“You never, is right!” Kreeth’s words bit the air. “I did this. And I shall name her Lutta. Lutta is my masterpiece. She is everything. And nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Ygryk cried. “All we wanted was one little chick that looked like one of us, or maybe both. What have you done? She’ll belong to neither of us.”
“That is your decision, my dear,” Kreeth replied. “But look at her. Look at what I have created.” Now the white face of the Barn Owl was turning the deep glistening black of a crow. The eyes were becoming beady crow’s eyes.
Within a single day, Lutta went through a half dozen transformations. For a few hours she was a crow. Then she slid almost imperceptibly into being a Barred Owl. Next a Snowy. The most spectacular shift was when, within the space of seconds, she would go from the total blackness of a crow to the pure whiteness of a Snowy. But perhaps her best transformation was when she changed into a Spotted Owl.
Lutta seemed cheerful enough, and Pleek and Ygryk were pleased, they guessed, that she called them Mum and Da, but they had a difficult time relating to this chick that Kreeth called a changeling.
“It’s genius what I have done!” Kreeth exclaimed several times a day and into the night. And despite all her protestations about not wanting to be a mother, she seemed genuinely fond of Lutta in an almost maternal sense.
“But all this changing—it’s not natural,” Pleek protested in the gentlest way.
Kreeth blinked her beady little eyes. “You think either one of you is natural? Who needs natural? Lutta is interesting. She’s a fascinating phenomenon.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Pleek and Ygryk nodded. Silently, they reminded themselves that they had a unique and wonderful chick. But each one silently thought, We didn’t want a phenomenon, we just wanted a chick! Something we can call our own. Still, they tried to appreciate this wondrous chick. To learn her ways. To come to love her and delight in her.
And for a while, it worked. Pleek and Ygryk told themselves that underneath the plumy whiteness of a Snowy Owl or the speckled splendor of a Spotted Owl or the silvery mist featheration of a Great Gray, she was still their little Lutta. Although it was especially upsetting to Pleek when he had brought her a plump little ice mouse for her first Meat-on-Bones ceremony that Lutta changed species a half-dozen times during the ritual. She started off as a Great Horned, then slid into the dark sleekness of hags-fiend. Pleek and Ygryk both churred at this, for they took it as an homage to themselves. “So respectful!” Ygryk murmured. And it would have been if it had ended there. But it did not. A moment later, Lutta had become a Pygmy Owl, of all things, and dwindled to such a tiny size that she could hardly get the plump thigh of the ice mouse down her gullet.
“Great Glaux, why would she do a thing like that?” Pleek fumed. Lutta blinked at him. “Why are you calling me she, Da, and not Lutta?” Pleek didn’t answer.
“Mum, why’s he calling me she? I’m your chick. It’s like you don’t know me.”
“We find it…hard sometimes, dear,” Ygryk stammered as she watched the Pygmy swell into a Barn Owl, then peered into the shining dark eyes that gleamed black as river stones in that stark white face. “It is you in there, isn’t it?” she asked in a tremulous voice.
From a corner in the ice hollow, Kreeth cast a sly glance.
Pleek and Ygryk were becoming less and less sure of Lutta. When out on their hunting flights, they would discuss their peculiar owlet.
“I just don’t know what to make of it, Pleek.”
“I know what you mean, my dear. I suppose we’ll have to teach her to fly,” Pleek said wearily. “As you say, it’s hard to know how to feel.”
Any child, bird or otherwise, can sense their parents’ doubt, and Lutta was no exception. At first it made her angry, but then she began to feel rather indifferent. What did she care what they thought? Kreeth was always good to her. Kreeth liked her the way she was—whatever that was. She began to dread when Pleek and Ygryk returned from their hunting trips. They always seemed to be whispering about her. She could sense it just before they entered the cave. And then they would either stare at her and not say anything or turn their heads as if it hurt them to look at her. But Kreeth was the opposite. She seemed to delight in all of Lutta’s transformations.
On this particular night, her parents had just returned and she was perched on her ice ledge as a crow, which she thought Ygryk would like, but Ygryk just got this hard look in her eye. By the demons of smee holes, thought Lutta, using a favorite curse of Kreeth’s, why is my haggish, so-called mother staring at me like this? “Look!” She blurted out. “I can’t help what I am and what I am not.” Kreeth craftily observed all this from a corner in the cave.
“I suppose that is so,” was all that Ygryk said. And Pleek went silently to his ice perch without even greeting Lutta.
At noon the following day, as Kreeth and Lutta slept, Pleek and Ygryk left. They abandoned their longed-for chick to the hagsfiend who had divined her.
CHAPTER SIX
The Education of Lutta
The inside of the ice cave danced with the light of the stars outside. They were called frost stars because their images were reflected perfectly on the ice walls as they rose in the night.
Lutta blinked. “I overslept.” She swiveled her head, which, at this time, had taken the form and featheration of a Barn Owl. Her eyes, like black mirrors, reflected the frost stars. Even Kreeth was struck by her beauty. “They’re gone, aren’t they?” She turned to the hagsfiend, who nodded. “And tonight was to be my First Flight. Here I am, fully fledged at last. Figures!” She spat out the word with contempt.
“Don’t you worry, dearie. I can teach you better than they ever could.” Kreeth watched her. The white face was beginning to turn tawny. Yellow suffused the black eyes. Another one of Lutta’s myriad transformations was beginning. It was in response to her rejection. On some level, she was trying to become what her foster parents had wanted. It was triggered by the sickening feelings of shame and abandonment.
Kreeth knew that her own task was to raise this extraordinary young creature. And Kreeth had big plans for her. Let the others fight their wars in the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms. Let them fight over territory and ice thrones and ice crowns. A new dynasty was beginning right here in this cave in the Ice Narrows. A dynasty born of the darkest and most impenetrable of charms—and Lutta would be its beginning.
But first, Kreeth must instruct her how to control her changes. She probably had no inkling that she herself could influence the timing of the change or the species she changed into. “Lutta, I love you for what you are and what you are not.” Kreeth spoke very slowly. She fixed her dark eyes on the fading black orbs of Lutta. “What you are and are not is the sum of your whole.” Indeed, the transformation was slowing down. The yellow of the Great Horned’s eyes seemed to dim as the black of the Barn Owl’s flooded back and the face feathered white.
It might have seemed to Lutta that Kreeth spoke in riddles. But she did feel something happening. The transformation slowed. She felt a sense of peace within her for the first time. She looked down. Her breast was white with a few light speckles. Her wings were tan with dashes of white. Kreeth was regarding her with great interest. She is understanding for the first time these differences. This is good. This is very good.
“It stopped,” Lutta gasped in wonder.
“You stopped it.”
“How? How did I do it?”
“By learning who you are, by being keenly aware of the differences. What did you feel first in your face?”
“I felt it lengthening and narrowing toward the bottom. The top is wider than the bottom.”
“Exactly. And what else?”
“The whiteness of my face. I felt that. I don’t know how you can feel color, but I did.”
“You sensed the light-reflecting qualities of white. That is all.”
“And I could hear better, too!”
“Yes, of course. You see, my dear, i
f you concentrate on the key elements that make a particular owl, you can control these changes. You can summon them or dismiss them at will. You shall control them. They shall not control you. This makes you important.”
“It does?” she asked.
She is completely unsuspecting. This will make it even more fun for me! Kreeth thought. “Lutta, you have power—great power. They talk of the Ember of Hoole, but you have a power to match that of the ember and that of the king who possesses it.”
“What can I do with the power?”
“Rule, my dear. You can become the first monarch of a new dynasty.”
A poisonous look infused Lutta’s black Barn Owl eyes. She felt a minute stirring in her primary feathers.
Demons of smee! Kreeth thought. Her first hagsfiends are hatching! She is too good to be true! Hagsfiends roosting in the feathers of a Barn Owl! Delightful! And she hasn’t even learned how to fly yet!
“Can I punish my parents? Make Pleek and Ygryk suffer?”
Oh, thought Kreeth, I’ve made a good one here. Some, Kreeth realized, might think it was a waste of energy to seek such petty revenge. Pleek and Ygryk hardly seemed worth it. Still, vengeance had its uses. Vengeance could feed the fire that burned within this creature. Vengeance was like a flint stone on which Lutta might sharpen her talons.
“Of course, dear. But believe me, there are greater prey than those two. Right now we must get to the business of flying. How would you like to learn to fly? As a Barn Owl? A Snowy? Northern Hawk Owl? Great Gray?”
“Great Gray,” Lutta replied.
“Nice choice. Lovely fliers, with all that fluffy plumage. Now begin to concentrate on what you have experienced so far during one of your transformations into a Great Gray.”
The transformations were sometimes so fleeting that it was difficult for Lutta to remember everything and she hesitated.
“Start with the head, Lutta. Always start with the head,” Kreeth counseled. Lutta snapped her beak shut and began to feel the bottom of her face expand. Her head was becoming larger and rounder. Her face expanded to nearly twice its size. Her plumage grew denser and silvery.
“Come with me, dearie. Our flight lessons begin!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Strix Strumajen Yearning
A cry was heard. “He’s sighted! Joss is sighted!” Then Cuthbert, commander of the second watch, flew into Hoole’s hollow. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but we done caught a glimpse of him in the dawn. It’s Joss, all right. He’s back!” Hoole was instantly alert. “So sorry to interrupt your sleep, what with tween time hardly passed.”
“Don’t go apologizing, Commander. This couldn’t have happened soon enough.”
Within seconds, Hoole was at the top of the great tree, peering into the rose-colored dawn. “Bless my gizzard and thank Glaux, he’s back.” Before anyone could blink, Hoole launched himself onto a rising thermal and flew out to greet the faithful messenger, the Whiskered Screech, Joss.
“Let him catch his breath, lad, let him catch his breath,” Grank called from below.
“No need, sir,” Joss replied. “There is much to tell and no time to be wasted.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Hoole apologized. “Here, come to the hollow and rest first.”
“May I begin, sir?” Joss asked as he settled onto a perch in Hoole’s hollow.
“Please. What is the news?”
“You did a right good deal of damage to Lord Arrin, no doubt about it, Your Majesty.”
Hoole interrupted. “Joss, please do not call me Your Majesty. It’s just the three of us here.” Hoole nodded at Grank.
“Oh, certainly…well…sir, many have broken with Lord Arrin. Lost faith, I guess you’d say. But, at the same time, new alliances are being formed. Of that you can be sure.”
“Yes, I feared that. There was always that possibility. But so soon?”
“Apparently.”
“Do you know the nature of these alliances?”
“Well, we know for sure that Ullryck has deserted.”
“Ullryck! Ullryck was Lord Arrin’s best assassin, wasn’t she, Grank?” Hoole turned to look at his counselor.
“Indeed,” Grank replied gravely.
“It’s rumored that she has started her own division of hagsfiends.”
“Just hagsfiends? Nothing else?” Hoole asked.
“Just hagsfiends,” Joss replied.
Hoole and Grank exchanged looks and blinked. This had always been their worst fear. An army of just hagsfiends. And then they both had the same unspoken thought. Though they were both flame readers, the fires had rarely rendered clear images of hagsfiends. It was as if the hags-fiends’ magic in some way inhibited the clarity of the flames. Images became garbled, almost nonsensical, and certainly not trustworthy. But, Hoole wondered, was the answer to turn to the magic of the ember? Was this when he must fight magic with magic? He did not like the notion.
“Tell us more,” Grank urged.
“There are rumors of a young upstart—an owl, not a hagsfiend—from someplace far north of the Firth of Fangs, but no one is quite sure who he is. If he has an alliance with hagsfiends, it is not known at this time.” Joss paused. “And finally, I fear that I have some troubling news for Strix Strumajen.”
“Oh, dear!” Grank groaned deeply. “What is it?”
“Her daughter, Emerilla, has been lost in a skirmish over the Ice Fangs.”
“Lost, you say?” Grank blinked at Joss. “But not killed?”
“Not as far as we know, sir. There were a great number of hagsfiends in the battle and if they had killed her, well, you know…” Nothing further needed to be said, for they all knew of the ghoulish practices of hagsfiends in battle.
“Call her mother here immediately,” Hoole said.
As soon as Strix Strumajen entered the hollow and spied Joss, she seemed to know. Her feathers flattened and she wilfed to nearly half her size. “She’s dead. My dear Emerilla is dead.”
“Not dead, milady,” Joss said softly. “Missing…for now.”
“There was no…no…head?” she asked quietly.
Hoole’s gizzard clenched. How hard it must be for this owl to suddenly refer to her daughter as simply a head.
“No, ma’am. No head.”
Strix Strumajen recovered a bit. Her feathers plumped up slightly. She turned to Hoole. “She is a dear young owl, and you know, Your Grace, Emerilla’s gift for interpreting weather was—” she hesitated “—is even greater than mine. She would be such an addition to the tree.”
Hoole made a short flight from one perch to another in his hollow. Above this perch was a somewhat crude map that one of the members of the H’rathian Guard had brought with him from the N’yrthghar. “The Ice Fangs, I don’t see it here.”
“It’s off the Bay of Fangs. It isn’t on this map. It was a short but brutal battle that took place there,” Joss said.
Strix Strumajen shook her head. “She wanted to go into battle so badly. I felt she was too young. But then you, Hoole, are about the same age as she. Siv and I laid our eggs during the same moon cycle. Emerilla was determined to fight, after her father was killed over the Ice Dagger. We all thought that she was too small to manage one of the long scimitars. But, by Glaux, if she didn’t go harvest herself a small blade from the issen vingtygg. It took courage to use, for it required close fighting. She was so quick with it. So bold!” Strix Strumajen’s dark amber eyes filled with tears.
Hoole dropped his beak and ran it through the feathers on his chest. He was thinking very hard and coming to the edge of an important idea. He looked up and blinked at the three owls. “I don’t want us to lose another owl to these hagsfiends and tyrants. We must act now. If we do not take the battle to them, they will bring the battle to us, to the tree.”
“Whoever chooses the battlefield wins the battle,” Grank said in a low, gravelly voice.
“Precisely!” Hoole nodded. “But I am choosing more than one battlefield.”
??
?More than one, sir?” Grank blinked. “Is that wise?”
“Well, you see…” Hoole swiveled his head slowly. “Not all of them will appear to be battlefields. Not all of them will require the same amount of power or resources, but they will be crucial to our ultimate victory.”
“I don’t follow, sir,” said Joss.
“Let me explain.” Hoole pointed to the map of the N’yrthghar and lifted it with his talons to reveal another equally crude map of the S’yrthghar. “We must deal with three realms essentially—that of the N’yrthghar, the S’yrthghar, and our own realm here at the great tree. In one realm, we must fight,” he said, pointing to the spot where the great palace of the H’rathghar glacier rose out of the N’yrthghar ice fields. “In another, we must train.” He tapped the tiny island in the vast sea of the Southern Kingdoms. “And here”—he swept his four talons lightly across the great expanse of the continent of the Southern Kingdoms, including that westernmost region known as Beyond the Beyond—“we must find out who our friends are, and if there are hagsfiends anywhere.”
Hoole flew to the Spotted Owl’s side and tapped her shoulder gently with his wing tip and even preened her back feathers a bit with his beak. “Strix Strumajen, your knowledge of weather is invaluable, but you also have great skill with a variety of weapons. I saw you practicing with battle claws the other evening. You were superb. You will be a formidable threat on this battlefield.” Once more, he indicated the place on the map where his ancestral palace on the H’rathghar glacier stood. “I want you to train a new company of owls with the short blade. Teach them everything you know.”
“It will be an honor, Your Grace.”
“Joss, your job is to set up a slipgizzling system in the N’yrthghar. You have been both messenger and spy for years now. It is too much for one owl. We need more information. Find noncombat owls, even gizzard-resisters, who are ready and willing to give it to us.”