The First Collier (9 page)

These activities would help pass the time until the
hatching of the chick. The egg did not have to be sat upon constantly. I had found enough moss in this beautiful forest to tuck in and around the schneddenfyrr and make it all warm and cozy. And this brings me to a point that I have never thought of before: Caring for an egg was no easy task. When my siblings were eggs and then hatchlings, my parents spelled each other in the nest. One would hunt while the other sat on the egg or tended the new chicks. Sitting on an egg constantly is about as boring as watching ice melt. And then, of course, after it hatches, nothing is boring. Those little beaks always wide open, begging for food, squeaking away, whining, crying. At least I would only have one to tend and, prince or not, I knew he would be squawking and demanding, making a mess in the nest, and if he was like any other hatchling, trying to fly before his wings were fully fledged. Sometimes I grew weak at the very thought of parenthood and all I had taken on.

Despite this, I knew that within this egg that glowed with remarkable light was a chick who would grow into an owl like no other. And this forest with its trees wrapped in ice was the perfect refuge for us. Yes, I had begun to think of this egg and myself as “us.” Destiny had bound us together as strongly as if I were this chick’s father. But more than father or mother, I would become this hatchling’s
tutor and if what I had come to suspect was true, the destiny of the entire owl kingdom would rest upon him. I knew that the ember was somehow part of his special destiny. I had been too weak to deal with the owl ember myself. I simply did not have the Ga’. But I sensed that this unborn chick did have it. It was the Ga’ of this chick that made the egg so luminous. Now my fears of managing a demanding chick paled in comparison to the responsibilities this young owl would have to bear. A boy king would soon hatch. I sensed it would happen when the night was the longest and the day the shortest, and for that I must wait patiently and be constantly alert.

Although I was never was far from the tree, I had begun to build fires outside of the fire hollow, in between the boulders that were strewn about in the forest. Each day I was discovering new things. In the Beyond, the land was scattered with nuggets of copper, gold, and silver. Here I found no such rocks, and I could not go as far to look for materials as Fengo had. I had to make do with what was near. But I did find red rocks that I sensed might contain metal. The bonk coal I had brought with me had, of course, hatched other coals, but no bonk ones. Those could be caught only on the fly, spit from an intense fire. There is no such thing as a second-generation bonk coal. This was a problem, for I knew that these rocks from
which I hoped to draw metal were very tough and needed a very hot fire.

So I experimented with ways to increase the heat by other means. And it was through these trials that I invented a special fireplace that I came to call a “forge.” Near the tree where my hollow was located, there was one immense boulder that, through some cataclysmic event in our earth’s history, had a large crack that nearly split it in two. I had been studying this crack for some time. The ground breezes of the forest seemed to funnel directly into it, and then pass out the top of the crack. I began to think that this might provide the drafts that are so critical to the feeding of fires. So I started building fires inside the cracked boulder.

It was hot, dirty work. My snowy-white spots turned sooty. My talons grew black. Although my original intent had been to coax metal from the hard red rock, I instead experimented with what kind of fires I could build in the split of this boulder. By this time, I was so absorbed with the different kinds of fires I could construct and the varying intensity of the heat that I rarely looked deeply into the flames to read them. Had I studied those flames I would not have seen Siv, but that smudge in the sky I had first noticed some days before. But I did not. It was only when I began to sense someone watching me that I grew
uneasy and tried again to read the flames. I was shocked when I saw the image of a youthful Great Horned Owl flickering in the curve of the flame. Indeed, he was, at that very moment, roosting in the large blue spruce behind me! I spun my head around and blinked in astonishment. There he was—perched on a high branch—watching me. My gizzard seized.

“
I
want to learn.”

Those were Theo’s first words to me.

But how much had he seen already? I wondered. And does he know about the egg? How could I have been such a fool to ignore that smudge at the edge of the flames? How could I have thought I was so entirely alone, so isolated here when this owl was practically within yarping distance of me? And how long had he been here on the island?

“W-w-w…what do you want to learn?” I stammered.

“About fire.” He flew down from the tree and landed on the boulder.

I fluffed my feathers in a dismissive way. “You’re too young. It takes patience, maturity, and I’m sure you don’t have the temperament.”

“How can you tell? You only just met me. You don’t even know my name, let alone my temperament.”

What gallgrot,
I thought. “You’re a Great Horned,” I replied.

“What does that have to do with it?”

“They’re impulsive.”

“That’s unfair. You can’t just exclude someone because of his breed. Besides, it’s untrue. I can’t help being young. I can’t help being a Great Horned. But I am mature, and I am not impulsive.” He paused as if waiting for me to reply. But I turned my back on him and peered into the fire, trying not to read the flames. But his face was everywhere in those flames.

“Don’t you want to know my name?” he asked.

“No,” I muttered.

“My name is Theo, and do you know what you are?” He did not wait for an answer. “You’re rude.”

I had a feeling that I was not going to get rid of this young’un that fast. “So what do you want to learn, and why do you think you can?”

“I want to learn the art of fire and of smeisshen.”

“Smeisshen?”

“Smeisshen—you know, striking, hitting hard ice.”

The word was, I wagered, from a very old form of Krakish, the kind they spoke way up in one of the firths. They loved the old language in those firths. They kept words, polishing them as if they were precious stones.

“Where are you from, young’un?”

“Firth of Grundenspyrr, off the Firth of Fangs.”

“Thought so,” I replied.

“So now you are going to tell me that owls from a far firth won’t have the brains for this.”

“I didn’t say that. But I might point out that it is not ice I have been smeisshening, as you say, but rock.”

“It’s
schmeiss huch ning
—that is how you pronounce it. Cough a little where the word breaks and you’ll have it.”

“Oh, so now you are a language expert.”

“I never said such a thing. I just know how to speak old Krakish, that’s all.”

“Pretty full of yourself, aren’t you?” As you can see, I could be fairly obnoxious.

“I’m not full of myself. If I were I wouldn’t be here asking you to teach me. I would think I knew everything.”

This took me aback. I blinked at him.

“You know,” he said, stepping closer, “I had an uncle once. He died in the Siege of the Fangs—murdered by hagsfiends. He was a great teacher. He believed that knowledge was a sacred trust. He believed that knowledge, not necessarily knowledge of magic but knowledge of the natural world, was the one way we could overcome the hagsfiends.” He paused. I didn’t say anything. This was an
interesting young owl. There was no doubt about it. “My uncle said, ‘I teach because I was taught.’”

I felt a quiver in my gizzard. “But nobody taught me this,” I replied, gesturing at the fire. I knew that sounded rather lame. The youngster agreed.

“I expected a better answer from you,” Theo replied. There was not a trace of smugness in his voice. There was only disappointment. He looked at me through his aggrieved tawny yellow eyes. It was this expression that broke me.

I sighed. “All right. I’ll take you on as an apprentice. But we’re going to have a few rules.”

“Oh, yes! Yes! I’ll do anything you say, sir! Anything.” He lofted himself straight up and down at least three times, such was his excitement. “Anything. I’m very obedient.”

“I’ll bet,” I muttered. “So, these are the rules. While you are here learning from me, it is strictly forbidden to leave the island.”

He nodded.

“Furthermore, your business is to learn about fire, nothing else. Understand?”

“Well, what would you define as ‘else’?”

I gaped and blinked at him in amazement. The impudence! The sheer gallgrot!

“I mean you keep your beak out of anything that is not connected with fire.”

“Like the egg?”

Now I was truly stunned. “The egg? You know about the egg?”

He looked down at his talons and scratched them nervously on the boulder. “Well, yes. I figured that was why you were digging down for the snow moss. It’s always used in schneddenfyrrs.”

I was tempted to ask him how long he had been here but frankly did not want to give him the satisfaction of saying, “Oh, ten or twelve nights,” thus proving that I was too stupid to have noticed. I coughed slightly. “Err…yes. I am sitting for friends of mine who are unable to care for the egg because of the war. They are off fighting.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Theo said suddenly.

“Reminds you of what?”

“I don’t fight.” I blinked at him. “I am a gizzard resister. I don’t believe in war. In my gizzard, I believe there is always a better way. And I don’t believe in magic, either.”

“Are you a Glauxian Brother?”

“I would like to be. But they think I am not quite ready.”

“And you didn’t make them take you anyway?”
How come I got stuck with you?
I wanted to scream.

“In matters of faith, one cannot use force. It’s difficult to explain,” he said.

“I can’t believe it!”

“Believe what?” Theo asked.

“That it’s difficult to explain. You never seem to be at a loss for words, Theo.”

“Could we get on with the rules?” he pressed.

“That’s about it. I keep a clean camp. Find your own hollow.”

“Thank you…thank you so much, sir. I’ll be the best student you’ve ever had.”

“I’ve never had a student!”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll both learn a lot, then. I, as a student, and you, as a teacher. And if you need any help in tending the egg, don’t hesitate to ask.”

I glared at him now. “No! The egg is my business. Learning about the fire and the forge is yours.”

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir. I promise to be an attentive, hardworking apprentice. I want to learn.”

And learn he did. The irony of all this was that as I had become the first collier, Theo the gizzard resister would become the first blacksmith and learn how to shape black metal into incomparable weapons—weapons as deadly as ice swords, ice slivers, or ice scimitars. I quickly altered that old Krakish word “smeisshen” to something I
could pronounce without gagging. The word became “smith”—and then blacksmith, for we were soon able to extract a new kind of metal that was much harder than any I had encountered in the Beyond, and it turned black when it cooled.

M
y last vision of Siv in the flames had been a terrible one indeed. I had seen her caught in that horrifying searing yellow light that radiated from the hagsfiends’ eyes, then taking the scimitar and rushing at the hagsfiends, and the sudden terrible sight of a torn wing and blood, lots and lots of blood. Since that time I had been too frightened to scour the flames for any other sight of Siv. I had sensed that she had survived. She would later tell me that just before she charged the hagsfiends, she feared that she was turning into one.

“So this is nachtmagen!”

That was her last thought before she felt her mind scraped clean. And then no thoughts, no feelings. It was as if she were becoming nothing. Or was she becoming something else? Something pecked at her gizzard. There was a peculiar ringing at the back of her mind. “Am I becoming a hagsfiend?” She felt her plummels dissolve in the cold night air. And where they had been, she felt the
edges become ragged. She looked in horror as her beautiful white-spotted, rich brown feathers began to darken. “No!” she shrieked.

But she was not becoming a hagsfiend. No, my friend, it was the Nacht Ga’. The dreadful spell had been cast, and Siv was resisting it with all of her might. Only to herself did her plumage appear to change. Outwardly, to anyone else, she would seem the same. What was changing was her gizzard and within it the seeds of her Ga’. It was at that moment when she dimly perceived these strange gizzardly mutations that she cried out with a bellow worthy of the mightiest warrior, “No!” and charged the hagsfiends. It was at that moment that I lost her image in the flames, when the harsh yellow light receded and the snowflakes turned red.

It was much later still that I would learn that all the while I was tending the egg, Siv was not dead but grievously wounded, her port wing nearly torn off. She had been able to fly only with Myrrthe’s help in a kronkenbot, a windless kind of vacuum used for transporting wounded soldiers from a battle. Normally, it would have taken a minimum of two owls to create the kronkenbot, but Myrrthe was determined, and if there was anything Snowy Owls of the far north were known for, it was their unfaltering resolve, their sheer stubbornness.

“I can do it, milady, I can do it. The tailwind is favorable. I know I can do it.” By ruddering her lateral tail feathers and making minuscule adjustments to her primaries, Myrrthe was somehow creating a windless space in which Siv, still bleeding, could be sucked along in flight. It was this sudden favorable wind change that had initially allowed them to escape because the wind brought with it the risk of salt death for the hagsfiends. You see, Dear Owl, despite all their powers, hagsfiends feared one thing: salt water from our icy seas. They could be seriously wounded or even killed by seawater. Their drenched feathers lacked oil and could not shed the salty water. Thus, their wings iced up immediately, often causing them to plummet into the sea. They avoided any contact with seawater.