by Jess E. Owen
“Leave him!” Caj screamed, voice cracking, with frustration. “You fools!”
He flared his good wing defensively, trying to block Sverin from Andor as he swooped down.
“Leave him!” He realized he could no longer command in Sverin’s name, or on any of his own rankings. Sverin crouched to meet the diving warrior, for a moment seeming oblivious to Caj. Caj could not let them engage, but couldn’t ignore Sverin to beat them off himself.
Instead he turned, ramming into Sverin’s side. His only element was surprise and Sverin staggered from it and fell, sprawling, sliding on the icy rocks into a deep, wet embankment of snow.
Andor cursed and circled tightly. Thankfully, younger Tollak flapped up higher, watching, looking toward the pass as if he expected reinforcement. Caj hoped he didn’t, and looked up at Andor.
“Leave him, I beg you—in—in the name of the Summer King, in Tor’s name,” he checked behind him to see Sverin recovering, shaking snow from his wings, and flared as if he could block him from Andor’s sight. “Don’t fight. Leave him to me.”
Perhaps the surprise of Caj calling on both the goddess the Aesir never recognized and the Summer King he didn’t believe in was as good as a strike. The dark warrior dropped to the ground a leap from Caj, staring uncertainly. “The queens ordered—”
“I know. I beg you leave him to me.” Caj fell again to all fours, and had only the sight of Andor’s eyes widening to warn him that Sverin’s focus had changed. He spun and threw up his talons in time to lock with Sverin and shoved, rolling through the snow.
“Stay back,” he shouted when he sensed the young warrior darting forward. “Stay away.” Talons clenched against Sverin’s, Caj managed only to twist and avoid crushing his broken wing again as Sverin shoved him down.
Sucking in cold breaths of air and desperately kicking in attempt to dislodge his massive wingbrother, Caj uselessly recalled Halvden’s warning that fighting made it worse.
But now there was no other way.
Sunlight gleamed through breaking clouds, littering the snow with brilliant patches of white. Sverin yanked his talons free of Caj’s grasp and swiped for his face. Caj caught Sverin’s wrist joint in his beak and resisted the battle urge to crunch down and break bone, fearing it would only worsen his fury.
Tyr, Tyr, make me strong.
When Sverin tugged, Caj released, and grasped for the leg again with his talons.
“I didn’t come to fight,” he grunted, slapping talons against Sverin’s chest to keep him from snapping at his throat.
Yet I do…I do fight. I fear.
For ten years he had feared. Sverin had feared. They had not trusted each other, and it had broken them both.
Sverin reared up to slash talons at Caj’s throat and rather than defend, Caj wrenched over to his belly, shoved to all fours and blundered away through the deep snow.
Sverin plunged after him, then launched into the sky, wings slapping gouges into the snow.
“That’s just like you!” Caj shouted, relieved that Sverin circled him, apparently forgetting about the younger warriors who stared from the rocks. “Knowing I have a disadvantage and using it! You miserable cheat.”
Caj dragged forward through snow as deep as his chest, challenging, drawing Sverin away from the den, out into the valley. Perhaps he should’ve drawn him to the tree line but it might help him catch sight of the young warriors again, and if he flew at them, Caj couldn’t stop him.
“You know you can’t best me in a grapple, so you’ll fly and dive, is that it?” Caj gasped, finding the deep snow almost a greater challenge than the fight. But it would hamper Sverin too, and give Caj some cushion.
The baiting worked. If he didn’t understand the words, he understood the tone, and with a fierce cry, Sverin dove. Caj whirled about to meet him, ramping high. Out of instinct he thrust open both wings—and barked in pain at the hot, snapping sensation that lanced up his injured bones.
Sverin smashed into him and Caj’s scream rang into the sky, bounding off the rock and mountainside.
“Stop,” he panted, delirious with pain and sudden despair.
If only they hadn’t intervened. If only…if.
“Sverin, you must stop—I know you don’t want to kill me—”
Sverin pressed, his razor beak gaping wide, his eyes locked on Caj’s neck.
“You know me,” he grunted as Sverin rocked down on him like a bear trying to disable a threat. Caj, flat on his back, talons locked on Sverin’s forelegs, managed a hard breath, and laughed as blood stung his own eye. “There, brother, first blood. You win. Are you happy? You won’t kill me, I know it.”
Sun lanced across them between the racing clouds, sun and stinging, gusting snow. Throbbing pain in his wing seem to weaken his grip and he tightened his talons, shoving against Sverin, giving him a shake.
“It’s me,” he growled. “Me. Trust me. We must trust as we once did. I know your true heart. I know you to be honorable, merciful—”
Sverin shrieked and Caj winced as it rang in his ears.
Still holding Sverin back with the last of his strength, he gazed through a bright fog at the lashing beak, at the blood-red feathers in the scattered sunlight.
Fighting makes it worse. Fighting.
Fighting.
Blood pounded the warning through his ears, his own racing heart.
With the whirling delirium of pain and the certainty of death suddenly striking each other in his mind, Caj realized with bright clarity what he had to do. The only thing left he could do.
“You must trust me,” Caj growled again to the mad creature who could be the end of him, “as I trust you.”
With a shuddering breath, he loosened his grip, and Sverin leaned into his weight, eyes glassy with a killing light.
“I submit,” Caj rumbled, locking eyes. “My brother. My king.”
With final resolve he let his grip fall slack. He let fall his wings, his limbs, and relaxed against the ground. He turned his face toward the blinding, sunlit snow, and offered Sverin his throat.
Red lashed in the corner of his eye, Sverin’s face swooping in. Talons pressed against his chest, pinning. Caj didn’t wince as the beak squeezed tight against his neck.
All he saw was white, winking with glittering motes of gold, and he thought his death had been swift and painless. He waited to see his father.
Wind sifted against his flight feathers.
No dead came to greet him, no shining warriors of Tyr, and he realized he was cold.
. . . As cold as if he still laid there, aching, crushed into the snow under the weight of an enormous opponent.
His wing throbbed with pain. The brightness in his eyes was sunlight on snow. The dim, distant shapes he saw were mountains and trees, the very mountains and trees of the Sun Isle.
Sverin’s weight was real, and the red gryfon had not killed him.
Caj didn’t move. Still Tollak and Andor hung back, staring and uncertain, mercifully still, and the first sound to break the silence did not come from them.
“Caj.”
His voice, raw from animal screaming, rough and guttural from many turns of the moon without use, sounded like the purest birdsong to Caj.
Warily Caj shifted, turning his face again and blinking back the sunbursts from his eyes. “Sverin.”
“Yes.” Still he hesitated, pinning, measuring his options with a lost, exhausted expression on his face.
Lost and exhausted, but present, aware, and knowing. Caj had been right. His near sacrifice had worked to awaken Sverin to himself.
“You’re alive,” the Red King croaked.
“I am, Sverin. I am.”
“Why did you come here?” With a sort of calm horror Sverin appeared to realize that he’d almost killed his own wingbrother.
“To find you,” Caj said firmly. With a heavy, slow weariness that alarmed him, Sverin climbed back, letting Caj rise to all fours again. “To speak to you.”
“Halvden t
old me you were dead.” His eyes narrowed.
Caj spoke quickly. “It’s past, my brother. He’s made amends, and I have. And I’m…” He found himself without words, suddenly dizzy, as if the entire journey caught up to him in that moment. “I am so glad to see you.”
Sverin made a rough noise, and cast a sideways look to the half-blood warriors waiting, now looking completely unsure what to do. “The Widow Queen sends her regards, I see.”
“Thyra too,” Caj said. Sverin, thinking perhaps of the last time he’d seen Caj’s daughter, when he’d tried to exile her from the pride, lowered his head.
“Andor,” Caj called over his shoulder. “Tollak. I have him. Go find Ingmer and the others, and tell them.”
They hesitated, and Caj lifted one wing with a growl.
Years of training and obeying under Caj appeared to overcome them, especially now that Sverin ceased to attack, and they moved quickly.
Sverin eyed them as they flapped hard overhead, toward the pass at the far end of the valley.
“Sverin,” Caj murmured.
The red gryfon looked back to him, seeming ten years older and at the end of his strength. “You should have left me here. You should have let me die wild, and Nameless, as I deserve.”
Not since they were fledglings had Caj seen Sverin express self-pity, and he rustled his wing feathers in disapproval. “That’s not what you deserve. And you will face your fate with honor and courage. Did you hear all of what I said, before we fought?”
“I did.” Sverin rustled against the cold wind and turned toward the shelter of the rocks. Caj followed him, wading through the trail he’d blazed earlier in the snow. “You’re sorry you lied. You’re sorry about Shard.” He stepped into the shallow snow near the cave, and turned again to face Caj. “Why did you lie to me?”
Caj had had time to think about that, too. “I wasn’t afraid of you, but Per.”
“You took Shard as your nest-son. I would have protected you both.”
Heat closed Caj’s throat for a moment. “I know that now. I didn’t then, and when Per died, it seemed too late.”
“You should have known.” Recovered to his senses, Sverin’s gold eyes pierced him hard, knowing, aware. “I never trusted the Vanir, but I did trust you. Though of course, now…” he trailed off and looked pointedly at Caj, and they both thought of Shard, now prince of the Vanir, surely planning on returning and claiming his Isle.
“While we’re speaking of lies,” Caj said evenly, keeping his temper only because he was happy to argue with words all day rather than with beak and claw, “what have you kept from me?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It’s over, Sverin,” Caj said quietly. “During the Long Night, when we could all see you slipping from us, Ragna told me something.” At the sudden, guarded expression on Sverin’s face, Caj knew he was close to something important. “Sverin, it’s done. It’s over. Ragna rules as regent, Thyra waits for Kjorn—”
“Waits for Kjorn?” he asked sharply, ears perking. “Where has he gone?”
Caj sat, carefully folding his wing. “Home. To the Winderost.”
“No,” Sverin whispered, looking stunned.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Caj said firmly. “He’s gone to find Shard, and he’ll return or he won’t. Your line is secure, in Thyra.”
“I always hated your lack of tact,” Sverin said, ears laying back. With the same expression he said, “And admired your honesty.”
Feeling struck, Caj merely shook his head. “Now, I’ll tell you all you like about what’s happened since you left, after you answer my question. What secrets do you hold from me, still? What passed between you and Ragna? What secret does she know that you could not tell me? Tell me what drove you to this, what split the trust between us. I’ve owned my lies.”
Sverin looked at him, and a quick, burning gratitude flashed across his features so quickly Caj almost mistook it for sadness. “I know I owe you that. I will tell you everything, though most of it you know. My failure as a king, as a father. But you don’t know where my failure began.”
“You didn’t fail as a father…” Caj fell quiet at another hard look.
“And I will not tell you here,” Sverin said, raising his head as sunlight reached over the valley and fell across his broad, red chest. “I will go with you,” he said, gazing across the snow field, “you and the others, as their prisoner, if that is necessary.” He looked to Caj. “And I will confess everything, for I have committed worse crimes than you know, and I must confess it all, before the pride, before you, Sigrun, Thyra, and Ragna.”
“Sverin…”
Sverin’s gaze grew distant and shadowed. “And I must ask her forgiveness, though I fear it’s too late. My fear of you and Kjorn learning the truth—both of our coming here, and what came after—was so great that it drove all else from my mind, Caj. I wore my broken honor like a shield. But after all I’ve done to you, to Shard, to the pride, my offense to her was greatest of all, and it has lasted these ten long years. I can bear it no more, and surely she can’t either.”
“Who?” Caj asked, frustrated that he wouldn’t be plain, but relieved that he would no longer fight. “Whose forgiveness must you ask before we can leave this behind us?”
The weary golden eyes met Caj’s glare. “Ragna.” His voice was quiet. Broken. “White Ragna, who has more courage than ever I had, and made me a promise I never deserved.”
~ 38 ~
A Silver Tale
THE TRUTH WAS WROUGHT in silver before their eyes.
And it was as Groa had told him.
“I knew it!” Hikaru said shrilly. “I knew that all those terrible things about gryfons couldn’t be true.” He slipped around Shard in a protective coil, as Natsumi, wide-eyed, peered at the new account.
Ume bobbed her great head. “The emperor of that time didn’t like being portrayed honestly, and commanded that the chronicler disguise the tale. So Umeko did, but it has passed from one of us to the next to remember, to know, that the truth was beneath.” She looked at Shard, ears perked. “And to wait until the right time to reveal it.”
Shard did note that the tale in silver was a bit more equal between Amaratsu’s and Groa’s stories. He noticed a bit more fault on the part of the gryfons than in Groa’s tale—more greed, more boasting, but the tragic ending was the same, with Kajar falsely accused of murdering a dragon and he and his band driven out with some of the treasures they’d been given. Neither side fully villainous, neither side fully wrong.
Shard thought of the Aesir and the Vanir, his divided family in the Silver Isles.
“See there,” Ume said to Natsumi as the younger dragoness read the tale, tracing intricate lines drawn into the background. “That is to show the elements at play—here is fire, and air, a volatile mix that ended in great sadness.”
Shard spotted a figure unlike any other. “There,” he said, opening his wings with excitement, “is that a wyrm, there?” He patted Hikaru’s coil and climbed out, peering up to see the higher panel.
“Yes,” Ume said. “You see here, after the Aesir left the Sunland, when we closed ourselves away.”
Shard followed the intricate reliefs in silver, marveling at the detail of the wyrms, the thick horns, the deadly tail. “It looks like a wyrm came to the Sunland?”
“That was Rhydda,” Ume murmured, touching a claw to the wyrm, flying over plains of pearl. “The last named wyrm. A year after Kajar left.”
“And then?” Shard asked. “Why did she come? What became of her?”
Ume rose higher, touching the silver panel as she opened her mouth to explain—then her ears laid back and she looked quickly toward the entrance.
“There!” shouted a new voice.
Hikaru and Natsumi’s heads whipped up, and Shard slipped around Hikaru, ears lifting.
Kagu charged into the far entryway, yellow scales blazing in the torch light, bouncing dazzling reflection off the golden pillars.
Blue Isora and two more fully grown sentries wound their way into the cavern behind him.
“I told you!” boomed Kagu.
A rolling growl began to build itself in Hikaru’s chest. Shard felt it thrumming against his whole body.
“Hikaru don’t,” Ume murmured. “Be still. Natsumi, be still. Show restraint and your youth may earn you some lenience.”
“You’ve been spying!” Hikaru burst out anyway, quivering with rage. Natsumi laid a forepaw on his wing, but he remained crouched and tense.
“Take the gryfon,” said one of the sentries, a sinuous jade female with a mane of lustrous gold. The other was flame orange, the same Shard had met on the first day.
Ume rose to her full height, spanning her wings as if to embrace them all. “Welcome, honored dragons of the warrior way. What may I do for you? Family histories, perhaps?” She bobbed her head once, watching them with hooded eyes.
Kagu snorted, and cobalt Isora silenced him with a look. He shrank back, but met Shard and Hikaru’s glare with a smug, fanged grin.
“Chronicler,” said the jade sentinel, dipping her head, though her gaze was hard. “You have much to answer for. The gryfon was not to see our treasures or our histories.”
“I cannot feel bound by an arbitrary rule,” Ume said. “We’ve had no rules about gryfons until the day Rashard entered our halls, and now rules come only by the empress’s whim. Tell me, how does your own upbringing console you to blindly following an unjust—”
“Be silent,” snapped the jade, her teeth gleaming in the torchlight. She reared up, but was still a head shorter than Ume. “I am loyal to the empress until my end.”
“Show them,” Hikaru cried, stretching up to point to the pillar. “Show them the truth, about Kajar, about the emperor—”
“Be still, hatchling,” Isora rumbled, and true to his new training, Hikaru huddled down, edging closer to Shard.
“Enough.” The jade dragon snapped her jaws. Her golden gaze traveled from Hikaru and Shard, back up to Ume. “You will all answer to the empress.”