by Jess E. Owen
Distracted by the shining pillars, Shard walked a few more steps in, only to look behind him and see that hundreds and hundreds of dens were carved into the walls, ringing the cavern in neat tiers, level upon level.
He peeked over to see the inside of a den on his level, and his skin prickled to see that the walls were entirely lined with translucent, honey-colored amber. Raw stones of all colors piled within the room, waiting to be polished or cut.
Feeling distinctly like a trespasser, Shard backed away quickly and looked around again, realizing that every room must be stacked with precious gems and treasure.
He turned his attention back to the pillars. Slowly he realized these were not simply art or fancy, but tales with clear beginnings, middles and endings.
Dragon history.
Growing excited, he followed a story that ran its course in images across the bases of several pillars. A dragon emerged from a wild sea and encircled the earth like Midragur. The same dragon raised mountains from the sea, which, on the golden pillar, were inlaid with pearl that looked like snow, so Shard knew it was the Sunland and the Mountains of the Sea.
The sun and moon rose and set on the Ages across the pillars and Shard saw war, peace, famine and abundance. He saw the Sunlanders learning how to bend gold and jewels into their crafts, saw them swimming, fishing, flying.
“Like gryfons,” he murmured, touching a talon to the gold. “Dragons dwell in earth and sky.”
Eagerly, Shard wound around the pillars, seeking the Tale of the Red Kings.
“You enjoy history, I see.”
Shard yelped and sprang into the air, whirling about and flapping two leaps high.
The withered voice, female, came from above him. “I thought the empress expressly forbid you from entering the treasure rooms.” Shard spotted her, peering out of a den four tiers off the ground level—an enormous, aged dragoness with scales the same soft hue of a fading aster.
For a moment Shard couldn’t respond, for he saw that she sat coiled in a den lined, like the one in amber, with nothing but panels of polished emerald. Firelight glowing off the precious stone wall cast green warmth around her and the den like a summer day in the woods. The dragoness, sitting comfortably in the den and with a sheet of thin, hammered gold before her, watched him curiously as he stared. “But then I suppose it is a gryfon’s nature to ignore such a command?”
Shard heard irony in her voice, not condemnation, but he tread carefully as he re-gathered his voice. “I think gryfons are very misunderstood here.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I’m Shard,” he said, flying up to her level. “Son-of-Baldr.” Dwarfed by dragon treasure and the dragoness herself, he felt he should add more. “Prince of the Silver Isles in the Starland Sea.”
“Yes. I’ve heard. You may land, there.” She pointed to a ledge just outside where she lounged. “It wearies me to watch you hover so.”
Shard touched down on the rock, taking another look around the gleaming den, then mantled to her. Her soft, shifting gray-violet scales had lost their shine, but light brightened her eyes and her mane and whiskers seemed to drift about in their own invisible breeze. He was sure he stood before a springborn dragon, one near the end of her life, a strange mix of ancient knowledge, swift growth and naïve wisdom.
Taking a breath when he beheld her more closely Shard blurted, “You’re beautiful.”
She chuckled, taken aback. “Oh? Among my kind, I am considered plain. I would return the compliment but I don’t know how your looks fare, among gryfons.” She seemed pleased, embarrassed that she was pleased, and she carefully set her sheet of gold aside to make room for Shard. Glancing at it furtively, Shard saw she’d been in the middle of tracing out images. He wondered if he was in any of them.
“I fear I’m also considered plain,” he confessed, and the scales around her eyes crinkled. “I hope you don’t find me disrespectful. Everything seems wondrous here.” He settled his wings. “Are you the chronicler?”
“Yes. I am Sora’s daughter, Ume.”
Shard mantled again, bowing low. “Honorable Ume. A spirit told me of a dragon who keeps separate the truth from lies, who keeps the stories. She gave me this token, from a dragon who was once her friend, long ago.” He lifted the silver chain and she bent her head to examine it. “She said you might be able to help me.”
Her eyes widened. “Yes, I know this work. These links are signature of my family. To what spirit did you speak?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Shard murmured. She smelled of earth and warm dragon flesh, mineral and sharp. He had a feeling she didn’t often leave this vast cavern. “I have so many questions for you.”
“And I you.” She leaned forward, sniffing the air about him, then backed away into the emerald cave to give him more space. “You’ve stirred the winds of Ryujan with your arrival, no doubt about that. And I hear something in your voice I haven’t heard since I hatched.” She looked beyond him, to the long, endless hall of history and treasure. Then her large eyes settled on Shard’s face. “I didn’t think I would know it when I did, but I do. Amaratsu heard it, and followed it, and now I know it too.”
“What do you hear?”
She closed her eyes, ears lifting. “I hear the summer. I hear life and truth and hope. I hear the Silver Wind.”
~ 35 ~
The Chronicler
UME LED SHARD THROUGH the golden pillars, explaining their history as she went, and pointing out details of particular interest within the shimmering reliefs.
Shard had told her his tale, and she appeared unsurprised by any of it. “Why are all the other dragons repulsed by gryfons, without even knowing me?”
“Ah, well it has to do with Kajar,” she said dryly, looking away toward a distant end of the cavern. “And the Great Betrayal.”
“I’ve heard two versions of that story,” Shard reminded her, searching her face, but her eyes had grown distant. Boldly, with respect, he touched his talons to her forefoot to draw her attention back.
She swiveled her head with a flash of surprise, then lowered her head to regard him closely. “Yes. You may have.”
Shard stepped back, tail flicking. “If the chronicler keeps separate the truth from the lies, I would like very much to hear your version, and if it’s different, why it’s been hidden all these years.”
“How I wish young Hikaru had come with you.”
“Me too. But we couldn’t risk it. His friend Natsumi is convinced we would all suffer great punishment if he was caught showing these things to me.”
“Great punishment,” she echoed thoughtfully. “How much greater could the empress punish us? How much greater than to be trapped here for our short lives, repeating our same lies to ourselves again and again, the moment we hatch? Telling our tales until they seem to us true, and are only a way to hide from the rest of the world?”
Shard looked from the golden pillars to her, and dipped his head low. “I hope to help you change that. Hikaru does. Amaratsu did.”
“I know.” She sighed, and resumed walking in sinuous undulation through the pillars. “I hope to learn from your brave example. Come with me, Rashard of the Silver Isles. I know you have particular questions, but first I must show you something.”
Without warning she bounded forward twice and jumped up, pale wings beating the still, warm air to fly high where the pillars were not yet covered in metal.
Shard spiraled up with her, and she showed him to a golden panel that covered only half of one of the pillars. Shard circled around it, taking in the images.
“Why, that’s Amaratsu flying to the Winderost, Hikaru, and…” He paused, staring at an image in gold. “Is that…?”
“Yes,” Ume murmured.
“A gryfon?” Shard flew closer to examine the relief of a small gryfon in gold, the wingtips edged with silver.
“Yes. The first gryfon in our halls since the time of Kajar.” She watched him, her eyes seeming to flicker with fire as the
torches dodged and danced with their wing beats.
“What’s that in the background. Wind? Fire?” Shard flapped forward, studying the swirls and slashes around the gryfon’s wings, and realizing they looked familiar.
“That is sky.”
“Sky,” Shard breathed, recalling the combed swirls of snow within the fifth ring, and seeing that Ume’s marks were the same.
“Yes. The highest, the lowest, the first and last, all in one.”
“I learned a little of it, with Hikaru, in the warrior rings.”
“I know. All that happens in Ryujan makes its way to me.”
“What does it mean? Hikaru couldn’t tell me, and I won against Kagu but I still don’t understand.”
Ume seemed to hover without effort, but Shard had to bank and circle slowly, watching her as she explained. “You learned, perhaps, only of the four elements born in the First Age. Sky has always been, will always be, like the Silver Wind, is between us, around us.” She stretched her claws upward, then swept her foreleg around in a graceful movement.
“A great crafter may wield sky as he works with gold to create art. A warrior may fall into sky when she does battle. Or a master of flight.” She dipped her head to Shard. “It carries our songs to those who listen. It is not the wind that carries your dreams, it is sky. You were springborn, prince of the Silver Isles, which keeps you grounded. But I think your true element is not earth, but sky, for you seem not to seek the easiest path like water, nor to forge brashly ahead like fire, or to remain still, like earth—but to seek the path between them all. That is the way of sky.”
Shard remembered the feeling he touched when he flew high, or when he dove fast and trusted that the sea would catch him, when he’d trusted himself within the fifth ring. “I don’t think I’m worthy of that element.”
“Oh,” said Ume. “But you must be.”
“Why?”
“Because for us to move into a new Age, we must be more than we are, and we must be shown. One must—”
“Fly higher,” Shard whispered. “I know the song. Did you make this panel?”
“I did.” She gazed fondly at her work. “This will be my legacy, which all chroniclers will preserve until we are no more, until the end of Ages when great Ryu, whom you call Midragur, uncoils and the egg of the earth hatches, and the end of the world returns us all to sky.”
Shard took a slow, hard breath. “And this gryfon is me?”
“That is my hope.”
“There’s nothing after,” Shard said, winging up higher.
“Of course not,” she murmured, watching him. “For we have only reached now.”
Shard circled once more around the column, then glided down to land. Ume followed, settling in tidy coils upon the ground.
“Our time is short,” Shard said quietly. “I hope that I can fulfill all you want, but I need help. I need to know the truth about the Red Kings, and I need to know all you know about the wyrms and why they are in the Winderost.”
“Ah.” Her gaze shadowed. “They are woven together. “
“I thought as much. What do you know of the wyrms? “
Ume’s gaze traveled along the pillars. “They are an ancient race, with an ancient memory. A relic of the First Age. They seem ever Voiceless, but they do have names—or at least, ways of knowing and addressing themselves. They may never speak, but we must not treat them lesser because of this. Oh, if only the others would listen as you do.”
She uncoiled and slid past Shard to gaze out into the massive cavern and the tier upon tier of precious rooms adorned in jewel and metal. “They understand us, or did once, but they do not speak the way we do. They live to be very old.”
“My uncle taught me that whales are the oldest living creatures in the earth or sea.”
With a kind, pointed look Ume said, “I doubt your uncle knew of the wyrms.”
“No…I suppose he didn’t really know much about them.” Something tight caught in Shard’s throat when he thought of Stigr, and he forced himself to focus on his questions. “You say they have names. How do you know, if they can’t speak?”
“They are in the histories. But their names are not like our names. They are…sounds. When we met them, we turned their sounds into proper names. They responded, it seemed, and they appeared honored. So we know they can understand. But they don’t speak. The last named wyrm was called rhydda.”
It sounded like a growl. When Shard repeated it, it felt natural at the back of his throat. “Rhydda.” The name, for some reason, made him think of stone, and of Brynja. “Does it mean red?”
“Yes. So you see, there is something in us which recognizes them. So just as creatures of the earth may speak to birds of the air and sea dwellers beneath the waves, we can talk to them. But they, perhaps, are not ready to speak. Who knows if they will ever be. They age as slowly as we Sunlanders do quickly. Like the earth, they are slow to move, to learn, to act, and, apparently, to forgive.”
“Forgive what?” Shard asked, stepping closer. Ume looked deeper in the cavern, toward the age of Bronze and Stone. “Ume? Amaratsu said they like nothing but treasures and hoarding and that when Sunland dragons tried to enlighten them, they turned away. Is that true?”
“We know only what is told in our tales, and on the pillars here. How can we truly know, if we were not there? How can we know their hearts, if we have never faced them?”
He felt she was keeping something from him, and sought around the edges of her words. “I’ve faced them.” Shard looked toward the entryway, feeling strangely watched. “And I fear what she said might be true, though I would still like to find out why.”
“It might be.” Ume, too, glanced toward the entrance, but it was still. “But, perhaps, we all have our own truth too. Since the Second Age it has been the duty of the Chronicler to remember that we can only ever understand the past through the stories that are left for the future. Those stories are the truth as the storytellers saw it. That is why one must rise higher…”
“And see farther,” Shard said quietly. “I know the song. I’ve tried to see farther, to learn why the Aesir acted as they did. I learned they fled the wyrms. And now, I’m trying to learn why the wyrms are in the Winderost, and whether Kajar was honorable, or a murderer and a thief as Amaratsu said. That has led me here.”
Ume bowed her head a moment, then collected herself. “For those answers, we turn to the Tale of the Red Kings. Come with me.”
They walked through the pillars which felt to Shard like a towering forest of gold, and he blinked to realize, after a few moments of walking, that they now walked in pillars of silver. The light changed with the metal, the forest of silver more ghostly and pale with the torch fire, like icicles lit by sunrise.
Shard looked up, and up, cramping his neck to realize he couldn’t see the ceiling of the mountain chamber. “Why the change to silver?”
“We mark our cycles thus,” Ume said, stopping to wind herself around one silver pillar in particular. “Though we repeat our origin story at the bottom of each new set of pillars. Right now, we are in the Age of Gold. You see thus, farther back, Silver, Bronze, Iron, Stone.”
Shard narrowed his gaze, staring hard toward the back of the cavern, and marveled to think how much better dragon eyesight must be than his. He could vaguely discern a shift in color where the metal wrapping on the pillars changed, but far away, wherever the Age of Stone began, was too dark for him to see.
“What happens when you run out of room in this mountain?” Shard asked, and the question made Ume laugh with surprise.
“We will start again. A new mountain. A new age. Look here, now.”
Shard looked, and saw a continuation, in silver, of the beginning of the world, but in this Age the stories were more detailed, and wound up a single column in distinct rows, rather than stretching across multiple pillars.
Shard told himself he was ready, ready to hear the truth, good or bad, about Kajar and the dragons, and what it would mean for K
jorn, Sverin, and the other Aesir.
Just as Ume turned to another row of silver columns, Shard heard a shout from the entryway.
“Shard!”
He whirled. “Hikaru? What are you doing?”
The young dragon hopped into the air and whipped between the columns to the Age of Silver to land beside Shard. “You were taking too long . Oh…” His eyes grew huge as he took in his surroundings. “Oh, it’s so beautiful. Shard, isn’t it amazing? Much more beautiful that I thought. I wonder why do we wait until our second season? Oh, greetings, Honorable Chronicler,” he added, mantling to Ume, whose eyes squinted in amusement and fondness. “I was worried. We had to come.”
“We?” Shard looked, dismayed, to see Natsumi following on foot, more dignified in her approach.
“Forgive me,” she said when she reached them. “I couldn’t stop him.”
“Natsumi,” Ume said, looking just as pleased at their arrival as if her own kin had come to visit. “How lovely you’ve grown.”
“Mistress Ume.” She bowed, lifting her pale wings. “Forgive the intrusion.”
“How I wish more young dragons would intrude,” Ume said. “You’ve come just in time.” When she noted Shard’s expression she said, “They’re already here, you know. They might as well hear along with you.”
Shard eyed Hikaru with a stern glare, but it had no effect.
“Yes, we might as well hear. Are you going to tell the truth?” Hikaru demanded, and Ume’s loud laugh leaped around the silver columns.
“As well as I can.”
Despite his worry, Shard was pleased that Hikaru and Natsumi would see the tale alongside him. No matter what, they would see it together, and no dragon could say that Shard was lying to Hikaru, whatever the truth turned out to be.
“You have joined us just in time,” Ume said again, her voice carrying the note of an instructor, “for me to reveal the truth to Rashard about the tale of Kajar.”
