"What's wrong with the old canary?" Caven muttered.
Tanis looked up into the bird's flat eyes, the color of mud, dimmed with pain. The bird's beak was partially open. He seemed to be panting. Up close, the half-elf barely recognized the once-sleek creature. The bird's proud carriage couldn't disguise that Xanthar had withered to little more than bones and feathers.
"He can't speak to us," Tanis told Caven. "He's been out of Darken Wood too long. The lady mage warned him." The bird nodded. "But he can understand whatever we say." Xanthar nodded again.
"What about the other birds?" Caven demanded. "Can we communicate with them?"
Tanis turned toward the chattering mass of giant owls, which stretched for some distance in both directions on the shore. Xanthar was shaking his head. "From what Kai-lid said, I'm guessing that only Xanthar had the rare ability to mind-speak outside his race," the half-elf said. Xanthar dipped his head again.
"Could he still speak to the mage?"
Xanthar cocked his head, and Tanis shrugged. "Maybe. He trained her. They have a special bond. But it doesn't matter, does it? She's not here."
Four somewhat smaller owls gathered around Xanthar. They appeared to be arguing with the old bird. Perched at the apexes of four dead oaks, the quartet broadcast their agitation with chittering, wing-flapping, and much whetting of beaks. Xanthar sat, apparently unmoved, at the tip of the stone, imperiously overlooking them all. The smaller birds chittered again; Xanthar dipped his beak in what Tanis interpreted as disagreement. The others cross-stepped back and forth on their branches, squawking some more. Xanthar appeared to consider, then dipped his beak again. The four other owls seemed to think a decision had been made. They leaped into the air with a rush of wind.
Xanthar didn't follow. Instead, he straightened and called out to them, a screeching that rivaled the tempest of wind, ocean, and crackling ice floes.
Several owls took to the air and circled overhead, calling down to the giant owl. One seemed particularly disturbed, darting again and again at Xanthar, screeching raggedly.
"l think they want Xanthar to go back home," the half-elf said, watching as the huge owl raised his beak and uttered a deep trill, the sound of water over stones. At that, the four returned, but with a deflated air. This time, as they landed on the ground, they turned large eyes toward Tanis and Caven.
"I hate that stare," Caven whispered. "It makes me feel like lunch. Their lunch."
"I see that Xanthar rules his family still," Tanis said, ignoring his companion's remark. He raised a hand to the closest bird. The owl dipped its head slightly.
Caven raised an eyebrow. "Family?"
"Look at them." Tanis pointed at the four and to other owls on each side. "Xanthar's dark brown and gray, and they're lighter. Those two are golden, but some have the same patch of white he has over the eye. Look at their markings, at the way they stand. Do you doubt the evidence of your eyes?"
The Kernan gaped for a while, then shook his head.
"At least it's obvious how we're getting to the Ice-reach," Tanis commented. Xanthar nodded.
"Obvious?" Caven's eyes darted nervously from Tanis to Xanthar, then over to the pair of tawny owls waddling across the heights toward the half-elf and Caven. Looks of determination lit their round eyes, and panic flickered across the mercenary's face. "Oh, no!"
Tanis ignored him.
"I'd rather swim across the bay than fly on the back
of one of those creatures," Caven said, swallowing. He took a step backward. "I-I wasn't meant to fly like a bird, half-elf."
"You mean you're afraid of heights," Tanis said.
Caven bristled. "Afraid? Not me. I'd just rather… rather… walk."
"You'll have to fly, and that's that."
"I… can't."
"Not for Kitiara?"
"Not for anybody. I suffer from vertigo… I'd fall off. Half-elf, no one can defeat me in hand-to-hand combat, or on horseback, but up in the air…" A shudder shivered through his frame. "By the gods, I don't dare!"
"We need you," Tanis replied. "You can use my harness. Strap yourself on; you won't fall off."
One of the birds, a blaze of white marking its tawny forehead, had reached Tanis and turned around, presenting its broad back. The half-elf dug the leather apparatus out of his pack and fastened it around the bird's wings and chest. The owl flexed its wings, testing the harness.
"Half-elf…" Caven said warningly.
The other bird, the same golden color as the first but without the blaze, came up on Caven's other side. It looked down on him solemnly, then plucked at his shirt with its beak, nudging the mercenary toward the waiting owl. "No!" Caven said. "Go away!" He put a hand on the hilt of his sword, looking wildly from side to side.
The two owls exchanged looks, then glanced at Tanis. The half-elf heard no voice of telepathy, but he understood the birds' intention. At that moment, the unharnessed owl raised its beak and screeched. The sound was enough to raise the hair on Tanis's neck,
and Caven whirled, fumbling with his sword. At that, the half-elf leaped for the driftwood he'd thrown away moments before, hefted it in one hand, and as the mercenary began to swing back the blade, brought the piece of wood down on Caven Mackid's head with a crack. The Kernan went down like dead weight.
Moments later the owl with the blaze, the unconscious mercenary lashed to its back, plunged from the ridge into the dizzying space above the churning waters of Ice Mountain Bay. Tanis's owl followed suit, the half-elf clinging to its neck. Xanthar launched from his pinnacle and swooped into the lead. They circled once, then turned due south.
Behind them, spread across the blue-gray sky, hundreds of giant owls followed.
Kai-lid.
Curled on the floor of the icebound dungeon, Kai-lid lifted her head and pushed back her coverlet. Her head swam. She hadn't eaten for days, although the ettin had begun showing up regularly several days ago, right after Kitiara had been dragged from the prison, to lower a pail of water. The swordswoman hadn't returned, and the ettin wouldn't answer Kai-lid's entreaties about Kitiara's safety. Several times Janusz himself had showed up and renewed the offer he'd made in the Valdane's camp, that she join forces with him and continue the magical training he'd begun with Lida and Dreena years ago when they were teen-agers. Of course, he would add, it was assumed that she would don the black robes and become his lover. Each time Kai-lid turned her head away, and when she looked back, Janusz would be gone, his scent of spices and dust lingering behind him. Her magic was useless in the face of the other mage's greater powers.
But surely she had just heard a summons. Was she hallucinating from lack of food?
Kai-lid Entenaka. Can you hear me? Have caution. I sense the presence of another, who watches. Do not speak aloud.
Kai-lid's trembling dropped away like the sloughed skin of a snake. She forced herself to concentrate, to look within, and to remain seemingly calm in the cold light from the walls, but her heart leaped.
Xanthar, is it you?
A pause. Do you speak like this with anyone else?
The lady mage practically sobbed with relief. She hid her emotions by rising and moving to the pail of water under the portal. She filled the dipper and drank deeply, all the while focusing her mind for telepathic speech.
Xanthar, my father has enslaved the Ice Folk. Kitiara has been gone for several days. I don't know if she's alive or dead. I fear she's cooperating with him. I am his prisoner, deep in some ice crevasse. Quickly returning to the parka and resuming her somnolent position under it, she mentally sketched in their trek over the Icereach in the dire-wolf sledge. You are near, Xanthar?