By the Silver Wind

by Jess E. Owen

  Like a gull, like a gull, they’re watching you, daughter-of-Ragr. Be a queen, a Vanir.

  She felt the moment, slapped her wings to the water and thrust herself up, not thinking, just working, shoving, flapping. An awkward, stumbling, lunging takeoff brought gasps of delight from the mix of Vanir, Aesir, and half-bloods above her.

  Pride flushed her muscles and she loosed a derisive churr at the water. The others laughed.

  Even as she worked to fly higher, she was grateful to see dark clouds on the horizon. “A storm comes,” she said, forcing her voice to be light, even as quivering weakness stole between her muscles and bones. “Let’s be in. We’ll fish again at dusk, weather holding.”

  “Yes, my lady,” they chorused, and she turned to the nesting cliffs to hide what she knew was a pinched, relieved expression. That had been far too difficult. She must not fall again.

  I’ve been too idle. I am in my prime, not some elder, brittle twig. Stigr would laugh his feathers off at a fly-out like that, and they praise me.

  Solid wing strokes warmed her trembling muscles and she thought she should go to Sigrun’s den. Mostly to set an example—a crash always warranted a visit to the healer, for injuries one might not feel until later. But rather than Sigrun’s den, Ragna’s distracted course led her to the wide entrance of Sverin’s prison. An older Aesir male and Vald stood watch, moved aside to allow her to land, and greeted her.

  Sverin prowled about his nest, she saw, muttering darkly. Ragna caught Vald’s eye questioningly.

  “For the last half sun mark,” the orange Aesir murmured. “He’s been—”

  A clatter of metal on stone finished the explanation, and as Ragna strode forward into the cave, she saw that the red gryfon was dragging all the gold from his nest to pile in a corner.

  Ragna stood well back. “Sverin.”

  It was not an orderly process, but savage tearing and tossing, soft curses. Incongruently, he wore two of his most favored bracers on his forelegs, ones twining with gold filigree and shifting brown and gold catseye gems.

  “Sverin.”

  His head jerked up and he swiveled, ears flattening. To her surprise, when he saw it was she, his ears relaxed and his expression cleared, but his tail twitched in restrained agitation. “My lady.”

  “Are you quite well?” She eyed the treasures warily. She had not at all enjoyed the sight of him muttering to himself, though it had seemed in frustration, not the rumblings of a mad creature. She hoped.

  “Indeed.” He glanced behind him at the raw pile of dragon gold, then looked back to her, challenging.

  Ragna found herself pleased to see that his nest looked normal again, padded only with deer hide, soft fir branches and the jutting base of stick and stone. “Do you find it too difficult to sleep on now?”

  “It was always too difficult to sleep on. Did you have a purpose here, my lady, or may I return to my business?”

  “Don’t let me keep you.” Ragna’s mind scoured itself for a reason, any reason to be there.

  But he didn’t wait for her reason. He inclined his head, reared up to the nest again, grasped clusters of small rings she had seen the Aesir wear on their front toes, and flung them into the pile. When Ragna didn’t speak, his ears flattened, and he asked, “How fares the pride?”

  She knew the unspoken question. Were they still fighting over meat? She considered lying. “Fortunately, Thyra has not had to exile anyone else. But tension remains.”

  He made a low noise and Ragna watched the crimson hackle feathers prickle. “Yes. It would. When you ban a gryfon from eating his preferred food.”

  “I know the feeling well.”

  He paused, but didn’t look at her. “I have faith you and Thyra keep everyone well in wing.”

  “Thyra and I, Caj. Halvden.” At the name he paused again, feathers sleeking back down. “He’s growing up at last. If we can forgive him his trespass, so should you.”

  “He lied to me. He turned me against my own son.”

  “You turned yourself,” Ragna growled.

  He shoved from the nest to stand on all fours again, talons slapping the stone floor. Feeling odd to be defending Halvden, Ragna lifted her wings in challenge and heard Vald shift in the entryway. Sverin’s gaze lifted beyond her to the sentries. He stepped back, inclined his head, and met her eyes with a smoldering look.

  “Is this a mockery, my lady? Why do you come here? At first I hated you for this light, weak sentence, for I knew I deserved more. I know what I would have done in your place.”

  “I’m not you—”

  “But now I see what the true sentence is. You, flying in and out each day to ask me one question or two, to watch me circle the walls, so you can revel in my imprisonment.”

  “That isn’t the sentence.” Ragna stood, rooted, drawing her strength from the stone at her feet. With the golden treasures shoved to a dark corner, the den regained some of its natural scent. The metallic odor that had infused the nest gave way to Sverin’s own, and with it rolled the memory of the last ten years. “And that isn’t why I come.”

  Isn’t it punishment? Ragna realized slowly. Is that why I come? To show him what it felt like to be trapped and helpless while he did as he pleased?

  But now she wondered how often he had actually done what he pleased, or how much he did to distract others from his own guilty secrets.

  “It isn’t why I come,” she said again firmly, for he stared at her with a look she hadn’t seen since his madness still held him. But it was an expression of clear, clean anger, not masked by layers of lies.

  “Then why? If you wish to drive me Nameless again with anger, these pointless visits are a good start.”

  Ragna glared at him, felt her ears slipping back defensively. “I came to check on your welfare.”

  “Don’t worry, your sentries have me well in wing.”

  Ragna shifted her feet, her own temper growing, anger at him, at herself, unable to recognize or admit why she had come.

  A sudden, hard brightness came to his eyes. “You pity me.”

  Coarse laughter drew itself from her throat and her neck-feathers stood on end. “Believe me I don’t.”

  One red ear twitched back in uncertainty. Seeing his honest confusion and frustration, Ragna understood herself at last, by his frank, flat expression.

  “I come here . . . I come to see you in your right mind. To wonder what might have been if you had grieved openly, admitted fault, and been a proper king.”

  “Ah.” Both ears slanted and he turned from her, wings flexing against the golden chains. “You come to regret. A typical Vanir. Living in the past. You offered me a weak punishment and now you wander in and out, fretting, regretting, waiting.” He sat, lifting a foreleg to remove his gauntlet. Ragna watched with some satisfaction as he appeared to struggle with the twin clasps. They had clearly been designed for gryfon talons, but in his agitation, he couldn’t manage. “Always waiting, the white Widow Queen.”

  “I can make your punishment harsher if you’d like.” Stung by his remark, she drew herself up and paced to his pile of gold, making a show of picking through it disdainfully. To think how her heart had caught at the sight of them when they first arrived in their magnificent regalia, talons overflowing with treasures. Though not Sverin, at first. At first, the only gold he had carried was Kjorn. “I spare you for your son’s sake. For mine, so he may face you again. And because you were a king.”

  “A tyrant, you mean?” He managed one clasp, and the sound of his beak grinding with frustration was too much for her. Ragna walked around to face him. Without hesitation, for that would look frightened and weak, she sat before him, and touched a talon to the clasp, offering.

  Like a stag, Sverin froze, his gaze inquiring. She only tapped her talon once on the gold, so he inclined his head with royal courtesy.

  “Yes. A tyrant.” She spoke and he watched as, with smaller, clever talons made for fishing, she unclasped the gauntlets, thinking he must have had he
lp before. It seemed that the dragon treasures were easy to lock, but not so easy to release. “But a king nonetheless, and I meant to treat you with courtesy at least.”

  More courtesy than you showed us, she added silently.

  He didn’t answer, holding so still she heard the breath through his beak, the beat of his red heart under red feathers. She set one gauntlet aside and worked on the other, ears flat, avoiding his look as she continued.

  “If you prefer, I will cut your rations, tuck you away in a cold, forgotten cave too small for you, and allow no one to speak to you again. If you prefer, I can make you truly suffer.”

  She set aside the second gauntlet and stepped back from him, feeling Tor’s thunder rise in her heart. He could bait her. She did not have to rise to it. “I will do all those things, and we’ll see how long you remember your name. You forget us, who had to live through your madness. I won’t try to drive you to that place again. Soon you’ll be Kjorn’s to deal with, and I will be rid of you.”

  “Will you indeed?” Sitting on his haunches, he flexed his forelegs. “I wonder if we’ll ever truly be rid of each other.”

  Ragna narrowed her eyes, uncertain how he meant it. As he sat forward, then stood, Ragna shifted farther away, saying only, “We will. Our sons will return soon.”

  “Ah yes,” he murmured, silhouetted in the mouth of the cave. His heavy frame was impressive, regal, and terrifying. If only, Ragna thought, he had used all his power to protect, to be strong, to rule well, rather than terrorize.

  Regret. Typical Vanir.

  “Our sons,” he mused. “We became who we are for our sons. Now they’re gone, and who are we? And then they will return, and who will we be?”

  Ragna didn’t know how to answer that, for she wasn’t sure what he was asking. She walked toward the entrance. As usual, there were too many questions she couldn’t answer, and too many answers would lead to regret anyway. Low evening light cast a sheen on the water far below, and Ragna shivered.

  “I saw you fall, and fly out again, out there.”

  She turned, tail twitching. The mention of it seemed to remind her body and it threw itself into dramatic, aching awareness of the growing bruise where she’d hit the water. “Yes.” She offered no more, for he would surely be thinking of Elena, who had fallen. Elena, whom Ragna hadn’t been able to save. Elena, who had drowned.

  He ducked his head, loosed a rough, dry chuckle. “I confess that for a moment, my heart stopped. But you flew out.”

  “A typical Vanir,” she said, ears flattening.

  Sverin’s head lifted, cocked, searching to see if she was joking. Ragna couldn’t decide, and kept her expression flat. When he said nothing else, she turned, flexing her wings.

  He stopped her again, she heard his talons touch the floor as he stepped forward. “It was impressive. Very impressive. I . . . I am glad to see the Vanir fishing again. My lady.”

  “Yes.” Anger burrowed deep in her chest. So many years he had oppressed their ways, and now he spoke of being glad. “I am too.”

  She shifted to go.

  “Ragna. Please.”

  She shut her eyes, thunder and skyfire lashing in her heart. She opened her wings, whirled on him with a snapping beak, unable to contain herself any longer. “What?”

  He stood tall, regal, tail low. “You must forgive me. You must know that I understand now the evil that I—”

  “I did forgive you.”

  “Assure me again,” he said quietly. “I saw you flying. I saw all of you, fishing, I saw you flying over the sea, as is your right. I know you fly at night. I know it brings you joy. You don’t understand what we faced in the night, in my homeland, and why I was afraid. You must forgive me for taking that from you. For taking that from Rashard.”

  Her breath swept from her. She pressed her hind paws hard to the rock to keep from flying at him with beak and talon for saying her son’s name. “I do, I did. But it remains a wound. You understand the feeling.”

  Gold eyes searched her face in the last gray light. “I do.”

  Silence clotted the den, and she sensed the guards standing rigid, ears perked firmly forward, trying desperately not to eavesdrop.

  “Fair winds, son of Per.” She turned, unable to look at his face any more.

  “Ragna. If you truly come to see me in my right mind, to check on my welfare . . . thank you.”

  She couldn’t answer that. She thought it might be the last time she came to the den, for in there, she seemed to forget everything outside of it. Her splintered pride, her missing son, the long remains of winter. In there, she only marveled at the change in him, and filled to brim with regret and anger. In there, she was only picking at her wounds.

  Typical Vanir. She couldn’t answer, but she turned to look at him again. Though the cave was dim and growing chilly with evening, a light touched his gold eyes, seeming to change his face to something younger. Hope.

  “Sverin—”

  Outside, a gryfess’s high scream tore the air.

  Sverin’s eyes widened, his ears slicked back, and he made an abortive movement toward the entryway.

  “You stay here,” Ragna growled, coming to herself again, and flung herself out of the cave, ordering Vald to keep Sverin there. It was no longer his pride to protect. In that, he had failed.

  She flew up, scouring the cliffs and surrounding land with her gaze. The brief storm had passed by them and the sky was clear. In the twilight, gryfons had gathered in the snow on top of the cliffs to eat. Ragna expected to see blood, fighting, some shocking new thing to fall across their way and block a path to peace.

  But she only saw Astri, stumbling through gathering gryfons and the snow, star white and shouting Einarr’s name.

  Confused, Ragna turned, flapping hard. “What in every wind is . . .”

  She heard more shouting, old Vanir shouting, half-bloods. She spied Sigrun and Caj, and dove, stumbling a landing beside them. Sigrun, with an expression of pure triumph, lifted her beak to point to the sky. At last, feeling slow, Ragna looked up where they were looking—high and toward the sky to the nightward horizon.

  And there, she saw what they saw.

  In a long, wide, wedge formation, like geese, flew creatures too large to be geese.

  “Tyr’s wings,” Caj breathed. “It’s . . .”

  “Einarr!” Astri screamed again. And indeed, the last day’s light bounced off coppery feathers of the leading male, but Ragna knew at once it wasn’t him. He was stockier, this gryfon, his wings longer, at least two years older than Einarr had been. Anticipation quivered in her chest.

  “No, dear one,” she heard Astri’s mother say. “It’s not him . . .” Growing commotion drowned her out. Gryfons flocked up from their nests, from the sea, from the river. They ran and gathered there by the King’s Rocks, staring. Gasps fell out, some shouted names, some launched into the air.

  As the arriving gryfons grew closer, Ragna counted at least forty. Since the albatross’s word, she had waited every day for Maja and the Vanir she’d recovered to appear on the starward horizon.

  But this was not Maja and her band.

  “It’s Dagr,” Sigrun whispered. “Ragna, he’s returned! He found Vidar, and those others, they’re . . .”

  “All Vanir,” Ragna said softly, stunned. The albatross had told her of Maja, not Dagr. Sverin had exiled Dagr last summer for waiting too long to take up the challenge of initiation. When Dagr learned Shard was true price of the Vanir, he had flown nightward to find his father and others on the same day Maja had, flown in Shard’s name to find the Vanir. And though they’d had no word at all of how he fared, here he was, and Ragna had to gather her wits, to reconcile her surprise and her joy.

  “So it begins,” Caj said quietly.

  Ragna snapped back to attention. She realized she had a duty to set the tone of this arrival, and fast. She couldn’t stand there like a tree. She bounded forward and jumped into the sky, winging a long circle around the pride and the arriv
ing Vanir. Some were Ragna’s age, some Shard’s age, a few older. Most of them landed hard and collapsed with relief onto the packed snow.

  “My pride! My Vanir, my family, welcome home!”

  At the sight of her, pale and strong against the deepening evening, the pride fell to quiet whispers, and tension stretched its wings over them. The returning Vanir appeared surprised to see Aesir in the mix, even though Ragna was clearly no longer under Sverin’s power.

  Surely Dagr and Vidar would have prepared them for the mixed pride, would have told them that some were true mates, some had mixed families like their own.

  Dagr flew to meet Ragna. “All hail the queen! Ragna the White! See, I bring you the indomitable Vanir who flew beyond the nightward horizon!”

  He laughed, and she laughed, wanting at the same time to weep. Other gryfons called her name, familiar voices she’d thought lost forever. Faces she’d dreamed dwelled in the Sunlit Land turned to see her and laughed and called their loyalty.

  It was chaotic, it was too soon, it was not as she’d imagined it would be. Yet, the sight of her bedraggled pride sank in at last, and she let joy steal over her.

  “You’re sooner than expected,” Ragna said, flapping in a quick circle around Dagr. “And bold! What made you fly here, when you didn’t know how we fared?”

  “From a safe distance, my father scouted and saw Vanir flying over the sea, fishing.” His eyes glinted as he hovered, straining against the cold air. “It was a welcome sight. This, more than anything, told us the Red King was no longer in power, told us it would be safe to come home.”

  Ragna laughed as she realized that would be an obvious sign. She remembered who she was supposed to be. The queen of the Vanir, mother of the true prince, not the widowed, lost gryfess who wandered in and out of her enemy’s prison to check on the state of his mind. “No, he is no longer in power. And you’re a very welcome sight.”

  In a colorful bunch to one side, the old Aesir watched, wary. Caj and Thyra went to them. Ragna trusted them to handle that half. As for the rest . . .