by Jess E. Owen
Shard dove to attack, but the wyrm tore away with a sudden, surprised bark of pain.
Shard flared to a hard stop in confusion, to hover between the wyrm and Hikaru. Blood dripped from the young dragon’s hind leg, blood that steamed even in the hot air. Shard saw with shock that blood had splashed in a crescent under one of the wyrm’s eyes, and every spot it touched now gleamed a rich, iridescent red.
“Bright with dragon’s blood,” Shard couldn’t help but choke out the words he’d heard before.
She dropped and wheeled away, clutching her eye as if it burned, and melded into the tumult of wyrms that blustered toward a tunnel on the far wall of the cavern.
Shard grasped a tendril of clean air and caught himself, flapping hard. Hikaru winged in beside him.
“Shard—”
“I’m fine,” Shard panted. “Are you? You’re bleeding…” But it looked as if Hikaru’s wound had already closed and begun to scar.
“I think I’m fine too.”
Shard looked toward the fleeing wyrms at the far wall, and those wheeling in confusion around and below them. A fiber of him longed to chase down the cold she-wyrm and avenge his uncle or die trying.
Likely the latter, he knew grimly, and Stigr would not want that.
He turned and soared high, Hikaru close behind. “Up, up, now! The mountain!”
Earthfire swelled and shot up in great geysers, and the air grew thick with poison. The Winderost wyrms flocked madly around the cavern, some crowding toward the top entrance with Shard and Hikaru, others for the tunnel through which they and Shard had first come.
Hikaru’s flight was awkward but they were still smaller and swifter than the wyrms. They raced up, and up. The wyrms’ breath heated the air behind them and the poisonous earthfire swelled.
Their escape beckoned, a gleaming crack of sky.
For half a breath Shard feared it wouldn’t be large enough.…
Then they burst through into cool, open air with a feather’s breadth to spare, breaking rocks loose, and the glowworms that clung to the roof of the mountain.
The frosty air shocked Shard’s body and sunlight dazzled pain over his eyes.
Beside him, Hikaru shrieked, blinded, thrashing, assaulted by cold and light as if he were hatching all over again.
Shard fumbled for and grabbed the dragon’s foreleg. “Close your eyes.”
Hikaru whimpered agreement. They wheeled together, blind, flying higher and higher in the already high, thin air. The sudden rush of clean, cold wind knocked the blackness and stench of the cavern away from them. Shard tugged Hikaru to follow the scent of trees, gliding back down. They had to fly in lower air or risk falling unconscious, for they had emerged at the very peak of the Horn of Midragur.
They soared down along the mountain face, high enough to be safe, low enough to take great gulps of cool, clean wind. Shard’s eyes streamed but he kept them shut against the daze of sunlight on white snow.
“I want to see it,” Hikaru panted.
“Soon,” Shard promised, and released his grip. “Follow my voice. This way!”
The mountain thundered behind them. They heard the wyrms of the Winderost break through the top of the mountain and scream in their own pain at the sunlight. Shard didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare open his eyes yet. The sun would stop the wyrms. Or the mountain would.
“Don’t stop,” he called to Hikaru. “This way!”
They turned from the dazzling sun, banking in a long turn until Shard felt sun at their backs, and soared nightward, leaving the erupting mountain and the raging wyrms behind. Shard waited to hear roars again, but they remained in the distance. He kept their flight nightward. Windward, he knew, lay the Dawn Spire and more problems than he had answers for. They wouldn’t go there. Not yet. Shard had no plan beyond fleeing the mountain and getting Hikaru to safety.
After another moment, the blaze beyond his eyelids darkened as clouds passed over the sun. Shard risked peeking, found his eyes beginning to adjust, and studied the land below them.
Out in front of them and as far as he could see nightward, the land slowly crawled away from the desert of the Winderost and rolled back into grassy foothills lined with juniper and pine forest. Shard squinted, scanning the far horizon. When he’d first flown there he’d been lost, Nameless and bent only on survival and following a small inner tug toward Amaratsu. He hadn’t paid attention to the land. He did now.
Far starward, beyond the Horn, rose another low mountain range, white with snow, and a cold wind buffeted them from that quarter. Nightward, far in the distance, it looked as through the land grew more lush, wooded and hilly. Windward, and dawnward, lay the Winderost, plains of grass and red rock, canyons and the ruined Outlands where the wyrms usually dwelled. Shuddering, he turned his gaze away. They would fly nightward.
The sun still stood within first-quarter mark. The wyrms would be distracted by the volcano and the sunlight, and would have no time to pursue until night, if at all. Shard thought of the she-wyrm, wondered if she’d escaped—if he would have a chance to avenge his uncle or if the mountain had claimed her.
Wind buffeted them from all sides. Wind, sunlight, and a view of endless land.
After a moment, when the fresh wind hit his face again, Shard laughed in hysterical relief, brushing other worries aside. He looked over to Hikaru, feeling triumphant.
“So, now we…” He closed his beak slowly, watching the young dragon’s face.
He stared at everything, everything, eyes huge and glowing in the light. With every breath the black dragon took in the bright sky, the roll of sweet scented trees and the brown, waving grass, the ring of white mountains on the starward horizon. He looked hungrily in every direction, gasping, ears perking, his talons stretching now and then as if to point out a new wonder. Shard looked again, and through the dragon’s awe, saw everything for the first time.
“It’s even better than I thought it would be,” Hikaru whispered.
“The land?”
“The world.” Hikaru swiveled to look again at the sky, the spires of trees, the pale light slanting on the sides of the mountains. “Everything you said is true.”
A warm tightness closed Shard’s throat, the same as the day Hikaru had first broken out of his eggshell. “Yes. And welcome to it, Amaratsu’s son.”
On impulse, they glanced back at the Horn of Midragur.
They saw that it wasn’t clouds that had covered the sun, but smoke and ash. Shard stared at the column of heavy, white and black clouds that crowded into the sky. Now and then red fountains leaped and fell from new cracks in the slopes, earthfire splashing out of the depths. He couldn’t see any of the Winderost wyrms, and a strange part of him hoped they’d all escaped. Bleakly he thought of the Dawn Spire, but was sure in his heart that their sky would only be dimmed, that they were nearly four days’ flight from the mountain and would see no poison or fire.
Ash and smoke closed over the sun. “We have to keep going,” Shard said, drawing Hikaru’s attention. “We have to fly as far as we possibly can before you tire.”
“I could fly forever!” Hikaru beat his wings, soaring around Shard in a loop, then settling alongside him again. He seemed to have grown even since leaving the cavern, as if his body knew he had more room.
“Let’s hope so.” Shard laughed as the cold breeze picked up, giving them a strong tailwind. They lifted high again, to cover more ground, and Hikaru followed him without question, nightward. Shard harkened to a small, quiet instinct that drew him away from the mountain, also away from the Dawn Spire and the wyrms, away from all of it, as the sky darkened and ash flurried around their wings like snow.
~ 6 ~
Shard of Memory
KJORN WATCHED AS ROK peered at the horizon, making a low, grumbling noise.
They’d kept Kjorn bound, trussed like a fly in a spider’s web, with long ropes of seaweed tying his wings to his body, and separate binds wrapping his forefeet and hind feet together, respectivel
y. Unable to fly with him bound thus, they all traveled on foot, and dragged Kjorn across the ground using more seaweed tied in knots to the main binding on his wings.
For days they’d trekked roughly windward across the barren coast, beset by cold rain and salty wind. It reminded Kjorn of spring in the Silver Isles. Spring. Thyra…All the females of his pride would whelp in spring, of course, but only one of them was his mate. Only one had made him vow, under threat of talon, to return in time to behold the birth of his kit.
Kjorn managed to flop onto his belly and see what the poacher saw. A thick haze hung over the far, distant horizon, strangely pale and dark at the same time, more like fog than cloud. His heart seemed to thicken in his chest.
“Storm?” The female, whose name, Kjorn had gathered without official introduction, was Frida, walked up beside Rok and cocked her head.
“No,” said Rok in a low voice, and his feathers prickled up.
“Earthfire,” Kjorn offered, and the other male gryfon of the band, Fraenir, growled a warning.
Kjorn snapped his beak in return, weary of being treated as a lowly prisoner, as a fledge who should remain silent. This land is my birthright. My great grandfather’s father ruled the Dawn Spire and all the gryfon clans of the Winderost.
So the elder Aesir in the Silver Isles had told him. More than his father had ever told him. Sverin’s version of their leaving the Winderost, since Kjorn’s kithood, was that they’d left with honors to conquer new lands and claim them in the name of the Aesir. Now he knew the truth. Kajar had lost his war with the dragons, stolen what treasures he could, and brought a blight upon his kingdom in the form of Nameless, Voiceless, terrorizing beasts. Per, Sverin, and all those whose families bore the curse had fled the beasts to live in exile.
My birthright, Kjorn thought. He shifted his talons against the tight seaweed binds. He’d hoped as it dried it would become brittle, but the long ropes only grew rubbery and tough, and if any of the band of poachers caught him gnawing at it, either he received no food, or a sharp cuff to the side of the head that left him reeling.
“Rok,” Fraenir began, in a note of complaint. “His Highness won’t stay still.”
But Rok was still gazing at the far horizon. “Earthfire, you say. Yes. An eruption. I’ve never seen the like.”
“What does it mean?” Frida sounded breathless, and opened her wings.
“Nothing,” Kjorn said, shortly. Like his father, he put little stock in omens—or perhaps his father did, and hid the superstition from him. Kjorn didn’t know anymore. He felt he didn’t know his father at all, had never known him, and swallowed a bitter taste. Kjorn had followed one sign. A starfire sign that led him to the Winderost.
Or maybe it was only Shard’s sign, he thought. Maybe I stole that from him too, as I stole the Silver Isles. Perhaps so, but he had come to make things right, in his once-homeland, with his wingbrother, if he ever found him again.
“Volcanoes erupt,” Kjorn went on when Frida cast him an irritated look. “It’s the way of the earth.”
“The Horn of Midragur,” Rok murmured, as if none of them were there. “Has to be. It hasn’t erupted in…well.” He faced them, raising his wings. “At least an Age. Not in the history I know of. Perhaps it is a sign.”
“Of what?” Fraenir asked, ears perked.
“Who knows. The world’s end, maybe.” He shrugged his wings, as if he were either prepared for such an event, or unconcerned about it. “Let’s move on. I can see His Highness is growing weary.”
He strode forward, looped seaweed around his own chest, and tossed some to Fraenir. In that way, they dragged Kjorn across the ground. The thick ropes of seaweed cushioned Kjorn from the worst of it, though the gryfons didn’t take much care to avoid large rocks or uneven footing. Frida walked alongside to make sure Kjorn didn’t try to chew through the binds. When he tried to talk to her, to reason, she only huffed and looked away. It seemed a lot of work and trouble. Kjorn wondered what Rok thought he could gain.
He ducked his head as they dragged him over a series of short, sharp rocks.
They traveled windward along the coast and Kjorn lost track of the sunmark under the cold gray cover of rain. He tried to track his surroundings and how far they had gone, but much of it just rolled on in wind-swept cliff tops that reminded him of the Sun Isle.
After a rest at one point near mid-day, Kjorn managed to roll to his other side and instead of the inland scenery, he watched the sea bump and drag by. Eventually the cliff top sloped down in a hill that graduated into a long, sandy shoreline.
It was then that the painted wolf returned.
Kjorn had nearly forgotten about him. Upon hearing the wolf’s greeting warble, Fraenir dropped his seaweed vine and flapped away to meet him. Kjorn wriggled, managing to prop up on his side, and watched with interest as the wolf and gryfon greeted like pride mates, or wingbrothers, pressing their shoulders together and laying their heads briefly on the other’s back.
“Lazy oaf,” Rok snapped, stumbling forward against Kjorn’s dead weight. Kjorn took note of the fact that Rok couldn’t haul him on his own. He hadn’t had a chance to stand up next to Rok but suspected he was taller than the rogue, and heavier. If he could take leadership of the bedraggled band, it could be a great help. But it had to happen before they reached wherever they were going, before Rok traded off Kjorn to whoever he planned to meet.
The elder Aesir back in the Silver Isles had reminded Kjorn of the borders, the different claims and boundaries. Once, they’d all been united under a single rule, a single bloodline of powerful kings that stretched back to the first gryfon to claim a kingship in the Second Age. Kjorn’s bloodline. But with Kajar’s quest came the madness of the dragons, the Dawn Spire splintered, and the clans broke away and returned to their own lands, under their own rule. Kjorn couldn’t count on a warm welcome anywhere, not even the Dawn Spire. Perhaps especially not the Dawn Spire. But if Shard had gone there, then Kjorn would too.
As Rok, Fraenir and the wolf exchanged news, Frida watched over Kjorn. He sat still, thinking. If loyalties and schemes and tier-climbing and poachers infested the Winderost, then Rok thought he could take advantage of Kjorn’s tie to the Dawn Spire. As near to the coast as they were, Kjorn could think of only one place the poacher would be headed, and that was the Vanheim Shore.
What kind of gryfons dwelled there, and what link or enmity they had with the Dawn Spire, Kjorn didn’t know. His father had left him nothing of his true birthright, no knowledge, no heritage. Only a false kingship in a conquered land. A creeping, hollow sense of insecurity carved its way into his chest when he realized that finding and reconciling with Shard would mean that Kjorn himself would have no true place in the Silver Isles.
If we are friends, what then? I can’t still claim his land as my own.
Rather than mire in a line of dark questions, Kjorn knew it would be wiser to focus on the situation at present.
The wolf’s return seemed to signal their stop for the day, and they dragged Kjorn down to a scant shelter along the shore. The rain slacked as the sky dimmed toward evening.
“We’ll start fresh tomorrow,” Rok declared. “Make a good impression.” He stalked a quick patrol around the area, checking for rogue gryfon or other threatening scents. Fraenir and Frida left to hunt or fish, whichever yielded better food. The wolf cleaned his paws some leaps away.
Rok returned from his brief patrol and sat a wing length from Kjorn, gazing out to sea, and Kjorn watched him quietly.
“When I asked of Vanir, you mentioned Vanhar. I thought they might be the same as my friend, but I don’t think so. Tell me about them.”
Rok gave him an incredulous look. “For a prince, you’ve got very little idea what’s going on.”
“Tell me about them, then,” Kjorn challenged.
Rok huffed and shook his feathers of drizzle. “Not my duty to tell you. I don’t owe you anything.”
Duty. Kjorn perked his ears. No born-and-bred poacher
would use a word like duty. “That’s true,” Kjorn said slowly. “You don’t owe me anything. But perhaps we can help each other. Will you tell me why you hate the Dawn Spire? What crime did they commit against you?”
Kjorn managed to keep his tail from twitching. He attempted Shard’s method—not jumping to a conclusion but instead, hearing out the other, taking his side. In his own pride, Kjorn’s word was law. Here, as far as he could see, there was no law except what gryfons made for themselves. And wolves. Feeling watched, he peered around and saw the painted wolf had stretched on his belly, his gaze locked on Kjorn. His head tilted round a fraction, as if studying a riddle.
Kjorn looked back to Rok, who appeared mildly surprised at the question. For a moment, he thought he’d broken through Rok’s shell.
Then the rogue scoffed, and his tail switched back and forth. He lifted his beak to the wind, sniffing. “The usual. Nothing to concern yourself with.”
“What’s the usual?” Kjorn asked. “I’m trying to make a peace. We’ve never met, I’ve committed no crime against you.”
“Be quiet. I’ve had enough of your smug voice. Windbrother,” he called to the wolf, who stood and shook himself, padding over. “Watch our prince. I’m going to fish.”
“I will.”
Kjorn tried to catch Rok’s eye again but he turned away, shoved up, and glided out over the water. For a moment Kjorn watched him. Then he sighed, and let his gaze drift along the wet shoreline.
“Son-of-Sverin.”
Jolted by the address, Kjorn swiveled to stare at the wolf, eyes wide. He hadn’t seen him since the day they took him prisoner, and had barely heard him speak then. “You remembered my name?”
The wolf tilted his head, the strange whorls of white and brown like snow and mud across his flashy pelt. A black mask over his face gave him a shadowed, sinister look, but his eyes gleamed bright, aware, and knowing. “Yes. I remember everything now.”