by Jess E. Owen
“Ooh,” Dagny said. “Even more clever, my sister. Yes, maybe it’s light.”
“Strength lifts a gryfon when there is no wind,” said Asvander. “Or courage.” Appearing to realize there could be multiple answers, he fell into unusually thoughtful quiet.
Kjorn listened to their ideas, meeting Nilsine’s silent gaze across the fire. “Do you know the answers?”
“Perhaps. But I don’t wish to be king, so my answers don’t matter.”
“What is the measure of a king?” Kjorn asked idly.
“His honor,” Asvander said.
“His kingdom,” said Dagny.
“His friends,” said Brynja, and Kjorn looked at her, then Nilsine, curious if that was correct. She remained inscrutable, and merely perked her ears at him expectantly.
“Well,” said Kjorn, “I have until midnight to figure it out.”
“The second one is definitely light,” Dagny said, and they dissolved into discussion again, while Kjorn wracked his memories for anything his father, Caj, and others had ever told him about being a king.
~16~
A Word in the Wind
RAGNA PACED IN HER den, awake, wishing Sigrun was there so she wouldn’t be so alone. At last, restless, she flew out under the moon, asking Tor’s help. Milky white rippled across the molten black sea, and Ragna flew along the trail of moonlight for a time, her head clearing in the frosty night.
She thought of Baldr, bright Baldr, who lived on in Shard. Shard, who had been gone so long but who should be here, should claim his birthright. Shard, who should be her king.
But when Ragna closed her eyes, breathed the winter air and the sea and thought of the King’s Rocks, she saw only huge, blood-red Sverin, his red meat, his collars and bands and eyes of gold.
Ten years he had oppressed them, forbidden their very life style, forbidden the night, the sea. Exiled any who broke his law.
And yet.
And yet, there had never been such disorder among the gryfons in that time.
He’d abused the wolves, the hoofed and thinking creatures of the Silver Isles, disrespected all living there.
And yet . . . the pride, as uncomfortable, tense, and divided as it had been at times, had been stable. It had been stable enough for Caj and Sigrun to fall in love, to bear a kit who grew into a huntress who would mate to Sverin’s son. It had been stable enough for Ragna to keep her promise to Sverin, remain in the pride and watch over Shard. Stable enough, Ragna realized ruefully, to indeed become a single, if troubled, pride.
Before he’d gone mad, before his spiral into Nameless hatred that had been a mask for his fear, Sverin had ruled with a hard talon, but a steady one. He would have cowed a bully like Ollar in less than a heartbeat.
I’m losing my mind.
Ragna shut her eyes, sucking in a cold breath. After all she’d hoped for, that couldn’t be the answer. It couldn’t be the answer that he had, truly, done the best he could with what he’d had.
Is tyranny and oppression the only way to maintain stability? She thought of Baldr, who was not a tyrant, who had been loving, understanding, and strong as a rowan tree, always fair, never paranoid. But he had not ruled a mixed pride. She thought of Shard, who was all the things his father had been, but more so, for his heart was divided. Baldr had left him a difficult legacy.
Perhaps Sverin really was the best king he could have been, at the time. We are all only, ever, the best we can be.
“Bright Tor,” she pleaded. “Let me see what is true. Let me know forgiveness. Shard,” she breathed into the cold wind, “come home to me, my son, my king.”
The night gave no answer, and she didn’t know if her words would reach Shard. But now they were in the wind, her heart, her truth, and the wind could do what it would. Talons clenching, Ragna banked and soared back over the sea, speeding up with hard, fast wing strokes.
Looking down, Ragna spied a shadow roaming along the nesting cliffs. Her blood skipped, wondering who was out in the night.
“Who goes there?” she called. The shadow stopped, a head flew up, and Ragna saw wolf ears outlined against the snow. A song answered her, a long, low howl that became words.
“Which rises first, the night wind, or the stars?
Not even the owl could say,
whether first comes the song or the dark.
Which fades last, the birdsong or the day?”
The song trailed off and Ragna glided down, thumping in the snow, and finished the song. “Not even the sky could tell, Whether last stills the sun or the jay.” She stopped, leaving it unfinished, for the verse’s lines spoke of death. “Well met, Helaku’s daughter. Thank you again for allowing us to hunt on the Star Isle. What brings you to my island? Why do you sing the Song of Last Light?”
“I have restless dreams,” Catori murmured. “And my own mother is long to run with the Great Hunt, and she cannot answer my questions anymore.”
Ragna felt her heart open with pity for the restless wolf. “And I can? Did you come seeking me?”
“Maybe I did. I ran all night, and my paws brought me here.” Catori wrinkled her nose, showing Ragna the points of her teeth, but ducked her head submissively.
Ragna lifted her wings a bit helplessly. “I often listened to Baldr’s dreams, though I don’t know what help I was. What did you see?”
Catori lifted her nose to the night wind, and the black feathers twisted and danced against her neck. Ragna longed for Stigr, for his gruff, blunt answers. He would know what to do with a restless pride.
Exile them all, she imagined him saying, and thought of Shard, instead, and his love for Aesir and Vanir. She thought of Caj, who was fair, and Kjorn, who was honorable.
And Sverin . . .
“I heard a new song in the wind,” Catori murmured. “A strange voice, at once young and old, a serpent in the sky.”
Ragna shook her head a little, and wondered if Catori had learned some of her riddling speech from ravens.
“What song did you hear?”
“A song like no other in the islands.” She stopped walking, her tail fluffed out and alert behind her, and looked out over the sea. Her ears perked as if she would see her mysterious dream serpent, or perhaps, like Ragna, she watched for Shard. Then she sang.
“The noble draw wind from the water
The brave will call fire from stone
The foolish seek gold in the mountain
The last know that wood grows from bone.”
Ragna shivered as wind slipped cold claws under her feathers. “It sounds like one of our first songs.”
“It does, and yet not.”
“Wind rises from the water,” Ragna mused. “Fools love gold, I understand. Wood grows from bone, yes. But I wonder how one calls fire from stone.” Ragna laughed, letting another shiver take her. “I wouldn’t mind knowing, on nights like this.”
“Fire comes from Tor,” Catori murmured. “Fire from the storm, and fire from the earth, from the heart of the earth, where it runs like blood. Perhaps it truly dwells in stone, and if you crack it open, it will bleed fire.”
“You sound like a raven, dear one.” Ragna touched Catori lightly with a wingtip, calling her back from the edge of her visions and rhymes. “Why does this dream trouble you so?”
She looked at Ragna, her eyes glowing in the moonlight. “Because it draws closer.”
“Something coming this way?”
“Perhaps.”
Ragna managed not to sigh, for she would be eternally grateful to Catori for helping Shard, for helping the pride, seeking harmony. But riddles grew tedious. “Come, my friend. Let’s clear your head.”
She dropped to a crouch, swinging her tail like a wolf inviting a friend to play. Catori laughed, crouched, then sprang away. They chased each other through the moonlight and across the plain to the birch wood, where Catori stopped. Ragna halted before running into her, but it was a near thing.
“Listen,” the wolf whispered. Ragna perked her ears and clos
ed her eyes since she couldn’t see much anyway. The soft shuffling made its way through the wind that moaned against the tangled, naked tree branches. Catori glanced at Ragna in silence, ears forward, inviting her to hunt. Ragna nodded once, a small thrill squirming up in her. She had sworn, with others, not to hunt red meat on the island. But the wolves had their blessing from Tor, and a wolf invited her now.
By silent agreement they split, and Ragna knew that she was to flush the prey toward Catori, who was more likely to catch it in the trees. She suspected a snow shoe hare, and a light scent on the wind confirmed it. She caught movement and leaped, crashing forward on purpose. The hare sprang away. A muddy blur was Catori, flashing through the moon in the trees, then suddenly the hare was dodging back toward Ragna. Without thinking she hurled herself sideways, talons flinging out as if the hare were a leaping salmon, and caught it.
“Ah,” she gasped, shocked that she’d been fast enough, then yanked the hare to her and dispatched it swiftly, by the throat.
Catori padded up, panting with hunt-excitement. “Well done, my lady. You are a huntress born.”
“You should take it,” Ragna said, looking at the blood on the snow.
Catori considered the hare, licking her muzzle, then ducked her head. With a mischievous air in her voice she said, “No. You may give it to the War King, with my regards.”
Cold closed over Ragna’s chest. “I will.”
Catori tilted her head. “What troubles you? Helping your enemy? Wood grows from bone. We are all one. If we wolves can forgive Sverin, surely you can.”
“It isn’t that I can’t forgive him. I’ve done that.” Ragna tightened her grip on the dead hare. “It’s that I fear I’m beginning to understand him.”
Catori lifted her nose in a gesture of comprehension, then watched Ragna in silence, as if she understood how much more frightening that was. “Do you know how I met Shard?”
Ragna shook herself, certain Catori was leading up to something. “Only that it was during the hunt for the great boar. Sigrun thought as much, but he never told us anything else.”
Catori walked in a circle around her, her voice low and sweet, like a song. “I met him first, before Stigr, though we had both been watching him for some time.”
“Stigr would wait,” Ragna murmured. “He was always more patient than I.” Except for the one time it had counted, the one time when she should have barreled ahead, a War Queen, and driven out the conquering Aesir.
Catori stopped in front of her, her paws delicate in the snow. “Your son was afraid of understanding me once, too.”
“He knew nothing true about wolves.” Ragna looked to the moon for strength. “I know what the Aesir have done, I have seen it, lived it.”
“And why?” Catori asked. “When we harried gryfon hunts, and fought, and harmed you, why?”
“Because . . .” Ragna ducked her head in assent. “Because you were under attack, first.”
Catori lifted her nose to the wind, her gaze scanning the stars, and Ragna craved the peace and confidence the wolf appeared to feel. “So too, were the Aesir in pain. They fled their homeland, and it was Baldr who first perceived that, Baldr who asked that his heir be raised among them. But like my brother Ahote, the Aesir were not ready to accept peace, and attacked.”
“Well I remember,” Ragna murmured, and shut her eyes, as if it would block Baldr’s death from her memory.
“Shard had a chance to kill Sverin,” Catori said softly, and the wind flitted across the snow and through the clawing branches of the trees. “And he did not. If he does not fear understanding his former enemies, why should we do any less?”
“Thank you,” Ragna said, turmoil still darting about her chest, but somehow she felt more accepting of it. “Thank you for the steady wisdom of the earth, dear one. I will think on it.”
“Fair winds,” Catori said. “Thank you for listening to my dream.”
“Good hunting,” Ragna said quietly, though she wasn’t sure how much good either of them had done for the other.
With the hare in her beak, she trotted back to the nesting cliffs. Alert for other Vanir, or any other witness, Ragna slipped across the white snow, grateful for her plumage, and rather than fly, she climbed down the cliff face, feeling oddly like a thief, with the hare. One wing pressed to the stone wall, she trailed down to the massive cave mouth that led to Sverin’s nest.
Vald barked from the entrance. “Who goes—oh. My lady?” He sounded uncertain, and Ragna remembered it was the middle of the night, she had a dead hare in her beak, and it was utterly foolish to be there. But she said nothing, letting the sight of the hare in the moonlight speak for her, and Vald and the other sentry stood aside.
She realized Sverin would be asleep, and felt even more foolish, not sure what she hoped to gain by being there, except that if she had to suffer restless nights, so did he. She began to turn around.
“I’m awake,” he murmured from the nest. “What are you doing here?”
Ragna dropped the hare, ears perking. “How did you know who I was?”
“I know your step.”
Taken aback, Ragna picked up the hare again, standing on her hind legs to toss the hare to him. She rested her talons on the edge of the nest, tail twitching. “There. With regards from Catori. The daughter of Helaku.”
“I know who she is.” He shifted. Ragna heard chains scraping, metal tumbling, and twigs snapping under deer hide. “Why does everyone think I had no idea what was going on in my own kingdom?”
“Not your kingdom,” Ragna said harshly, defending herself against her own sense of empathy. “And you’ll understand that I didn’t think the names of wolves were important to you to remember.”
“They became so.”
“Well by any wind, here, more red meat.” She tossed the hare up to the nest.
In the murky dark his feathers didn’t show the way hers did, didn’t pick up a trace of light, but when he moved, she saw the chains that bound his feet and his wings.
“I’ve only just finished the deer. Are you afraid I’ll go mad from hunger in a day?” He was eating the rabbit. No false sense of pride there—he bolted it down and ducked his head. She didn’t answer, and told herself he was right, and that was why she’d done it.
After a moment, he asked, “Why did you let me live?”
“I don’t consider death a punishment,” Ragna growled. “I want you to live, to face what you’ve done. I want you look into my son’s eyes when he returns, and bow to him.”
He seemed to have no answer for that, and somewhere in the cave, a small rodent scuffled about. The sound of the ocean came to them, and she wondered if it was soothing or troublesome to him. The sound of the waves had always rocked her to sleep. She wondered if it made him think of his mate, if there was a sound in his homeland that he preferred, that he’d missed hearing all these years. She remembered what Catori had said. He was not at first a conqueror, but an exile.
“Do you like the sound of the ocean?” she asked, unable to stop herself from breaking the silence.
“No.”
“Because of Elena?”
“I never did. But Baldr died in the waves. Do they not trouble you?”
Ragna’s heart quickened and she growled. “Baldr died at your father’s talons. The waves have never troubled me and they never will.”
He made a soft, derisive noise.
Ragna felt reluctant to leave, to go back to the whirlwind of her own head. Sverin said no more, didn’t ask her a question, didn’t move, didn’t speak. The sentries remained silent at the entrance. Ragna stood there, and Sverin remained in his nest.
“I wonder.” His soft words were so loud in the quiet it sounded like distant, echoing thunder. “If—”
Wings stirred the wind outside. Ragna’s mind seemed to fly apart like a cloud of irritated starlings.
“What?” she asked him, burning with sudden curiosity. What was he thinking, while she stood in silence?
; “Ragna!”
“Sigrun?”
Ragna turned and watched her wingsister swoop into the den, past the surprised sentries, suddenly embarrassed that Sigrun would even look for her here. “What is it?”
“A messenger!” Sigrun paused, eyeing the nest as Sverin’s head appeared over the top. Then she huffed and looked solely at Ragna. “A sea bird! He said he that he’s traveled all winter, over the starward corner of the world, and met Vanir there!” The healer spun in a circle, giddy as a fledge, and laughed. “He spoke with Maja herself, and even now, they’re making their way home!”
“Halvden’s mother?” Sverin mused. “Maja, who left a fish in my den before fleeing?”
“The very same,” Sigrun said brusquely. “But you didn’t know she also left the Isles last summer, seeking exiled Vanir.”
Ragna remembered all of it. After wolves killed Halvden’s father, Maja declared her freedom and self-exile by leaving a fish for Sverin and fleeing. Then she vowed to fly for Shard, to find any lost Vanir who’d flown starward. And now, at last, word that she was well and had found others. Sunlight flooded Ragna’s heart. Vanir. Her Vanir, at last, flying home.
“This seabird,” she began, “Is he still here? I’ll hunt fish myself to fill his gullet.”
Sigrun laughed and nudged Ragna toward the entrance. “Yes, come, we must meet him, and then tell everyone.”
Ragna trotted with her to the entrance, then, as if tugged, found herself looking back at Sverin. In the faint moonlight, she saw his face, grim, silent.
“Fair winds,” he murmured, averting his gaze.
“Fair winds—”
“Come!” Sigrun said, nipping her neck feathers lightly. Ragna shook herself, and without another look back they jumped from the ledge and flew down to the shore. There she spied the sea bird, bright under the moon, and a scatter of the other Vanir who’d apparently also grown restless in the moonlight and came down at Sigrun’s shouting.
Ragna landed on the pebbly beach and trotted to the group. Not just any sea bird, but a great albatross from the farthest seas stood there, looking slightly uncomfortable at being surrounded by several gryfons, and standing on dry land.