by Jess E. Owen
He stuck with the change of subject. “I wasn’t ready either, this summer.”
“Catori!” called a male wolf. She lifted her head and Shard swiveled his ears. In the dark it was hard to recognize coat color, but the voice was familiar.
“Catori, run with me!” He loped up and hoisted to his hind legs to slap his paws on the rock near Catori’s feet, panting and delirious with the moon. A gray feather of Shard’s flickered against his neck fur, a sign of their friendship.
Catori tilted her head in to lick his face while Shard watched, bemused. “Not this night.”
His ears flattened in disappointment, then he darted his face in to wash her cheek vigorously. “Then I’ll wait another night, and another, until it’s the next Halfnight.” He tilted his head the other way and stopped panting, serious for a moment. “And the next, until you run with me.”
“You’ll be old and gray, Tocho,” Catori mused. “Find an eager young female to run at your side.”
“I’ll never find her.” Tocho’s eyes shone under the moon. “For I can see none but you.”
With that he shoved from the rock and bounded away, laughing, to dive into a wrestling game with the pups. Shard looked inquiringly to Catori.
“Perhaps.” She turned her ears toward Tocho. “Perhaps when there is peace in the Silver Isles again.”
Shard chuckled. He didn’t know Tocho well, but knew he was good. Once, Shard had saved his life from another gryfon, and for that Tocho hadn’t attacked the gryfon’s nesting cliffs that summer past. For that, they would always be friends.
None of that helped Shard think of a proper mate for himself, though. What Catori said was true. He would need a mate.
A queen.
A son, a brother, a father.
He shook his head, feathers ruffling up as if against a cold breeze. It was too much to think about, and there was no gryfess in the Silver Isles now that Shard could picture mating with, much less making queen. Perhaps the Vanir who were yet to return, as Catori had said. Perhaps there was a young Vanir huntress among them, who wouldn’t have known of Shard’s past as a runt among Aesir, an outcast. A female his age, demure and quiet, who would know him only as the prince who returned peace to the Silver Isles.
The thought was strangely cheering and he’d just begun to form an image of this phantom gryfess in his mind, with keen eyes and feathers like twilight…
A shout went up among the wolves.
Shard and Catori exchanged a look and jumped down from the rock to find Ahanu. Pups and young and old wolves alike clamored around them.
“What is it?” Shard asked. “What’s happening?”
All looked to the sky, questioning and staring, different wolves circled asked, “Gryfons? Is it the War King?”
“No, it’s sunrise!”
“Too early,” grumbled an old wolf.
Shard looked up, scanning the sky, and he shivered in awe. A soft, bluish light crept forward from the starward quarter of the sky. It glowed like moonrise, but from the wrong quarter and much too early.
Suddenly Stigr was at Shard’s side among the knot of excited wolves, ready to protect him against attack. He tilted his head at the sky. “What’s all this?”
“I don’t know,” Shard breathed, excitement beating through him. Some new magic was revealing itself under Tor’s blessed light, on the Halfnight. Maybe it was a final sign for him. He had to see.
He crouched and shoved into the air, his wing beats scattering wolves as he soared up high, ignoring Stigr’s shouts to come down.
8
Starfire
Caj sprawled on his nest, watching edgily as his mate stood near the mouth of their den.
“No wolves sighted at all, you said?” Sigrun stood with her dove-brown wings half open to catch the moonlight that peeked in from the dawnward sky. She was Caj’s mate, healer to the pride, and that night she looked like something from an old, eerie Vanir legend. Wolf howls drifted clearly to them from across the sea channel between the islands.
Mocking.
“Not during the day,” Caj confirmed, tracing the line of moonlight down her wingtip with his gaze. He rarely remained alert so late into the night, but Sigrun’s restlessness and the large rising moon had kept them both awake.
His ears twitched at the last of the howls before they fell quiet. “They hide in their caves, laughing, and come out at night.”
Sigrun turned, her face soft, eyes fierce. “Perhaps the king will finally consider hunting at night.”
“Doubtful.” Caj shifted and then thought better of standing. He didn’t want her to feel threatened. Instead he extended his wing to invite her back to the nest. “Come away from there.”
She perked her ears. A draft stirred up the strong scent of herbs and Caj sneezed, making Sigrun laugh. “Are you afraid I’ll fly away into the night?”
“No.” There was something about the moonlight through her wings and Caj hadn’t figured out if it was beautiful, or terrifying. She had survived the Conquering and accepted Caj as her mate, but that didn’t change who she was. A pure Vanir. For half a breath, he saw in her everything his wingbrother feared. Darkness. The cold moon. Magic.
Nonsense.
The only skill he had ever seen her practice was mending flesh and bone and spirit. That, she did with splints, herbs of the earth and her calm voice and heart. Not magic. And she had never lied to him, even about Shard. Once they were mated and she felt safe, she had told him that Shard was really the son of her wingsister, the son of the slain Vanir king. With her, Caj had kept the secret, had raised him under Sverin’s gaze, had tried to make him a loyal member of the Red King’s pride. Had failed.
He shifted again, closing his wing when she didn’t move to come to him. “Does Shard live?”
Sigrun turned, wings folding, and didn’t seem surprised that he’d asked, though it had been half a season since Shard’s battle with Sverin. “I don’t know.”
Caj pushed himself up to walk to her, to the edge of the cave, to show he wasn’t afraid of the night. That answer was her way of not lying to him. He knew it. “Or should I ask, did he survive his fall into the sea?”
“He didn’t fall,” she said, almost curtly. “He dove.”
Caj shuddered, feathers prickling up. “So he did survive.”
She looked down, ears laying back. “He would never harm Kjorn.”
“Kjorn isn’t my wingbrother.”
“He released Sverin before hitting the water, and he didn’t have to. You know him, Caj. You helped raise him.”
Caj stifled a growl. “I hardly helped.” Shard hadn’t let him, too aware that Caj wasn’t his true father, though Caj had tried many times to be a father to him.
Sigrun’s wing brushed his and she seemed to ignore his answer. “What will you do, now that you know?”
“What I’ve always done.” He hesitated before he touched his beak to the soft feathers behind her ear. “Protect you.”
She loosed a breath of relief and Caj began to turn, but she nipped his feathers. “Stay. Stand with me, watch the rise of the Halfnight.”
“I don’t observe the Halfnight,” he muttered, eyeing the moonlight that grew brighter on the sea beyond the nesting cliffs. It cast a pale, glimmering path along the water straight toward them as if the moon invited them down a strange new trail. A cursed trail. Is there a land of Endless Night, where Tyr’s light never touches? A land where the cowards and oath breakers go to suffer when they die?
“It’s a cursed time,” Caj went on when she didn’t speak. “The beginning of cursed winter.”
“I observe it,” Sigrun answered quietly, looking out again. Caj hesitated. She had never shamed him, never flown at night, never spoken openly of the old beliefs where others could hear. Only to him. Because she felt safe.
After another moment, Caj sat slowly next to his mate. They sat there in silence for a little time. He became aware of Sigrun humming, a low, timid song in her throat. She never g
rew louder, and didn’t add words, but the song seemed to match the moon.
It was late, middlemark, and Caj’s weariness ate at him, but he’d decided to let Sigrun determine when they would sleep.
Just as he’d begun to think the moon had a little of its own kind of beauty to it, a strange, growing unease warmed his stomach. The many deep scars lacing his skin began to ache the way they did before a storm, his nerves as tense as if an enemy approached.
Glancing furtively to Sigrun, he saw her eyes widening, and her ears laid flat against her skull. They both sensed something, like a storm, something growing thick but invisible in the air, as if the night were coming alive.
He looked back out into the dark, and they saw it at the same time.
Ice chilled Caj’s heart.
“What is that?” Sigrun breathed. She crouched, staring at a strange, growing light in the starward quarter of the sky.
“I don’t know,” Caj answered, as calmly as he could, though his feathers had begun to stand on end. “But it’s been seen before.”
Shard flew so high the thin, frosty air spun his thoughts in giddy circles. Below, Stigr’s swearing barely made it through the cold wind.
The Isles spread out below Shard in the moonlight, the tides pulled away by mighty Tor to reveal land between each island, to reveal that the Silver Isles were really one. Each isle thrust up from the sand and glittering back sea, bunched in the shape of a gryfon’s hind paw.
Shard gulped cold air, his wing beats slowing, but strong enough to keep him aloft at the dizzying height. His mind alight with mystery, he swung about to stare starward. That quarter of the sky was so named for the Daystar that shone high above in the night and day and could be relied on for direction from any quarter. Now all the stars were washed out by the strange pale light.
“Impulsive—foolish—” Stigr’s gasping reprimand cut short as the older gryfon decided to save his breath. He flapped hard to hold steady next to Shard as they stared. From that height they could see the slight curve of the world, like the edge of an egg with light behind it, and the starward sea beyond the Silver Isles glowed blue.
White Tor stood high at middlemark. The Halfnight. Shard could just picture Tyr, standing perfectly on the other end of the world, waiting for his time.
The moon laid heavy light on them, turning Stigr’s black feathers to molten silver.
A slow coil tightened Shard’s belly as he waited, staring starward. At first he saw only the fixed, guiding Daystar.
The cold, growing light crawled over the mountains and trees and tops of all the Isles. At last the source of the glow came over the earth of the horizon.
“Great Tor’s wings,” Stigr breathed, and Shard could only agree.
A stream of fire glided across the sky.
Shard had seen stars fall, bright motes dropping like sparks and dying. This wasn’t the same. As if a star had grown wings, a ball of pale, bluish fire trailing a long, bright tail soared slow and blazing across the night.
Something flashed before him, a dream image in front of his open eyes.
A white serpent in the sky. Swan wings shaping the wind. A gleaming pearl in a black cave under a sky swathed in stars.
“Only the long day brings rest…“
“Only the dark of night, dawn!” Shard sang back desperately, hoping for an answer. “Who are you?”
“Tyr’s beak.” Stigr’s second remark broke Shard from the vision. “It’s headed this way, Shard.”
Instead of a serpent, Shard saw the starfire again. He blinked hard, eyes streaming against the dry, cold air as he reoriented himself.
His heart ignited with glee. It was a final sign. It had to be, fire from Tyr but colored like the moon and sea, a sign from both Tyr and Tor to show him his path. Aodh was right. He’d only had to look. The line of fire split the sky in half, drawing a clear arc toward the windward quarter of the sky.
Windward. Toward the home of the Aesir. The home of the conqueror, Per the Red.
Baldr’s vision, now Shard’s vision, was of the homeland of the Aesir.
I’m suppose to go, Shard knew with utter surety. Whether or not Stigr likes it.
Maybe he could find allies there. Maybe some of his own Vanir pride had fled there, waiting for him to find them, or for news that he had risen so they could return. Maybe he could learn a way to make the Aesir in the Silver Isles leave peacefully if he knew more clearly why they had come. He would find the white mountain from the vision, and the singer who called to him, and fulfill whatever the vision meant to show him.
Any solution he wanted that involved not confronting Kjorn as a rival prince or challenging Sverin would be found in the Aesir homeland.
And I knew it, Shard thought grimly. I knew, and it shouldn’t have taken Tyr’s talons raking the sky to see it.
“Fly down with me,” Stigr growled, for though the starfire showed no sign of awareness or life, it flew nearly straight toward them.
Shard didn’t want to chance an encounter with the fire, and followed Stigr down. The older gryfon was more experienced and heavier than Shard, but Shard spent his time practicing flight. He’d learned the way that falcons dove at eye-defying speeds to catch their prey. He sleeked his feathers tight and twisted his body, contorting until the wind slipped like river water around him. He outpaced Stigr in a heartbeat and hurtled toward the beach, flaring only a few leaps’ height above the water, slowing just enough to land hard and sprint to Catori and Ahanu.
“What is it?” Shard asked, breathless, feeling hot and tense and ready to follow the fire across the ocean. Stigr thumped beside them, nearly knocking two cubs over. “What does it mean?”
“It shows a path,” Catori murmured. “Our family has seen it once before.”
Shard blinked, and Stigr made a rough sound. “Tell us what it meant to you, then.”
“I will tell the tale,” said Ahanu, and even the pups trotted close to listen, and learn the name of the fiery creature in the sky.
“Kajar’s Sign,” Kjorn breathed.
He shouldn’t have been awake. Aesir were children of the day. But he couldn’t sleep with the moon shining in and the wolf howls in the night. He’d almost decided to break the laws of his father and Tyr and fly to the Star Isle to hunt the wolves down, if only to get his last couple hours of sleep before dawn.
Then the sky had brightened. Too bright for night, and too early for dawn, so Kjorn had risen from his nest and paced to the mouth of his den.
Fire streamed across the sky. Kjorn’s heart lit and pounded.
“My mate,” said Thyra, slipping up beside him. She was calm, as if they only observed a new breed of deer walking past. A cool huntress to the core. The moon and strange starfire lit her lavender feathers with an other-worldly pale blue glow. “What did you call it?”
She didn’t look afraid. Kjorn had never seen her afraid of anything and recalled again why he loved her, had chosen her. He hesitated to tell her, but the old stories drifted to him, and he had promised himself he would never keep anything from her.
“There’s a story. A true story. My mother told it to me once as a kit, but my father wouldn’t tell it after she died. He doesn’t like omens or talking about the past. Aesir look toward the future.”
“Tell me,” Thyra urged. “Your past is my past now, too. I should know it.”
Kjorn watched the majestic progress of the starfire as he spoke. “My mother said that the starfire comes every few generations, and has flown since Tyr and Tor created the world. She said it first led the gryfons from the realm of Tyr and Tor down into the world, and when it’s seen, it’s a sign of things coming, or where to go.”
Thyra huffed, looking concerned and practical, traits from both her parents showing as she studied the starfire. “Do you know what it means now?”
“No.” Kjorn lifted his wings, staring at the starfire. Is it a sign for me? It can’t be. Kjorn, like his father, didn’t truly believe in omens, but only in real things
that he could do and control.
Surely it was only a strange occurrence of the night, like the moon and stars.
“I don’t,” he said firmly, looking at Thyra. “But it’s been seen by my family once before. Great-grandfather Kajar saw a starfire trail like this, and believed it would lead him to his destiny. He followed it all the way across his own territory and the sea beyond, into the arctic land of the dragons, and started his war to conquer their land and seize their gems. He took gems and by all accounts won his battles, but…”
He trailed off. “That’s all Mother and Father ever told me of it. When Kajar died, our families and allies were strong enough that my grandfather Per led us all to conquer the Silver Isles.”
Thyra seemed to hold her breath a moment. Her scent drifted to Kjorn, always a comfort, and now with a new edge. The scent of their unborn kit in her belly. His kit. The thought of it tightened Kjorn’s muscles with pride and sudden fear. He wondered if it would be male or female. He pictured a male kit with his strength and Thyra’s sharp wit. He could take him hunting along the Nightrun as a fledge.
What if it’s a little huntress? he thought in dismay. He wouldn’t know what to do with her besides protect her from pushy males. But she would have the best mother to teach her all she needed. Either way. A little warrior or a huntress. It will be Thyra’s and mine.
And he would do whatever he had to do to make the world right before his offspring came into it.
Is this how my father felt about me?
Thyra nuzzled him out of his thoughts. “What will you tell your father? He’ll be sleeping fast. He won’t have seen it. What will you tell him?”
Kjorn stared at the fire in the sky, blood racing as if he were about to plunge into battle. He thought of his father’s relentless hunt for the wolves, his distrust of the native Vanir gryfons, his fear of the night. He thought of his own new suspicion that Einarr was hiding something. He couldn’t imagine what Sverin would do if he learned of the starfire.
They already struggled to prepare for winter.
Unrest already grew.
Thyra watched him quietly, waiting. Kjorn set his ears back, turned from the night and said, “Nothing.”