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flew a good distance ahead of him, her head sweeping in a wide arc as she sniffed the air. How stunned his family had been when he had chosen a hagsfiend for his mate. “A disgrace,” they had hooted. “Outrageous!” screeched an elderly aunt. But where they saw filth, he saw a dark purity. Where they smelled the stench of crow, he experienced only the heady scent of nachtmagen. She was magnificent and powerful. The half-hags that flew in the fringes of her primaries served her well because she commanded them so expertly. And it was for this reason she was one of the finest trackers in the N’yrthghar. These tiny poisonous half-hags darted out from beneath the edges of her flight wings on short forays to detect clues from the long-vanished flight paths of owls. It might have been hours since an owl had passed through a patch of sky but a half-hag could sense the most minute vestiges in an air current disturbed by the wings of a particular owl. It might be anything—atiny filament of down still spinning in a swirling eddy, the scent of a pellet yarped in flight. Nothing was too small, too insignificant, for these tiny poisonous creatures to detect. And their obedience to Ygryk was unparalleled, unequivocal, and beyond that of any other half-hags. This made Ygryk the best tracker.
    They knew exactly what they were looking for. As soon as Lord Arrin had given them their flight orders, Pleek had returned to the iceberg where Siv had nested. They waited until Svenka and her cubs were off fishing and picked up a feather Siv had shed. This was enough to provide the half-hags with her scent. Furthermore, Ygryk had explained to them, in that odd language that was used only by hagsfiends to communicate with their half-hags, how Siv’s flight marks would differ; because of her damaged port wing, she would be favoring her starboard wing. Therefore the air she passed through would be unevenly disturbed.
    The half-hags’ first clue had been picked up in a maverick eddy that had spun off an air stream coming off the island of Dark Fowl.
    “Two points north of east,” Ygryk called to her mate. She flipped her head back to make sure he was following. How incredible it seemed to her that a true owl had chosen her for his mate. How seldom this happened. She feltso proud. And Ygryk’s family was as proud as Pleek’s was ashamed. The only problem was that they had been unable to have offspring. Only a few of these rare unions provided offspring, and for most hagsfiends it was not a problem. But for Ygryk it was. Deep within her she had a longing that was different from anything she had ever known. She adored anything young and vulnerable. Now, many hagsfiends were fascinated by the innocence of chicks or cubs or pups, but it was not a loving fascination. Quite the reverse. They enjoyed killing the defenseless and the innocent. The blood of innocents was a tonic on which they thrived. They had even been known to eat their own young. Ygryk, too, had bloodied her beak countless times on young polar bear cubs left while their mothers went hunting. She had swooped down on a fox’s kit that had scampered from its den. And nothing was more delightful than a nest full of soft newborn bunnies. The pathetic mewlings of the mother before Ygryk would rip out its throat, the wide-eyed disbelief of those babies as she slowly ate them one by one, too stupefied even to run. But this fascination and thrill of power over the innocent had turned to something else when she had met Pleek and had thought of a chick of her own—half-owl, half-hagsfiend—a dear little creature. She had imagined it for so long. The chick would have, of course, two darkbrown tufts that rose on top of its head, just like Pleek’s. And she pictured its plumage mostly black but shot through with some of the grays and tans of a Great Horned. Its eyes would be the lovely amber of Pleek’s. When she’d begun to realize that this was not going to happen, that there would be no