by Jess E. Owen
Copyright © 2015 by Jess E. Owen
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Five Elements Press
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, or incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.
Cover art by Jennifer Miller.
Cover typography and interior formatting by TERyvisions.
Edited by Joshua Essoe
E-BOOK EDITION
ISBN-13: 978-0-9858058-8-3
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~ 1 ~
The Cave
SHARD CROUCHED AGAINST THE inner wall of the crystal dragon, digging at an edge where the diamond-hard scales met the ground. He’d already worn two talons dull against the hard earth and volcanic rock. His back ached from his prolonged crouch and he made sure to open and stretch his curved, gray wings and his hind legs often.
He could see, vaguely, beyond the walls—only light and shapes, and he paused to check for movement outside.
The glimmer of ten thousand false stars filled a cavern massive enough for two dozen dragons to fly. The cavern was the hollow center of a mountain peak, which gryfons called the Horn of Midragur.
Shard knew where he sat within the cavern, knew what any other creature would see. Near one edge of the floor rose a pedestal of stone, squat and oval, and on top of the pedestal coiled the crystal form of an enormous, serpentine dragon of the Sunland.
The crystal dragon’s body formed a dome, sealing two creatures inside, one of whom was Shard.
I need a better plan, he thought, stopping to stare at the meager groove he’d created along the crystal dragon’s body. He’d discovered that it wasn’t connected to the ground, that given time, if he had the strength, he might tunnel underneath and escape the chamber. And he desperately needed to escape. Food was running low and the only water to be had was whatever condensed along the walls of the crystal.
A low, thrumming thunder shuddered the ground under his body and he swiveled, peering again through the crystal. That time he saw warped, winged, dark shapes that loomed beyond. There would be a consequence for escaping, one that he hadn’t yet thought through.
But it was not only for his sake that he needed to escape, no matter the peril beyond.
“Shard!”
He startled, scooped loose dirt back into his shallow tunnel, and sat up. “You’re done eating?”
Hikaru bounded forward in rolling leaps, his shining black scales catching the eerie light of the million glow worms far, far above them. When the little dragon had hatched he’d been no larger than an arctic hare. Now he was a third Shard’s size. They would starve if they didn’t escape, or Hikaru would grow so large that Shard feared he would crush them both against the walls. Shard hadn’t yet told him of their danger, and didn’t want him to know of the tunnel.
“I have a new question,” Hikaru announced, and sat.
“All right,” Shard said, happy that the dragonet still didn’t understand their peril, and hoping he wouldn’t ask why they could only eat so much food at a time. Hikaru’s mother had left them a store of dried, smoked fish but now there was only enough for a few more days. Shard had lost track of the time in the unchanging light of the cave, but two things kept him aware. One was their hunger. The other was the wyrms, most of which left at night to hunt, and returned at daybreak. All told, by counting their comings and goings, Shard and Hikaru had been in the chamber just under a fortnight.
Hikaru displayed his small, long wing, growing in shape like a swan’s, the tips of the black feathers gleaming like the translucent edge of volcanic glass. “Why have I different…different…”
“Feathers?” Shard offered.
“Yes.” Large serpent eyes of luminous gold met Shard’s. Hikaru would eventually realize that Shard’s moss-green eagle eyes were different than his own as well. “Why have I different feathers than you? And no feathers on my tail, as you do?”
“Because you’re a dragon,” said Shard quietly, but reassuringly. “And I’m a gryfon.” He tried to stay calm, but the young dragon had grown so swiftly, and was growing still, speaking, learning more quickly than any young creature he’d ever seen. The mother dragon had said as much, that her son would grow faster than Shard could imagine, like a bird, and would need guidance. As he doubled in size so rapidly, it was becoming critical that they find a way out of their sanctuary before it became their grave.
Shard wondered if Amaratsu had thought that far ahead, either. The store of food she’d left, that he hadn’t noticed in the heat of their last confrontation with the dragons, hinted that she’d planned to remain in the mountain for some time.
A dull, far away sound swept a chill down Shard’s back. Hikaru flicked his soft, roe-like ears toward the crystal walls.
“What is that?” he whispered. The long whiskers that sprouted from his snout quivered in the air. He hadn’t been able to hear the outside noises before. Shard imagined how rapidly the dragonet’s senses would improve to levels possibly higher than his own.
“Dragons,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. Hikaru’s soft ears perked fully forward. Shadows swooped around the chamber like enormous ravens. They had tried to break in, with no luck, and the walls muffled their horrible, blood-lusting roars to dull rumbling.
“Dragons like me? Like my mother?” He peered at his own body, then sat up and arched his head back like an egret. He offered his bird-like, five-toed forepaws for Shard’s inspection.
“No,” said Shard, forcing his gaze from the glimmering walls of their haven. Soon Hikaru would fill it to overflowing, but escaping it held just as many problems. “Not like you or your mother at all. Those are dragons of the Winderost. Voiceless, angry. Other creatures call them wyrms. Your mother was from the Sunland at the bottom of the world. A place of snow and light and peace.” He tried to speak as if he’d seen it himself, to assure Hikaru of his noble birth. Truly though, all he knew of the Sunland or of dragons was what Amaratsu had told him in the last hours of her life.
She had begged him to care for her son. Begged him, in the face of attacking wyrms who wished to steal her egg, or worse. Shard didn’t know what they wanted. He’d tried to speak to the wyrms once, tried and failed.
That lingering fear and threat hovered like a storm at the forefront of their quiet time within Amaratsu’s coils.
Perhaps still thinking of his mother, Hikaru walked to the wall of the chamber. He touched it gently, as if afraid to mar the scales, though the wyrms of the Winderost had failed to chip or even scratch it from the outside.
“Mother,” whispered the dragonet, stroking the unfeeling scales. “Earth.” He touched both delicate forefeet to the ground. “Sky…” He tilted his graceful, wedge-shaped head back to peer through the crystal. He wasn’t staring at the false sky that was the roof of the cavern, laced with
clusters of glow worms and lichens, but at a far, high hole near the top that Shard had once pointed out to him. A crack near the pinnacle of the Horn of Midragur led to the sky. Shard followed his gaze, his wings aching to fly.
He didn’t realize he’d opened his wings until he saw that Hikaru’s black wings also stretched wide, opening and fanning in exercise.
“Flight.” Hikaru’s voice was breathless with hunger. One of the first things they’d spoken of was flight, of the sky, of freedom and joy in the wind.
Hikaru continued reviewing words and objects, like a lullaby. He did it often, usually putting himself to sleep that way. Relief filled Shard that the dragon had no more questions, and he simply watched, correcting here and there and thinking of how Hikaru’s voice differed from Amaratsu. Her quiet, winding voice had the strange accent of a bird from a land he had never seen and didn’t know. Hikaru’s voice lovingly mimicked a gryfon’s, more rasping, with the soft rolling rhythm of a cluster of islands in the starward corner of the world. Shard’s home.
“Fish,” Hikaru said, touching the dry, smoked planks of meat on the ground. Shard saw his eyelids slipping and so he settled himself, stretched out on the ground on his belly, and opened a wing. Hikaru slithered forward, purring, and curled against Shard’s warm flank. Shard closed his wing around the dragonet.
“Feathers,” Hikaru murmured, combing Shard’s wing feathers with gentle talons. “Talon. Pebble. Rib.” He yawned widely, then his jaws snapped shut. He bared his tiny, sharp teeth in what Shard had learned was an expression of amusement. “Tired.” It reminded him of Catori, his closest wolf friend in the Silver Isles, and he longed for home.
“Friend.”
Shard waited, knowing it was the last word that Hikaru uttered each night, a word that brimmed with affection and admiration Shard wasn’t sure he deserved. Small, articulate dragon talons curled around his foreleg and Hikaru nuzzled his head against Shard’s feathered shoulder. His final word for the evening rolled from between his little teeth in a warm sigh.
“Shard.”
A dream bore him a vision of a snowy valley lit by a celestial green glow. He’d never seen the valley or mountains in the Silver Isles, nor the Winderost. In the center of the valley, he beheld a ring of stones. A pale star glowing down on the earth darted to and fro amongst the stones, and then away toward the mountains on the far side of the valley.
Before Shard could explore the vision further, something grabbed his wings, shaking him, demanding his attention.
“I’m awake,” Shard grumbled, grasping Hikaru’s forelegs and wrestling him off. “I’m awake!”
Hikaru laughed and coiled his tail around Shard’s chest, baring his teeth in challenge. Groggy, but determined not to lose a playful spar to a dragonet half his size, Shard rolled to his back and Hikaru fell with him, scrambling to stay on Shard’s stomach. Shard arched up to kick his hind legs against Hikaru’s belly, lifting him off the ground. The dragonet loosed a long, laughing scree like a seabird and flared his wings. At full spread they were as long as Shard’s, despite his smaller size.
“I’m flying!”
“Well done!” Shard laughed, still holding Hikaru’s forefeet. The dragonet uncoiled his tail and set his hind feet on Shard’s paws and his front feet in Shard’s talons, so he stood braced against an imaginary wind, flapping his wings hard. Shard gripped the little forepaws firmly, encouraging this exercise. The only way they would escape the cavern was to fly, and Hikaru would be too big for him to carry. He had to build his strength.
After another moment of “flying,” Hikaru broke free with a shove and leaped, gliding the small expanse from their side of the chamber to the other. Shard flopped over to his belly and watched the little dragon glide, flap and flare. He looked to have the instinct for it, though he flared too late and smacked into the far wall instead. Shard rolled to his feet and trotted over as Hikaru crawled to a sitting position.
“Are you hurt?”
“Oh. No.” He ran his little talons nervously down his belly scales, and Shard detected a flush at the end of his soft nose, which was more like a deer’s nose, and had no scales. “Mother caught me.”
Shard lifted a foot, taken aback, then chuckled gently. “Yes she did. Well done though. Next time—”
“I know.” Hikaru’s eyes slitted and he lashed his tail against the dirt, “If I think it’s time to turn or stop, it’s already too late.”
Shard nodded once. “Well remembered.”
“Next time I will.”
A tremor vibrated the earth under their feet. Pebbles shivered on the rock, and pure cold washed Shard’s skin.
Hikaru perked his ears at the ground. “What was that?”
“Earthquake,” Shard said. The tremor stilled, and he managed to keep his voice calm. “This is an ancient volcano, a hollow mountain. It’s not uncommon for that to happen.”
Hikaru patted his paw against the ground, as if to make the earth shake again. “Is it dangerous?”
Shard hoped not, and to answer he said only, “It won’t matter if we get out, soon. Don’t worry. I’ve felt small earthquakes in the Silver Isles. Are you hungry?”
Shard hated such an obvious change of subject, hated to deter Hikaru from his questions or seem to be lying, but he didn’t want the dragon to fear things over which they had no control. For the first time, Hikaru hesitated at the question. He glanced at the dwindling stash of meat. “Should we save it?”
Shard drew a deep breath. “No, Hikaru. You’re growing fast and you need to eat.”
Hikaru’s eyes narrowed further, the delicate ridges drawing down in a reptilian frown. “When did you eat last?”
“I’m fine,” Shard said firmly. “Eat a fish.”
Hikaru’s tail twitched again, then he did as Shard told him. Shard tried to remember the last time he had eaten, himself, and when he couldn’t, decided he’d better have something. He ate a smaller fish as well, watching how Hikaru made an effort to chew slowly and savor the meal.
I can’t wait to show him a true meal. A real fish. Real meat. Judging by his wings, Shard guessed Hikaru might be able to dive and fish, and the prospect of teaching the young dragon excited him.
First things first. He waited for Hikaru to get sleepy, as he usually did, after eating. Then he could work on the hole to get them out. But Hikaru didn’t curl up right away. As if he’d been thinking of something for a while, he left the fish pile and pressed his paw to the crystal wall, angling his head to watch Shard closely.
“My mother gave her life for me. And for you.” He searched Shard’s face. “Why?”
“She was your mother,” Shard said, struggling to answer the new, more complicated question. The previous days all Hikaru had asked about were the names for things, and when they might have fresh fish. At last Shard sat, fidgeting his talons against the rock. “She wanted me to teach you of the world, and of dark and light, and the songs, and of her.” He took a deep breath, watching Hikaru’s quiet, eager expression. He’d known the moment would come, and he’d already decided what to do. Shard’s own past had been a mystery to him his entire life, with others secretly hoping for and expecting things that he might do without telling him everything he needed to know.
He had vowed never to do that to Hikaru.
“Hikaru, the dragons of your kind have kept to themselves for many years in the Sunland, not visiting the rest of the world as they once did. Your mother hoped that by bringing you here and letting you befriend other creatures, you might help to change things.”
Hikaru tilted his head. “How could I change things? And why would she want me to?”
Shard tilted his head in an unconscious echo of the dragonet, and flicked his long, feathered tail against the ground. “I’ll tell you, but it’s a long story.”
Hikaru nodded gravely, then, stretching his wings, said, “I shall like to hear it. But could I have one more fish?”
“I knew you were hungrier than that.” Shard laughed, and rea
ched forward, slipping his talons gently under the dragon’s wings to lift and spread them wide. “Yes, but just one more or you’ll get too plump to fly!”
“Ha!” Hikaru squirmed back and flapped once, hopping away. A sudden memory blinked through Shard’s mind so swift he almost missed it. Himself, being swept through the air, as a laughing, deep, male voice praised the shape and health of his wings, proclaiming that he would be a fine flier.
But the voice in his memory wasn’t his true father’s voice, Baldr the Nightwing, dead king of the Silver Isles.
Shard caught a breath, and realized Hikaru had wanted him to chase, so he did, pouncing forward. The dragonet squealed in delight and leaped back to the dried fish, his wings still stretched wide.
Shard scrambled for the memory again while Hikaru picked through the fish. He’d been so young—why didn’t I remember this before? Strong talons had swung him through the air, and when he looked down, he met the fierce, guarded eyes of his nest-father, Caj. Caj, one of the conquering Aesir, wingbrother to the Red King who had committed so many crimes against Shard’s pride. Caj, who had also kept the secret of Shard’s true parentage from the king himself, and raised Shard as his own.
A number of regrets surged forth and Shard shook himself of them. He had enough things to focus on, namely, feeding Hikaru, and escape. After that would come decisions.
So many decisions.
The weight of his own birthright sat more than ever like stones across his wings, the amount of wrongs to set right and matters to settle.
“I’m ready for the tale,” Hikaru announced, dragging a long strip of fish back to Shard.
Shard fluffed his wings, focusing on the one thing that was important in that moment.
“The story of our being here,” he began, lifting his gaze to the crystal wall and the shadows beyond, “begins a much longer time ago. In a place called the Dawn Spire.”
Hikaru watched him, entranced, and Shard met his eager gaze.