The First Collier (13 page)

The immense Snowy settled between two spikes of the iceberg. “Milady.” Lord Arrin nodded. “I am pleased that you are healing.”

A
s I rejoiced over the survival of my dear Siv, also unbeknownst to me were the trials of Theo. You see, Dear Owl, every now and then the egg had begun to make a very small rocking motion. So I knew that the time of the hatching could not be far off. I could not leave the nest to tend fires, let alone peer into them. I had gone hunting one last time to stock up on food for both the hatchling and myself. Hatchlings don’t eat meat at first. We start them on insects, a few soft worms if they can be found. There were plenty of grubs and such in the tree. It was also important to keep the egg warm now. So I confined myself to the hollow. It was on the second day of this confinement period that I began to think that perhaps Theo should have returned by this time. As tempted as I might be to build a fire for flame reading, I knew that I could not let thoughts of Theo distract me. My only business now, my only reason for living, it seemed, was to see this prince into the world, to make him safe, and to
teach him. Theo had said I was a natural-born teacher. This chick would be my greatest test.

I sat there for long hours on the schneddenfyrr and I wondered how far Theo had to fly for his blasted rocks. And then the next moment I would curse myself for cursing the rocks. Had I not asked him to make battle claws he never would have gone to the Nameless with its evaporated lakes and landlocked seas. Occasionally, I would drift off and dream of Theo and of battle claws. One morning at dawn, I dreamed of flames and I swear that I saw those first battle claws, which Theo was wearing, stained with blood. Was it Theo’s blood? I woke up with a start. I was frightened. The wind had died down, and it was an exceptionally warm night. If I plucked more down from my own breast and tucked it in with some of the rabbit-ear moss that was abundant all over the tree, it would certainly keep the egg warm enough for a short time. I would just fly down and make a quick little fire. I simply had to. I was having very troubling thoughts about Theo. As annoying as that young’un could be, I had grown to love him as I would a son.

I gathered some peels of birch bark, which the coals always grab on to quickly, and put in some dry, well-seasoned moss. This did not need to be one of those nearly bonking fires that Theo created for his smithing. Just a
small one, small but with articulate, well-shaped flames. I bent close as the first flames popped up, gasped, and drew back sharply. I blinked again and came closer. This could not be true!

Theo and a ferocious Snowy Owl were circling each other warily. The Snowy was armed with an ice saber in one talon, a short ice dagger in the other, and his beak bristled with ice splinters. The two owls were circling over a headland that jutted into the Bitter Sea. And that Snowy was not just any Snowy. It was the warlord Elgobad, cousin of Lord Arrin, and now part of that deadly pact with the hagsfiends. I knew Lord Elgobad well. In our youth, we had spent summers with our families on the same firth. He was a skillful and accomplished fighter. He was powerful—and he was a cheat. He followed no knightly rules in combat.

For there was a code of sorts. A code for noblemen and their squires and knights that defined honor on and off the battlefield. And in the flames, I saw Elgobad, true to his nature, breaking those rules. First of all, he was off the battlefield, as was Theo. He knew nothing about the battle claws, however. So, from his point of view, Theo was unarmed and Elgobad by contrast was armed quite literally to the beak. Theo himself had been staying far out of the range of engagement. He had also dipped his
wings in a manner to indicate that he was not going to engage or fight. Yet Elgobad kept pressing in closer. The images in this small fire were amazingly clear. Not only were there images but I could just barely make out some brief exchanges between the two.

“Who are you and where are you going?” the Snowy Owl demanded. The sun was just setting and the fierceness of its glare on this white bird, spiky with ice weaponry, gave him a blinding radiance.

“Why do you demand to know this? This is not a war zone.”

“Everywhere is a war zone.”

“According to the H’rathian code of honor, the Bitter Sea is a free-fly zone.”

“H’rath and his code are dead. There are new rules now. New codes. What is your name?”

Theo was silent for a long time.
Glaux!
I thought.
Now is the time to speak, lad. Say something. You who are never at a loss for words.

“What is yours?” Theo asked.

“I am asking you. Not you me, young’un.”

“If I tell you a name, how will you know it is my true name? I could tell you Glauclan or I could tell you Morfyr or I could say my name is Hegnyk—”

As the flames popped up, I could see Theo still rattling
off a dizzying number of names and flying faster and faster in circles, still out of the range for engagement. According to the H’rathian code, one who was not within range could not be considered an aggressor. It was absolutely forbidden to attack in a situation like this.

“Would you stop talking and tell me your name and where you are going?” Elgobad demanded again.

“But how would you know, I ask again, that I am not lying?”

“Nobody lies to Lord Elgobad,” the Snowy screeched out.

“Oh, Lord Elgobad, so that is your name. I cannot say that I am pleased to meet you.”

Lord Elgobad was stunned. How had he, the scourge of the southern N’yrthghar, been tricked by this young’un into giving his name first? He started to wilf slightly, not from fear but from shame. I knew this could turn ugly in an instant. Lord Elgobad was a bully. He would have to seek vengeance on this young owl who had embarrassed him. Just at that moment, I saw something else in the flames. I felt my gizzard seize.

This was an impossible position to be in. To be able to see so much but not help Theo was wrenching my gizzard most painfully. And I could not tear myself away from my
little fire to check on the egg. The sky was growing darker. This would be the longest night of the year. I again leaned closer to the flames to get a better look at what I thought I had seen. It could be anything, anyone, but something was approaching Theo and Lord Elgobad.

The good news was that it was not a hagsfiend. The bad news was that it was one of Lord Arrin’s knights. He was not armed as heavily as Elgobad, but he did fly with a very deadly looking ice scimitar. Nonetheless, the balance was hardly equal: two against one. I could only hope that this fellow had more sensitivity to the rules of war than Elgobad did.

“Who is this?” asked the newly arrived owl, a Great Horned like Theo.

“Won’t tell me his name or where he is going,” Elgobad answered.

“I’m a gizzard resister,” Theo said. “I don’t fight.”

“Unless attacked!” hooted the new owl and, with that, both the Snowy and the Great Horned blasted through the purpling sky toward Theo, their ice swords, sabers, and scimitars raised.

Theo dodged them, but they quickly wheeled around and came in for a second attempt. Theo went into a giddy spiraling plunge. Then skimming close to the water, he
flew as fast as any owl I had ever seen. There were few icebergs of any size in that region of the Bitter Sea but there were several ice floes, which are smaller and lower. If Theo’s pursuers were hagsfiends in some sort of disguise this flight course would finish them because the wind had begun to pick up and waves were cresting and breaking, spraying salt water into the air around the floes. But they showed no fear of the sea and followed Theo as he wound in and out of the maze of ice floes. I knew that he wouldn’t want to fly too far out of the Bitter Sea because then he would enter a war zone. There might be more owls, and how would he know if they were friend or foe?

The Snowy and the Great Horned were gaining on Theo as I watched. I felt my gizzard being wrenched in all directions. Suddenly, I saw a glittering missile whiz through the night, which had now turned black. It was an ice sliver and it just missed Theo’s head. A sliver like that could have driven straight into his brain. Theo knew this. Suddenly, I saw him do one of the most spectacular maneuvers I have ever witnessed. It was a complete somersault in the air but executed dangerously close to the water. He came out of it and raced straight toward the two owls. His battle claws gleamed in the light of a rising moon. I heard a
whup-whup
sound. There was a terrible screech. It was all so clear that it seemed as though the fire itself was spurting
blood. The breast of the Great Horned was torn open to the bone and he plummeted into the sea. The other, Lord Elgobad, went yeep, recovering just in time to fly off, looking back at Theo and his terrible claws.

The images faded.
What have I done?
I wondered.
Have I saved an owl or destroyed a gizzard resister?

“
I
t was awful.”

Those were Theo’s first words when he returned. I said nothing. He looked at me. “Don’t you want to know what was awful?”

“I know,” I replied.

He looked surprised. “You have gone back to your fires to read the flames?”

I nodded. Early in his apprenticeship I had told Theo about my firesight and that I suspected I had lost some of my ability. It was not really the truth. The truth was that I had been frightened that I would see Siv dead in the flames. But I could not tell him that.

“I don’t know why those owls were so far out in the Bitter Sea,” he said.

“The Great Horned was most likely a press scout,” I said.

“Press scout?”

“Owls sent out to find other owls whom they can press into soldiering.”

“In other words, by killing that one owl I might have saved other owls from being forced to kill? Perhaps even saved myself from being forced to kill them?”

“Yes, exactly,” I said quietly.

“And you think I should feel pleased about this?”

“I would not dare to tell you, Theo, what you should feel, but I know that it is never a good feeling to kill a living thing that is not prey to eat.”

He was perched on a branch outside the hollow and he raised one talon and regarded the battle claw for several moments. The Great Horned’s blood was still on it. “They will know about these now,” he said. “If that owl lives to return to his troops, the word will spread. And then what will happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know,” he said suddenly. “You see, Grank, we have invented a better way to kill. The whole owl world will want battle claws.”

“It will take a long time, Theo. The owl world does not know about smithing. They don’t know about the black rocks, about iron. It is a complicated thing you have invented. A new technology. For thousands of years we
have fought with ice. And now iron? It will take time. You have a kind of genius.”

“A genius for what? Killing? Don’t flatter me.”

“With this skill, you will make other things, not just battle claws. From copper, small containers for carrying and holding, and tools of all sorts. It will not be all battle claws.”

Theo blinked at me as if to say,
You fool. You old fool!
I felt my gizzard squirm.

M
y last flame vision of Siv had been of the bear teaching her to fly. The images had faded before I saw what Siv had just spotted, and it was not until much later that I would learn what exactly had transpired, Dear Owl. But ever since Siv told me of how Lord Arrin arrived to treat with her, to make this so-called peace, the scene is vivid in my mind.

“Peace, he called it,” Siv said scathingly. “It was surrender, that’s what he wanted. Surrender of the egg.”

“I am pleased that you are healing,” the wily old bird said to Siv as he swept down to land on the berg.

Siv blinked and narrowed her eyes as she studied the leading edges of Lord Arrin’s wings. No wonder she had heard him. There were no plummels. The tips of his flight feathers were ragged and dark, too dark for a Snowy.
Oh,
she thought,
there is something haggish about this lord, yes, very haggish, and yet he dares fly close to water.
Her gizzard shuddered.
So he is not a hagsfiend yet, just haggish enough—for now.

Every instinct in her drove her to wilf. But she resisted.
I shall not wilf in front of this dastardly creature who calls himself an owl. I shall not wilf! Never!
And overhead, camouflaged in a thick dark cloud, she knew the haggish Pleek flew. And most likely, his mate, Ygryk, who so longed for her egg, was nearby.

Svenka had disappeared but Siv knew that she lurked close by, listening. One swipe of the polar bear’s huge paw and she could decapitate this owl, but who knew what else lurked above in the clouds—Arrin’s troops along with Pleek and Ygryk? Perhaps even hagsfiends ready to cast their deadly yellow light. Siv knew, as did Svenka, that it would be utter foolishness to risk an attack.

She wondered how much small talk there would be before Lord Arrin got to the point of his visit. “I see you are flying short distances. Quite amazing,” he said.

“Yes, but I have always been a quick healer,” Siv answered.

“Is that so? And your parents are well, I suppose.” Siv remained silent. He peered at her as if expecting a response. Siv, however, was growing extremely tired of this play at civility.

“Suppose what you want about my parents, Lord Arrin. What have you come here for?”

“Oh, just to see how you are doing, to inquire about your egg and its hatching.”

Aha!
Siv thought. It was just as she expected. She must lie. She must fool him. For her hatchling’s sake, she must keep him believing that the egg was still here. If she said anything else, Lord Arrin would launch a huge hunt for the egg. Every hagsfiend in the N’yrthghar would be summoned. Not to mention all of his own troops. They wanted that egg, that hatchling. Through that still unhatched owl, they suspected, perhaps they knew, that they could control owlkind.