by Jess E. Owen
Darkness closed on the canyon as he told Brynja of his life and Shard’s, and with darkness came a reminder of winter cold and a light layer of frost. Stars pierced feebly through the gloom of haze just as Kjorn reached the tale of he and Shard’s initiation hunt.
“And then, Shard began calling ridiculous insults, goading him to attack—”
A hollow, discordant roar cracked through the night.
Kjorn startled to his feet and flared, staring around, while Brynja leaped up beside him.
A second roar, metallic and grating, bounded along the canyon rim, so thunderous it reverberated in Kjorn’s chest and the ground under their feet. Kjorn could see nothing, smell nothing, the canyon was a cold, murky void.
He looked at Brynja, feeling breathless as a hollow, witless fear squirmed in him at the noise.
“We must get under cover,” she said. “Now.”
Kjorn didn’t argue. They bounded toward the canyon wall. Just as they ducked into the safety of a cave, a rush of wind from massive wings whistled above the canyon and a sour, reptilian scent drenched the air, blotting out the fresh smell of the river.
Kjorn murmured, “The enemy?”
“Yes.” Brynja’s voice was tight with contained horror. “They’ve returned.”
~ 24 ~
Dwelling of Ice and Stone
AS THEY LEFT THE ICE cavern, Hikaru gusted a breath in relief. “Oh Shard, there is so much to tell you, to show you!”
“Hikaru—”
“I know, you’re injured.” He looped around Shard and snaked his head under Shard’s belly, and with a quick, rolling bump, had landed Shard neatly across his shoulders. “First I’m taking you to the healer, for your leg. Tell me all that happened since the blackfish attacked us.” He sucked in a breath and paused, one forefoot lifted, and twisted his neck to look at Shard fully.
“And forgive me. If I had listened to you, we wouldn’t have gotten in the fight. And you wouldn’t have been hurt. And we wouldn’t have been separated.” He flicked his ears forward, tilting his head to see Shard’s leg more closely. Then he hung his head. “Forgive me, brother.”
Shard settled himself more comfortably and drew a tight breath against the ache in his leg. “It’s all right now. I learned some very important things in the time we were separated, and I have a feeling you did too. I’ll tell you my tale first.”
“On the way to the healer,” Hikaru confirmed, and turned forward again.
Riding Hikaru felt awkward at first, then comfortable, and Shard told of his journey and tried to keep track of the tunnels and halls of ice and stone. After a while he gave up, and trusted that Hikaru would take him where he needed to go.
Feeling watched, he lowered his voice when he re-told Groa’s tale, certain for the moment that Hikaru was the only dragon interested in hearing it, possibly the only one who would believe him. Spreading it around, Shard sensed, could be more dangerous than he’d realized.
“That is good,” Hikaru said, thoughtfully, his body undulating in warm, rolling movements that lulled Shard to calmness. “Though I don’t like the way the emperor treated Kajar. We should tell the empress now, tell everyone, so that they know.” His voice quieted with worry. “Shard, they don’t like gryfons, here. They only know the story my mother told you, and they don’t understand that you’re not greedy and foolish and barbaric as the old story says.”
“I see,” Shard said. “Maybe we can change their minds. But let us bide our time a little.” They passed through a broad tunnel laced with trickles of silver. The constant torchlight, flickering with the movement Hikaru brought to the tunnel, turned the silver to life with dancing light. It seemed the only fit dwelling for the magnificent dragons that Shard could imagine. “Only while we seek out the dragon that Groa spoke of. Then, when we have more information, and perhaps another dragon who knows the truth, we’ll approach the empress again.”
“Yes. That would be wise.”
He walked on, turning down another silver gilt corridor. In that place the silver was carved into visions of dragons performing various tasks, Shard realized, that had to do with healing. After a moment Hikaru murmured, “I will ask Natsumi if she knows of this dragon who keeps separate the truth and lies.”
Shard perked his ears. “Natsumi?”
In the firelight, he detected a flush at the end of Hikaru’s velvet nose. “She’s a new friend. She tried to help you when the warriors in training were out at sea. That’s who found us—warrior class dragons of my year and their masters, learning to fly during storms, learning to fly out at sea.” He fluffed his wing feathers around Shard. “I told them you were the greatest flier ever, dragon or gryfon, that you had battled a powerful tyrant during a storm at sea.”
Shard sensed a change of subject. He did recall a female voice after the whale attack. “And this Natsumi, is she—”
“Here we are!” Hikaru said brightly, and sat up so that Shard was forced to gently slide to the stone floor in front of a carved stone entryway. “You first,” Shard said, eyeing the tall, tall archway. A reassuring scent of herbs wafted from the archway that reminded him of Sigrun’s den.
“Of course,” Hikaru murmured, and led the way inside.
“Well it was messy, very messy indeed.” The healer coiled around Shard, an older dragoness the color of iron ore, with a bristly, short, white mane. Having broken away his makeshift cast and splint with an air of disdain, she gently examined Shard’s leg while Hikaru curled in the corner, watching with his usual curiosity.
The healer lifted larger silver eyes to meet Shard’s. If she was disgusted by him the way the other dragons were, she hid it behind a healer’s practicality and appeared only to care about his injuries. “You set it yourself, you say?” She looked sideways at Hikaru, who tilted his head, listening.
Shard glanced between them. “I set it and held it with splint and mud,” he said. “It was the best I could do at the time. It’s mostly the flesh I’m worried about.”
“Hmm. Hmmm.” The dragoness glanced at Hikaru once again before prodding Shard’s leg. He flinched and flattened his ears, stifling a hiss. “Forgive me for that. The bone looks to be in good order. The flesh, I’m afraid, will always tell the tale.”
“A scar!” Hikaru exclaimed with relish, as if it was the best outcome possible. “A battle scar.” He laid his head on his forepaws, his whiskers drooping on the ground, making him look forlorn that he hadn’t won a scar, too.
Shard wasn’t as thrilled with the idea of scarring, but was just glad to have his leg. Though perhaps, he thought with a fledge-like glimmer of hope, such a scar would impress Brynja. Someday. When we see each other again. The thought was enough to make him sit straighter. He had battled grown blackfish in the middle of the ocean, in a storm, and lived. He would enjoy telling Brynja the tale. As the healer examined the torn flesh, Shard imagined creating a warm fire to gather around, and watching Brynja’s face as he told of his travels. And Asvander. He would tell the tales with Asvander present. And Kjorn. Someday, when he saw his wingbrother again, they would make amends, and he would love to see Kjorn’s face when he spoke of all he’d done.
If only, he thought with sharp, lancing regret, if only I could tell Stigr.
The healer spoke after a moment, apparently unworried about scarring one way or the other. “I will sew the skin, and administer new splints and an ointment with soothing herbs to help the pain.”
So saying, she uncoiled half her length from around Shard to reach for her store of herbs. Her den reminded Shard of Sigrun’s, though many times larger, and she stored her herbs not open on rock ledges, but in clever wooden and silver bowls.
Hikaru sat up. “Dragon medicine is wonderful, Shard. They helped my wing, and there was hardly any pain. I don’t want to see you in pain, and it will help you rest too.”
“Thank you,” Shard said to him, and to the dragoness.
She made an affirmative huff and leaned back over him, holding a bowl of herbs crus
hed and mixed into a paste. “This will help you sleep while I recast the leg and apply an ointment.”
Shard sniffed the bowl. He had been raised by a healer. Pain was part of healing, and so was managing the pain to the best of one’s ability, but he often didn’t trust such treatments if over-used. Perhaps it was Caj who had instilled that—enduring pain took strength—and simple caution. He knew Sigrun possessed knowledge of powerful herbs that could dull pain, but he recognized only two out of nearly six different scents in the bowl of paste.
The healer met his curious gaze. “Normally you will eat it with food. But this will help you sleep more quickly.”
She uncoiled from him entirely and set the bowl before him. He glanced to Hikaru, who nodded once in encouragement.
“All of it,” the healer said. “Then, when you’re drowsy, I will begin.”
Shard’s stomach growled as he tasted the herb paste. Sharp, bitter odors washed down his nostrils and the taste and texture left his tongue sticky. He ate obediently, with Hikaru creeping forward and the healer weaving before him like a serpent.
“What did you put in…” He thought the rest of the words, but didn’t hear himself say them. Hikaru caught him in a strong embrace, and Shard trusted his dragon brother to hold him as he fell into sleep.
He thought he saw the dream net spiraling before him, and grasped at a strand.
The Sunland felt too far away for him to dream of his home, his family, or of the Winderost and his friends there. He drifted, instead, on icy ocean winds, feeling now and then a twist of pain in his leg. When he twitched, strong claws held him fast, and he dipped once more over the sea. Perhaps if he couldn’t travel far enough on his own, he might travel farther with help.
He heard a daydream, an albatross alone at sea. So he swept along on the wings of an albatross for a time, though not the one he had once met and named Windwalker. When the albatross veered away from where Shard wished to go, he soared to a tern…to a gull…hopping through the threaded dreams of floating sea birds until he saw a jagged shore.
There he dove into the dreams of an eagle who hunted in the Winderost, and lately dreamed only of fire.
“Show me,” Shard said in the dream, and the eagle said, “Since you are the Star Sent.…”
Haze clouded the air, and the sour reek of smoldering ember and smoke. The Horn. The smoke from the fires of the Horn of Midragur. It clouded the Forest of Rains, the Winderost, the Dawn Spire.
Shard wondered if what he saw was only fearful thinking, or if this was a true vision. If it was true, then it was exactly what he wanted to see, though the awful smoke left a sour taint in his throat. He left the eagle and found one who could bear him farther, a magpie with clever and shifting dreams like a raven.
The magpie took him to a carcass where he hopped to a crow, and the crow took him high, high above the haze.
He met Munin there.
“Ah! You’ve found me, my prince. I didn’t think any gryfon could outfly myself, the dream walker, the…”
“Show me my friends,” Shard said firmly before Munin began talking too much, feeling the dizzy tug of his body, hearing concern in Hikaru’s voice beyond the dream.
“Ah, yes…”
Munin snagged him in spindly claws and bore him with unnatural swiftness across the plains, past the Dawn Spire, which Shard missed in a blink, the broken canyons of the Voldsom, another sweeping plain full of rocks, and spun him about to show him a golden gryfon, huddled in the dark, alone. He’d lost control of the dream. He didn’t know if Munin showed him something false or true, and he heard Hikaru, trying to wake him.
“Kjorn,” Shard breathed, grasping at the dream. “Is he truly in the Winderost?”
Munin laughed, tossing other dreams to Shard with his beak, and he fought against them like a spider web, unable to sort the true from the false.
Caj, pinned to the ground by a mad and Nameless red gryfon.
White Ragna, a fierce, terrifying expression of vengeance on her face.
Wyrms, hunting along a canyon. White wings flared before his eyes and he thought of Amaratsu, then the white owl. She tried to say something to him but he couldn’t hear. Then there was only fire, fire, fire—
Freezing water doused his face and he woke with a gasp.
“We must fly!” he shrieked. “I…” He blinked when Hikaru whipped away from him in surprise, eyes wide. “Hikaru. I was dreaming. What happened?”
“You didn’t wake up,” Hikaru said, his eyes slitted with what Shard thought was worry, then when the young dragon’s gaze shifted to the healer, realized it was suspicion.
The healer peered at Shard, nonplussed. “Perhaps the dose of sleep was too strong, for one of your size.”
“It seems so,” Shard said, and looked down at his leg, now bound properly with strong splints of wood and, he noted, fine, metal wire. Fine threads of sinew tied the torn flesh together. A pale paste was smoothed over all, and he felt a pleasant, cool tingling in his skin. “I’m not a dragon, after all. Thank you. This feels wonderful.”
“Eat a bit of this with every meal, to help with the pain and to quicken the pace of the healing.” The dragoness handed him another bowl of the paste. “Be sure you don’t eat too much.”
Hikaru took the bowl from Shard, showing his teeth in amusement when he saw Shard’s look of distaste. “I’ll make sure. Thank you, healer.” He bowed his head, and Shard did the same. “Come, Shard, I’ll show you my den. And I’ll tell you all I’ve learned here, and then we’ll see the forges, and the arenas where the other warrior class learn—”
“First, you will let him sleep.” The healer slipped away from the entryway to let them pass, and Shard thought he read distress in the scaled lines around her eyes, but it was hard to discern reptilian emotion. “He’ll need rest, Hikaru. Lots of rest.”
“Yes, of course. Come with me, Shard.”
That time, the healer assisted Shard with climbing onto Hikaru’s back, and as they walked, Shard worked to find things to remember about the stone halls through which they passed while also listening to Hikaru’s story.
“They said I was lucky my wing wasn’t broken.” They passed back through the halls of silver that led to the healer’s dens and into the first, massive cavern Shard had entered with the sentries. “And they fixed all the scrapes and cuts with ointments and now it’s as if I was never hurt. I don’t even have a scar.” His voice rang a bit with disappointment.
Though Shard suspected it would’ve been faster to fly, Hikaru remained on the ground level, twining around the pillars and flicking them with the end of his tail in a seemingly unconscious habit. Shard tried to ignored the stares and the occasional hiss from other dragons walking or passing overhead.
“They gave me the den that was my mother and father’s, and told me that because of my mother, I am of the warrior class.”
“Class?” Shard asked, staring up, and up, at the mountain cavern and the torches lining the stone pillars. Winking jewels adorned some of the carved reliefs, forming eyes, or suns, or stars, in the images on the pillars.
“Yes. What we are destined to do. My mother’s ancestors follow the warrior way, my father was crafts class. Those who work with the gold and treasures. But I wanted to be a warrior,” he turned to look at Shard, “like you.”
Shard ruffled, unable to help feeling pleased that despite the wonder of Hikaru’s home and the magnificence of the dragons there, Hikaru still wanted to be like him. “Tell me about this warrior way.”
“Oh, the warriors are very honorable, like you—like gryfons.”
Shard flicked his tail thoughtfully, pleased that Hikaru thought that, but also knowing it could be folly. “Hikaru, honor is individual to everyone. I’m glad you think of gryfons that way, but remember that there are wicked gryfons and good ones, just as there are wicked dragons and good ones. And probably wicked blackfish, and good ones.”
Hikaru huffed. “I’ll believe a good blackfish when I see it.”
“Why don’t you tell me about the warrior dragons?” Shard had genuine interest in them. If they were honorable and their purpose was war, then he may find the help he needed after all. Not to destroy the wyrms of the Winderost, but, perhaps, at least have a show of strength so they would consider listening.
So Hikaru, still walking along the ground of the seemingly endless mountain floor, told him of the warrior way.
“There are eight virtues. I’ve had to catch up, since the others of my year have been learning since autumn, when Natsumi hatched. So far I’ve studied justice, courage, and mercy.”
“Those sound like good things,” Shard said quietly. “I think it’s wonderful you’ve found your place.” Wonderful, and terrifying. What if he wants to stay? “Tell me what the dragons think of justice.”
As Hikaru spoke, Shard leaned out to study the pillars, and realized they were created in sets, in lines that led to and framed specific exits from the mountain hall. Each line of pillars had a series of images carved into it that told of a way of life. One showed dragons forging and creating. One, he recognized as the healers again, and noted that it led back the way they’d come, toward the healers’ hall. Another showed dragons dueling, great battles and victories, and Shard realized Hikaru followed this line of pillars through the mountain toward an archway at the far end. Perhaps once he learned of the different dragon occupations, he could find the one of which Groa had spoken.
“…so justice is the wisdom to decide,” Hikaru said after some dragon history of the warrior class, “to use reason without wavering. It is the bones beneath the warrior skin.” He paused mid-step to swipe his claws through the air. “It’s the ability to strike when it is right to strike. And to die when it is right to die.”