The Starward Light

by Jess E. Owen

  And the dark.

  “Go,” she said again to Shard, lifting her voice. “He wouldn’t want you to be sad, on such a beautiful morning.”

  ‘“Yes, my lady.” Shard loosed a weak chuckle, nuzzled her ear, and left the den.

  Brynja touched her beak to Frar’s head, then brushed a comforting wing tip against Pala’s shoulder, and they walked together into the fresh silver light of a new winter’s day.

  -oOo-

  THE VOLDSOM NARROWS ECHOED with the murmurings of hundreds of gryfons. The eagles had woken early, and already hunted along the hazy canyon rim farther starward. Stigr stood with Shard, striving to remember everything he’d wanted to tell his nephew before he flew away.

  His last recommendation that Shard try to stay alive met with some resistance.

  “I would die for any of them,” Shard said, eyes narrowing.

  Stigr kept his tone even, admiring the audacity of youth. “I know, Shard. So do they. But they don’t need you to die, they need you to live. A living king is better than a dead one. Remember that.”

  “Stigr—”

  “A living king,” he said again, very quietly, and watched his nephew take a slow, measured breath. His green eyes, Ragna’s eyes, grew distant as they did when Shard was remembering something, or experiencing a vision.

  “My father,” he said, as if coming to a new realization. “You don’t think he should have challenged Per.”

  The hardened grief tore open, just a little, like the raw scar where his wing had once been. He hadn’t been thinking of Baldr directly, but once Shard said it, Stigr knew he was right—and he remembered. And he told him, because Shard deserved to know. “I told him not to, but I think he believed it was best at the time.” Fresh sadness pooling about his heart, Stigr forced himself to add, “But that’s long done.”

  “It is,” Shard said, looking encouraged by Stigr’s apparent willingness to let go the past, making Stigr glad he’d said it, glad to make Shard believe all was well with him.

  Then, neither spoke again.

  Wind drifted, stirring the scent of dust, frost, and all their allies.

  Shard, looking ragged and weary and every inch a king-to-be, stood as still as an uncertain fledgling, awaiting direction.

  Stigr shifted, trying to think of some other sliver of advice, some word, something to draw out this last parting. He didn’t know when they would see each other again, or even if. He waited for Shard to say something, to draw himself together, to turn at last to the mass of gryfons patiently waiting for his word.

  But after another moment of heavy silence, Stigr knew his nephew needed him, one last time.

  “It’s time, Shard.” He backed away a step, then another, forcing earth and wind between them. “It’s time.”

  Taking a long breath, Shard turned, extending his wing toward Stigr’s good side. Fresh surprise swooping through his chest, Stigr opened his wing to eclipse it as Shard spoke.

  “Fair winds, Uncle.”

  “Fair winds, my prince.” It felt strange to say it now, and somehow, that word wasn’t enough. Wasn’t right. Regret forced itself out in a laugh and Stigr added, “My friend.”

  Shard met his gaze one last time, turned, and hoarsely shouted the order to fly.

  The sight of the exiled Vanir taking wing first pierced Stigr’s heart with triumph, then darker remorse. He would never join them. His task was done, his life’s purpose for last ten years flew now beyond his reach, and he watched his pride fly home without him. It took every fiber of strength in his muscles not to race after them on the ground, to follow until his legs or his heart gave out.

  Then . . .

  Just when he needed her, Valdis came, pressing to his lame side, adding the warmth and weight he missed with his wing.

  “You did well by him,” she said, her own voice chalky and flat. “Your part is done. Don’t say the valiant warrior I chose will become a sulking crow now that your nephew has achieved all you hoped he would.”

  Stigr, pulling himself out of the mire, realized she had just bid farewell to Brynja, her own niece and the closest she would ever have to a daughter. Neither of them could very well wallow. Kits grew, and fledged, and the flew the nest. Even if Shard’s nest was farther away than Stigr would have liked, it was the way of the world.

  He buried his beak in the feathers behind Valdis’ ear. “Come.” He looked dawnward. “Let’s go . . . home.”

  STIGR CLUTCHED A ROCK outcropping, hauling himself up the narrow, winding way to the top of the Wind Spire. Already, moist heat pounded the dark morning, and a long blanket of gray cloud swept from the Dawn Spire to all the far horizons. A sliver of orange under the far end of the cloud bank promised a stifling day.

  The lancing cramp in his wingless shoulder told Stigr it might very rain, later, and that would be a welcome relief, even if the changes in wind and pressure brought him aches. The late days of summer wore on him, and he longed for the chilly days of winter. Biting back grumbles, he worked himself carefully up the trail. It was actually not quite a trail, but a climbing trek he had devised to prove to Kjorn, Asvander, and the rest of the Guard that he could stand a watch like anyone else.

  The trickiest part came near the top, where the rock proved too hard to carve a trail, and he had a near-vertical ascent for the length of two lion’s leaps. Though he’d been doing it for years now, it proved a challenge every day.

  Gathering his resolve and trying to ignore the sharp pain in his shoulder that was worming its way up his neck, Stigr gathered his hind legs and jumped to the first talon-hold. It was best to move quickly and not think too much, using the power of confidence and motion. Grasping rock and catching his hind claws on feather-fine ridges in the stone, he scrambled up the tower like a squirrel up a juniper.

  He grasped the ridge that widened into the lookout post, and was about to haul himself over the top when a stabbing pain in his shoulder made him cry out, and his talons seized, flexing and releasing. He swung down, hanging by three talons and his hind claws.

  His wing flared.

  Now, even now, his wing betrayed him, flaring instinctively to fly. Instead, it threw him off balance, rolling him sideways along the vertical face of rock, twisting his other foreleg as he strained to keep hold of the ledge.

  His back slammed against the stone and he lost his grip. The sickening lurch of falling into open air halted with a wrenching jerk in his wrist joint.

  Strong talons had snatched his foreleg, then the other, then released his foot and grabbed him by the shoulder, digging into the numb scar. Stigr managed to shut his wing against a gust of wind. With the help of the sentry on the rock and strong, scrabbling shoves with his hind legs, together they pulled up him and over to splay across the wide, flat surface of the lookout post.

  “That was invigorating. A way to keep me alert, for certain.”

  “Fair winds, Rok,” Stigr muttered, rolling to his feet.

  “Fair winds, my friend.” The tall, lanky brown gryfon sat, watching Stigr collect himself. ”All’s quiet, though I thought I spied lions earlier, but hard to tell without the light. Keep an eye windward.”

  Stigr noticed he didn’t mention him almost falling again, but watched him suspiciously. Rok was one of three gryfons at the Dawn Spire who knew better than to suggest Stigr might consider taking his watch on a shorter tower. Stigr wanted the Wind Spire. He could climb it, he did climb it, he had climbed it, every morning for the last three years, and he wouldn’t stop now because of a cramp.

  “You’re pretending to know what I’m thinking again,” Rok said. Stigr realized he’d been staring fiercely at the other gryfon, daring him to speak.

  “No,” Stigr said, relaxing his glare, perking his ears and peering around. The Wind Spire was the highest point of the aerie, aside from the Dawn Spire of course. Standing atop it in the wind, with the Winderost spread out below him, almost gave him the feeling of flying again, and a pleasant flutter in his heart. “I know what you’re t
hinking, you and everyone else.”

  Rok stood and stretched, and Stigr wished he’d take his leave. But he didn’t, and Stigr didn’t ask him to. Aside from Asvander and Valdis, Rok was one of the few gryfons at the Dawn Spire Stigr had grown close to, would call a friend—a good friend, even. They respected each other. The former rogue had followed Kjorn to the Silver Isles and back, fought in the Battle of Pebble’s Throw and the Battle of Torches before, as well as serving as ambassador to the free gryfons of the Winderost. Stigr had accompanied him to the First Plains and the Dawn Reach before, to speak to lions, rogue gryfons, and painted wolves, and never once had Rok complained that Stigr’s presence meant the journey took three times as long.

  There was more to him than his breezy attitude, so Stigr gave him more consideration than he might any other blunt, cocky gryfon.

  Rok tilted his head. “You know what I’m thinking, eh? All right then prophet, have a go.”

  “You’re thinking I’m still trying to prove a point by standing the watch, and you think it’d be safer if I didn’t.”

  Rok laughed, a rich, booming laugh that probably woke half the gryfons not already stirring. “That’s not what I’m thinking, that’s just true. Care to know what I really think?”

  “I think I’m about to hear whether I want to or not.” Stigr flicked an ear his way though, curious despite himself.

  “What I think is, you’re wasting valuable energy and time when you could be serving the king and the Spire in a better way. How much earlier do you have to rise before dawn to make it up here in time for your post? What happens the next time you slip, and I’m not there to catch you? What would your nephew think when he returns someday, only to hear—”

  “It’s my choice.” Irritation needled him, and his pride flared, but he knew Rok was right. Like him, Rok had once been an unwilling exile, a rogue living in the wilderness without his pride, though he seemed to have taken to it better than Stigr ever did. It gave them something to talk about anyway. Rok always seemed to find him around the fire in the evening and they talked into the night—which meant he was coming to know Stigr all too well.

  “It won’t be your choice for long,” Rok said, more quietly. “If the king hears you almost fell.”

  Stigr eyed him. “Will the king hear?”

  Rok fluffed his wing feathers in a shrug. “Not from me.”

  Stigr wasn’t entirely sure he trusted that, but he had no alternative. “I hear you’re leading a good-will visit to the Vanheim Shore before winter.”

  Rok’s hackle feathers puffed up at the ungraceful change of subject, then he shook himself, sleeked, and chuckled, averting his gaze. “We want to keep good relations.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Stigr thought of Shard, and of Sigrun, and of choices he’d never made that were made for him, in the end. “Rok, my friend. She’s waiting, but she won’t wait forever.”

  Rok’s ears ticked back, and his tail flicked once. “We both know it wouldn’t work. I can’t leave the Dawn Spire now, and Nilsine would never leave the Vanheim.”

  “Do you know that?” Stigr stood, an old anger that had nothing to do with Rok roiling up under his skin, his scars, pounding in the place where he’d once possessed an eye. “Have you ever asked her? Have you ever made your heart known, even given her a choice?”

  “She knows,” Rok mumbled, and Stigr remembered how much younger he was.

  “She does not. Tell her. Give her the choice. Then it will be decided one way or another, but you will have at least made a decision and it won’t just fade, or end, or be taken from you.”

  “I suppose you would know.” Rok glanced at him sideways, and the wind ruffled their feathers, smelling heavily of damp earth and ozone. Stigr knew he hadn’t meant the words to cut, yet they did. The rogue was aware of his history—never mating with the gryfess he’d loved in the Silver Isles, and losing her to a conquering Aesir. Of course, that had resulted in other, happier things, but it was a long time in coming.

  “As for choices . . .” Rok ‘s voice was firm, but the words cautious as he changed the subject again. “Have you thought any more on my—”

  “I have,” Stigr said quietly. “It’s not a good time.”

  One ear flattened in disappointment, then Rok lashed his tail. “That’s no answer. And here you speak of giving everyone straight answers and choices. There will never be a good time, Stigr. The answer is yes or no.”

  Stigr lifted his wing a little, for he didn’t have a yes or no answer yet to the question Rok had asked a year ago, then again in the spring, and the summer again.

  It just wouldn’t do.

  But that wasn’t what Rok wanted to hear, so Stigr hadn’t told him. “Thank you for the help. Go to your rest. I have the watch.”

  Rok’s ears laid back, then he ducked his head once and jumped from the spire, gliding down in the muggy air toward his nest. Stigr wallowed in a moment of longing for his own wings, then turned to look over the land, alert for Rok’s supposed lions or other trespassers, and hoping the rain held off until he’d finished his watch and climbed down.

  Of course, it didn’t.

  ALVISS, THE ELDER HEALER, clicked his beak in a steady rhythm of disapproval as he secured an herb poultice in place on Stigr’s hind hip. A trio of somber fledges watched every flick of his talons, except one, who stared at Stigr with her beak open. Stigr winced as the old gryfon tightened the sinew, then released a breath as the potent desert thornapple seeped into his bruised muscles.

  “Three leaps you fell!” Valdis paced in the entryway, and rain beat a steady drum on the red stone of the aerie outside.

  “Hardly that.”

  “Asvander saw you.” Valdis turned, ears flat and eyes flashing. “He’s not one for exaggeration. He said it was three leaps and you tumbled the whole way down. What were you thinking? You could have died. You could have broken something.”

  Stigr grumbled.

  What’s left to break?

  Kits hollered and shrieked from the swollen stream that wound past the healer’s den, splashing and searching for fish that weren’t there. Stigr hoped someone was watching them, in case of flash flood. He eyed Valdis, knowing her hen-fussing only came from worry, but still, he wondered that she couldn’t wait until they were out of the healer’s den to humiliate him. Still he loved her, this gryfess who had vowed to be his mate even without him being able to fly in a proper ceremony, who had pledged her love to him on the ground.

  Like lions, she had reassured him on that Daynight two years past. Like the wolves you respect so.

  He could scarcely grudge her worry, this gryfess who understood him so well, who stood by him.

  “I wouldn’t have died,” he said at length, quietly.

  Alviss grumbled indelicately, as if clearing something from his throat. “You know, Stigr, the elders have been talking. Did you know Master Lenvir is thinking of joining—”

  “Back in the evening for a fresh poultice?” Stigr rolled to his feet. He did not want a single suggestion that it was time for him to retire from sentry duty, nor especially that he should join the elders’ circle. The elders indeed. As if he were even old enough, and good for nothing else but dispensing his hard-earned wisdom. He had many good fighting years left, and more wisdom yet to earn.

  Alviss’ tail flicked. He cast Valdis a sideways look and she ruffled her wing feathers indifferently. “Yes,” said the healer. “Come back this evening before you eat, and again before your post in the morning. I’ll make sure one of these lot has your poultice ready. I don’t suppose I can convince you to take a day of rest and avoid climbing for a couple of . . . no, I thought not.”

  “Thank you,” Stigr said, and left the den with Valdis. The rain lessened to a soft drizzle, and Stigr tried not to think if he’d waited but another quarter mark atop the Wind Spire, he might have had an easier climb down. He glanced at Valdis, and wondered if she was thinking the same. Her stony silence suggested he not strike up conversation. They w
alked along the canyon floor, and Stigr felt the strength and comfort of the walls that towered above their heads.

  “Son of Ragr!” piped a small voice from behind.

  Stigr paused and turned to see one of the apprentice healers bounding after them. “Yes, does Alviss need something?”

  “No,” said the young gryfess. She looked barely four. She would’ve been a nestling when he first came to the Dawn Spire. “Did you really fall three leaps from the ground?”

  Eyeing Valdis, Stigr answered, “Yes.”

  “Tyr made you so strong,” she breathed, eyes widening impossibly further. “I helped with your poultice. I hope it makes you feel better. I—I wanted to give you this.” She thrust a delicate white flower in his face.

  Stigr took a step back, then sniffed it. It didn’t smell herby, or useful in a way that he knew of. “Ah, what is it for?”

  She blinked large golden eyes and her neck hackle fluffed up self-consciously. “Oh. Just, for um . . . luck?” Apparently overcome by the question, she dropped the flower and fled back to the healer’s den.

  “Desert poppy,” said Valdis, and picked the stem up carefully in her talons. “I don’t know about luck, but many young gryfesses like to decorate their nests with it. I believe she’s taken with you.”

  Stigr laughed, and submitted to allowing Valdis to tuck the flower behind his ear. “I could be her father. Twice.”

  Valdis snorted. “A harmless turning of the head. Though I can’t imagine what she sees in you.” A nibble at his neck feathers and Stigr knew Valdis had passed from anger at his foolish choices to relief that he hadn’t broken his neck.

  He should be flattered by a young gryfon’s awe, yet somehow, the whole thing nettled him. He was nothing to aspire to or admire. Lame on an entire side of his body from both missing wing and eye, the only full-blooded Vanir in a pride of a thousand Aesir and half-bloods, growing older, and apparently less able . . . it wasn’t long until Kjorn and his queen changed from actually needing him to humoring him, or worse, taking pity . . .