The First Collier (12 page)

“It isn’t?”

Did he really know more than he was admitting to? I wasn’t sure. But I had to go ahead. “This egg is the egg of
the beloved King H’rath, who was slain in the battle of H’rathmagyrr, and his mate, Queen Siv.” If Theo had appeared stunned before, he was now overwhelmed. “Come along, lad, I’ll let you take a peek.”

“You will?” He was completely astonished. I had not let him anywhere near the hollow with the schneddenfyrr since he had arrived. He followed me up.

“Step in, young’un.”

He gasped in disbelief as soon as he entered. The entire hollow was luminous from the glow of the egg. Its luster and the intensity of its luminosity had increased every day. I had never seen anything like it.

“This, Theo, is the future of our kingdom. This is a sacred charge that I have been given by Queen Siv herself. I must protect this egg at all costs. I have told you about Lord Arrin and his alliance with Penryck.”

“Oh, yes,” Theo replied. His voice quaked.

I felt there was more to this story than just “oh, yes,” but I was not going to pursue that now. “Well,” I continued, “Lord Arrin wants the egg. The hagsfiends want it. They have chased Siv halfway around the N’yrthghar. If the hagsfiends get it they will turn it to evil. With their nachtmagen, they can transform it into exactly what they are—part crow, part owl. Lord Arrin wants the egg because, as a hostage, it would be invaluable to his efforts
to become the High King and rule the entire N’yrthghar. And I think he also wants it for revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“Just before the battle in which H’rath was killed, his own son was killed by one of the ice harvesters who had survived the attack in the Firth of Fangs.” I paused. “Killing H’rath did not seem to satisfy that vengeance he sought.”

“But that is my point. Killing never satisfies. Violence simply breeds more violence.”

I ignored his remarks and, looking him straight in the eyes, said, “I intend to do everything in my power to protect this egg. The queen herself has entrusted it to me. Do you know what it means for a mother to give up her chick? I am to raise him, see to his education.”

“It’s a male?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Theo, I am asking you to make me a pair of battle claws so I might protect this egg from destruction, to keep this hatchling from being murdered. You can see by looking at this egg that a special chick will hatch from it and—hopefully—grow into a great king. A king who can annihilate the hagsfiends—or at least nullify their magic.”

The long silence in the hollow was as intense as the luminous glow from the egg. These were the longest minutes that I had ever endured. But Theo finally broke the
silence. “I shall make your battle claws. But first I shall make a good hammer. Without a good hammer, I cannot make what you want. The edges must be keen, the points sharp, sharper than anything you can imagine. I need a hammer to do this.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew in that moment the history of warfare had been changed. We would be unleashing terrible weapons into the world of owls. We had fought only with ice before, but now we had iron, as Theo called this new metal that he had coaxed out of the black rock. Were we creating something worse than magic with these iron weapons? But by these weapons a prince might be saved. Was it worth it? I thought so. Anything that could rid the world of the nachtmagen, the horrendous magic of the hagsfiends, was worth it. And this prince was our best, our only chance.

T
he sources for black rock were few and far between. Theo had exhausted the ones on the island in the Bitter Sea, but he felt that in the inhospitable Nameless region to the west there might be some of the rocks he needed. A particularly important ingredient was something he called “salt stars.” When combined with the black rock, this salt made the metal easier to manipulate. In the Nameless region, there were said to be evaporated lakes and one small landlocked sea. He felt this would be a perfect place to find the salt stars.

“I want you to take these battle claws with you, Theo,” I said.

“Why would I need battle claws in the Nameless? It’s far from the war. No hagsfiends go there. It is completely empty of owls, empty of everything, except for what I
seek, and no one knows that these black rocks are worth anything.”

“It’s not the Nameless that I worry about. It’s getting there. You might encounter someone out there over the Bitter Sea.”

“No one ever flies over the Bitter Sea.”

“You did.” I paused. “I insist. No more arguments.”

He blinked. “Just one thing.”

This was the most exasperating young owl I had ever met. He never gave up. I sighed. Before I could say anything, he blurted out that one more thing.

“I might have made these battle claws, but I don’t know the first thing about how to use them. I have never fought in my life.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure out how if you have to.”

“It’s going to make me fly funny. I just know it. I mean, I’m adding a lot of weight. Glaux knows how I’ll rudder, do a banking turn, and I can forget a steep dive for hunting prey.”

“First of all, you’re not wearing these on your tail feathers. So let’s skip the ruddering question. Nor are you wearing them on your wings. They are to be worn over your talons. If anything, they will help you kill prey.”

“It’s an issue of balance.”

Issue of balance! Theo always got testy when he was being challenged. “It’s an
issue
of your stubbornness and your eternally argumentative nature. What we’ll do, Theo,” I spoke very slowly and carefully, “is have a few training sessions so you can—”

“Can what? Kill something? Kill
you
?”

At this point I exploded. “Will you kindly shut your big fat beak and listen to your elder? I should have kicked you out of here days ago!” Now he did look truly contrite.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “Go on.”

“Oh, go on? You’re actually giving me permission to speak? What I was going to say before you so rudely interrupted me was that you’ll practice flying with them.”

“All right.”

“I’ve saved some gut and sinew from that snowshoe hare we had the other night. We’ll use that to strap them on.”

“Yes. That’s a good idea,” Theo replied. I blinked in surprise. A compliment from this youngster—rare!

“There!” I said a few minutes later as I tied the last knot. “Ready?”

“I guess so,” Theo said softly.

“Come on now. Get your gizzard into this. It’ll be fun.”

“Fun, he calls it,” Theo muttered.

“I’ll ignore that!” I replied. “Now lift off from the rock on top of the forge. The heat will give you a good updraft.”

A minute later, Theo was aloft. “You’re doing fine,” I called out.

“I might just have to keep flying over these warm updrafts forever. These things are heavy. Glaux knows what will happen if I get into cold air. The differential pressure alone will wreak havoc with my balance.”

The claws had not evidently wreaked havoc with Theo’s ability to talk. He kept up a steady stream as he circled over the forge. I mean, yak yak yak! No one could talk like that lad. I thought that perhaps I shouldn’t worry for his safety. He could probably just talk a hagsfiend to death, should he meet one.

I knew that to nudge him out of the thermal drafts, I was going to have to be up there—right by his side. So I took off and quickly slid in next to him. “Now come on, lad, let’s get you out of the thermals.”

“I don’t know, Grank. These things are heavy.”

“Look, we’ll just sort of slide into it very slowly.”

“All right,” he replied in a shaky voice. “Aiyeee!” He began to stagger in flight.

“Steady there! Steady!” I gave him a little bit of a wing prop by flying under him and pumping my own wings hard, sending up some puffy little pillows of air for
support. “All right, you’re doing fine now.” Better than fine, actually. Theo was a beautiful flier. It was one of the first things that I had noticed about him shortly after he arrived. And for more than a minute now he had been flying smoothly with the added weight of the battle claws.

“I think I’ll try ruddering,” he said.

Ah,
I thought.
He is rising to the challenge.
He began to rudder and performed an excellent banking turn.

As we settled down after our practice session, I could see that Theo was quite pleased with himself. “I don’t think you need any more practice. You’re a natural.”

“Natural what? Killer?”

“No, no, lad, a natural flier.”

“Technically speaking, we are all natural fliers, Grank.”

I churred. “I’m finished arguing with you, lad. Now, on your way and here’s my coal bag. Bring back a lot of rocks.” I paused. “And Glaux speed!”

“Thank you, Grank. Thank you so much for everything.” He paused. “And do you know what you are?”

“No, lad, what am I?”

“You’re a natural-born teacher.”

This indeed brought a tear to my eye.

I watched Theo take off and followed his flight as best
I could until he dissolved into a fog bank that was looming offshore. Fog sometimes unnerved me, and this one certainly did. Who knew what might be lurking beyond those swirling downy plumes of mist that could instantly wrap a world in a thick impenetrable whiteness?

“
H
ardly a wobble, now try a banking turn…little more rudder with the tail feathers, Siv.”

Talk about natural-born teachers! I was nothing compared to Svenka. Imagine, if you will, Dear Owl, a polar bear teaching an owl to fly, in particular, one with a severely damaged wing. Indeed, a wing that was almost half gone!

It was most uncanny that at practically the same moment I was coaching Theo to fly with battle claws, Svenka the polar bear was attempting to teach Siv to fly again. How I first found out, or suspected this, is in itself an interesting story. For the first time in several days, I was alone. Almost as soon as Theo departed I felt a loneliness as I had never before experienced. It was not a simple loneliness. It had weight. And this weight was almost crushing me. The egg, I knew, was still several days from hatching. I decided to build a fire, not for coaxing metal out of rock but for plucking some images from the flames. For a long
time I had been unwilling to peer into the flames to search for anything at all. I had become accustomed to building fires purely for utilitarian purposes. Theo was learning so fast and his research about metal was so fascinating that I had nearly forgotten that I had abilities for interpreting the flames. And to be quite frank, I was frightened. What if the fire revealed that Siv, my beloved Siv, was really dead? What then?

But within hours after Theo had left, my loneliness had turned to such despair that I built a fire. As I gazed at the soft yellow part of the flame where I often found the first glimmerings of a form I did see something. It was large and white. I peered in closer. The heat licked my face. I never had to be this close when forging, but reading was a different story. And a story was indeed unfolding before my eyes.

It was a polar bear floating lazily on her back near a large iceberg. The bear was calling instructions to a smudge in the sky high above her. As the bird spiraled down closer toward the water, I gasped. It was an owl with a badly mangled port wing and yet it was flying. And it was not just any owl. It was Siv. Dear Owl, Siv! Horrendously maimed, but still and forever Siv!

You cannot imagine my relief. The images began to fade. As was often the case after an intense, emotional
reading, I was not much more than a contented, but exhausted, pile of feathers. I flew back to the hollow and basked in the glow of the egg. “You are so lucky, little one,” I whispered. “Your mother, your dear mum, the most noble of owls, lives!” Did I imagine it? The light seemed to shimmer a bit as if the chick inside the egg had given the slightest little shiver.

Had the images in the flames not begun to fade I would have seen what happened next, and this would have diminished my relief and joy considerably. I only learned of it much later. There was another dark speck in the sky flying higher than Siv.

“I caught sight of him,” Siv told me later, “or maybe I should say I caught the sound of his wing beats. He was flying very noisily for an owl. But I would have recognized Lord Arrin anywhere. If Lord Arrin did not personally kill H’rath, he certainly caused it, arranged it with his cohorts of hagsfiends.”

As she practiced flying, Siv had been seeking out the smee holes that occurred frequently in this part of the N’yrthghar and especially in this firthkin, which was generally ice free. The steam from the smees gave her a good lift and as she was rising up on one, she heard, then spotted him. She spiraled down rapidly. She was sure that he had already seen her. There was no use hiding. Would
the hagsfiends be with him? Dare they come this close to the water?

“That’s him,” Siv said as she lighted down at the edge of the iceberg.

“Who?” Svenka asked.

“Lord Arrin.”

“The one you told me about? The one who made the alliance with the hagsfiends?”

“The one who caused my mate to die. And I think Pleek is with him.”

“Pleek? Who is Pleek?” Svenka asked.

“A terrible bird. I will not deign to call him an owl. He consorts with hagsfiends.” Siv gave a shudder, but then quickly recovered.

“I’ll protect you, Siv. I will,” Svenka said.

“He hasn’t come to kill me,” Siv answered.

“What did he come for then?”

“The egg.”

“But it’s not here,”

“He doesn’t know that.” Siv turned to Svenka. “And that is our only hope.”

“Why is that our hope?” Svenka was confused. The polar bear knew that the strategies of owls and the politics of their world were a lot more complicated than those of polar bears.

“You see, Svenka, he thinks I have the egg. We must keep him thinking that way until the time is right.”

“Right for what?” the bear asked.

“For me to get away.”

“But you’re still too weak.”

“I know, but this is going to take more than muscle. I’m going to have to think hard about this. But get ready. He’s coming in for a landing.”