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wheeled around still swinging his hammer in one talon and gripping the tongs with the hot burning coal in the other. The crow with the singed wing was back. Impossible! There was a sudden downdraft that sucked all four birds into a trough of still air. Just beneath him was the black back of a crow. It glistened like a polished anvil. With all his might he struck that feathered anvil with his hammer. The crow broke in half like a dried twig. The other two let out terrible caws that ripped the stillness of the dawn.
    Then as fast as they had come, they were gone. Gwyndor was exhausted. He felt himself losing altitude. I have to go on. I have to go on. I must get to Nyroc before it’s too late.
    And the dawn bled into day, and the day became the night, and the night was thick with shadows and dreams. The crows became hagsfiends like dark vapors flying through the night. Gwyndor moaned in pain and fear.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Facts of Life and Death
    D o you know what scrooms are, my little hatchling?” Nyra asked her son.
    “Sort of. But, Mum, I am an expert flier now and I have killed my first prey. Do you have to keep calling me a hatchling? I’ve been through my First Flight ceremony.”
    “Well, yes, that’s true. But we still have Tupsi, the Special ceremony. And after that, I shall truly no longer be able to get away with calling you ‘hatchling.’” She churred softly. “Nor even owlet. For you shall be a soldier after the Special ceremony that we call Tupsi.”
    “Tupsi, I like the sound of that,” Nyroc said.
    “It stands for Tytonic Union of Pure Ones Special Initiation.”
    “But what is the special initiation? I wish I knew more about it. What am I supposed to do?”
    “Tonight I shall tell you more about it. And more about your history, and about scrooms, too.”
    And so she began.
    “A scroom, my dear, is a spirit that cannot rest until its work on Earth is finished.” Nyra blinked. Her dark eyes as polished as river stones seemed to look into another place, another time, another night. There was something spooky about his mum, Nyroc suddenly realized. For the first time he was afraid of her in a new way—not because he had done something less than perfectly or asked a question that he should not have asked. This was different. She seemed to have gone into some sort of a trance. She began to speak in a scratchy singsong voice.

There were three scrooms who came to me
    And said Nyroc shall be king
    And with this Special ceremony
    His glory shall long and loudly ring.

    Nyroc’s eyes brightened. “You mean, Mum, that I am really to be king, supreme commander like my great father?”
    “You will. Once you have completed the Special ceremony.”
    “But what is it?”
    “The Special ceremony is a sacrifice of sorts. But it is also more. It is a courageous act—a blood act.”
    “A blood act? Sacrifice?”
    “Sacrifice is giving up something that is difficult to give up. Something you care for.”
    “I get it! It’s like killing something you might want to eat but then not eating it, right?”
    Nyra’s eyes glittered. “Not exactly, but close. I shall explain more as we draw nearer to the time of the ceremony.”
    Centipedes? Nyroc wondered. He loved centipedes. They were one of his favorite foods. But he had a feeling that it was not centipedes. Centipedes, after all, didn’t have blood. Perhaps a fox, or something larger. Could it be the prisoner he was to kill? He did not want to, would not, think about that.
    Maybe it had to do with his da’s battle claws. Yes, that must be it. He would be required to kill something with his da’s battle claws! His mum had saved them for him. They were pretty special, and so was his da’s mask, which hung in their hollow in the cliff. Actually, Nyroc thought, the mask gave him the creeps. Every time he looked at it he wilfed a bit. But he was drawn to the battle claws. They were his inspiration. Everything he had learned how to do was because of the claws.