S
he heard the strains of the ice harp as she approached the point on which throngs of gadfeathers had gathered. She was nervous, but she knew that gadfeathers did not pry. They were very close-beaked about who they were and where they had come from. It was part of their culture, the gadfeather way of life. All of them at sometime or another had left something they called home or family for whatever reason, and it was considered a grave transgression to ask a gadfeather about his or her personal history. Theirs was a journeying way of life. They considered themselves free of loyalty to any region or clan or hollow. The words “free” and “freedom” threaded through many of their songs. They mostly traveled alone or sometimes in small flocks, but these flocks changed constantly. So even though they were known to be rather solitary creatures like polar bears, they did gather several times a year to meet and sing. The gift for making song and lovely music was one thing that all gadfeathers seemed to have
in common. Among the most musically gifted of the gadfeathers were the Snowy Owls. As Siv drew closer, she could clearly hear one of the Snowies singing to the beautiful liquid notes of the ice harp. It was a mournful, soul-searing song.
Fly away with me,
give my loneliness a break.
Fly away with me,
so my heart will never ache.
Fly away with me this night.
Fly away with me,
I’ll find a feather for your ruff.
Fly away with me till dawn.
Fly away then we’ll be gone.
Hollows we shall leave behind,
fly to places they’ll never find.
Fly away with me right now,
I can’t wait.
Fly away with me,
don’t hesitate.
I want to soar the smee hole drafts
where the steam rises from the sea.
I want to cross the mountain ridge,
I want to see the other side.
We’ll preen each other in the moon’s light.
Fly away with me.
We shall wake up in the snow,
go where the winds always blow.
Fly away with me!
“Lovely, ain’t it?” A Whiskered Screech lighted down on the ice cliff where Siv had perched.
“Oh, yes,” Siv replied. The song had awakened so much loneliness in her. How she missed her beloved H’rath and the chick she had never met, and now Svenka and the cubs. She had never felt lonelier in her life. It struck Siv as rather ironic that gadfeathers disdained the life of family and hollow yet sang so beautifully of loneliness. It was as if they craved companionship yet celebrated loneliness.
“Nothing like a Snowy for singing. They call her the Snow Rose.” The Whiskered Screech nodded at the Snowy Owl who had just finished singing. “Hope she sings ‘Sky of Tears.’ Just wait’ll you hear that one. Your gizzard will be in shreds.”
That is the last thing I need,
Siv thought,
my gizzard in shreds!
She had to be alert and pulled together and keen for anything she might hear—not just these aching songs.
She flew onto another perch. Here, gadfeathers were swooping through the air doing one of their jigs while a
Great Horned Owl belted out another song full of hurt and anger, bad weather, and teardrops that froze feathers.
Enough of this!
thought Siv. She flew off to where a group of owls were picking over a pile of herring that some Fish Owls had delivered. She sidled up to a small clutch of gadfeathers who were busily eating and talking.
“They say the fighting’s moved back to the H’rathghar glacier. Lord Arrin, you know.”
“Yeah, the last of H’rath’s guard tried holding him off.”
“Well, if they’ve moved to the glacier, that’ll free up the Firth of Fangs for a bit of sport flying this summer. Nothing like them smee holes up there.”
“Yeah, but there be kraals, too.”
Kraals,
Siv thought. What exactly were kraals? She had heard King H’rath speak of them once. She had thought they were some kind of gadfeather, but these owls were speaking as if they were something else entirely.
“They say that old Screech who used to fly with us went kraal last summer.”
“They be a nasty lot.”
“I heard they were settling down somewhere on the glacier.”
“Naw, you got it mixed up. It’s them Glauxian Brothers who are on the glacier.”
“No, Mac, them brothers picked up and flew off. Started a retreat somewhere, like the sisters have.”
This was news to Siv. She knew for a fact that the brothers had lived in the scattered holes on the glacier. Indeed, the brothers had often visited the Glacier Palace during the periods when they were permitted to speak. Throughout the year the brothers kept long periods of silence. And even during the rest of the year, each day had certain hours in which they kept the rule of silence. They had always been welcome at the palace, for both Siv and H’rath had enjoyed them greatly. They were most learned owls, and it had been Siv’s hope that if she and H’rath ever did have a chick, one of the brothers might be convinced to come and tutor it. She had often heard them speak of their longing to have a retreat, a place where they could all live together in what they called a community of learning instead of living scattered. They dreamed of starting a library in which they could keep records of all they had learned. So, it seemed at last they had done this.
“It’s peaceful over there in the Bitter Sea. Hasn’t been touched by the wars. That’s probably where they’ve gone.”
“Not much to fight for over there. Not like around here. I heard tell the hagsfiend Ygryk had been spotted not ten leagues from here.”
Ygryk!
Siv’s gizzard froze.
Ygryk near here?
The thought was too terrible. She would have to be extra careful. She would need more gadfeatherish bits and pieces to tuck in. Nearby was a pile of reindeer moss. She had noticed one gadfeather had swathed some around her head, lending her a rakish air but also obscuring her face. She went to the pile and plucked some up and while arranging it, continued to listen to the two gadfeathers that had been talking.
“Bitter Sea never freezes up. You ain’t gonna get Lord Arrin over there now that he’s cozied up with the hagsfiends. Too much open water. Salt water. Odd how it be only salt water that gets them hagsfiends, and not rainwater so much.”
“Lose their half-hags from the salt. Salt usually makes things melt. But when it gets mixed with that poison of the half-hags it makes them freeze up, then the feathers of the hagsfiends start to freeze and down they go. No oil in their feathers, either, like the rest of us, which helps us shed salt water.”
The terrible half-hags! Siv remembered them vividly. They had never reached her for she had successfully blocked the fyngrot. However, she would never forget the image of them swarming over her mate as he fought Lord Arrin. Nevertheless, H’rath had fought on as the
poison coursed through his hollow bones, dissolving them and then flooding into his bloodstream. But it had been Lord Arrin who had delivered the fatal blow. And then the hagsfiend Penryck had sliced off H’rath’s head, jammed it onto his ice sword, and swooped off into the night. The hagsfiends were known for their ghoulish ritualistic ways of murder. Siv clamped her eyes tightly shut against this rush of memories.
“‘
Too much open water
’!” The words rang now in Siv’s brain. Her gizzard tingled. Why had she never thought of this before? The Bitter Sea would be the perfect place for Grank to have taken the egg on that night when they had been attacked by the hagsfiends in the Ice Cliff Palace. She would go there immediately!
A
s Siv plied her way west toward the Bitter Sea against a headwind that made her barely healed port wing throb with pain, Lord Arrin was meeting with his band of hagsfiends and commander owls in a cave on the H’rathghar glacier. There were twenty owls with the rank of commander, each of whom had a company of no less than ten owls. Every one of the twenty units had a hagsfiend attached to it. And there were some units composed entirely of hagsfiends. The cave was crowded with the twenty commanders and six hagsfiend captains. And on each hagsfiend, unseen, lurked scores of miniscule half-hags. They lived in the interstices and narrow, slotted spaces between the hagsfiends’ feathers. It was from these nearly invisible refuges that the half-hags would dart out in battle with their poisonous loads. The hagsfiends themselves had built up a strong immunity to the poison. If one were to look closely, its feathers, even while the
hagsfiend was resting, would appear to be moving slightly as if stirred by the most delicate wind. But it was actually the half-hags. Like ants in an anthill, they went about their business constantly and their business was to feed off the small lice and other tiny vermin that lodged in their hosts’ wings. Perched in the shadows behind Lord Arrin was his closest confidant, Penryck, who was the captain of one of the hagsfiend units. Penryck who was also known as the Sklardrog, which in Krakish means sky dragon. He was a bold hag full of wit and magic, and Lord Arrin had come to rely on him more and more as the war had turned in his favor. The Glacier Palace of the H’rathghar was now within their reach. They would lay siege to it by summer’s end, before the katabatic winds started to blow.
But what was a palace without a queen? Lord Arrin needed Siv, and he needed the chick who must have hatched by now, but where were they? Where was this chick who might have greater powers than any of them could imagine? Luckily for Lord Arrin, few had imagined these powers. It was Penryck who had first suggested to him that the chick might have a special energy. They had only caught a glimpse of the egg as Siv and her servant, Myrrthe, had fled from the Glacier Palace when King H’rath had been killed. The egg had possessed a peculiar
luminosity, which had resisted the fyngrot. The searing yellow light had slipped off the egg, simply melted away like ice crystals in the heat of the sun. Indeed, the egg had grown even more radiant.
And had this radiance in some way rubbed off on Siv? Was that how she had resisted the fyngrot? It was quite extraordinary. She had seemed impervious to the yellow glare. This had both fascinated and frightened the hagsfiends. They imagined that both Siv—and especially her chick—had untapped magic. And if there was any magic greater than their own in the N’yrthghar, the hagsfiends lusted for it. They were the rightful heirs of nachtmagen! No others but the hagsfiends could possess it.
But magic was not all. They needed an alliance with a powerful owl like Lord Arrin. Despite their nachtmagen, they still were peculiarly vulnerable to seawater. Thus, there were only limited regions that they could control, but with Lord Arrin this problem was solved. Solved, that was, as long as he himself did not become too haggish through association. That is why he desperately craved Siv for his mate. She who could resist the fyngrot, would thwart those haggish tendencies, would make him immune to that one vulnerability he had learned by Pleek’s example.
The lesson of Lord Pleek and Ygryk was a harsh one. For as soon as Pleek had taken Ygryk as a mate, he had begun to acquire certain haggish aspects and was now beginning to fear open water. The union between the Great Horned and the hagsfiend had proved to be a chick-less one. Eggs were laid but they never developed. After a few days, they shriveled up into gray, hard, misshapen spheres. Nonetheless, Lord Arrin and Penryck had discussed how they might best use Pleek and Ygryk in obtaining Siv’s chick. Ygryk longed for a chick of her own. She was desperate, so desperate that she was willing to fly over open water to get one if need be. She was obsessed. It had been Ygryk who had actually found Siv on the iceberg in the firthkin.
And it was Ygryk who had just informed Penryck that Siv had left the iceberg. Penryck stepped out of the shadows now. “Lord Arrin, I have just received news from Ygryk that Queen Siv has left the iceberg in the firthkin.”
“Left? She has left?” Lord Arrin was aghast. “What now? How will we ever find the chick?”
Penryck stepped closer to Lord Arrin and, leaning in to him, whispered something in his ear slit. Lord Arrin cringed. The stench of these hagsfiends was overpowering. He wondered if one ever became accustomed to it.
But he was soon distracted from such trivialities as he listened to the hagsfiend’s whispers.
“It is as I always thought, my lord. The egg was never there with Siv. The chick did not hatch at the firthkin, and if it did it would have been much too young to fly—certainly not against those spring winds of the firthkin. If Siv left, she must have been alone.”
Lord Arrin blinked.
He’s right. Penryck is right.
“But what now, Penryck?”
“Don’t you see, Lord Arrin, it is a blessing.” It was very odd hearing a hagsfiend say a word like “blessing.” A blessing was associated with Glaux, with faith, but never with magic. The word sounded curious from the beak of a hagsfiend, something like the krakish word for blood, “bleshka.”
“How so?” Lord Arrin asked.
“A mother yearns for her chick. If we find her, we can follow her. She will lead us right to the chick.”
“Aaaah.” Lord Arrin blinked. His amber eyes glowed with this sudden realization.
Penryck wondered yet again how stupid these owls were. Not only did they have no magic but they, who thought that hagsfiends brains were primitive, had their own unique ignorance. Lord Arrin might imagine that he, Penryck, was working for him, but in truth it was quite
the reverse. Penryck himself had a grand scheme for domination, and if they could seize the chick…well…the world would be Penryck’s and he would not be just king of the N’yrthghar but the god of the nachtmagen universe.
The other owls and hagsfiends whispered among themselves as Lord Arrin and Penryck continued to confer.
“We need the best trackers,” Lord Arrin was saying in a low voice.
“Well, we know who that is!” Penryck churred. But it was not the soft gentle laughter of owls. Instead, it sounded rather like ice fracturing.
“Ygryk! How convenient.”
Penryck nodded.
“Invite her and Pleek to the war room,” Lord Arrin said, and then paused. “Of course, we won’t let Ygryk actually keep the chick. She could be its foster mother, nanny, nursemaid, perhaps.”
Penryck shook his head. “No, that will never do. She will want to possess the chick entirely.”
Lord Arrin blinked. “Well then, there is only one choice.”
Penryck nodded.
“She will be slain as soon as she leads us to the chick.”
“Precisely,” Penryck replied.
“And we know who our best assassin is—Ullryck,” Lord Arrin said. He then churred.
This, indeed, is a good plan,
he thought to himself. “Yes, yes, a good plan. Send for Ygryk and Pleek right now!”
Ygryk and Pleek followed Penryck as they flew through a tangled web of ice tunnels under the H’rathghar glacier. Their gizzards were tight. Their hearts beat rapidly. Never before had they been asked into this innermost sanctum where Lord Arrin had plotted and strategized against the H’rathian owls of the king.
We are coming up in the world,
Pleek thought. How they had made fun of him. No, worse. When he had first taken Ygryk as a mate, they all had sneered and treated him as if he were splat from a wet pooper of a bird, a seagull. But look at him now—and look at Ygryk—both of them flying toward the war room to be included in a high-level meeting.
Lord Arrin began at once. “We have invited you here to perform a special mission.”
“Your word is our command.” Pleek dipped his head obsequiously.
“Ygryk, I understand that because of your superb vigilance you have just discovered that Siv has fled the iceberg.”
“Yes, my lord.” Her voice creaked in the manner of those hagsfiends whose ancestors were said to have emerged from the smee holes that dotted the N’yrthghar. Somehow the heat or the steam from the holes and had given their voices an odd inflection.
“I know that it is difficult for you hagsfiends with your…” He hesitated as if searching for the proper word.
Don’t you dare say “primitive,”
Penryck silently cursed.
“…With your unusual brains and thinking processes to master the art of reason, but I have deduced that it would be most logical at this time for Siv to set out in search of her chick.”
No credit for me, of course!
Penryck thought.
“Therefore,” Lord Arrin continued, “my proposition is simple. Ygryk, you are a superior tracker and you, Pleek, have learned well from this good mate of yours.”
At last,
Pleek thought,
someone understands what a jewel my Ygryk truly is!
“I want Siv as my queen,” Lord Arrin went on. “You want a child. You get me my queen and her chick. I’ll keep the queen and you keep the chick.”
Pleek and Ygryk were overwhelmed. They slid from the ice shards they had been perched on and bent their legs so deeply that their talons skidded out from under
them and their beaks dug into the ice. “Merciful and all wise Lord Arrin,” Pleek began, “how shall we ever thank you for this?”
Lord Arrin looked down at them groveling at the tips of his talons. “Oh, I’m sure we will find a way.” He blinked and the amber in his eyes cast golden shadows on the ice. He paused. “Now, you are dismissed.”
The Great Horned and the hagsfiend, bowing and scraping, backed out of the war room. Then Lord Arrin turned to Penryck. “Send for Ullryck. She’s got no longings for chicks? No notions of mothering?”
“Not our Ullryck, sir. ‘Twas said that her ancestors came from the deepest smee hole in the N’yrthghar, one that went straight down to hagsmire.”
“Perfect, then, for this job. Give her flight instructions immediately. She’ll need two burly fighters with her for the trip back. They’re not to set off until Pleek and Ygryk are a few leagues out. Her half-hags should be able to pick up their scent. Give her a cover story if they discover her; just say that I felt they might need some backup if things got rough.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“My lord?” Lord Arrin blinked at Penryck with a hint of contempt in his amber eyes.
Penryck was momentarily confused.
Surely he does not want me to call him ‘Your Majesty’ yet! Not yet!
Penryck dipped his head. His shaggy black feathers scraped the ice. “Your Majesty?” At the very core of the word was a quaver of doubt. But if Lord Arrin noticed he chose to ignore it.
Fool!
thought Penryck.