by Jess Owen
While the rest of the gryfons broke into eagle cries, Shard swiveled to find Kjorn. The prince looked as if the king had smacked him in the face. Then he stood, bright below Sverin on the rocks. Beside him, Thyra stood and raised her voice with the others.
Shard stood, flared his wings and raised his head—but couldn’t find his voice at all.
~ 21 ~
The Last Verse
Towers of storm clouds boiled closer, as dark as Shard’s feathers with a shock of white, sunlit edge.
It was still day, but all gryfons huddled in their caves as if it were night. Except Shard. Sure now that everyone else took shelter, he bounded up and took flight, angling his wings to shape the wind.
The first high gust almost smashed him into the cliff face. He clamped his beak against a shriek of frustration, heart thundering now. Only mad or desperate gryfons flew in a storm wind. He almost laughed at himself. Maybe he was both.
Thunder crashed. Skyfire lanced distantly through the clouds. Shard flapped away from the cliffs, choosing to chance low flight over the water rather than close to the rock. He wheeled, gliding along the coast, angling himself toward Black Rock.
Waves surged toward him and he caught the quick, hard eddies of storm gusts to carry him away. His muscles strained and cramped. After what seemed an endless, battle of a fight, Black Rock loomed up before him and relief filled him that he reached it before rain fell.
He barely recognized it in the day, being so used to landing on it at night. He tried to circle once to get his bearings and the storm wind shoved him hard, almost ten leaps out to sea. Shrieking frustration, he dove down to land, tumbling against the black face of the island.
“Stigr!” Darkness swirled overhead. “Stigr! Uncle!”
Skyfire lanced through the clouds and a heartbeat later thunder cracked overhead. Shard scurried toward an outcropping where the rock thrust up from itself to form a short wall. A dull roar rolled toward him from the sea. Rain.
“Shard!”
He turned at his uncle’s voice and saw the old gryfon down on a steep ledge, a black cliff of slick mossy stone. “Stigr, I need your help! Please!”
“Come down here!”
Shard clenched his wings and loped to the edge of the cliff. Wind shoved his feathers up the wrong way and he crouched lower. A narrow foot trail wove down. He had to get down it before rain made the edge too slippery. He pressed his claws against the rock and stalked down the trail, one wing scraping against the rock. The wind moaned past, the sea and sky thrashing like a gryfon in a rage.
Stigr reached up to catch Shard’s wings in his talons and dragged him down under a rock overhang.
“Are you mad? Flying out here on a storm wind—”
“The king has declared war,” he gasped. “Open war. On the wolves. I didn’t know what else to do but come here.”
His uncle shouldered him deeper under the ledge, and Shard saw that it wasn’t merely a ledge, but the yawning mouth of a cave. The floor sloped up, and then down. Perfect for keeping water out. Stigr had never brought him there before. Black Rock held more secrets than he knew.
He followed Stigr as he blurted all that had happened, barely noticing when it grew too dark to see. “I didn’t speak against it. How could I? But I–I don’t think it’s right. I can’t just let it happen. The wolves will be taken off guard.”
He spoke then of Ragna and the Song of the Summer King.
“She sang the song?” Stigr’s ears perked, searching Shard’s face. Shard blinked a couple of times, realizing he could see Stigr’s face. He glanced around and saw soft lichens growing along the walls, shedding strange light. “And Sverin named Kjorn?”
Outside, the constant ring of thunder battered the island over the drumming roll of rain.
“He saw the Vanir growing restless,” Shard murmured, realizing everything more clearly in his memory than he had in the moment. “He had to do something. I think Kjorn could be a summer king.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Stigr said, and Shard felt as if he were his uncle’s student again, and that no argument had passed between them. They kept walking, deeper, down, and the air fell as cool as evening.
“He could be,” Shard insisted. “He isn’t like his father.”
“He is. He will be. More than you know. The Aesir are greedy, violent conquerors, all of them—”
“They are my family.” Shard stopped walking. The glowing lichens clustered thick along the walls. He could see his uncle’s angry face, the ugly scar over his eye that made him look fierce and old. “You might hate all of the Aesir, but I grew up with Kjorn. He is my wingbrother. Still. Maybe Ragna sang that song to me. Maybe she wants me to do something, but I won’t betray my brother.”
He flexed his talons against the cold, dry rock. It smelled of minerals. Farther off in the still, quiet air he smelled water too, and heard the scrabbling of rodents.
“You already have,” Stigr whispered. “Don’t you see? You have become a Vanir. I see it, even if you won’t. You are your father’s son. You know this war is wrong as he knew the Conquering was wrong. Sverin and his kin aren’t the mighty conquerors they make themselves out to be.”
Shard cocked his head. Stigr had never said anything like that before. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that the Aesir, who claimed to be raiding and conquering, came that first summer with their kits?” Stigr paced in front of him. “Better to conquer first and then bring your family.”
Shard swiveled, not meeting Stigr’s eyes. Rodents scuffled away from their voices, filling the cave with little whispers. “And so?”
“And so I say they were fleeing something. Some disgrace or enemy in the windward land. They conquered here because they lost there.”
Shard turned away. “That makes no difference. They’re here now.”
“Let yourself rise up, Shard. Even Sverin can be fought. And defeated.”
“I’m not strong enough!” Shard slapped talons against the stone. “Anything I might want, I’ll have when Kjorn is king. When Thyra is queen.”
“I’m telling you it won’t be so.”
“You don’t know him!”
“I know his father. I know the Aesir.” Stigr tried to approach Shard and he spun, ears back and wings lifted in warning, feeling trapped and wild and half witless with confusion.
“There will be unbalance,” Stigr continued. “He will continue to conquer and claim as his father did, all the while assuring you that it is the only way.”
“What would you have me do? Declare myself the Summer King and challenge Sverin and my wingbrother, Kjorn, in front of all the pride? Stop the war?” Shard’s breath left him with a harsh laugh. His uncle didn’t laugh.
“Yes.”
Somewhere, water dripped.
“You’re mad,” Shard whispered. Only from ice the flame, the song sang in his mind. “You planned all of this. You twisted my heart and now I can’t see which way is up to fly.”
“Only by knowing the other,” Stigr replied, “did they come to know themselves.”
Shard stood, breathing hard. Torn between wanting to tear out his uncle’s other eye and beg him for further advice, he stood witless and still. Then, from nowhere he said, “When Ragna sang the song, I felt there was more.”
Stigr blinked, then perked his ears, fully alert. “Tell me what she sang.”
For a moment Shard stood in silence, then dipped his head, whispering.
“One will rise higher
One will see farther…”
His own voice grew in strength and shimmered back to him from the cave walls. It sounded like another. Deeper, fuller, his voice having grown as he had come into final growth over the spring and summer. When he finished, the last echo drifted back to him and matched the memory of the voice in his mind. His father’s voice. He knew it now. He had inherited it. He knew it.
“And that’s all she sang?”
Shard thought Stigr look
ed fiercer under the pale, haunted light of the cave. “Yes.”
“You’re right.” The old exile paced away, tail lashing. “There is another verse. Maybe she didn’t want to sing where Sverin would hear. But I think in your heart you know it.”
Shard’s heart beat like wings against his breast. “What is it?”
Stigr turned and his low voice thrummed through the glowing cave as rain lashed outside, singing the last verse Ragna had not.
“He is borne aloft by the Silver Wind
He alone flies the highest peak,
And when they hear his song at battle’s end
The Nameless shall know themselves
And the Voiceless will once again speak.
He comes when he is needed
He comes when he is called
He is called the Summer King, and this is his song.”
For a moment all stood silent but for the wash and pull of waves on the rock outside and the clatter of rain. Shard whispered, “What is the Silver Wind?”
But then they heard a scuffle on stone.
Shard whirled, heart slamming, and hissed a challenge. The light revealed a strange sight. Catori stood miraculously at the deeper edge of the cave. Stigr’s laugh echoed across the walls when Shard stopped, staring at the she-wolf.
“How in four winds did you get here?” The moon wasn’t full. Storm wind lashed high tides around the islands. No ordinary creature could have made it to the island in the tempest, not even a winged one.
The she-wolf blinked at Shard, but didn’t laugh at him as Stigr did. Instead, she dipped her head and murmured, “The song has been sung?”
“Yes,” Stigr said. Shard looked back and forth between them.
“The last time it was sung, a king fell, and the time of war came upon us.”
“So it will be again, I think,” murmured Stigr, and looked at Shard. “Where will you stand, Shard, when the Red King draws the lines of battle?”
Shard couldn’t answer, still shocked over Catori’s appearance. “What is the Silver Wind? Speak plainly. Tell me the meaning of the song.”
“The song is plain,” Stigr rumbled. “One will rise higher. One will see farther. Will it be you? The Silver Wind is the highest way, the way above ways, the wind that touches the stars, the breeze that bears Tyr and Tor and carries the scent of all the history and future of the world.”
“Well that explains it,” Shard muttered.
“The truth,” murmured Catori more helpfully. “The Summer King is borne by the truth. Who will you be?”
Shard stared at them, breathless. What is my own truth? He didn’t know if he could be this supposed Summer King, even if Stigr wanted it. Shard struggled for his own answer, whether Hallr was right or wrong and deserved his death or not, whether he could stop a war, whether he could betray Kjorn.
He shut his eyes and listened to the stillness in the air, the drumming rain. Something in him stirred. A quiet breeze. A wind. Like a voice. His own voice, his own words. I don’t think it’s right. I can’t just let it happen.
He opened his eyes. “We have to tell the wolves of Sverin’s plan.”
Stigr’s face lit as fiercely as if Shard had declared war on the Red King. Inside, Shard quailed. He still couldn’t choose a true side. He was just doing what he had to do.
“Let us go to the Star Isle,” Catori said, stepping forward, watching Shard closely. “And speak to my pack.”
“We can’t fly in this storm wind.”
Stigr’s laugh boomed through the cave again. “Nephew, we won’t be flying.”
~ 22 ~
The Wolf King
Kjorn threw another hapless fledge to the ground and pressed talons to his throat.
“Pathetic!” Caj roared from far afield. The prospect of war gave the pride extra energy, extra everything, and war lit the Sun Isle like fire, but if anything, it looked as if the blue warrior thought everyone was getting worse at fighting.
“This isn’t a spring romp with bunnies on the Nightrun.”
Kjorn helped the fledge up, who peeped and scrambled as Caj stalked closer. “This is war. Every fight could be your last. Every wolf has your death marked on his teeth.”
“Caj,” Kjorn rumbled, glancing at the younger fledges. Uninitiated. Unable to fly and join the battle. But Sverin had given all of them leave to learn fighting with Caj. “They’re too young.”
His father’s wingbrother stopped in front of him, wings hunched in threat as if Kjorn were a squirming fledge like any other. “No one,” he rumbled, “is too young to die. Pairs!”
The warriors fell in. Kjorn stepped away to leave this one out. Einarr sparred and instructed the fledges more calmly than blue Caj. Earlier, Halvden had sparred with a vengeance, as if each opponent were a true wolf, as if each one might be the wolf that killed his father. Now Kjorn didn’t see him, and supposed he’d gone back to Windwater.
Kjorn tried to stand proud. But his wings felt heavy. Shard wasn’t there either. Maybe he’d gone to patrol Star Isle and told Kjorn, but in all the commotion, he’d forgotten.
Kjorn narrowed his eyes and turned from the spar to lope away and bound off the cliff. He angled starward.
The Summer King. He didn’t feel like a Summer King. He didn’t feel like anything at all but what he had been before that song. He knew why his father had done it, but it felt like a lie.
Shard always helped him keep his head on. He flew for Windwater.
Gryfons already stirred there, but it didn’t look like a hunting party. Surprised, Kjorn squinted, barely able to see in this half-light.
Two warriors harried a smaller gryfon. Kjorn narrowed his eyes and slipped out of a warm draft to glide lower. He made out Halvden’s green feathers, but not the others’.
They bullied the smaller gryfon toward the cliff edge as if to drive him or her away from the cliff. Spying Kjorn, the warriors below called his name.
The second word Kjorn heard clearly was traitor, and he gave a ringing, angry cry as he dove.
The caves reached under every island. They linked into a maze of caverns and tunnels carved by all the ages of swirling sea and, in the oldest times, Stigr said, boiling flows of earthfire. In places, the pocked, black stone still looked the same as the glassy crags of the volcanic rock on Pebble’s Throw. Even though the rock was cold and the volcanoes dead, they still avoided those tunnels.
Shard ran, lost in a dream of smoky lichen glow, mineral scents of underwater streams, and high columns of rock supporting vaulted stone ceilings. Some places narrowed so low he had to crawl on his belly while the rock above scraped his wings.
At first he’d laughed when Stigr told him of the network of caves that wove under the islands—but now it made sense. He already knew that the islands were really one.
“Catori,” he grunted, crawling low on his belly. She whuffed softly in acknowledgement ahead. “What happened, on Daynight? What really happened? Kenna flew back and said that wolves attacked them.”
Ahead, she snorted and Stigr huffed. Shard tuned his ears forward and listened, but also had to duck to avoid small thrusts of rock and deep, curling roots. We’re nearing the surface again. At last Catori answered him.
“Will you believe me?”
“I will,” Shard promised, rueful. “I haven’t been the friend to you that you’ve tried to be for me.”
She made a quiet, soft whine. “Since the gryfons chose to celebrate the Daynight on Sun Isle, we came out of the forest with our family, the young summer pups, and the old. We stayed clear of Windwater though. We hunted, feasted, and watched your mating flights from afar.”
Shard paused in surprise, then wriggled forward to catch up, only to smack his face into a low-hanging jut of stone. He muttered. “You watch the flights?”
“Of course! The dance is beautiful. We have our songs, but no such beautiful ritual when we mate in in the season of red rowan. Only a great hunt and a fast run.” He heard her panting through the words. The length of
their journey wasn’t tiring, it was the constant change of level, the duck and weave and unending dark.
She holds no anger toward us, Shard thought, full of shame. And I’ve treated her as an enemy. “What happened then?”
“We saw gryfons returning to Windwater after the mating flight, and we went to the woods. But Hallr left the nesting cliff, and hunted us. He sought out the elders and the pups. We fought him off.” Her low, even voice sharpened. “And some of us were tired of running. To hunt us on a hallow day, when we’d brought no fight and not trespassed? It was too much. Half the pack pursued him back to the nesting cliff, and the other gryfons called it an attack.”
Shard listened, seeing it all. The wolves and their singing. A peaceful, joyful celebration in the open sunlight. Then an attack. “Did you lose any pups?”
“No,” she said softly, and Shard heard a note of surprise in her voice, as if she couldn’t believe he would ask.
“Good. I’m sorry for the attack.”
“So am I,” she murmured, and they both went quiet again. Stigr never spoke, but crawled quietly ahead of Shard, only loosing the occasional frustrated snarl or curse if he bumped his head.
At last, in darkness, spent and aching from the unnatural crawling, he caught the scent of pine. Star Island. He perked his ears, worming forward.
Catori could go to any isle, any time. If all the isles are one, do caves stretch even to Sun Isle?
But no wolf would be so foolish.
Shard thrust his shoulders out of the crack of a cave mouth that opened halfway up the side of a sea-washed cliff. Disoriented, he swiveled to find the sun. Not quite dawn, but the paler sky told him this cliff rose on the starward-facing flank of the isle. He had never been so far beyond Windwater. Not on foot.
“This way,” Catori murmured, giving them both a quick sniff before she bounded into the woods. Shard clamped his beak against a groan. He was tempted to fly part of the way, but it would be too dangerous. Others would be waking, readying to hunt. Planning war.
And here I am, with the enemy. Stigr nudged his shoulder and they ran after Catori, climbing the cliff and diving into the cool tangle of forest.