg, the egg of her first chick?”

Rorkna blinked and clamped her beak shut as she thought. “In truth, my dear, I would have thought she would have come to me. But if not here…well, I do remember that summer when she came to visit, she told me, and I took it as a great compliment that she would confide in me this way, that she and you and H’rath had discovered a marvelous hideaway in some ice cliffs.”

The Ice Cliff Palace! Why, of course! Why had I not thought of it? Sister Rorkna must have noticed the look in my eyes. The elation.

“You know what I am talking about?” she asked.

“Yes, madam!” I exclaimed. “I do indeed!”

“Well, go to her and please tell her if she needs our help we are here for her. These are dangerous times, but I doubt anybody would ever attack our retreat.”

“No, never,” the others murmured in agreement.

“Oh, no—never,” I added for good measure. Although I crossed two of my talons for the lie I had just told—with the best of intentions.

T
he blizzard had subsided and been followed by sheets of freezing rain. It was a brutal gale-lashed night when I left the Island of Elsemere. Where the sea was free of ice, the water roiled violently, and as I approached the Ice Talons, great blocks of frozen seawater ground against each other, groaning horribly beneath the rage of the wind. The Ice Cliff Palace was on the southwest side of the Talons, far up in a frozen canyon where the cliffs rose eerily into the night. Warped and scraped by thousands upon thousands of years of weather, these cliffs had been carved into bridges and arches and spires. Behind them was a complex maze of interlocking ice passageways. To find one’s way to the Ice Cliff Palace in the heart of the cliffs was almost impossible. This made it a perfect hideaway, an unassailable stronghold in desperate times. And these were desperate times. H’rath, Siv, and I had discovered this retreat many years before. Only a few of the king’s and queen’s most trusted servants knew its whereabouts
and even they often became lost in the maze of ice. Rumors had abounded for years as to its location, but despite their powerful magic the hagsfiends had not been able to find it.

Now as I flew up the ice canyon, I scanned the face of the cliffs for a ribbon of darkness that would appear blacker than the night. I knew I would see it soon, but at that same moment I began to smell a vile crowish odor. The hagsfiends were near! I knew at once that I must cease my flight. I could not risk revealing an entryway into the Ice Cliff Palace. I knew I must spottilate immediately so that I could blend in with the ice-sheathed cliffs. This is precisely what I did, and not a moment too soon.

I lighted and stood as tall and thin as possible. It was an intentional wilf in which I pressed my feathers close to my bones. Just then, the noxious odor of hagsfiends swirled around me until I thought I might yarp a pellet. This indeed would be a giveaway, literally a dead giveaway! But I swallowed, feeling my first stomach lurch and my gizzard quake as I heard the air hiss with that unmistakable stropping sound. First, I saw the spikes of stiff feathers like daggers rising from a hagsfiend’s spine and then a very long tail.
Can it really be Penryck?
It was. The air stirred about me as he flew by so close I could have reached out and touched him. So close that I saw the little half-hags
swirling in the currents of his tail feathers. These minute parasitic demon creatures are much smaller and not as strong as hagsfiends, but it is as if all evil has been concentrated in them, distilled to the highest potency. Their beaks are said to drip a kind of poison that hagsfiends themselves are immune to. It is a poison that kills the mites that live in hagsfiends’ feathers. The half-hags feed on these mites and are therefore dependent on the hagsfiends for their sustenance. I had pressed my feathers as close to my body as possible and drawn myself up tall, spottilating so as to turn my plummage inside out. In my stillness, my slenderness, and my near whiteness, I was, for all intents and purposes, an icicle—one of many. It seemed to take Penryck forever to fly by. I saw more of his feathers close up than I cared to and more of the half-hag demons. Thankfully, they did not see me. The half-hags have woeful eyesight. Some say it is because they are part bat.

It should be noted here that the plumage of a hagsfiend and a half-hag is as different from that of any true owl as a snakeskin is different from a bear’s hide. Hagsfiends’ feathers are a deep glistening black, but instead of plummels, those fine fringe feathers that help owls fly so silently, the leading edges of their flight feathers are very long and shaggy and trail through the air, disturbing currents and
making a hissing sound. And then, of course, there is the awful stench. There is nothing subtle about a hagsfiend and in many ways this is good. One knows when they are coming. But there are other characteristics of these birds that are truly terrifying. Perhaps they do not need to be subtle. Their beaks are as sharp as any ice blade. Their talons are like ice needles. Indeed, all the weapons we have learned to make from the strong ice—ice needles, ice swords, ice splinters, spiked fizgigs—were invented to combat the deadly sharpness of hagsfiends’ beaks and talons.

Penryck finally did pass by, and it was then safe for me to go into the small fracture in the ice cliffs. I threaded my way through the twisting passages. There was a full moon and, as the storm clouds scudded across the sky, an occasional shaft of moonlight fell through the issen clarren, or clear ice, illuminating the interior of this strange, tangled web of ice and frost. There was nothing more beautiful than the Ice Palace in falling shafts of moonlight. Every ice crystal, every flake of snow radiated intricate faceted designs that sparkled fiercely. It was as if the stars had fallen from the sky and hung suspended within these cliffs.

Deep in a maze of ice tunnels and channels I came upon her. There she sat, the widow queen, trembling on
the nest of her egg. Her breast was nearly bare from the feathers she had plucked to weave into the packed snow from which she had fashioned her schneddenfyrr, that special kind of nest that we birds of the near-treeless north build for our eggs. These nests are surprisingly snug and warm, and Siv herself was not shivering from cold but from fear. I could see the grief deep in her amber eyes. The stranger at the grog tree had told me about that last battle in which H’rath had been cut down. The queen had witnessed it from an ice notch in the Hrath’ghar palace and had seen the king, her mate, fall in flight, his blood splattering the glacier below. The stranger had said that if she had been in flight instead of sitting on her egg, she would have gone yeep. “As it was, she could hardly move, sir. It seemed as if her gizzard had frozen.” When he told me this, I had shut my eyes and imagined her looking into that night that was woven with her mate’s blood and seeing the sky torn with hagsfiends. Glaux, how had these creatures ever come to be? What ghastly trick of fate had sent them flying into the owl world with their terrible magic, poisonous enchantments, and vile charms?