The First Collier Read Online Free PDF

studying.” The message was from H’rath, my king and friend. It began:
    “These are most grievous times. I sense a deep and devious plot against me. My ice harvesters have not returned from their expedition to the Firth of Fangs. I do not know whom to trust. I fear that some of my oldest allies have joined ranks with hagsfiends. Fragile coalitions with neighboring clans are disintegrating. They all lust for nachtmagen.”
    Ha! I almost laughed out loud. Nachtmagen! Hagsfiends’ magic could not compare to mine. It is astonishing that it did not occur to me even then that I had done nothing with my new power except to gaze deeper into the ember to see more and more terrible things. I read on:
    “Siv has set an egg.”
    I felt a twinge in my gizzard for the first time in a long while.
    “Promise me, dear Grank, that if something happens to me, you shall protect my family. Protect Siv, her egg, and when the time comes, the hatchling. But now you must come home. We need you desperately. Should anything happen to me—” The writing broke off. Something must have interrupted him. I dimly remembered seeing something in the fire earlier in the evening—a flood of hagsfiends sweeping down off the ice fortress of Hrath’ghar ridge. Blood.
    I took the thin piece of hide and dropped it into the fire. I watched the flames. Yes, a battle was raging. It did not look good for the H’rathian troops. I yawned. I saw Joss look around the camp. It was littered with my yarped pellets. I was living in squalor. I blinked. Then I looked at Joss. “I know all this that is in the message.”
    “You do?” Joss said, shocked. “Then why have you not come?”
    “I don’t know,” I replied blandly.
    Fengo stepped close to me. “Return the ember to the volcano, Grank. It is not for you. Its magic is too strong. You are a good owl, perhaps a mage, but you are not powerful enough to bear exposure to the ember.”
    I blinked. “I don’t understand.”
    “It is too strong for you and it is too dangerous to chance it falling into the possession of a hagsfiend or an evil owl.”
    “Would it not be too strong for them, too?” I asked.
    “Yes, but they would use it. And it would magnify their evilness, their nachtmagen. But if by chance a good owl, a noble owl of great grace and great strength would find it, the ember would not be too strong, and he or she would use the magic for the good of all owlkind. You are good, dear friend, but you are not that owl.”
    “Then who am I?” I said in a frail voice, and looked around. For just then I seemed to realize I had somehow mislaid my very self.
    “You will find yourself when you put the ember back.”
    “Put it back?”
    “Fly back to the volcano, Grank. Drop the ember into the crater and let it lie buried until an owl is hatched who will use it well.”
    And so I did. I felt the power of the ember slip from me the moment I dropped it into that bubbling cauldron of lava. I felt my gizzard expand and realized that for many long days and nights it had been pinched and hard. I felt my self, my real self, seep back. My gizzard quickened. I was ready. The volcano had erupted. The flames scoured the night, turning the moon and the stars crimson. And in those flames I saw terrible things. Things that I had ignored too long. I knew that I must fly back to the N’yrthghar as quickly as possible.

CHAPTER SIX
When We Were Very Young
    I t was the season of the N’yrthnookah, which meant that the winds were on the beak. It would be a long trip back, a tough claw-flight. I would have to fly off the wind and claw against the easterly current to keep from being set too far west. The trees grew thickly in the Shadow Forest, so I flew low between them where I would gain some protection from the wind.
    I was flooded with memories of H’rath and Siv as I flew back to the N’yrthghar. The three of us had known one another since we were mere hatchlings skidding about on the glaciers, not yet able to fly.