The Rise of a Legend Read online

  “Again?” Lysa said again.

  “Again what?” I asked.

  “Mouseth,” she sighed. When she spoke she had a slight lisp. It was the cutest thing ever. “Tired of mouseth. No vole?” She paused. “Pleath, Lyze.”

  My heart seized, my gizzard lurched when I heard her speak my name.

  “You know my name?”

  “Yeth. You my big brother.” I blinked but the tears wouldn’t stop.

  “Don’t cry,” Lysa chirped. “I love you. Eyes not for crying.” She opened her own so wide and began swiveling her head around like an old pro. “You Gilda?” she said, then flipped her head upside down and backward. “And you my broody, Gundie!” She took a big breath. “I LOVE LOVE LOVE all you!”

  Lysa began to grow in leaps and bounds. She was the fluffiest fuzzball ever and each day there was a new achievement. She had her First Insect ceremony, then First Meat. I could hardly tear myself away from her to go visit Thora, but we did sneak off occasionally.

  “I understand about little sisters.” Thora paused and seemed to gulp. We thought she was about to say something, but she turned back to her work. “You know, they grow very quickly. You should make a chart.”

  “A chart?”

  “Yes. Go over to my kindling pile and each of you take a big piece of birch bark and then fetch yourself a nice charred piece of wood and you’ll have a marker.”

  “Now what?” Moss asked.

  “Start marking down what your sisters do!”

  “You mean their sky marks?” I asked. For that is the word we used for significant events in a growing owlet’s life, even before they can fly.

  “Yes. You know, when they hatch, when they eat, followed by their first yarped pellet.”

  It was a wonderful idea, and Moss and I both started the charts for our sisters.

  “Can I put three on one chart?” Moss asked.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Thora advised. “They each deserve their own sky marks chart.”

  I looked at Thora. She was an uncommonly intelligent owl and not that much older than we were, but somehow vastly more mature.

  That day, I returned to the hollow close to twixt time, and Lysa woke up.

  “Lyze, that you?”

  “Of course. Why are you awake?”

  “I’ve got this funny feeling in my tummy.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, ever since my First Meat last night.”

  “You do!” I was terribly excited. I had arrived just in time with my chart. “Don’t panic, Lysa. Stay calm.”

  “I am calm.”

  “This is nothing to worry about.” I took a big breath. “You are about to yarp your first pellet.”

  “I thought it might be something like that. I think I’m budging, too. I just didn’t want to wake up Gundie.”

  “We’ll help you, dear,” Gilda said.

  “Now here’s what we do,” I said. “I’m going to lead you to the very edge of the hollow. And you have to lean out and open your mouth very wide.”

  Lysa followed me to the portal and I helped her to the ledge just outside.

  “Oh, my, it’s so beautiful! The snow looks pink.”

  “It’s dawn snow, siypah schnee.”

  “This is so exciting. I’ve never been up this late. I’ve never seen the day!” She paused. “I’ve never seen the night for that matter. I’ve just heard about stars and the moon. Look, there’s one star left over from the night!”

  “That’s the Light Bringer, the morning star. The one that climbs into the dawn before the sun rises.”

  “It’s lovely. I never thought there would be lovely things that were part of the day. I thought it was only the night that hatched beautiful treasures like stars and moonlight.”

  “You won’t be able to see the Light Bringer for long. Not after the sun rises. But now you must concentrate on that pellet. How’s it coming?”

  “Oh, that!” she replied dismissively.

  “Not ‘oh, that!’ This is important. We’ll mark it on your chart. Come on now. This is your chance to show how grown up you are. Open your beak really wide,” I urged her.

  Lysa opened her beak as wide as she could.

  “Now you’re ready to yarp,” I said. “Make a little hiccup. That’s it … that’s it. Go for it! It’s coming. I can hear it rumbling.”

  Something flew out of her mouth.

  “You did it!” I exclaimed.

  “Where’d it go?”

  “Down there. A nice plump pellet. When you start to eat the meat on bones with fur, all your pellets will even be bigger.”

  “Oh, my Glaux, I might not be up to a really big pellet.”

  “Of course you will.”

  Lysa looked down, trying to spot where the pellet had landed.

  “You want me to fetch it? We’ll show Gundesfyrr when she wakes up.”

  “What a lovely idea!” Gilda said. “I’ll go down and get it.”

  I heard a flapping sound in the distance. That’s rather loud, I thought. A dread seeped through my gizzard. Lysa must have picked up on it.

  “What is it, Lyze?” she asked.

  “What is it?” a familiar voice hooted like a slightly distorted echo.

  Oh, Glaux! It was Tantya Hanja. I saw Gilda freeze in her tracks.

  Go away! I wanted to schreech. But she was our aunt.

  “Oh, my goodness. What an adorable little owlet,” Hanja said.

  “I just yarped my first pellet!” Lysa said. She tucked her wings behind her and swung her tail back and forth a bit, she was so proud.

  “Oh, melt my gizzard!” cooed Tantya Hanja.

  Gilda had climbed back up the tree with the pellet coiled in her tail.

  “Do come in,” she said politely, then gave me a rather sharp nudge with her head as if scolding me for forgetting my manners.

  “Yes, do come in,” I repeated. “So — so … happy to see you,” I lied.

  “Any voles? White-footed mice?” she asked as we entered the hollow. “I love the voles from this woods. They’re very sweet.” Have I mentioned that Tantya Hanja was a bit of a mooch? She always traveled with a botkin and happily received any gifts that owls bestowed on her. And they bestowed many in an effort to get rid of her quickly.

  “No white-footed mice, but I’d be happy to get you some,” I said quickly.

  Usually, when I went out hunting, I went bare-taloned. But I knew Tantya Hanja was an incredibly nosy old Screech. Always poking about the hollow under the guise of nest-keeping, as she had just begun to do.

  “Oh, Gilda, I think you missed some inchworms in that corner,” she called.

  I didn’t want her poking around my battle claws and discovering the caps that disguised the sharp tips. So I put them on.

  “Your training claws, Lyze! How handsome. You wear them for white mice? Hardly seems worth the effort.”

  “I need all the practice I can get.”

  “You’ll make a wonderful cadet. When do you go to the Academy?”

  Not soon enough, I wanted to say. “Soffen issen,” I replied.

  “Spring? Well, that’s not too far off. This little one might be flying by then.”

  I hoped so. I couldn’t wait until Lysa could fly. In a very few weeks when the snow wasn’t too heavy in the trees, I planned to start her on branching.

  “So,” Moss said, flying out of his hollow, “I see your tantya Hanja has arrived.” I made a scathing sound deep in my throat. “You’re not alone,” Moss said. “Her showing up is enough to put the entire forest on edge.”

  “Shhh,” I said as I picked up the first heartbeats of what I was certain was a white-footed mouse. Moss tilted his head to scoop up the tiny footfalls.

  “We’ve got competition!” he said.

  “What?”

  “A Snowy. I know the wing beats.”

  Suddenly, out of the thickly falling snow, hurled a sooty sphere with wings. “Thora!”

  “They’re coming! They’re
coming. It’s an attack!”

  “Who? What?”

  “Ice Talon commandos with fire claws.”

  Fire claws! No decent owl fought with fire claws. They were grosnik, forbidden, dirty weapons.13

  Thora was armed to the beak. She had battle claws, a scimitar in one talon and a billy hook in the other. “They stole embers from my forge to load their claws. They’re coming!”

  Moss and I both hooted the alarm calls of our species. The Snowy alarm is like a hot needle piercing the air while my own is a hollow warble in a higher frequency. Within seconds, the small forest at our end of Stormfast Island was shrieking. Then, like fiends from hagsmire, the enemy swooped down on us.

  Their faces were emblazoned with the double red crescents, the sign of their so-called sacred force. “Bhachtyr Bylyric!” they screeched as they raised the tips of their glowing fire claws in the name of Bylyric. Their battle cry did not frighten me, but it did sicken me. I felt my gizzard boil. I was ready to fight — to fight as savagely as any creature on Earth. It was as if I had instantly molted into a new bird, almost unrecognizable to myself. How my heart did pound. I felt nothing except rage, cool rage that left my brain clear. I was able to make a quick assessment of the battlefield: where they were and what they were fighting with.

  Some were armed with scimitars, others with hot blades, hooks, thorns, and all manner of weapons including ice blades. Somehow their ice looked slightly different from the shards we saw harvested at the Ice Dagger. Elfstrom, the large Snowy from a neighboring tree, was back from the front and leaped into the air to engage a Burrowing Owl.

  Burrowing Owls are not the best fliers. Their long, featherless legs are made for digging, and this one appeared to be digging at the air as if it were soil. In the process, he dropped his ice splinter. I swooped down and retrieved it. It was light and didn’t throw me off balance at all. I had seen owls practicing with the splinters on Dark Fowl and knew you could hurl an ice splinter or use it for talon-to-talon combat. I decided to hurl this one. As soon as I saw a space between Elfstrom and the Burrowing Owl open up, I raised my talon, aimed for the owl’s chest, and flung it. A spurt of blood smeared the night. The owl plummeted toward the ground.

  “On your tail, Lyze!”

  I smelled singed feathers. My feathers! A Barred Owl with fire claws had attacked me from the rear. I operated on pure instinct and began backwinging, then flipped myself tailfirst into a small snowdrift and smothered the smoldering sparks. It was a contour, or covering feather, that had caught fire, and luckily not one of my filos.14

  “Brilliant!” a familiar voice called from above. I looked up. I was under my hollow’s tree and directly above me, a creature was swinging something that looked like a scaled flail. It was Gilda. She had transformed her head into a weapon and was swinging it at Ice Talon owls.

  But there was not time to marvel. I saw Thora and Moss together fending off a threesome of Barn Owls. There was a dead Great Gray nearby on the ground, his fire claws hissing softly in the snow as the coals in their tips expired. Beside him lay an ice scimitar four times the size of the splinter I’d hurled. I seized it with both my claws, then transferred it to my port talon. I realized immediately that I would have to compensate for its weight by stroking harder with my starboard wing, but I flew toward the rear of the three Barn Owls as fast as I could. They were flying in a tight formation, their wings almost touching, and they didn’t see me. But Moss and Thora saw it all. I lifted the scimitar and came down hard with it in the tight spaces between two of the owls. They screeched, and two tawny wings fell to the ground, their owners plummeting after. The third owl turned and opened his eyes wide with fear, but before he could maneuver, Thora and Moss were on him. They ripped open his back and tore off his tail.

  Moss’s eyes glazed over with a look of absolute horror. “Your tree! Your tree!” he shrieked. There was a loud cracking sound and then a sweet smell. The tree burst into flame, fire leaping toward the sky and scorching the night.

  “Lysa!” I shrieked, and flew straight toward the fiery hollow. The sound of owls battling receded behind me. I had only one thought in my mind: Save my sister! The tree hissed and spat as boiling sap escaped from the trunk and branches. A dark mouth seemed to widen before me. It was the hollow, spewing black smoke. I flew in but could not breathe. I instinctively backed out. There simply was not enough air. But I was determined to try again. I’d find another way. I’d tear a hole in the trunk on the backside if I had to. The awful odor of seared feathers mixed now with the sweetness of the sap. I flew through the branches of the pine desperate to find a back way into my family’s hollow, choking and shreeing in horror. Then I felt something raking me from the tree. There was the cool draft of air in my lungs. And that was the last I remembered.

  “He’s coming around,” I heard someone whisper. I could still smell that sickeningly sweet odor of boiling sap from the burning tree. My eyes blinked open. Elfstrom was bending over me, his yellow eyes bright and anxious in a white face now black with soot. Thora’s and Moss’s faces were also darkened from the ashes and smoke. I tried to speak but began coughing and couldn’t get a word out.

  “Don’t try to talk.” Elfstrom patted me with his wing as gently as possible for he still wore his battle claws. I shut my eyes and, concentrating as hard as I could, tried not to cough. Finally, I gasped, “Lysa!” I saw Elfstrom glance nervously at Moss. Gilda slithered up to me. Her head had resumed its normal contours, and tears rolled out of both her eyes. “She’s gone, Lyze.”

  “They snatched her!”

  “No, dear.” She shook her head wearily. “She’s dead.”

  A revulsion pulsed through me. My gizzard quaked. Dead? Lysa can’t … can’t be dead. She just budged. I was going to teach her to fly…. It was all so wrong.

  “Gundesfyrr, too,” Gilda said. “It was the smoke. They suffocated in the hollow and you nearly did, too.”

  Moss began to speak. “Gilda got to you and dragged you out.”

  “I went back in for Lysa. I found her, but it was too late.”

  “You found her?”

  “And Gundesfyrr.” She nodded slightly to one side. I twisted my head. There they lay. Next to Gundesfyrr’s rather large body, Lysa was nothing more than a little dark lump in the snow. All her lovely tawny feathers that had just begun to budge were an awful sooty color. And Gundesfyrr had been a handsome Spotted Owl, but not one of her spots showed through the black. Her sister, Prytlah, stood over her, weeping. But it was the sight of Tantya Hanja that made me shut my eyes. She had nary a scorched feather, not a trace of ash in her plumage. How had she escaped while the rest … I didn’t finish the thought. She was hunched over Lysa’s tiny body, weeping clamorously. I couldn’t look. I had to try and remember Lysa’s tawny feathers and the gray ones, and the flecks of white feathers that would have soon appeared over her eyes. Mum was wrong, I thought. A pine tree isn’t the safest tree in the forest. It was the sap that caused it to ignite.

  And Lysa? Lysa had passed over that border between Earth and glaumora. The echoes of her churring voice when she laughed at my pranks, the merry glint in her eyes when she heard me talk of flight — all these I would keep precious and bright. I would polish them as a smith polishes his metalwork to keep the gleam. She was not here on Earth with me, but she was somewhere. … Somewhere, I thought.

  The rage that had overtaken my gizzard and my heart was still inside me. The savage bird within had been unrecognizable to me at first, but he was beginning to feel quite familiar. I slipped into his plumage as easily as during a spring molt. For the season of the soldier had arrived, and I was ready to tap that boiling rage again.

  Moss’s sisters had all survived. Their hollow was not in a pine tree, which had turned out to be a veritable firetrap. My parents returned soon after the tragic attack. They had seen a lot, but never anything quite like this, never an attack on broodies and children. My mother was stunned. She kept hopping around in the charred debris of the tree
, as if she were searching for some tiny remnant — a toy, perhaps even an old yarped pellet of Lysa’s — of her youngest chick. My father followed her, and every now and then would pat her with his wing tip and try to murmur soothing words. But there was nothing he could say. The war had changed in a way that no one had ever anticipated. No longer did warrior meet warrior on a neutral field. Bylyric had come to our peaceful forest and savaged it.

  The battle in our forest had been won by what my da called a “few good owls.” And he included me in that small coterie. Moss and Thora and I had distinguished ourselves. After all, we were very young owls and had not as yet experienced any kind of combat on this scale, nor had we any kind of combat training. My parents’ devastation at the loss of their first daughter was eased by their pride in me. “A real soldier, this one!” my da would boom. And my mum’s yellow eye would glitter fiercely. “A commando if I ever saw one,” she proclaimed.

  Moss, Thora, and I flew to Dark Fowl soon after the attack. We realized our childhood was finished. I had the feeling that Thora’s had been finished long before. The news of the attack had reverberated throughout the Kielian League and nowhere was it more evident than on Dark Fowl. The island bustled with activity. The smiths did not sleep. Their fires burned both day and night. The honing pits had added snakes, who worked in shifts through the days and nights.

  The Military Academy on Dark Fowl gave us no time to grieve. There was so much to learn, and we were busy constantly. With the attack on Stormfast, the war had escalated and we were only the first of many attacks on civilian settlements to come.

  It was not easy for a young owl to arrive for training with a bit of a history behind him. At least, that’s the way it was with the three of us — Moss, Thora, and myself. Everyone had heard about the attack on Stormfast. Expectations were running high for us, uncomfortably high. It was especially tough for Thora, who really had no desire to train as a cadet. She wanted to learn smithing and apprentice Orf. She would settle for an apprenticeship with no other smiths. There had never been a female smith in the history of the Northern Kingdoms; it was not a promising situation. I cringed when she asked one of our instructors once if she might take some training to work at a forge.