Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

ELEVEN
The Ice Cliff Palace
    T he 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 whereaboutsand 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.
    Now as I flew up the ice canyon, I scanned the face of the cliffs for a ribbon of darkness that would appear blacker than the night. I knew I would see it soon, but at that same moment I began to smell a vile crowish odor. The hagsfiends were near! I knew at once that I must cease my flight. I could not risk revealing an entryway into the Ice Cliff Palace. I knew I must spottilate immediately so that I could blend in with the ice-sheathed cliffs. This is precisely what I did, and not a moment too soon.
    I lighted and stood as tall and thin as possible. It was an intentional wilf in which I pressed my feathers close to my bones. Just then, the noxious odor of hagsfiends swirled around me until I thought I might yarp a pellet. This indeed would be a giveaway, literally a dead giveaway! But I swallowed, feeling my first stomach lurch and my gizzard quake as I heard the air hiss with that unmistakable stropping sound. First, I saw the spikes of stiff feathers like daggers rising from a hagsfiend’s spine and then a very long tail. Can it really be Penryck? It was. The air stirred about me as he flew by so close I could have reached out and touched him. So close that I saw the little half-hagsswirling in the currents of his tail feathers. These minute parasitic demon creatures are much smaller and not as strong as hagsfiends, but it is as if all evil has been concentrated in them, distilled to the highest potency. Their beaks are said to drip a kind of poison that hagsfiends themselves are immune to. It is a poison that kills the mites that live in hagsfiends’ feathers. The half-hags feed on these mites and are therefore dependent on the hagsfiends for their sustenance. I had pressed my feathers as close to my body as possible and drawn myself up tall, spottilating so as to turn my plummage inside out. In my stillness, my slenderness, and my near whiteness, I was, for all intents and purposes, an icicle—one of many. It seemed to take Penryck forever to fly by. I saw more of his feathers close up than I cared to and more of the half-hag demons. Thankfully, they did not see me. The half-hags have woeful eyesight. Some say it is because they are part bat.
    It should be noted here that the plumage of a hagsfiend and a half-hag is as different from that of any true owl as a snakeskin is different from a bear’s hide. Hagsfiends’ feathers are a deep glistening black, but instead of plummels, those fine fringe feathers that help owls fly so silently, the leading edges of their flight feathers are very long and shaggy and trail through the air, disturbing currents andmaking a hissing sound. And then, of course, there is the awful stench. There is nothing subtle about a hagsfiend and in many ways this is good. One knows when they are coming. But there are other characteristics of these birds that are truly terrifying. Perhaps they do not need to be subtle. Their beaks are as sharp as any ice blade. Their talons are like ice needles. Indeed, all the weapons we have learned to make from the strong ice—ice needles, ice swords, ice splinters, spiked fizgigs—were invented to combat the deadly sharpness of hagsfiends’ beaks and talons.
    Penryck finally did pass by, and it was then safe for me to go into