by Jess Owen
But it was not Ahote before him. Blood hunger, rage and the mad light of the hunt gleamed in his eyes. Witless with hate.
Nameless. The wolf that Shard had known lurched forward and Shard ramped to his hind legs, clapping his wings together before spinning away. They tangled and at some point Shard felt warmth ooze down his ribs. Blood.
Somewhere, another fledge yelped in pain. Or death.
Red boiled up behind Shard’s eyes and he shrieked, spinning to knock Ahote aside and in a rough, quick wrestle, slammed him to the hard earth. The wolf had too many wounds to survive the battle much longer. Hate drove him.
“Ahote of the Star Isle,” Shard rasped. Ghosts whispered in his head. The Nameless will know themselves. “Stop this! You’re dying.”
Wild golden eyes flared at him, slather dripped from his fangs, and Shard clenched talons against his throat.
“Ahote. Son of Helaku. Hear me. You fought well. Brother.”
The wolf panted and squirmed and then, at the final word, the emptiness washed from his gaze. He stared at Shard, and knew him. “I…would have been king, after my father.”
“We are all kings,” Shard whispered, “in the Sunlit Land.”
“You gave me back my name,” Ahote whispered, and Shard heard blood in his throat. “Give me my honor.”
The Nameless shall know themselves, the ghosts whispered. Ahote’s head lolled. Shard finished him by the throat and looked up only in time to see an emerald fury swooping down on him.
“Traitor!”
Shard leaped forward under Halvden’s dive and his claws raked empty air.
Halvden swooped by and wheeled around, talons sweeping wide as if to show Shard the battle. “This is your doing.”
Shard remained on the ground to draw Halvden in. He didn’t want to try his luck in an aerial battle against the bigger gryfon.
“No,” he said firmly as Halvden circled low, seeking an opening. “I only, ever, tried to do what was right.”
Halvden shrieked and dove again. This time he saw Shard’s move to dodge and met him sideways, catching Shard’s wings to toss him over on his side. Stunned, Shard rolled to gain his feet but Halvden fell onto him, a mountain of weight and beak and claw.
Shard curled to protect his throat, panic bursting. Halvden’s beak slashed through the feathers of Shard’s neck. Shard saw a blaze of white. Halvden snarled in surprise as another gryfon plowed into him. Freed, Shard leaped to his feet.
Ragna.
Amazement struck Shard to see the widow, a fury of white and flashing talon as quick as any young gryfess protecting her kit. Her kit. Me, Shard thought. Another gryfon lunged up in a run, dusty black and bloody.
“Stigr!” Shard shouted in relief. Catori’s raven had reached him, and of course he had come to Shard’s aid.
Stigr and Ragna, brother and sister, fought Halvden off. They were older, slower, but smarter. The green gryfon retreated, swearing, and sought wolves to attack instead.
“Fly, my prince!” Stigr shouted. “Fly to safety!” Shard stood like a stone. Thunder boomed across the sky as the wind brought in a third storm.
I can’t run. But who can I fight? He still tasted Ahote’s blood. He couldn’t attack his own pride. He couldn’t attack the wolves, despite all. He crouched, backing away, staring around him. Neither gryfon nor wolf showed strategy, plan or thought to their attack and defense. Animal fighting roiled across the field. Kjorn fought two older, scarred wolf warriors. Thyra and coppery Einarr defended a wailing huddle of fledges from two more.
Stop! Shard’s mind screamed.
A cobalt blur. Caj thumped down between himself, Stigr and Ragna.
“Didn’t I drive you once from this isle?” he boomed at Stigr, who crouched with a hiss. Ragna edged away toward Shard.
“You owe me an eye.” Stigr leaped and Caj met him, cracking together like thunderclouds. I can’t let them fight. Shard took two steps forward to break them up before Ragna shouldered him aside.
“Shard, fly to Black Rock,” she pleaded. “I cannot risk you here!” But he barely heard. At the sound of shrieking fledges, Caj broke free of Stigr and flew off. Stigr didn’t pursue.
Clouds boiled over them from the sea. A flash of skyfire drew Shard’s gaze up. Something has to stop this. Someone!
Like a spell, a thunderclap broke the sky, shook the cliff and drew the attention of every warrior. As one, drawn by a sudden, twin knowing, wolves and gryfons lifted their heads to stare at the rise of the king’s rocks, where they saw Sverin meet Helaku.
The Great Hunter and Red King battled each other to the top of the ancient stones, a tangle of black fur and red fury against the blackening dawn.
Gold flashed by Shard. “Father!”
Shard lunged after Kjorn, tripping him and catching his wing. “Stop, Kjorn, look at them!”
Pale Thyra lunged up beside them, panting, her feathers bloodied and flanks scarred. Wolves milled, howling and barking as a few gryfons took flight, finally dragging fledges away from the scene.
“Look,” Shard urged Kjorn again, holding him back.
“They’re mad,” Thyra gasped. Both kings slashed and tore and snarled with the savagery of wild, witless beasts. Sverin’s metal bands protected him from Helaku’s worst bites at his throat and forelegs. The wolf king’s heavy coat acted as armor against Sverin’s talons.
“Let me go to him!” Kjorn spun tightly, snapping at Thyra and Shard. They fell back and the prince leaped, flapping hard against the wind to land at his father’s side. He tried to shove the king back from Helaku. Sverin spun with an eagle scream knocked Kjorn away with a violent thrust of his wings. Kjorn lost footing and slid down the rocks, stunned. Thyra clambered to him, with Shard close behind.
Gryfons milled, seeking the young and the injured, or flew. Wolves circled, howling for their king, but he did not hear. Shard saw some injured wolves trail toward the woods and the Nightrun.
The cave entrance must be near the river.
The kings, oblivious, fought. They rolled, kicking, snapping, Sverin’s red wings tearing the air, Helaku’s growls like rolls of thunder. Sverin knocked the wolf king to his side with a twist of wing and talon. Helaku wrenched around, trying to gain his feet, and left his throat open.
Shard saw it. Sverin saw it, too.
Shard leaped forward, shouting. It was too late. Too far.
Thunder buried the last cry of the old wolf king.
Any wolves who hadn’t fled gave wrenching cries as if it were their own death, turned and sprinted to the woods. Gryfon warriors, renewed by the sight of the dying wolf king, leaped and chased them down.
Sverin roared, breaking to an eagle scream, and his wild golden eyes turned toward the fleeing wolves. Rain spat down.
This has to stop, Shard thought wildly. They only want to escape now. Even as he thought it, words bellowed from his own chest.
“Sverin!”
The Red King stilled, wings stretched up above his body, and stared down at Shard. Shard drew himself up, unfolding his own wings to mirror the king. “Son of Per! End this.”
A raven swooped down around Sverin and the dead wolf king. “Behold, Sverin, behold the true king!” Circling, laughing, the raven fled when Sverin swiped at him. The battle seemed to hold its breath, bloody, panting wolves staring at their dead king, gryfons with wild eyes on Sverin, waiting for his command.
Sverin turned mad eyes on Shard, then his gaze darted to nearest wolf, a wounded, terrified yearling. Gryfons tensed. Wolves snarled, and the king crouched to pounce.
Shard leaped forward. “End this. Or fight me. I, Rashard son-of-Baldr, challenge you!”
“Shard,” Kjorn cried, and Sverin laughed in disbelief.
“Stay away from him, my son.” The gryfon king’s golden eyes pierced through the gloom to burn Shard like twin suns. “I told you what comes of trusting Vanir.”
Rain pelted down. The king stretched his wings wide, red flames against the storm.
�
�I should have seen it. I should have known the Vanir had a secret. The Night King was too willing to fall.” Sverin raised his head, his laugh breaking into a snarl. “Baldr the Nightwing threatened my father with tales of Vanir magic. We never die,” he rasped at the air, then snarled and crouched on top of the rocks. Shard tensed, lifting his wings for flight. The Red King lashed his tail. “I mean to prove him wrong.”
And with a shrieking roar, he leaped down, talons wide. But Shard launched himself away from the king’s furious charge, and swept fast into the sky. Sverin’s scream echoed across the sky as he followed Shard up into the storm.
~ 28 ~
Son of the Nightwing
Blinded by whirling dark clouds and rain, Shard pumped his wings hard, high into the storm. Skyfire lanced out over the sea and all his feathers prickled with the nearness of it. Peering back, he saw Sverin closing. Shard whirled, straining to hold his position for three breaths.
“I’m not your enemy! If you’d ever trusted me, my Lord, I told Kjorn—”
But the king’s eagle scream cut him off and Shard snapped his wings shut to drop under the charge. Sverin’s talons, streaked with Helaku’s blood, scraped his shoulders.
“Vanir traitor,” Sverin shouted, folding his wings to dive after Shard. Wind sucked the breath from Shard. He gasped, diving, then pulled up and banked, trying to lose Sverin in the winds. At least he was speaking. At least he was not fully mad.
“Give up! I see now. I see now I must rid the islands of wolves and Vanir if my pride is ever to have peace.”
He snarled as Shard swooped over his head, doubling back, and banked to follow, slower, but full of power.
Shard turned face to face Sverin before the king, trying to meet his gaze. “I am your pride! All I ever did was to serve—”
“You are nothing!” Sverin’s shriek broke into a roar and thunder smashed overhead. Shard stooped again as the king caught up to him, talons slicing the air, then Shard’s hind leg. Warm blood ran down his leg, a crimson stream washed away in the downpour.
Below, the silver and black waves crested high in the wind, beaten by rain.
Shard’s heart felt ready to burst, his breath scraping his throat. On each wing stroke his muscles quivered and twitched. He strained into the storm, but he could barely see. The Red King would never stop chasing him. But an Aesir couldn’t fly in the rain forever. Sverin’s furious shouts chased him through the rain.
“You are nothing! Nothing! Son of a dead king who would not fight! As he died, so will you!”
Helaku had said the same. Had called him nothing. New fire bloomed under Shard’s feathers, flushing his skin, giving him strength against the rain. I am the son of the Nightwing. I am the son of Ragna the White. But Helaku had seen his father die. Killed by the grandsire of the prince you call brother. He fell into the sea and all his visions died with him.
All his visions died with him.
“No,” Shard whispered to the storm. He thought of flying as high as he could, as high as he had ever practiced, as high as an Aesir could fly, to outpace the king. But Sverin would follow him to any height. Shard wondered if he would follow to any depth.
He whirled to face the Red King.
Dark red, feathers soaked, the wolves’ blood washed from him by the storm, Sverin swooped around Shard once. But rather than attack head-on again, he flapped and strained to gain height. Shard circled tightly and didn’t follow him up.
“My father lives, Sverin!” Shard eyed the king’s ascent, shouting to bait him down, stripping him of title and respect. “He lives in me!”
Sverin laughed, narrowed his wings, and hurtled straight toward Shard. His talons stretched out for the kill. His razor beak opened wide.
Shard braced.
Sverin slammed into him. Talons smashed together, beak slashing, his weight like a boulder, he growled, “Then I will kill him at last.”
Locked together, wings beating, they tumbled through the air. The Red King slashed and snarled, so close to victory. Shard strained and squirmed to avoid a killing bite. The wind battered around them. They wrenched and flipped so that for a heartbeat Shard rolled Sverin beneath him. Perfect.
Shard drew a breath. Then closed his wings. He might as well have turned to stone.
Not even the king could lift so heavy a weight.
They fell.
Sverin shrieked when he realized what Shard was doing and they plummeted toward the wild sea. “Release me!” He tossed his head, his massive, drenched wings already struggling with his own weight and the metal bands he wore. “Traitor! You called my son wingbrother and then turned on us all! I will kill you!”
Shard freed one foreleg and grabbed the king’s throat, forcing the wild gold eyes to his.
The scent of salt and brine tossed around them.
Now they could hear the waves.
So close, Shard could whisper, “The Vanir never die.”
Then he unlocked his talons from the king’s, wrenched loose, and dove. The wind yanked his breath. Waves lunged toward him. Sverin’s drenched wings stroked the air desperately and Shard saw distant colors, gryfons coming to aid their king.
Sverin shrieked curses and rage.
But he didn’t follow as Shard broke through wind, terror and rain to plunge alone into the black and crashing sea.
A gryfon, pale gray, landed before him. They stood on a shore of the Star Island, a real place of rock and wave, as if Shard were awake. Waves washed nearby, birds sang and Shard’s ears twitched. He felt light, tireless, and knew it was a dream, for his waking body would be full of aches and weariness. Or perhaps he was dead, and this was the Sunlit Land, free of pain and weariness forever. He felt a curious lack of sorrow.
“I’m proud of you, Shard.”
“Are you Baldr? Are you my father?” It could be no other. Shard clung to his sense of the world, trying to steer the dream, refusing to be distracted. Hungrily, he studied the gryfon before him, the Nightwing. His father. His feathers weren’t black, as Shard realized he’d pictured; black, like Stigr. He was raincloud gray. He was fit, compact, smaller than red Sverin and even old Stigr, and his lion haunches were pale, silvery gray.
“I am that part of him that passed into you. Your courage freed my spirit from the sea, and before I fly on, I can cling here a moment with you.”
“Then you are dead. And so am I.”
“The Vanir—”
“—never die,” Shard finished with him, and their voices were so similar they could have been the same gryfon. “Tell me what to do.”
Baldr stretched his wings, looking so alive that Shard twitched to step forward. But it wasn’t life. Either it was a dream, or he was dead. Either way he was sure he wouldn’t have the gift of touching his father.
“Only the Summer King can end this war the right way, for his is a name that stretches back into the memory of all creatures, and there may be more than gryfons battling by the time all is done.”
“But what must I do? Am I truly the Summer King? Or is it some other? Someone stronger?”
The pale gryfon blinked slowly at him, as if he were looking through him. “Being dead gives me no more answers than being alive does. Death is beyond this realm, my son. Only life, only your tie to the earth and the sky and the beating life of the world will give you a vision of what may come, or what has been.”
“I need help,” Shard said, feeling desperate. “If not you, then who?”
“You will have help.” Baldr watched him with an expression Shard hadn’t known a spirit, or memory, or whatever this vision was, could possess. Pride. Love. It almost shattered him. “When the Aesir first came to us, I offered peace and shelter and help in their plight. They didn’t come at first as conquerors.”
“That’s what Stigr thought,” Shard murmured. He turned to pace and his limbs started to feel heavier. Little aches needled up his wings. Something tugged him, like waves, tried to drag him from his father.
He was waking. So he wasn
’t dead. And his father was a dream.
“If you can discover why they fled their homeland, you may find an answer.”
“They think I’m dead. Kjorn would never speak to me again after my betrayal. What you ask is impossible.”
“Then give up,” murmured the gray gryfon. The dead king. His father. “Give up, sink into the sea and join me here in peace forever.”
Shard stared at him. “I won’t do that.”
A sound, vaguely familiar, filled Shard’s ears. Waves? Rain? A voice, screaming?
Shard!
The Nightwing didn’t seem to hear. “Good. Then see the vision I saw, the very eve of the day the Aesir came to us, with gold and kits in their grasp.”
“I think I dreamed it—”
Baldr opened his wings.
Red flashed in the sky and went dark, and they stood on a sunlit plain. Vast stretches of waving grass sprawled before him, broken by towering pillars and arches of marbled red rock. Above, a black gryfon soared across the cloudless blue, a bolt of skyfire in his talons. Again Shard saw the white mountains, heard the roar of the earth deep within.
“But I don’t understand it,” Shard whispered. Invisible waves dragged at him and he dug talons into the dream sand, clinging.
“Neither did I.” They stood again on the beach of Star Island. “And maybe that was my undoing.” More voices called for Shard, voices that Baldr didn’t hear. Shard clenched his talons into the gravel and sand but it began to slip through them like wind. Like water.
“But the Aesir came the morning after. Per was too proud. I offered help and he played the invader and took our land and suppressed our ways.” Stone-gray eagle eyes bored into Shard. “But I had another vision, one of peace, where gryfons ran with wolves in the woods, and had the strength of the Aesir and the peace of the Vanir within. I should have known I couldn’t have that vision without understanding the meaning of the first. And so I died for something that couldn’t yet be.”
“But how can I—”
“Shard! He’s there!”
“I can’t reach—”
“Shard, wake!”