To Be a King

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Come, Lutta. We need to get you a feather.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Ice Palace of the H’rathghar

  The splendor of the Ice Palace of the H’rathghar could be seen from many leagues away. It was a majestic sight on a clear sunny day. Its spires of ice shimmered like silver in the blue sky. Its walls and ice bridges and towers all carved by the wind seemed to blaze with a brilliance unmatched by any diamond. But by moonlight it was even more magnificent. As they approached the palace, Theo’s mother couldn’t stop talking.

  “Oh, you’ve never seen the likes of it. And to think it is all Shadyk’s now!”

  “But what happened to Lord Arrin?” Theo asked.

  “I told you, Theo. He ain’t got no respect anymore. Not after the Battle in the Beyond, where he was beat so bad. Half his forces flew off. Some of the hagsfiends left to start up their own bands; one was named Ullryk, I believe.”

  She believes! She says it so casually. As if it doesn’t matter who fights for what anymore. Or who fights on which side. So now they fight among themselves—hagsfiends, rebel owls, kraals. It truly is as Svarr said: A feast for vultures.

  Theo’s gizzard lurched as he caught sight of the hagsfiends draped over the ice parapets of the palace, their shaggy black wings dark slashes against the shimmering ice. Philma gave four long hoots and then two short, the usual hoot pattern of a Great Horned Owl, but then she paused and gave three more short ones. She swiveled her head toward Theo. “That’s our signature call. They know I’m Shadyk’s mum. Oh, it’s all so grand. You won’t believe how fine they treat us, Theo. We’re very important now, almost like royalty.”

  “But how did Shadyk get to be—what do you call him?”

  “We’ll call him king soon. He’s to have a crowning ceremony—what’cha call that?”

  “A coronation.” But how did all this happen? Was it raw power on Shadyk’s part? Theo was about to ask when his mother interrupted.

  “My goodness, there seem to be more hagsfiends than usual outside the Ice Palace. Oh, and Theo, wait until you see the throne hollow and Shadyk sitting on the throne. To think, a son of mine sitting upon the H’rathian throne. Ain’t it grand?”

  A sickening feeling swept through Theo as they entered the palace and proceeded to the throne room. It was immediately evident why the hagsfiends were all outside. The inside of the once magnificent palace was rotting. Rotten ice! The two words shrieked in Theo’s brain. He had always thought it was just an expression, but now he knew that it was real. Inside the palace the ice was cloudy, and it looked as if it were disintegrating. Theo had seen a honeycomb in a tree hollow in the S’yrthghar and that was exactly what this ice looked like to him, a honeycomb. Sweet rotten ice!, Theo thought as they entered the throne hollow. The palace was rotting from the inside, so only the outer walls were safe for the hagsfiends to perch on. How long would they remain to serve their leader, their monarch, this ridiculous-looking owl who perched upon the melting throne? Shadyk was not that much larger than when Theo had left, and his feathers were bedraggled and looked as if they had not been preened in ages, although four female owls, a Pygmy Owl and three Elf Owls, were busy running their beaks through his feathers and picking nits from his ear slits and between his talons.

  “Mum?” Shadyk leaned forward.

  “Yes, sweetie. Look who I’ve brought.”

  Shadyk immediately stiffened. “How often do I have to tell you that I am to be addressed as Commander—Commander Strong Talon.” He turned to Theo. “Good evening, brother. It has been a long time. You have been studying, I suppose, not soldiering.” He turned to the other owls who were in the hollow. “My brother, Theo, is of a studious bent. Not a fighting sort of owl.” There were mumbles that Theo interpreted as disapproving. “Indeed,” Shadyk flew down from the throne, that fabled throne that was said to have been miraculously sculpted by the elements to resemble a tree with scores of limbs on which the king, his queen, princes, and princesses could all perch. But most of the limbs had rotted away, and it was evident that all this once resplendent throne could now sustain was the weight of one rather small Great Horned and his minions of tiny Elf and Pygmy owls. Theo stepped forward.

  “That’s far enough!” Shadyk flapped his wings.

  “Good evening.” Theo paused, and Shadyk swelled up into a threat posture. “Commander Strong Talon,” Theo added.

  In those brief seconds, Theo realized that Shadyk had either forgotten or denied their past history—all the times that he had protected his younger brother from his father’s rages, nursed not only his bruised feelings but his bruised wings and broken shafts—it was in that moment that Theo realized that Shadyk was not just yoicks but completely insane. A mad glint danced in his amber eyes.

  “Ain’t it all so grand, Theo?” Philma whispered to him. He thought that if his mum said “grand” one more time he’d yarp a pellet. “He’s got quite a way about him, don’t he, lovey?”

  “My family and I shall adjourn to the banquet hollow.” Shadyk turned to the Elf and Pygmy owls. “Please join us, my sweets.” The small owls twittered about him, making fawning gestures.

  The banquet hollow was a disgusting mess. The remains of half-eaten lemmings, snow squirrels, and ice rats were strewn around but no one seemed to notice or care. The melting ice was streaked with blood. Theo had thought he was hungry but had no appetite now, even as several owls flew in with fresh kill.

  “So, brother,” Shadyk swiveled his head toward Theo. “Still studying? Join the Glauxian Brothers yet?” he drawled, and cast a glance at his audience. There was a loud raucous churring from the delegation of owls who had followed them into the dining hollow. They clearly had contempt for study and contemplative owls.

  “Uh…” Theo hesitated. “Yes, um, yes, I have been studying and am thinking of taking my vows.” So far, the truth. They need not know that I have taken vows as a Guardian on a faraway island in the S’yrthghar and sworn allegiance to the rightful heir to this throne. For the first time in his life when not in the midst of the violence of war and given no choice, Theo felt true rage rising within him. Now, he thought, I am truly a warrior!

  “I don’t know if many of us in this palace have the time for such study. It does seem rather like a luxury now, does it not?” Shadyk drawled while weaving and bobbing his head about to catch everyone’s eye except that of his brother.

  His ways have become very strange, Theo thought. He speaks in an odd manner, each word prolonged to the point of silliness. And he casts his eyes in glances that are both simpering and haughty. My brother is mad. And yet no one sees it. Not Mum, not Wyg. Not the four little owls flitting about him. How has he done this? How has he gathered these owls and these hagsfiends around him? Does no one else see that this palace is rotting? Are the only sane creatures the hagsfiends who perch on the parapets and the turrets?

  At that moment, he saw a Spotted Owl come to serve her master a plump ice rat. She approached him in mincing steps, her head bent, obsequious, submissive, the perfect attendant to a king on the rotting throne. But despite that bowed head, Theo glimpsed a glint of gold in her dark brown eyes, her very sane dark brown eyes, and he knew that he was the only one who recognized her sanity. And who also recognized her: This was Emerilla, daughter of Strix Strumajen and Strix Hurthwel!

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  To Be Emerilla

  Delicately, Kreeth wove the feather into Lutta’s plumage. “You see, my dear, it is not enough to look like just any Spotted Owl. You must be a particular one. With this feather from the head of Emerilla’s father you will be able, in a sense, to become her. Yes, you have mastered the call of the Spotted Owls, the long whuff-whuff. And you are excellent at capturing that peculiar tilting action of their plummels as they go into a banking turn, and you even think like a Spotted Owl. But now you must think like Emerilla. Because, as your half-hags heard, this new king from the strange tree in the south is searching for her. You are vital to my plan to get the em
ber. If you can become Emerilla, the ember is mine!

  “Now listen and learn, Lutta. Hagsfiends do not really have what owls call a “true gizzard,” but with this feather, well…you will get close to having one. Owl gizzards are strange. They serve no good purpose. It is much better to have a hagsfiend’s gizzard. It is a simple organ that digests food and does not bother us with the so-called finer sensibilities and emotions.”

  “What are emotions exactly?” Lutta asked.

  “Silly feelings that get in the way of actions.” She paused and fixed Lutta with a beady-eyed stare. “And this will be the most difficult part of your mission. You must act like an owl with a gizzard, but at the same time you must resist the instincts with which a gizzard might distract you. A gizzard could prove dangerous! Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  “In this mission, there is simply no room for emotions. You must do nothing that would jeopardize the mission.”

  “No, never! Never!” Lutta felt a strange twinge in her belly. Something squirmed deep within her. She had experienced the first turnings of gizzard, not a true owl gizzard, but nonetheless it was a queer feeling. A sensation that she did not completely dislike. In fact, it was a sensation that made her feel more…more…She searched for the words: more complete.

  Her mission was to fly to this island in the south and steal the ember, the Ember of Hoole. She must not let this so-called gizzard distract her.

  When Kreeth had first heard about the ember and the great tree ruled by this idiot who wanted to rid the owl world of all magic, she had started to devise her strategy. She had, thanks to Lutta’s half-hags’ reconnaissance flight, heard the facts. But she realized that what she needed was not more information but knowledge of a deeper sort. She needed to know the nature of this owl named Hoole who was in possession of the most powerful magic in the world, yet wanted to rid the world of it. She plucked a withered gizzard from her collection, which hung on ice picks. Placing it in a solution, she began to mumble peculiar words. It was a dream-sight divination that had to be spoken both forward and backward without a single mistake—“Veeblyn spyn crynik spyn veeblyn Hoole Elooh nylbeev nyps kinyrc nyps nylbeev.”

  It took her three tries, but she finally succeeded. She could now enter the dreams of Hoole. Not every dream, and not all the time. Some dreams would prove useless and give no insight into his nature. But others would be quite valuable. For several days as she slept, she was stirred by the dreams of Hoole, but they were, for the most part, unremarkable. The usual ones: a succulent prey that slipped through one’s talons, flying the starry configurations of a night sky to suddenly find it daytime and a mob of crows closing in. There were a few dreams of the Battle in the Beyond, but not as many as she would have liked. These battle dreams yielded a wealth of information about Hoole’s fighting strategies, and she was intrigued by the strange devices that he and three other owls wore on their talons, which extended them into fearsomely sharp weapons. But then one day, late in the afternoon just before her usual time to rise, she entered a dream that she knew was crucial to her understanding of Hoole and the success of the mission.

  Kreeth found herself flying through thick fog that was beginning to thin. It seemed that shimmering stars were suspended in the pearly mist. But they were not stars at all. They were the white dots of a Spotted Owl. Hoole was dreaming of the owl Emerilla for whom they were searching. Nothing unusual about that. She had known that the Spotted Owl was the object of their search. But though Kreeth herself had no owl’s gizzard, she could see that Hoole’s gizzard was in turmoil. He was drawn to this owl, concerned for her safety, fascinated by her courage.

  Kreeth snapped awake. “It makes our task so easy!” she exclaimed.

  Kreeth stepped to the sleeping Lutta and patted the feather she had earlier woven into her primaries.

  “Now, my Lutta,” she whispered. “You will truly become Emerilla. Don’t you feel it?”

  Lutta did begin to feel different, but then again she was not sure what it was she was feeling. More than anything, Lutta was confused, but she dared not ask any more questions because Kreeth was in a highly agitated state, and when she got this way it was not a good idea to pester her. Still, Lutta wondered what exactly she was—Hagsfiend? Owl? Snowy? Spotted, Pygmy, Elf? Or Great Horned, as she had appeared soon after she hatched? She sometimes felt split up into a hundred different pieces. Yes, it could be confusing—and very lonely.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  An Old Friend

  In the northern part of the S’yrthghar, winter weather had set in and the night was aslant with a slashing wind of sleet and snow and rain. The wintry weather reminded Hoole of the dwindling number of nights to Short Light and this made him fly all the faster. Every night the darkness lengthened and the sun grew weaker, staggering up over the horizon like some crippled sky creature until finally there would come that morning when it would not appear at all. That would be the Long Night when they must strike.

  Hoole flew alone on a northeasterly course. He was unfamiliar with sleet. In the N’yrthghar, it was so cold and dry, there was no sleet, only snow.

  “Great Glaux, I’ll wear out my wings flying through this slop,” he muttered as he approached Broken Talon Point. Phineas and the Snow Rose had protested when he said that they must go back to the great tree to report what they had found so far. The Pygmy and the Snowy had wanted to accompany him, and it took a lot of arguing on Hoole’s part to convince them that he would be quite safe. “It’s more important for you to fly back and share what we have found and to seek out more Rogue smiths who are willing to be slipgizzles.” Finally, they had relented.

  The images in the fire had shown Namara—the wolf once called Hordweard—in the harsh and inhospitable region northeast of Broken Talon Point, not in the Beyond where the dire wolves had lived ever since Fengo had led them there. It did not surprise Hoole that Namara had chosen to leave the Beyond. She had lived most of her life there as one of several mates of the demonic wolf called MacHeath. But she had left her clan and shown great courage and endurance in hunting down the traitorous MacHeath and warning Hoole of Lord Arrin’s approach before the Battle in the Beyond. Had it not been for Namara, they would have never been prepared for the attack. Ever since that day she had been regarded as a hero by all the wolves of the Beyond. But hero or not, Namara wanted no part of their society. In her time alone tracking down her old mate, she had become strong again, and confident and beautiful. She had declared that her name was no longer Hordweard but Namara. “I am Namara now. My clan is MacNamara. I am a clan unto myself.” Hoole needed her now and was determined to find her.

  He knew the way of the wolves. He had lived in Fengo’s cave, breathing the air that the wolves breathed and smelling their scent marks. But his education was not complete until he had joined a byrrgis, the traveling formation of wolves, and hunted with them. And although he had not become a wolf in his shape or body, he had in his mind. His beak had felt like fangs, his feathers like fur. It was almost as if he could read the wolves as he read the flames.

  Those feelings were returning. He knew he was drawing close to Namara. He could feel her hunting nearby—was it a stray caribou? A bobcat? With each beat of his wing, he felt himself becoming more wolf than bird. A confounding but thrilling paradox.

  He spotted her just as the moon was sliding down toward the horizon into another night in another world, and the first gray of dawn began to peel away the darkness. It was a winter-thin caribou she was tracking. Hoole settled in a tree to watch the ritual of lochinvyrr that was about to be enacted. He dared not interrupt it. An agreement was being made between predator and prey. The prey, in a silent language, said, “My meat is valuable, my meat will sustain you. I am worthy.” It was not a moment of victory or defeat but one of dignity.

  When Namara had finished with the kill, Hoole swept down from the tree. She lifted her blood-soaked muzzle. “Hoole, dear Hoole!” How odd those soft words seemed coming from th
at blood-drenched face. “What brings you here, young’un? Oh, forgive me—you are now king.”

  “No, I shall always be just Hoole. I care not for such titles.”

  Namara laughed softly. “What brings you here to this lonely place?”

  “Is it lonely for you, Namara?” Hoole asked.

  “No, not really, and if it were, it would be a loneliness of my own choosing. You know me, Hoole. But tell me, why have you come?”

  Hoole told her of his encounter with the hagsfiend in Ambala and how he had suspected that others were around. “So I went to the fire to read the flames.”

  Namara nodded her head as she gnawed on the caribou. “Yes, you were a flame reader. I remember now. And the flames told you that there were hagsfiends loose in the S’yrthghar.”

  “In the Desert of Kuneer to be exact. A perfect place for them, of course. But it told me even more.”

  “What was that?” Namara lifted her head. Her tilted green eyes sparkled. Hoole leaned forward into their green light. He knew he was right. This was the light he had seen in the flames.

  “Namara, the green light in the eyes of wolves will destroy the fyngrot. I know this. I know it through the flames. I know it in my gizzard.” He paused before going on. He was frightened of asking the next question but he must. “Namara, I need you to lead a wolf pack into the Desert of Kuneer. You are a loner, I know, but you are a natural leader, too. The wolves of the Beyond hold you in great esteem. I am not asking you to live with them. I am asking you to lead them. This is a battle for the wolves. I will go with you. I shall fight. In the Battle of the Beyond I learned from my mother to resist the fyngrot, but I cannot destroy it. My family’s palace, the Ice Palace of the N’yrthghar, has fallen into enemy hands. And now, in the S’yrthghar, there are hagsfiends. Before I can go north again and lead my owls of the great tree on to the H’rathghar glacier to oust those outlaws and tyrants, I must make sure the S’yrthghar is rid of the hagsfiends.”