by Jess E. Owen
Home. He stretched his leg in the cold, warming the taut muscles and relieved to be free of the splint.
He breathed slowly in the thin, icy air, watching Hikaru spar with a dragoness four months his senior and twice his size, her scales the same pale, shifting rainbow of color as the inner wall of an oyster shell.
Dragon-sized tiers were carved into the foothills of the cliffs and barren rock mountains, into the ice and snow. Shard sat on a low tier of rock nearest the sparring rings. The first three rings were filled with dragons fighting. Shard found it ironic that the older and more skilled they grew, the smaller their circle became. Perhaps that was the point. Other dragons lined the stone tiers, watching, preening, waiting their turn, while the master dragons walked or circled above, calling out corrections or admonishments.
“Kagu, tail out!” barked the hulking blue dragon Shard had met on the first day. He was a training master as well as sentinel, named Isora. Immediately, Shard could think of nothing but Caj, patrolling among the fledges as they sparred.
Kagu, who Shard gauged to be five or six months old, with scales like yellow buttercups, stopped, landed, and bowed to his opponent. Then he slunk from the ring and back toward the sitting tiers.
Thinking of Caj, and home, made Shard restless. He looked anxiously back to Hikaru’s spar, hoping one or the other of them would win quickly and they could resume their search for the dragon Groa had spoken of, a dragon who knew the truth. He reached up to tuck a talon into the silver chain, to reassure himself it had all happened. Once he had the truth, he could take it to the empress.
Hikaru hadn’t been able to speak with his friend, Natsumi, since Shard’s arrival. When Hikaru had sought out her parents, they’d forbidden her from being near Hikaru and Shard, and that was that.
It would be difficult to find anything the dragons wanted to hide, though, even another dragon. The Mountains of the Sea and the dragons’ dwelling within was so vast Shard could easily see that a dragon could be kept away. Secrets could be kept away. And truths.
“Rashard of the Silver Isles.”
Shard turned, then stood up and bowed his head, in the dragon manner, to Kagu. The yellow dragon didn’t return the favor. “Kagu.”
“Still spying, I see?” His large, serpent eyes looked nearly all gold, the pupils slitted against the brilliant day.
Though he was only a few months older than Hikaru, Shard had trouble thinking of him as nearly fully grown. In another three months the dragons would consider him a seasoned adult, so now, Shard thought of him as an initiate, nearly grown but a ways to go, a bit younger than Shard himself.
So Shard would treat him appropriately. “I’m learning,” he corrected, and managed not to flick his tail. A steady, soft wind filtered around the valley, and the brush of it felt good against his leg, for the scars still felt warm. “I love to watch how all of you fly, and fight.”
“I’m sure you do.” Kagu raised his head, looking toward the largest fighting ring where Hikaru spiraled in the air around his opponent, seeking an opening. “Hikaru has suffered from lack of training, both of his body and his mind. That will be fixed.”
Shard ignored the barb. If he’d known anything of dragon ways, he would’ve taught Hikaru. “Why do you train to fight, if Sunlanders remain sheltered, away from war?”
Kagu’s head whipped back to glare at him, then he drew himself together, with fine discipline. “It is a waste of our gifts not to train.”
Shard had wondered, more than once, if he might be able to interest the younger generation in the rest of the world. “Have you ever seen real battle?”
“Are you questioning my honor?”
Shard lifted his wings. “No, I’m asking if you’ve ever seen a real battle.”
“Our spars are real enough.” He reared his head back, sitting up to his full height. Half the size of an adult, he still towered over Shard.
“What have you fought for? Your honor? An insult? I’ve fought battles,” Shard said quietly. “Battles for real things. Protecting my home and family. I’ve fought and killed wyrms your size in the Winderost.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like a threat, but it must have, for Kagu’s ears flattened against his head.
“Those are lies,” he said, then laughed pointedly. “It’s not possible.”
Shard narrowed his eyes. “Courtesy,” he reminded, for that was another of the warrior virtues Hikaru was learning.
“I won’t be courteous to a liar. To a spy. What’s the point of your questions?”
“What I’m asking you,” Shard said quietly, “is if you’ve ever fought when it mattered.”
Kagu bared his teeth, shuddering at the implied insult. Instead of attacking, however, he sat up to his full height and opened his pale wings. “Training master!” he bellowed over the training field. Shard flinched as the spars ceased and blue Isora, circling above, glided nearer. “How long will this be allowed to continue?” Kagu gestured to Shard. “He continues to spy and learn our ways. What other reason than to bring honorless, dangerous thieves like himself here once again?”
“I am trying to learn your ways,” Shard said, “out of respect and curiosity. Spy? No. Never. I have no reason.”
From the corner of his eye Shard saw Hikaru leap from his ring and fly toward them, fury lighting his face. The black dragon landed hard between Kagu and Shard. Shard ambled back, his leg still stiff in the cold.
“Leave Shard alone,” Hikaru growled. “He has ten times the honor and skill you ever will.”
Shard eyed the big yellow dragon warily, wishing Hikaru didn’t believe in him quite so much.
“Stand back both of you.” Isora remained aloft, circling, but his tone was sharp and warning. “Stop this snapping like hatchlings.” Hikaru and Kagu glared at each other and backed a pace away, bowing to their training master. “You,” Isora said to Shard. “You will leave. Every day you’re here you disrupt our work and unsettle the younger dragons.”
“They need to be unsettled,” Shard said, and Hikaru lifted his wings in approval. It was dangerous, challenging the master in front of the others, but Shard was no fledge, no training dragon, no dragon at all. He could respect their ways, but he didn’t plan to cower before them. “Why train to fight, if not for some purpose?”
“We are ready to defend. We are ready to keep our homes and families safe—”
“From gryfons?” Shard asked mildly, spreading his wings wide to remind them of his small size. “What threat—”
“You threaten our way of life by coming here, by spreading your lies, spying, who knows what schemes you have to—”
“You know nothing about me!” Shard shouted, since the dragon refused to land and speak on the ground.
“We know enough about your kind,” he rumbled, and a dangerous murmur of agreement wove through the younger onlookers. “Our history tells us so.”
Any plans Shard had to remain civil were dashed in the face of the dragon’s willful ignorance and accusations. “You know nothing, except that in good faith I helped Hikaru to hatch safely and escape the wyrms who would’ve captured or killed him, or maybe even raised him—but raised him Nameless and wild and hateful. You know nothing but that I nearly died trying to bring him home, to you. You know only that I searched this wretched land to find him and make sure he was well, and that I sit here, sometimes, to try and learn more about you, and because I’ve been banned from wandering alone. So I stay close to Hikaru.”
As Shard spoke his heart at last, Hikaru backed down further from Kagu, who stared, unblinking. Uncertainly, both young dragons looked at the training master.
“All this,” rumbled the great, blue serpent, “we know you have done in order to further your own ends.”
A hollow, burning heat filled Shard’s chest, for a small part of that was true. Hikaru looked at him with huge eyes.
Shard shook his head. “I won’t deny that I hoped Hikaru could help me here, help me to work with you and get to know you. But everyth
ing else, I did because I love him. Everything else, I did for my brother.”
“Brother?” Kagu curled his lip to reveal startlingly long, white and pointed fangs. “That’s ridiculous.” He raised his voice. “It’s obscene.”
“It’s not,” Hikaru snarled. “Shard has been a better family to me than any of you. At least he is trying to be friends.”
“Be silent,” said Isora. “Your heart must be stronger. Right now, it shifts like water.” His great, pearly wings beat a constant, cold wind on them. “And you, Kagu. You have too much fire. Learn to temper it.”
Kagu’s gaze darted from Isora to Shard, and he latched onto his opportunity of shared prejudice. “But how can I, Master Isora, in the face of this lying, bragging—”
“Bragging?” Shard demanded. The same restless, indignant energy that sent him after the starfire, that sent him to speak with the wyrms, that drew him to take Hikaru across the sea, kindled under his skin.
“He’s not bragging,” Hikaru said, bristling, now fully coiled around Shard to shield him even as he defended his strength. “He’s done everything he said.”
Every dragon in the fighting arenas, a dozen at least, had stopped to watch them.
“Enough,” said Isora. “You will leave,” he said to Shard.
Shard’s tail lashed. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Your very presence disrupts our very short time to practice.”
“My presence does nothing. His arrogance caused this.” He lifted his beak to point to Kagu, and couldn’t seem to stop the next words. “If he believes me to be a lying braggart, then let me prove myself. I challenge him to a spar.”
To their credit, none of them laughed, except Hikaru, who exclaimed, “Ha!”
And as soon as he said it, Shard knew both that he couldn’t take it back, and that it was the stupidest thing he’d done since drawing the wyrms to the Dawn Spire. In his brief days there he’d learned that dragon honor was like a vital organ. It spanned their mind, their spirit, their family, all the way to their ancestors since the First Age. He might as well have stabbed an icicle to Kagu’s belly and expected to walk away with no consequence.
“I accept,” the yellow dragon said gravely, showing all his teeth. “And let us fight in the fourth ring, since you claim to be a master.”
“I never claimed that,” Shard said. “But I’ll fight wherever you like.”
“Fifth ring,” declared Isora.
Kagu’s head jerked up, eyes bright with surprise, his soft nose flushing with pleasure. “You think I’m ready? But, he has a clear advantage in size—”
“I have an advantage in size?” Shard wondered. Standing, the yellow dragon was eight times the height of a gryfon. From nose to tail Shard could’ve stood twenty gryfons along his length.
“The spar isn’t to blood,” Hikaru reminded him. “It’s form, precision. You have only to drive or throw him from the ring.”
“Ah, good,” Shard said. “I’ll just throw him from the ring.”
Kagu bared his teeth wider. “This will be a pleasure.”
Master Isora spiraled high and his voice rang like iron striking iron across the training valley. “Kagu’s honor has been questioned by the intruder, Rashard.” No one dared to laugh, as Shard had been laughed at in the Dawn Spire for challenging their First Sentinel, Asvander. The mood here was much more dignified, more serious, curiosity reigned and the training dragons gathered in the tiers to watch. “They will settle this matter now, in the ring of Sky.”
~ 28 ~
Hunters Hunted
REGRET AND CURIOSITY BURNED through Kjorn for not having taken the chance to see the great wyrms, but he knew it would’ve been a fool’s errand, and put him further behind in his search for Shard.
A day of flying saw them to a long sweeping plain, studded with uneven hills. As the sun sank, so did Brynja and Nilsine’s motivation to keep airborne.
They’d risen above the haze and as the sky darkened and stars twinkled, they dove in a loose formation toward the ground. Kjorn liked to think they would’ve been able to see the great lake from that height, if there were no smoke and ash clouding the air, but such as it was it could have been days and days away.
“Look there,” said Brynja, gliding in neatly on his left, and pointing roughly dawnward. “You can barely make out where the hills turn into the Dawn Spire territory. You can’t quite see the Spire itself, but…”
“I see.” Kjorn tilted his head, staring hard until his eyes smarted against the smoke, and in the dimming light, made out the small, ghostly outline of rock towers on the horizon.
“Do you remember any of it? My father says you were just weeks old when Per and his allies left the Winderost.”
“I don’t,” Kjorn murmured, then raised his voice over the wind of their flight. “Some scents bring a rough familiarity. But that’s all.”
“Did you ever think you would return?”
“No.” Kjorn shifted his wings as the wind picked up, catching scents as they descended. “My father and his father’s story was that we’d left with honor to conquer new lands, and we did. The Silver Isles was my home. It always has been.”
Brynja twined her talons, watching him thoughtfully. She seemed about to say something else, then extended a foreleg to point down. “We could shelter in those hills. No creature claims this part of the land that I know of.”
“Very well.” Kjorn called to Nilsine and together they all glided in to land. The low, bumpy rises gave little shelter from the cooling, constant wind, and only stunted grass grew. The haze, turning gray with evening, covered most scents, though Kjorn thought it caught a faint, old trace of pronghorn.
“Too late for hunting now,” Brynja said, trotting up to him as she tucked her wings.
“From the air,” he agreed, and looked over as Nilsine approached. “Though we might hunt as lions do. I could use a meal.”
A rare look of approval shone on Nilsine’s face, and Brynja dipped her head, chagrined. “Yes, we could do that.”
They gathered the gryfon band, now a hearty two dozen in all.
“We should split up,” said Dagny, Brynja’s wingsister. The younger, quick gryfess nearly disappeared in the near-dark, with her richly sable brown feathers, but she spoke clear and bright. “Range in at least three directions, since we don’t know the land, and converge again if anyone scents prey.”
Brynja and Nilsine nodded at this plan, and Kjorn deferred to the huntresses’ wisdom.
“We can use bird calls,” Brynja said. “Raise a call if you find prey. It will be less conspicuous to them and to anything else.” She didn’t say wyrms, but they all thought it.
Kjorn looked at her. “Shard used bird calls, in the Silver Isles.”
Her ears flicked back, self-aware, and she nodded once. “He worked with the huntresses here. It works well.”
“I know a blue jay call,” Kjorn said.
“I learned a magpie,” Dagny said, excited for the hunt.
“I, a red hawk,” Brynja said, and they looked to Nilsine.
“I suppose a gull would be conspicuous, this far inland.” Brynja looked uncertain and Nilsine tossed her head. “Honestly.” With that they realized she was joking, they laughed, and she dipped her head, seeming more comfortable. “I can make the sound of prairie owl.”
“What shall I do?” Fraenir, sitting too close to Kjorn and quivering with the excitement of all his strange new adventures, seemed to Kjorn to be too excitable just then to go hunting.
Kjorn flicked his tail, and paced to the top of the small hill. “Fraenir, I want you to stay here, to relay calls—”
“Stay?” He flared his wings. “But we’re only hunting! We’re so far from the wyrms, from any danger. Why am I being punished?”
“Punished?” Kjorn shook his head. “I need you to stay here. We don’t know these hills. If anyone gets lost, they can’t fly to find this spot again for fear of attracting wyrms. You’re the center point. I’m no
t punishing you, I’m asking you to do this task, to serve me as you wished to.”
Fraenir’s ears flattened. The other gryfons remained silent, and Kjorn noted a touch of smugness on Nilsine’s face. “But I’m a good hunter. I hunted with Rok.”
“No one doubts you,” Kjorn said evenly, resisting the urge to snap and simply order him. Fraenir served him out of some sense of whimsy, not true duty, and Kjorn had to remember he was not a prince here. He remembered the times Caj and his own father had calmly explained their reasons for asking him to do things, rather than just snapping orders. He walked down the hill to stand tall in front of Fraenir, who stepped back. “This is what I ask of you. If you cannot do this, tell me what larger task I should entrust to you?”
Chilly wind buffeted around them, raising an eerie, whistling song from the stunted grass and dead, dry flowers. Fraenir huffed. “What bird sound shall I make?”
Kjorn fluffed in a shrug. “A crow.”
That done, Brynja and Nilsine divided their bands into four groups, and Kjorn went with Brynja, since he had hunted at night and he didn’t know if she had.
She climbed the low hill and looked down at the groups. Kjorn could barely see her now in the murky evening. “Range,” Brynja said. “If you catch a scent, call twice. If you become lost, call three times. Fraenir, if you hear a thrice call, respond. No one is to fly. No one.”
The wind picked up and they set out.
Cold laced Kjorn’s bones. It wasn’t the wet, snowy cold of the Silver Isles, but a dry and constant wedge against his skin and his chest. The smoky air blotted out the scent of prey. Walking seemed to take ages, careful smelling, trotting along hoof trails only to watch them scatter and then fade. They found old scat here and there, but that was all. Kjorn was ready to call the hunt and sleep a little hungry when they came across the day-old scent of a painted wolf, and tracks.
“Odd,” Brynja remarked, setting her talons into a paw print to confirm its size. It had been nearly a full mark of wandering after half dead trails. Kjorn discerned gray moonlight filtering down through the haze. “I didn’t think there was a painted wolf pack in this area.”