The First Collier (6 page)

The mother superior, or Glauxess, of the order quickly glanced at the old Snowy who appeared at the entry to the underground burrow. She nodded and welcomed her.
“Why, of course,” the Glauxess answered. “You are welcome here.”

Myrrthe regarded her closely. She looked like Siv’s cousin Rorkna but seemed changed in some way Myrrthe could not quite pinpoint. She immediately became wary. Following Rorkna, the mother superior, Myrrthe wound her way through the tunnels that connected the burrows of the retreat. They arrived at a larger burrow, where a pile of plump voles lay. The sight of food made Myrrthe’s gizzard growl.

“What be your name, ma’am?” the Glauxess asked.

Myrrthe felt her gizzard lock. What be your name? This was poorly spoken Krakish. No one of royal or noble gizzard would ever speak this way. Myrrthe fought the instinct to wilf. She must not betray her suspicions, her fears. She would eat the vole quietly and then leave as fast as she could. She thanked Glaux that she had insisted that Siv remain tucked in at the base of the Ice Dagger, a short flight away. She suspected what might be going on here. If it was true, then the evil intricacies of the hagsfiends’ nachtmagen was worse than she had ever imagined. Myrrthe had heard stories from an old aunt that there was a spell that some very powerful hagsfiends could cast, called the Nacht Ga’. But her auntie had been a nervous, apprehensive type, imagining a hagsfiend around every
corner and making the slashing sign with her talon to ward off evil. So Myrrthe had never given much credence to her ramblings about hagsfiends and nachtmagen. But now Myrrthe’s gizzard gave an alarming twitch.

Let me explain something, Dear Owl, about the nature of the gizzard. The gizzard is not simply a second stomach that accommodates the indigestible parts of our prey by compressing bones and fur and teeth into neat little pellets. Hardly! It is through this most mysterious of all organs that we experience our strongest feelings, emotions, and instincts. But it is more even than that. The gizzard of an owl can possess or develop what we call “Ga’,” which means great spirit; a spirit that somehow embodies not only all that is noble, but all that is humble as well. It flourishes, however, to its greatest in very few owls. H’rath, for example, was a kind and great king. But did he have great Ga’? It is a hard question to answer. At that time in my life, I had never met an owl who could be said to have great Ga’. The extent to which Ga’ evolves within an owl varies. But the seeds of it are there in every owl.

The spell of the hagsfiends, the Nacht Ga’, freezes the seeds of a gizzard’s Ga’; in fact, the spell suppresses all of the rare and extraordinary powers of the gizzard, turning that marvelous organ into what it was in the most common
of birds—a mere second stomach, a lump in the gut. The spell allows the hagsfiends to invade an owl’s being and force that bird to do their bidding. Although the owl might look as it did before, the owl’s gizzard, its identity, the very essence of its owlness and personality were now in thrall to other powers—those of the hagsfiends. So even though the Glauxess looked exactly as she had before, she was not. She had been rendered powerless to exercise any moral judgment, powerless to act upon any conviction, powerless even to think any genuine thoughts. Myrrthe now knew that Rorkna and the other sisters had fallen under this spell. Even if she had not known about the Nacht Ga’, she would have wondered about the strange grinding noises coming from their gizzards. She knew the cause was not a bad vole—mere indigestion. The old Snowy knew that she must get away from this place as quickly as possible. She looked at the rock slab in the large burrow where she and the others shared the vole. Dread swept through her: She was not surrounded by the good sisters of Glaux but by hagsfiends who merely looked like the sisters. One false move and they would be on her like a pack of mobbing crows. She had to exercise the utmost caution. Her gizzard contracted and trembled as Rorkna spoke.

“Would you not honor us with one of your ancient gadfeather songs?”

Ancient gadfeather songs!
Myrrthe thought frantically. Did she know any ancient gadfeather songs? Something sounded dimly in her brain. “Yes,” she said hesitatingly. “Let me just get these vole teeth set away in my gizzard.” She gulped and pretended to be flexing her gizzard, which, in truth, was trembling so hard it was barely functional. She was trying to buy herself some time. She then coughed delicately. The words of the song were coming back, and she sang:

From a time before time

when we gadfeathers roamed

o’er mountains, valleys, and sea,

We sought not a home,

not a limb for a perch,

we only wanted to be free.

Now the sky is our hollow,

the stars we do follow.

The wind is our friend.

That’s all we need in the end;

To fly and rarely rest.

The whole world is our nest.

Let us be, let us be, let us be.

Let us be free, free, free!

“Lovely! Ain’t it, Sisters?” the Glauxess turned and spoke to the others.

The word “ain’t” ground in Myrrthe’s ear slits as loudly as the gizzards grinding around her. She could not leave quickly enough. As soon as she could, she bade the spellbound sisters farewell.

Taking her leave, Myrrthe set off on a roundabout flight path for fear of being followed, and finally returned to Siv, who awaited her in a crevice at the base of the Ice Dagger. Siv was sitting on the sling in which she carried the egg.

“Well?” Siv asked eagerly. “What took you so long?”

“Bad news, milady,” Myrrthe replied.

“Rorkna hasn’t died, has she?”

“Worse, actually.”

Siv felt her gizzard flinch. “Worse! What do you mean?”

“Rorkna and all the sisters are spellbound. The Nacht Ga’.”

Myrrthe thought that Siv might faint. Her sparkling eyes became lusterless. She swayed on her perch over the egg.

How Myrrthe wished she had a crop, one of those gullet pouches that other birds had. Then she could have brought up some of that vole to feed her lady. “There, there, milady,” she said.

Siv staggered a bit, then steading herself atop the egg. “Don’t worry, Myrrthe. I shall be fine. But I suppose we must leave here soon.”

“Yes, milady. As soon as possible. Weather is coming in.”

“Thank Glaux, you fashioned this fine sling for the dear egg.”

“Yes, well, snow mice are more than just good to eat. Their pelts are useful, too. Madam?”

“Yes, Myrrthe?”

Myrrthe peeked out of the crevice. Snow was coming down harder. “I think we should go right now—by day. It’s starting to really blizzard. So I’ll blend in fine. Once I get rid of all these gadfeather trappings.”

“Yes,” Siv agreed. “Time to get rid of these gaudy accessories. Odd, though, isn’t it? My great-aunt who was never even close to being a gadfeather loved all these trimmings. In moderation, of course. Still, I think spots are accessories enough for Spotted Owls. I shall begin to spottilate right now and this should obscure most of my darker feathers.”

Myrrthe nodded.

Spottilating was a very clever trick that Siv, H’rath, and I had devised for camouflage flights in blizzards. It involved fluffing the feathers in a certain way so that the white spots that mottled our darker plumage spread to cover the brown, thus making us appear whiter.

This trick never ceased to amaze Myrrthe, and she watched in silence as Siv slowly became an almost purewhite owl. Then they rose off the Ice Dagger and within mere seconds melted into the white rage of the blizzard.

I
n the whiteness of that blizzard, another owl had spottilated as well. Myself. And so we passed each other without ever knowing it. Aah! So clever we were. Ha! White fools flying through a white night! I bound for Elsemere, and Siv and Myrrthe just lifting off from the Ice Dagger upon which I would land in minutes to rest before pressing on to the sisters’ retreat. I lighted upon the Dagger and almost immediately saw signs that owls had been here. I examined their talon prints closely. I felt my gizzard quicken and then it nearly shimmered when I spotted a feather. It was Siv’s. I knew it. It just had to be. I was almost certain that she was a short flight away on the Island of Elsemere.

I was so excited that as soon as I regained my strength I lifted off and set a course for Elsemere through the blinding blizzard. I had always had very keen white vision, something that owls of the N’yrthghar came by naturally because of our long winters, but my white vision was
especially sharp now. So the scratchy outline of the island soon appeared out of the blizzard, but at nearly the same time, my gizzard gave a lurch that nearly sent me into an air tumble. I began backwinging immediately. I didn’t need to gaze into a fire to know that there was something awful happening to the sisters of Glaux on the Island of Elsemere. I suddenly realized that my powers of intuition had been intensified. This new power must have come about because of my exposure to the ember. Now I knew what I must do.

I began to circle back to the Ice Dagger. Thank Glaux, I had brought the horn with the coals in it. I would build a fire to see more precisely what was transpiring on Elsemere with the sisters and possibly Siv. And this time I would act. No, I would not fall prey to that dazed, hypnotic state in which I saw everything but did nothing.

Using some moss and small twigs I always carried in a lemming-skin pouch, I soon had a small but very serviceable fire going. I squatted down on the windward side of it so the flames would not blow in my face and began to read them. First, I scanned the licks of orange-and-yellow flames for any sign of Siv but could find nothing. I quickly realized that this was rather stupid of me. Hadn’t I learned after all these years that the images from the fire could not be hunted down? I would not find them; they would
find me. As soon as I relaxed and stepped back a pace from the fire, things became much clearer. And what I saw truly terrified me.

There was a Nacht Ga’ cast upon the sisters of the island. It bound them and their gizzards as tightly as if they were trapped between two crunching ice floes. But there was no sign of Siv. Yet instinctively I felt she must be nearby. I had found feather traces of her here. And it was only reasonable that she would have gone to visit her dear cousin at this desperate time. My problem was trying to reason at all. I was caught between the evil magic of the hagsfiends and my own powerful magic. Reason is not a fulcrum for magic upon which decisions should be made. Nor is magic a fulcrum for reason. To mix logic with magic can be catastrophic. I was about to find this out.

I smothered the fire and thought. Reason commanded that I must go to Elsemere because, logically, Siv must be there, even though she was not brought forward by the flames. I knew that flames had their limitations. I also knew that the Nacht Ga’ must be broken, whether Siv was there or not. It was sheer brutality to have enslaved the gizzards of these good sisters in such a manner. I must save them. There was only one way in which a Nacht Ga’ spell could be broken and that was with a splinter made of issen blaue, which is the hardest of what we call the
“strong ice.” Normally, a single stab with one of these ice splinters was instantly fatal, but in the peculiar case of a spellbound owl, the wound broke the spell and restored the owl’s gizzard.

Some of the very best ice splinters could be struck off the Ice Dagger itself. The Ice Dagger was a blade of rock soaring from the sea and sheathed in ice. One of the first lessons in our youth was to learn ice knapping. Old King H’rathmore sent us with his master-at-arms, Proudfoot, a Snowy, to this very Ice Dagger where we learned the craft of making weapons from ice. We learned how to use stones and various kinds of ice shards to strike off other pieces of ice and to fashion them into weapons. It was a craft known only in the N’yrthghar and it demanded real skill. Both H’rath and I became fairly good ice knappers.

I now made three sliver swords. They were minuscule. I carefully wrapped them in protective layers of moss so I would not cut myself and tucked them close to my shoulder between by my coverts and my flight feathers.

I circled Elsemere Island twice before lighting down on its eastern shore. An elderly sister, a hunched Barred Owl, waddled out of a burrow hole near one of the few trees and approached me. I knew immediately that what I had suspected was true. She was in the grip of the Nacht Ga.’ Her normally warm brown eyes were dull, and there
was a hint of that intense yellow behind them that is the mark of all hagsfiends.

“How may I serve you, good sir?” Her voice was mechanical, without the usual low melodious tones of a Barred Owl’s speech.

“Just need a bit of a rest,” I replied.

“A bit of vole might do you some good,” she said.

“That would be very kind of you, madam.”

“Follow me, then.”

I followed her into a burrow opening, one of many that were scattered across the island, and soon found myself wending my way behind her through the twisting passageways of the sisters’ retreat. I kept alert for any signs of Siv. It could be easy to be lulled into a sense of false security with these spellbound owls. Yes, their gizzards were deadened and they appeared to be in a daze, but they were entirely controlled by hagsfiends and capable of rendering great harm. I needed to know if Siv was here, and I needed to see the Glauxess because it was my guess that it was through the gizzard of the Glauxess that the hagsfiends had gained control.

I soon knew I was right. The Nacht Ga’ had been cast not just on this one owl, but the entire lot. I entered a large central space in the network of burrows and immediately noticed the strong scent of crow as a Spotted Owl
approached. And there was something else. That unmistakable yellow of her eyes was only thinly veiled. One cannot imagine the intensity of the yellow in the eyes of a hagsfiend in the rage of battle. It is said that if one stares straight into a hagsfiend’s eyes, one can go blind. But I have long believed that it is not blindness that occurs but a state similar to that of yeepness. In any case, I was prepared. My ice sliver was tucked under the knobby suface of my third toe, ready to be slipped into the gizzard. I just had to get near enough to the Glauxess to use it.