“I see now,” Grank began to speak slowly. “I see now why it happened.”
“Why what happened? Are you angry, Uncle Grank?”
“No, lad. It’s just that you are a fire reader—like me. Only your vision is stronger, much stronger, and that is why there were no images left for me to read in the flames.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Grank. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t be sorry, lad. You have a gift. You can read deep into the flames.”
“Fire reader?” Phineas said.
“Never heard of such a thing.” The Snow Rose looked at Theo as if for an explanation.
But Theo could say nothing. He was just looking at Hoole and remembering the peculiar luminosity of the egg from which this owl had hatched. This owl, this prince was special. If there was any creature on earth who could save the N’yrthghar and quell the hagsfiends and their poisonous magic, it must be Hoole. But for now he must not know that he is a prince and a future king. No one must know. They must fly immediately to the Beyond. Yes, thought Theo, and like the metals I work with in my fires, young Hoole will be tempered and wrought into a king.
Into a king!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Wolf Howls
The wolf called Fengo sat on a high ridge and, with his head thrown back, he began to howl. His strange mad music, wild and untamed, threaded through the night that glowed with the fires of the volcanoes. There are many ways in which a wolf howls, most of them understandable to other wolves. Through their howling and scent marking they speak of danger, of the territorial boundaries, of herds of caribou to be hunted. But sometimes they simply howl—not to communicate, but to mourn or wail messages meant only for themselves or for Lupus. It was to the constellation they called Lupus, that great wolf of the sky, that Fengo now howled.
Where is he? Where is he? Where is Grank?
Never gone so long.
Has he been killed?
Does he now climb the spirit trail,
Lupus?
The good owl, friend of mine.
He is owl. I am wolf.
He is sky. I am earth.
We are brothers of this world.
This particular kind of howling was called glaffing, and it was considered poor form to interrupt a glaffing wolf. But another wolf began to climb the ridge where Fengo howled. Fengo did not stop but rose to his feet, the hackles on the back of his neck stiffened, his ears raised now, and his tail lifted in a line horizontal with his spine. The approaching wolf, MacHeath, began to crouch and pull back his mouth into a grimace. With his belly scraping the ground and his ears laid back flat, he started to move forward toward Fengo in an attitude of complete submission.
How dare he approach me when I am glaffing. Such swine, these MacHeaths! Fengo continued glaffing, trying to ignore the wolf. But his mind was drawn to other thoughts. Why did I even bother to include the MacHeaths on our journey from the Always Cold. The wolves led by Fengo had left the land far to the west that had once been hospitable but had grown colder and colder, colder even than the N’yrthghar, until every river and stream and pond was frozen and even the waterfalls were stilled. They had made the long journey that had taken countless moons to this land of Beyond the Beyond where fires scorched the sky and the land never froze. Fengo paid no heed to the wolf and continued his glaffing for Grank. Never had Grank been gone so long, and deep in his bones Fengo felt that something awful must have happened to his dear friend since a messenger came and delivered the letter from King H’rath so many moon cycles ago. When Fengo finished, he turned to MacHeath. He loathed this wolf who was full of sense-less rage, a hunger for power and who, in his fury, had been known to kill both mates and pups.
“Yes? What is it?” Fengo growled.
“I would like to serve, Fengo.”
Fengo knew what was coming. MacHeath had seen Grank retrieve the owl ember from one of the volcanoes. Many wolves had seen it, and they sensed its peculiar power. They were smart enough to stay away from it. But not MacHeath. He had been fascinated by the ember and the strange owl who had stared into its depths. He waited now for a reply from Fengo. Fengo remained silent. This exasperated the impulsive MacHeath. “He was right, you know,” he said with an edge in his voice.
“Who was right about what?” Fengo replied.
“The owl, the one called Grank, the one you are glaffing for. He was right when he called it the wolf ember. It is not the owl ember. It holds the same green fire that burns in our eyes.” He dropped his lids halfway so that only a slit of fierce green showed.
“The ember is not all green. There is the fiery orange of its heat and the blue…”
MacHeath interrupted, “But the blue of the center is ringed with green—green like our eyes, Fengo!”
Fengo was now incensed. His hackles grew more erect. He snarled, humped up his back, and advanced on MacHeath. But MacHeath did not move. He pulled back his lips, baring his teeth in the grin of submission, and made an odd sound halfway between a growl and a whine. He was caught between fear and aggression, threat and submission. His hackles were erect yet his ears were laid back. And still he crouched and made the whinish growls. Would it be submission or aggression? It was the utter contempt in Fengo’s eyes that triggered him. He suddenly exploded in a high leap and came down on Fengo, his fangs sinking into Fengo’s shoulder. MacHeath was huge, larger than Fengo, massively built. But Fengo was a cunning fighter. He immediately sank down close to the ground. His goal was to reach the slope and let gravity do the work for him. He flipped himself once, twice, and then a third time and rolled. Together, they rolled off the ridge and down the slope. MacHeath held on. Fengo suddenly twisted his neck around, and although he intended to grab MacHeath’s snout with his teeth, he missed and his fangs sank into one eye. There was a terrible howl of pain and MacHeath finally let go.
But Fengo was not done with this wolf yet. He would not kill him, but he had to prove that he, Fengo, was dominant. He must show the other wolves who was leader. So, as MacHeath attempted to run away, Fengo dragged him back. Blood poured from MacHeath’s eye socket and on the ground lay the eyeball.
“There is your ember, wolf. The bloody eyeball of greed! The bloody eyeball of your tyranny. Your mates will suffer your abuse no more. Your pups will no longer cower.” Fengo then turned to the other wolves who had gathered at the foot of the slope. “Often I have told you that it was not I who led you here, but the spirit of a long-dead hoole. Hoole, the wolf word for owl and the name of the very first owl. So we say that this ember is not the wolf ember but the owl ember. And it is our duty to guard it until the owl who will be king comes.”
“Fengo.” It was Dunmore MacDuncan, a young but very intelligent wolf who was just a pup when they had left the Always Cold and begun their journey to the Beyond. Dunmore had impressed Fengo from the start, for not only was he wise beyond his years but, despite a birth injury that had left him with a deformed leg, he was brave and stalwart and never gave up. He ran as hard and as long as the other wolves on the long journey, and never complained. Not only that, Dunmore seemed to possess a rare intuition. He sensed danger before anyone else. His instincts were finely honed. He was quick of mind and body despite his leg. Now Dunmore crouched down submissively and made the sign for asking a question.
“Yes, Duncan.”
“Will this owl be our king as well?”
“He will not be our king but he will help us. We know little of magic and what the owls of the N’yrthghar call nachtmagen. But there are practitioners of this terrible kind of magic in the north who are known as hagsfiends. They want to rule not only over the owls, but all creatures. They cannot easily cross open seas and if they touch salt water it can wound them mortally. They hope with their magic to be able to find a charm that will guard them against seawater, and if they do that, we shall all be in danger.”
“And what if the wrong owl comes for the ember?” Dunmore MacDuncan asked.
How smart this yo
ung wolf is, Fengo thought. Indeed, Fengo himself had been absorbed for a long time with this same question. So far, Grank was the only owl who knew how to dive for coals, but owls were smart and in the kingdom of owls, news traveled. Fengo felt that it would not be long before other owls might master the art of colliering and the craft of making tools from metals. How, indeed, would they prevent some tyrannical owl, like one of those who had betrayed King H’rath, from hearing about the ember and making an attempt to retrieve it? There were five volcanoes that stood in a circle. When Grank had finally given up the ember, he had dropped it into the one they called Stormfast. But there was no certainty that it would remain there. Underlying the volcanoes was a network of rivers flowing with lava. The ember could move to any of the other volcanoes. He wondered if he should set up a watch to guard the ember. He would mull this over in his mind. Perhaps Dunmore MacDuncan would be the perfect wolf to captain such a watch over this ring of volcanoes.
He looked on now with great interest as the wolves dispersed. Which of MacHeath’s mates would stay with him. And which would leave? He saw MacHeath approaching each one, undoubtedly with new promises and favors. Indeed, they all stayed with him—all except one! Hordweard. She was the oldest of his mates. Perhaps at long last she was tired of his abuse. For ears she had only stubs. MacHeath had bitten them off in a fit of rage when she had not laid them back in submission quickly enough. Or perhaps she was beyond bearing any more cubs…Or perhaps, thought Fengo, she is a traitorous old she wolf. Had he convinced her to spy for him? After all, MacHeath is missing one eye now. Why not have three! What has he promised Hordweard? MacHeath held a power over his mates that was hard to escape despite his abusive treatment. He controlled them not only with physical force but with threats and bribes. Fengo sincerely doubted that a wolf as old and weakened Hordweard would dare leave him for long.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Hagsfiend of the Ice Narrows
A bizarre-looking bird with a fat orange beak, beady black eyes, and shaggy feathers cautiously waddled up to Pleek and offered him some small fish that it had just dived for. Pleek shook his head once more in disbelief as he watched this peculiar concoction of a bird. Half-hagsfiend, half-puffin, and strangest of all, it could dive with immunity into the sea and fish like all puffins. The salt water did not harm him.
For the cycle of one moon, Pleek and Ygryk had been sheltered in the Ice Narrows by Kreeth, the old hagsfiend who was Ygryk’s friend. Both he and Ygryk were recovering from their wounds. But Pleek wondered if his dignity would ever fully recover. How could Lord Arrin have turned on them so? Halfway back to the Ice Narrows they had been set upon by Lord Arrin’s most cunning assassin: Ullryck.
If Kreeth had not been flying by with two of her monstrosities they would never have survived the flight over the Bitter Sea. But she was a powerful hag and what she lacked in strength and size, she more than made up for in the power of her charms. “Kreeth, why would Lord Arrin send Ullryck to kill us? If it hadn’t been for you and your two…puff-hags, we would never have made it back here.”
Kreeth thought hard for a long moment as she gazed about her cave. It was like a laboratory of nachtmagen. Gizzards of owls and other birds she had murdered were neatly dried and hung up. There were salt stars that had formed in the evaporated lakes of the Nameless and several petrified bird eggs that she had excavated from a region she would not reveal. The entire ice cave was strung with macabre garlands of withered eyeballs. Finally, she turned to Pleek and spoke: “Most obviously, Ullryck was spying on you and Ygryk. When she saw Ygryk trying to…remove the young owl’s eye, she must have thought she was trying to kill him. So she planned her own attack.”
Pleek nodded. Kreeth pointed to one of the withered eyeballs that hung above her. “Got that one from a polar bear. Imagine that,” she cackled. “Me going after a polar bear. But I got him, and I started pouring the fyngrot into him. But he got away. Still, cursed be the creature that encounters a polar bear with fyngrot.”
“Does he know how to use it?” Pleek asked.
“Can’t tell you. And if he does know how, will he have the gallgrot to use it? You see, this is what is so interesting about my work. It is both nachtmagen, and scientific and philosophical.” She paused. “And it takes a unique courage. What other hagsfiend would live so close to open water? It is what my dear mum told me: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The sea is my enemy, but I have spent a lifetime here in the Ice Narrows studying it. I shall one day divine a charm that will render salt water powerless against us.”
“Pleek, Kreeth, come quickly!” Ygryk spun her head around from where she had been looking out of the cave. “Look there in the distance, coming through the Narrows…”
“By Glaux,” whispered Pleek. In the fog of the Ice Narrows, the forms of four owls could be seen: Grank, Hoole, Phineas, and Theo.
“Are those the claws you were telling me about?”
“Yes,” Pleek’s voice quavered and the wound that ran down his back where new feathers were just beginning to fledge twinged painfully. Never would he forget the tearing of those claws on his back.
“Hmmm, I don’t think it’s wise to attack,” Kreeth said thoughtfully. “They are four, all armed except for the Pygmy, and neither of you is ready to fight.”
Ygryk looked down at the roiling water that churned through the Ice Narrows. A wave of nausea overcame her. She had to step back from the edge of the cave. She was a long way from fighting. Most of her half-hags had died in the cove. It would be many moon cycles before the remaining ones could reproduce enough for battle. Therefore her poison levels were down. It would be a long time. And would she ever dare fly over open water again?
But Pleek’s eyes were bright. “They must be heading for Beyond the Beyond. That would be the most sensible place to hide out, across a vast sea and then to the farthest reaches of a broad continent. What Lord Arrin wouldn’t give for this information! Ha! But, Ygyrk, we have it. Don’t you see?”
“See what, dear Pleek?”
“We can still have our son and that son means power.”
“Indeed, it does!” Kreeth said in a low voice. “With that young prince, I think I could complete the charm that would shield us all from open water. We could bring nachtmagen to the Southern Kingdoms.” She turned to Pleek and Ygryk. “We could rule!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Seedling
“Are we halfway there yet, Uncle Grank?” Hoole asked as they left the Ice Narrows.
“Not yet, Hoole. I told you it is a long journey. We have to fly all the way across the sea of the Southern Kingdoms.”
“Is it green like our seas?”
“Believe it or not, I have yet to see the color of its water. The Southern Sea is always thick with fog. Once the fog thinned toward the middle and I saw that below me was an island.”
“Were there any trees to perch in for a rest?” Theo asked.
“Not a one. Bare as can be. Not a living thing. Just rocks. But we can still go down and take a rest if I can find the island again.”
It was shortly after that the fog started to clear and patches of blue sky began to break through. “My, we are lucky!” Grank said. And then all at once every scrap of fog, every cloud seemed to evaporate and the sun was shining warmly.
“Look! There’s the island!” Hoole shouted.
The four owls began their descent, circling in steeply banking turns that grew tighter and tighter.
From the very first moment that Hoole saw the island he felt as if his gizzard were singing. By the time they landed, he was in a state. He hadn’t felt such stirrings since he had first glimpsed his mother’s figure in the flames of the forge’s fire. Reminded of his mother, he once again felt that painful wrench in his gizzard and his heart. He drooped his head. A tear fell to his feet. The three other owls noticed that Hoole was experiencing something more than just a rest in a long flight. He seemed to be in some sort of trance.
“A gizzard d
ream,” Grank whispered to himself.
Hoole continued to look down. He peered harder as he spied infinitesimally small movements in the dirt. The kind of movements one might find in the N’yrthghar in a pile of snow when the ice worms stirred in late winter or in the Southern Kingdoms when an anthill is disturbed and the grains of dirt begin their minute writhing as the ants flee. But this movement was not that of ice worms or ants. It was a seedling pushing from the ground.
“Uncle Grank.”
“Yes, lad?”
“You’re wrong.”
“Wrong about what, Hoole?”
“This island is not bare. There are living things here.”
“What?” Grank, Theo, and Phineas all asked at once.
“A tree is starting to grow. Right here.”
The others came to where Hoole was standing and peered down. Between his feet a small green sprout pushed up from the earth. As soon as it was clear of the dirt, its top sprung up.
“By Glaux! I believe it’s a seedling tree,” Grank murmured.
“Look, it’s growing so fast!” Phineas said. “It’s almost as tall as I am.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Grank gasped. “I don’t know how it’s possible for a tree to grow so quickly. Oh, dear. I hope it’s not some nachtmagen.”
The seedling seemed to tremble at the sound of the word.
“Oh, no!” Hoole said. “Never nachtmagen. This is a good tree…It has…Ga’, Uncle Grank. Yes, Ga’.”
“But only owls have Ga’,” Theo said.
“No. Not just owls. This tree has Ga’,” Hoole said firmly.
By the time they left, the tree was almost as tall as Hoole. Oddly enough, as soon as they flew out to sea the fog closed in thickly, leaving no trace of island or tree. When they were far way from the island and approaching Cape Glaux, which jutted out into the Southern Sea, unbeknownst to them the tree was larger than either Grank or Theo.