For Evan Weaver, who inspired this book.
— K. L.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Prologue
THE BOOK OF EZYLRYB
THE OWLET MOONS
CHAPTER 1: I Hatch Out
CHAPTER 2: Fuzzball to Fledgling
CHAPTER 3: First Feathers
CHAPTER 4: Moss and Me
CHAPTER 5: A Snake Named Hoke
CHAPTER 6: Sea Smoke
CHAPTER 7: Ice Dagger
CHAPTER 8: A Place of Fire and Song
CHAPTER 9: A Flyaway
CHAPTER 10: Lysa!
CHAPTER 11: A Visit from Tantya Hanja
CHAPTER 12: The Molt of a Warrior
THE CADET MOONS
CHAPTER 13: The Academy
CHAPTER 14: Ice Squires
CHAPTER 15: What Thora Saw
CHAPTER 16: A Strategy Is Planned
CHAPTER 17: The Deadly Sisters
CHAPTER 18: An Odd Welcome
CHAPTER 19: A New Hollow and a New Owlet
CHAPTER 20: For a Kingdom?
CHAPTER 21: General Andricus Speaks
CHAPTER 22: Strumajen Strix
CHAPTER 23: Glaux + Speed = ?
CHAPTER 24: I Meet Octavia
CHAPTER 25: Octavia Flies
CHAPTER 26: Virtual Light and True Black
CHAPTER 27: Myth Meets Truth
CHAPTER 28: Half Beak and Three Talons
CHAPTER 29: Spikes in the Night
CHAPTER 30: Wingfast
THE WAR MOONS
CHAPTER 31: For Shame!
CHAPTER 32: “The Price We Pay! The Price of War!”
CHAPTER 33: Into the Ice Talons
CHAPTER 34: Separate Paths, One Cause
CHAPTER 35: Operation Ice Shield
THE LONG MOONS OF THE RETREAT
CHAPTER 36: End Game
CHAPTER 37: A Reprise
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Preview: Horses of the Dawn
About the Author
Copyright
Tonight something odd happened. A young Barn Owl and three of his companions showed up here. Blown right out of a force-eight gale. A raging thing it was, that gale, full of slop and ice. Couldn’t see for racdrops out there. These four had been traveling together for some time. They call themselves the Band, or a Band, as if they’re special or something. Perhaps they are. It’s the Barn Owl, the one called Soren, who interests me. There’s something about him that took me back to my own youth. It stirred me deeply.
So I decided to put aside this book I’ve been working on, the third volume in Weather Systems and Their Structure: How to Fly Them, Analyze Them, and Survive Them, and turn instead to something a little less academic, a little less dry. Indeed, a story drenched with blood from endless wars and also tears, both happy and sad, of love, betrayal, and of hope.
The Barn Owl’s just a lad and does not know what he’s in for. I certainly didn’t. Oh my, I was such an innocent — if one can call an aspiring warrior “innocent.” And what am I now but a reclusive scholar, a scientist in a world still boiling with violence. I have chosen a different path. However, once I was a very different owl. So different.
Now I begin my own story. I shall call it simply The Book of Ezylryb.
The first crack in the egg that held me occurred just before midnight. My mum and da weren’t there, of course, as the action in the century-long War of the Ice Claws had heated up and they were both away fighting. So they’d gotten a hire broody for the egg — common practice in the war-torn Northern Kingdoms. When my first crack started, the hire broody, Gundesfyrr, sent out Mrs. Grinkle, our nest-maid snake, to inform the neighbors. Hatchings were treasured occasions, particularly during times of war, for every new chick was viewed as a potential fighter. Most likely, everyone bent over my shell urging me to soldier on in my first battle — getting out of this egg that had sheltered me for nearly two moons.
“C’mon, chickie! Follow in the flight marks of your da — the old general!”
“And his mum, don’t forget his mum! The commando.” The words were muffled through the shell and I really didn’t understand much. But I would soon learn that my mum was a commando in the Ice Dagger unit, and Da was supreme commander of all the allied forces of the Kielian League, which included the famous Frost Beaks as well as the Hot Blades and other divisions. In short, they didn’t come home too much.
Don’t feel sorry for me. This was the way it was back in those days on Stormfast Island in the western part of the Everwinter Sea. It would have been mighty queer for an owlet to have both parents around. Almost embarrassing, quite frankly.
I soldiered on in the shell, knocking my brains out trying to get out of there, although most of the work was done with my egg tooth. Peck, peck, ram. Then pry a bit, rest, then peck some more. Soon I had opened another crack. There was a great hooray and then a gasp. Someone had just arrived.
“What’s she doing here?” a voice said in stunned disbelief.
It was, I am told, my tantya Hanja. The good cheer and boisterous spirits receded immediately. Tantya Hanja was Mum’s sister. The two of them were as different as sisters could be. Tantya Hanja wasn’t a military type. Glaux, no! She would have been disastrous in battle. Instead, she was a quiet little thing, whose whiskers seemed longer than her wings. She had a funny style of flying, a permanent list to port, which disqualified her for military service. To compensate, her starboard wing had grown much larger than the other, and she seemed a bit lopsided. But she got around.
Everyone called her Prinka Hanja. “Prinka” meant “poor” in Krakish, the language of the Northern Kingdoms. They felt sorry for her because she couldn’t hunt as well as others. Therefore, she led an itinerant life, visiting relatives. Our family dreaded it when she showed up. She had a knack for appearing when something bad was going to happen. So when she arrived the very night I was hatching out, my broody, Gundesfyrr, began to tremble fiercely and crouch over my egg protectively.
“Oh, good Glaux!” Gundesfyrr nearly keeled over as Tantya Hanja approached the nest with me in it.
“Would love to have a peek. I had a haggish time getting here,” Tantya Hanja said. “The winds were against me the whole way. I see I have arrived just in time. First crack already!”
“Second crack, actually,” Gundesfyrr said weakly.
“Can I tidy up here a bit in preparation for the new chick? Would you like me to gather some moss? It’s always comfy, isn’t it, for the little ones as they’re almost bald after they hatch out. And here, Gundesfyrr, let me give you some down.” Hanja poked her beak into the thick feathers of her primaries and plucked out the downy ones beneath.
“Oh, that really isn’t necessary!” Gundesfyrr shrieked.
“Don’t screech, dearie! Not just after second crack. That could jiggle things up the wrong way for the exit crack. Now we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Gundesfyrr exchanged a horrified glance with Elfstrom, a neighboring Snowy, who had entered the hollow and clamped his beak shut at the sight of Hanja. Elfstrom had seen more battles in his lifetime than my two parents put together. He was on leave from a striker unit after a fierce battle in the Ice Narrows. Very little unnerved this veteran commander, but the sight of Tantya Hanja did.
“There you go,” Tantya Hanja said, tucking some of her down into the brooding nest. “Now I’ll be back in two shakes of my tail feathers with some moss for the little one. Bet he’ll be handsome like his big brother, Edvard. Such a handsome Screech, that one.” Just as she was about to leave, she turned and said, “Nearly forgot. Might as well take some of my whiskers. They
grow so long this time of year that my talons get tangled in them.”
Gundesfyrr didn’t need to worry. There were no odd jiggles to interfere with the exit crack. I hatched out just fine.
Of course, my eyes were still sealed shut. I could see nothing but I could hear voices muttering about Tantya Hanja. I couldn’t make that much sense out of it. It just came to me in fragments.
“Why did she have to show up?”
“Always an ill omen.”
“But look, he’s just fine.”
Who was “she”? Who was “hesjustfine”? Was that a very long name? And then suddenly, the words stopped and there were terrible sobbing sounds. No words, just long, agonized cries interrupted by short, wet blubberings and gasps. Someone called, “Edvard is dead!” What was an “Edvard”? What was “dead”? I would very soon learn that Edvard had been my brother, and a messenger had arrived from the Hot Blades unit, saying that he had been killed in action over the Firth of Fangs.
So as I entered the world, more or less staggering from my shell, I was surrounded by crying adults, Gundesfyrr, Elfstrom the Snowy, a neighboring Barred Owl couple from across the way, as well as three or four Kielian nest-maid snakes.1
“Oh, dear,” sobbed Mrs. Grinkle, a very elderly nest-maid snake. “I guess you’re the man of the nest now!” she said, looking at me — me, who still had the goo of egg yolk on my unsightly featherless body. Everybody began sobbing anew. I had no idea what she was talking about. I started pecking at the slime left in the fractured cup of the egg. This is an owlet’s first meal and as such provides the occasion for a First Ceremony. First Slime it’s called. But in the tumultuous grief of the moment, everyone seemed to have forgotten this except for Tantya Hanja, who had returned with soft moss for the nest. Calmly, she began singing:
Lick the slime,
There is time.
Dear owlet,
You have hatched.
Now you feed
As is decreed.
May you grow big and strong,
Fledge your wings,
Learn to sing.
But this is your first feed,
So to you we say, Glauxspeed!
Hanja continued, “Now we must all pull ourselves together because I think this is a precious little chick here. I have a feeling he’s bound for greatness.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Grinkle the nest-maid snake whispered. “What she feels is greatness is sometimes tragedy — the tragedy of heroism like dear Edvard!”
Two days later, Tantya Hanja left and there was a great sigh of relief at our end of Stormfast Island. And before I knew it, it was time for my First Insect ceremony. But even more memorable would be my First Meat ceremony, for my mum and da had returned by then.
The owlet years can be divided into three stages. The first is commonly called the Fuzzball stage, and the subsequent ones are the Fledgling and the Flight stages. They are often referred to as the Three Fs. The Fuzzball period is named after an owlet’s lack of true feathers. Instead, we are covered in unsightly patches of downy fluff. All adult owls think we are extremely cute, absolutely adorable. How quickly they forget! If you are an owl chick, you’re embarrassed about being half naked, and because you are half naked, you’re always cold and dependent on mature owls to cuddle and comfort you to keep you warm. Worst of all, you can’t fly! You examine yourself every five seconds for any trace of budging points, those tiny little knobs of flesh where feathers begin to poke through.
In the Fledgling stage, a chick begins to learn how to branch, which will ultimately lead to flying. Of course, in the Northern Kingdoms, there aren’t many trees, so branching per se is difficult. Instead, we have to use rocky, often ice-sheathed outcroppings. My family was lucky, for we lived in one of the few stands of trees on Stormfast Island. The hollow in which I hatched was in a slender pine.
But I digress. It was long before I branched that I had my First Meat ceremony, and this was when I met my parents for the first time.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!” Gundesfyrr hooted.
“Who’s coming?” I chirped.
“Your mum, your da, back from the last battle near the Ice Talons, and just in time for your First Meat ceremony.”
“I get to eat meat!” I did a little jump. Meat was actually more exciting to me than my mum and da. Remember, I had never really seen a mum or a da. But I’d seen a lot of meat. Gundesfyrr and her friends were always chomping on rockmunks, a kind of chipmunk that lived in the rocky cliffs on Stormfast, or lemmings or voles. Sometimes they even ate fish. The Fish Owls dove for them off one point of the island. But all I ever got to eat during my Fuzzball stage, beyond the slime from my eggshell, were carefully selected insects. Insects don’t have meat and, most significantly, they don’t have blood. The scent of blood when Gundesfyrr and her friends came in with freshly slaughtered rodents was enough to drive me yoickers!2 So I was beside myself when I heard that my parents were coming and bringing me a plump vole!
The only problem was that when Mum and Da flew into the hollow, I nearly yarped. It wasn’t the vole with its steaming guts slithering out from the slash of my mum’s talons that made me want to yarp. It was Mum who gave me a fright. She only had one eye! Where the other eye should have been was a pit leaking blood through a seam that had been coarsely stitched across it.
Do all mums just have one eye? I wondered. I couldn’t help myself, and I shrieked when she bent over me. Suddenly, I knew — this was the face of war!
“Oh dear, my patch must have slipped off,” my mum said. She quickly reached up with her port talon and pulled down a small piece of lemming fur to cover the eye pit. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Lyze. No, never! You are a dear little thing.”
Gundesfyrr nudged me a bit, then whispered, “Greet your mum, dear.”
“Oh, let him get used to me. I know it must be hard. I’m just glad I’ve got one eye left to see him with.”
“Hello, Mum. Sorry, I — I —” I was trembling. I just couldn’t look at her.
“Never mind, dear. You’ll get used to it.” But would I? And what if I didn’t? Everyone was a warrior, a soldier. All anyone ever talked about was war. This was our life, why owlets often knew their hire broody and nest-maid snakes better than their own mums and das. I knew I would have to toughen up, so I dared myself to look at the horrible gash that ran out from under the lemming fur, like a jagged thunderbolt down her face. Did I doubt war at this point? I’m not sure. After all, I was just an owlet. But I might have doubted myself and whether I could be an honorable member of the Kielian League.
Rask was my father’s name. It was an old-soldier name and meant fast or quick. But he was not quick enough, apparently. One side of his face had been seared and he was missing his whiskers! Not a pretty sight. But not nearly as shocking somehow as my mum’s missing eye.
“What a tough little owl we got here! A veritable whiskerspritz!” my father said. “Whiskerspritz” was a term of endearment for a young Whiskered Screech Owl. It meant “full of spirit.” I felt anything but, and truthfully I felt a bit cheated. My parents were legends on Stormfast, but heroes or not, one was missing an eye, and the other, half his whiskers. And then I realized that it was shameful for the son of heroes to be thinking this way.
“Don’t let this bother you, son.” My da tapped the whiskerless side of his face.
“Do you think they’ll grow back?” I asked.
“Probably no more chance than your mum here has of growing another eye. But we showed them, didn’t we, Ulfa?” He turned and nuzzled my mum.
“Where was the battle, sir?” Gundesfyrr asked quietly. Nay, not just quietly, but reverently. She looked straight into their mangled faces as if paying homage to their scars. I must try and do the same, I thought.
“First Ice Talon between there and the Ice Narrows. Just a skirmish, really. They got her eye and my whiskers, but we got them! By Glaux, we got ’em! We were the only ones in our units who were injured. Very lucky we were.
Very lucky.”
Lucky? I thought. They call this luck? All I could think about was my mum’s eye — somewhere at the bottom of the Everwinter Sea. However, when they started to speak of the strategy and the weapons, I must admit it interested me. War seemed like a strange but violent puzzle to me.
“We left our mark, didn’t we, Sweet Gizz?” My da nuzzled my mum’s chest feathers.
“Darned hootin’! Your da raked off half a Great Horned’s beak, and I snapped off not one, but two, of the other fellow’s talons.”
“Mercy!” exclaimed Gundesfyrr. “And you having just lost your eye!”
“I know. Not sure how I did it. It’s one of those instances in battle when you don’t think, you just do. Something rushed through me like a hurricane-force wind and just … just propelled me. I didn’t feel any pain, any anger even, just a passion to destroy.”
“It’s called being a soldier,” my da said. “You’ll do it, too, someday. Someday, young’un!” He turned to me almost jubilantly, as if anticipating the courage I wasn’t sure I’d have.
I wondered if I would ever be a soldier, a true soldier.
“When can I have my meat? I’m hungry,” I said.
“That’s the spirit, lad!” my father boomed.
“Yes, let’s get on with the First Meat ceremony!” My mum’s voice rang out joyfully.
Before I knew it, the hollow was crowded. For this ceremony, my mother stripped the fur from the vole, and then my father stripped the meat from the bone. It is more digestible this way for a young chick. We are not expected to swallow the creature whole, like the grown-ups do. Our gizzards aren’t up to it.
Mum and Da were around for a good while, as they had been granted a long leave. And before I knew it, I had passed through my First-Fur-on-Meat ceremony, which meant I got to eat the entire vole skin off the bone but with the fur. The fur tickled when it went down. And finally, it was time for my First-Meat-on-Bones ceremony. For that, they always bring back quite a small rodent, either a baby or one of the dwarf rats that scramble about on the beaches of Stormfast. There’s a bit of a knack to eating a creature whole.