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.
CHAPTER NINE
The Eyes of Fengo
In 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.
But then something strange began to happen. It felt as if the air in the burrow was vibrating. I knew immediately what it was. Two powerful forces of magic were grazing up against each other: the nachtmagen of the hagsfiends and my magic, for which there was not yet even a word. Invisible sparks between these two forces began to fly. Suddenly, an overpowering flare burst from the eyes of the Glauxess. The burrow flashed with yellow light. She stepped closer. She is trying to blind me, I thought. I will not flinch. I must let her come closer and closer. I felt myself going yeep, but I was not flying. How could one go yeep if one was already on the ground? It was my gizzard. Glaux, no! Not my gizzard, I thought. Panic welled up in me. I felt myself slipping into some sort of trance. I blinked. This was oddly similar to that strange time in Beyond the Beyond when I was entranced by the ember. I had sworn I would never let that happen again. I had failed to act then.
But now something even stranger happened. In my head, there flashed a vision of Fengo and the ember as I had first seen its reflection in that dear wolf’s beautiful green eyes. The glare of yellow in the burrow began to dim. Now! I thought. Now is the time! And I lunged toward the Glauxess with my ice sliver and plunged it deep. And then the yellow receded, the world darkened, and I fell unconscious.
CHAPTER TEN
My Best Intentions
Was I dead or was I dreaming? I seemed to be flying outside my body, high in the winter sky. Where? I was not sure. I do remember seeing the moon suddenly obliterated by what at first I thought were bats in flight. But their wings were too big, and their feathers too long and shaggy. They had to be hagsfiends, yet I felt no fear. When I looked down I saw that they were hurling themselves from the Island of Elsemere. And then I woke up. I was in a burrow. The burrow of the Glauxian Sisters on that same island. I looked around. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. They burned as if they had been seared, as sometimes happens to warriors who fight in daylight and encounter ice glare. But this I knew had not been the case with me. I blinked several times and was soon able to make out dark lumps scattered across the floor of the burrow. My Glaux! I thought. The sisters are dead! The hagsfiends have killed them all. As if proving this, the heavy stench of crow suddenly assaulted me and here and there a black bit of feather floated down from the burrow’s ceiling.
But then I heard a stir from the owl closest to me. It was the Glauxess. She raised her head, then dropped it again with a small gasp. I saw the glint of the ice sliver. Cautiously, I approached her. “Rorkna?” I whispered gently.
“Yes, I answer to that name. What has happened to me? What has happened?” She raised her head again. Then, looking around her, she gasped. “Oh, my dear sisters!” She gave an agonizing cry.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. They are not dead,” I assured her. “If you are not dead, they are not.”
“I have the most awful pain deep in my gizzard.”
“I can help you,” I said. I hoped I could. I knew I would have to try to remove the ice sliver or else her shattered gizzard would never heal properly.
“Here,” I said, grabbing a small rock. “Put this in your beak and bite down hard while I remove this ice sliver.”
“An ice sliver!” She gasped. “Why am I not dead?”
“I’ll explain later. Just bite down now.”
She did, and quickly I nipped at the tip of the ice sliver that protruded from her gizzard through her flesh. She gave a yelp of great pain and swooned. But as she did so, I heard the first rustling of the other owls. The Nacht Ga’ had been broken for all of them. They were rousing themselves now, one by one, shaking their heads as if they had been in a long, deep sleep. As the Glauxess was restored, so were they. She had been the key upon which the Nacht Ga’ turned.
“How many moons have we been gone?” asked one.
“Gone?” asked another. “I think we have just been asleep.”
At that moment, the Glauxess came out of her swoon. She was as perplexed as the others. “Something strange has happened here,” she said.
Now, Dear Owl, I was faced with a difficult decision. I could not explain outright to the sisters what had happened to them. As you might recall, I earlier wrote that the orders of the Glauxian Sisters and Brothers believed that hagsfiends existed due to owlkind’s desertion of reason and loss of faith in Glaux, that it was this loss of both reason and faith that had allowed the hagsfiends to enter into our world. If I told them how a spell had been cast upon them by a powerful hagsfiend, it might have destroyed them. They might believe they had wavered and this occurred because of their lack of faith. I decided I could not tell them what had happened. It was evident that they were oblivious to the stench of crow. I was probably aware of it because of my newly enhanced senses. No, it was best to keep my own counsel about this. I simply could not reveal to these selfless sisters of Glaux that they had fallen prey to the powers of the hagsfiends and their magic. So I made up a story about the weather. I told them that when the N’yrthnookah blows, a deep, trancelike sleep can afflict some owls. It was a complete lie, but a lie told with the best intentions.
We talked for a long time. I had things I needed to know. And of course, they had questions, too. It was with great patience I explained who I was and where I had come from.
“So,” the Glauxess finally said, “I do believe I remember Siv talking of you that summer she came to visit. The three of you were great companions, is that not so?”
“Yes, indeed, Sister, and that is why I have now come. You have heard that good King H’rath died in battle?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. And I grieved for my dear cousin’s loss. Might you know where she has gone?”
“I was about to ask the same of you, madam.”
“Me?”
“Yes, did you know that she and H’rath were expecting their first chick?”
“No!” Rorkna gasped, and there was a soft tittering among the other sisters.
“Yes, it is true. I thought she might have sought refuge here, but she didn’t?” I paused. “As far as you can remember?”
“I don’t think so. But what with this odd sleep that overtook us”—she looked about—“do you suppose that those berries we stored from last summer could have gone bad on us, Sister Lydfryk? I mean, I know Grank thinks it was the N’yrthnookah, but it could have been the berries.”
I tried to steer her gently back to the subject. “But you don’t think that Siv could have come here recently with her egg?”
“Oh, no.” She twisted her head. “I certainly would have remembered if my cousin had shown up here with an egg.” She gave a soft churring sound of laughter. But then a tiny little Elf Owl spoke up.
“You know, I don’t remember Queen Siv, but I do seem to have a dim recollection of a gadfeather coming here.” She turned to a Barred Owl who stood beside her and who was still a bit bleary-eyed. “Do you, Sister?’
“Now that you mention it, yes. And didn’t she sing us a song?” This seemed to cause a ripple of excitement among the sisters.
They began remembering the gadfeather with a lovely voice coming and singing them a song.
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“Something about the sky is my hollow,” said one.
“Yes, and how they need no perch, no home. Very pretty. Slightly impractical, but a beautiful song,” said another.
So Siv had not been here. How had I been so wrong? I turned now to Rorkna. “You knew Siv well, madam. Where would she go if she were all alone and with an egg, the egg of her first chick?”
Rorkna blinked and clamped her beak shut as she thought. “In truth, my dear, I would have thought she would have come to me. But if not here…well, I do remember that summer when she came to visit, she told me, and I took it as a great compliment that she would confide in me this way, that she and you and H’rath had discovered a marvelous hideaway in some ice cliffs.”
The Ice Cliff Palace! Why, of course! Why had I not thought of it? Sister Rorkna must have noticed the look in my eyes. The elation.
“You know what I am talking about?” she asked.
“Yes, madam!” I exclaimed. “I do indeed!”
“Well, go to her and please tell her if she needs our help we are here for her. These are dangerous times, but I doubt anybody would ever attack our retreat.”
“No, never,” the others murmured in agreement.
“Oh, no—never,” I added for good measure. Although I crossed two of my talons for the lie I had just told—with the best of intentions.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Ice Cliff Palace
The blizzard had subsided and been followed by sheets of freezing rain. It was a brutal gale-lashed night when I left the Island of Elsemere. Where the sea was free of ice, the water roiled violently, and as I approached the Ice Talons, great blocks of frozen seawater ground against each other, groaning horribly beneath the rage of the wind. The Ice Cliff Palace was on the southwest side of the Talons, far up in a frozen canyon where the cliffs rose eerily into the night. Warped and scraped by thousands upon thousands of years of weather, these cliffs had been carved into bridges and arches and spires. Behind them was a complex maze of interlocking ice passageways. To find one’s way to the Ice Cliff Palace in the heart of the cliffs was almost impossible. This made it a perfect hideaway, an unassailable stronghold in desperate times. And these were desperate times. H’rath, Siv, and I had discovered this retreat many years before. Only a few of the king’s and queen’s most trusted servants knew its whereabouts and even they often became lost in the maze of ice. Rumors had abounded for years as to its location, but despite their powerful magic the hagsfiends had not been able to find it.