Song of the Summer King (The Summer King Chronicles)

by Jess Owen

  He needed to fly to the Black Rock Isle that night, and meet with Stigr again.

  ~ 11 ~

  Black Rock

  The last pink light of sunset faded. Shard watched it from his den, stretched out on his belly. He’d meant to sleep to be alert when night fell, but sleep was a hare he couldn’t catch. Ears lifted, he listened to the gryfons of Windwater settling for the night. Stars pricked the darkness. The moon had already risen above his vantage point, but he noted the glow that turned the black sky to velvet blue.

  Midnight of the full moon. Tail flicking back in forth in time with his breath, Shard waited, wondering if the night was always so long.

  He may have slept, for the next thing he remembered he couldn’t see but he heard every sound. The crawling waves stalked and crashed into the rocks. Wind in the grass five leaps above him, rooted hard in the rock. Somewhere, a gryfon snored. Shard’s ear twitched and he opened his eyes.

  Wolf howls sang across Star Isle. They had woken Shard before. Hunting howls.

  To me, brother. To me, sister. Here, here. Shard flattened his ears. Surely, he imagined the words. Mudding earth words. He pushed himself up and crouched at the edge of the cave, peering out. Away from the horizon, the white moon perched like a queen gryfon high in the dark, white, bright as a false day. Shard could even see the shadows of sea wheat whipping farther down the shore, and remembered Stigr’s words.

  I have never seen bright Tyr strike a gryfon down for opening his wings in the moonlight.

  In this darkness, Shard wondered if Tyr saw at all. Will he see my second flight in the dark, when my life isn’t at stake, and turn his light from me? The alternative chilled Shard in a way, that Stigr might be right and it was only the law of the red kings that forbade flying at night.

  “Only one way to know,” Shard whispered to the breeze, and lunged out, flaring his wings to catch the first draft and soar high. A wolf howl cut the air, triumphant. The hunt was done. Shard banked, leaving Star Island behind him.

  Son of the Nightwing, he had been thrice called. His father had flown at night, often enough to bear a nickname. Something flickered in Shard, something warmed, an ember.

  My father.

  He had come from somewhere. He had a legacy.

  He stroked the wind and rose until the islands were dark, slumbering humps in a silver sea. Feeling a little homesick, he took the longer route, windward of the Sun Isle. He flew high, over the nesting cliffs, and looked down at his home. No one would be awake to see him.

  The moon shone bright on him, cold silver light completely unlike sunlight, light without heat, only showing him the way. No other his age had seen this. Kjorn had never seen this. Kjorn couldn’t see in the dark. Hallr, Halvden and all the other mighty Aesir would never know the sight that Shard saw.

  Something shivered through him and broke out as laughter.

  What are they afraid of? Wheeling, he folded his wings and dove, spinning through the air like a pinecone before flaring to glide again. It felt as if the whole night belonged to him.

  Night wind battered and tossed him, challenging, lifting and then sinking him without the heat of thermals from rocks warmed by the sun.

  As Shard came around starward of the Sun Isle, he saw Black Rock. It looked huge in the dark. Everything looked larger and he couldn’t fathom it. Shard squinted, trying to determine if it was a trick of the dark and moon. The silver edges of the waves seemed farther back than a normal tide. He had never seen it so far out before. Disoriented for a moment, Shard cast his gaze up to the Day Star, and turned his flight accordingly.

  The Black Rock isle loomed huge in the moonlight, seeming bigger than he remembered. Not knowing the surface of it well, he chose to glide low and land on the sand beach where the tide was out. Wind whispered between the rocks. Shard’s talons crunched in the wet, pebbly sand. The night shuddered through him still, excitement banishing nerves as he caught his breath.

  He perked his ears. “Hello?”

  With tide so far out, the broken rocks and jagged edges of the little island formed a wet, black maze in the night. He felt foolish. The strange old gryfon could be anywhere, or nowhere at all. A cowardly exile playing games with me.

  “Stigr! I’ve come!”

  A step shuffled in the sand, but rocks blocked the wind and Shard couldn’t catch a scent. A shadow in the dark lee of a rock stopped, then bounded away. Not like gryfon movement.

  “Wait—”

  Shard snarled and sprang after it. Tripping over rocks and threatened by tiny crabs underfoot, he finally shoved into the air, flying swift, narrow swoops through a maze of wet rock. The challenge warmed his blood and he almost laughed. The shadowed creature kept just ahead, and almost seemed to pause a few times so Shard could keep up. It can’t be some witless creature.

  “Might as well stop now!” Shard called.

  At last his quarry sprang into open ground, onto a trail that led up the face of Black Rock to the surface. Shard swooped down to catch it, talons splayed—but it sprang, too quick, to a lower ledge of rock. With no time to pull up, Shard landed hard, breathless with the thrill of the hunt.

  The ground crunched under his feet, brittle shale or dead timber. He didn’t bother wondering about it as he turned, ready for a fight.

  His quarry padded back up to the top of the rock, and in the white wash of light he clearly, but impossibly, saw Catori, the she-wolf of Star Island. Shard caught a sharp breath.

  “You. What are you doing here? How did you come here?” A wolf couldn’t swim so far.

  “I always come to Stigr on the full moon,” the she-wolf answered evenly. “And I was about to say that it’s good to see you again.”

  “Your brothers tried to kill me!”

  She perked her ears as if surprised, then shook herself and lowered her head, ears forward. Her voice remained soft as if they were still talking in the woods under the sun. “I didn’t know. You must believe that.”

  “I’ve never killed or attacked a wolf and they would have killed me that day.” But he thought of how he gladly would have fought her in the woods if she’d accepted his challenge. He thought of the dead young wolf at Hallr’s feet. “They would’ve had their vengeance on me for the acts of others.”

  “The anger is old, and growing,” she said quietly, as if she didn’t notice his crouch and lashing tail. “Now your king has pushed even beyond the boundary of the gryfon’s isle. We were content on the starward side of the river.”

  Her words, like a freak wind, tossed him. “You…left us alone on purpose?”

  “Of course.” She lifted her nose to the wind. “It is high spring. No reason to fight over food when food abounds. But if you bring the fight to us, don’t think my family will not fight back.”

  “You already have. One of your young hunters attacked members of my pride.”

  Catori perked her ears, then lowered her head. “So. You believe that arrogant Hallr. No. None of my hunters attacked you. They came upon us by surprise to steal a fresh kill.”

  Shard laid his ears back. “I don’t believe you. Gryfons don’t steal their food.”

  “You may never think of stealing food, but you are a better hunter than Hallr and his son.” She paced and Shard shifted, checked by her words.

  Shard hesitated, not sure if that was true. A part of him believed that Hallr would seek out trouble, kill out of spite and not defense.

  But what am I thinking, to believe the word of a conniving she-wolf over a gryfon?

  But, Shard thought, growing irritated in his uncertainty, Catori had helped him once. What has Hallr ever done but question me?

  “I don’t hold you to blame, Shard.” Her eyes glinted in the shifting dark, the eerie, reflected green of a creature who saw through the black. “Not this time. But choose your path well. My family will seek vengeance if given the chance.”

  “That sounds like a threat,” Shard snarled. Part of him cried out, wanting to say that he had admonished Hallr, tha
t he tried to restrict the gryfon’s hunting, that he, too, thought there was enough for everyone.

  But meeting an exile and treating with wolves would make me a full fledged traitor to Sverin’s law.

  “It’s a warning.” She tilted her head. “That young wolf’s name was Kwahu.”

  “I don’t care.” Shard’s hackle feathers lifted as Catori circled him, like a teasing wind or a raven.

  “He was named after the eagles. He admired gryfons, once.”

  “Stop! I don’t care! He interfered with a hunt and that is the price.”

  She stood beneath a rock now, in shadow. “I just wanted you to know. To know that he had a name. You were willing enough to learn Lapu’s, before you killed him. What has changed?”

  “I’ve been given duties by the king.” He straightened. “And I won’t see his efforts fail. You speak winding words all around me, trying to confuse me, trying to make me see him as a villain, but even you should know that only the strong endure.”

  “Yet there is balance. We are not the Nameless, witless beasts at the mercy of hunger and fear.” The wind stirred her coat, the black feathers matted into her fur flickered. Light slivered and diffused as clouds gusted over the moon. “Has she taught you nothing?”

  “Who?” Shard loosed a frustrated, witless shriek. “How did you come here? Why do you bother me? How do you know Stigr?”

  She laughed at him. “I walked. I think we can be friends, you and I. I see confusion in you, not arrogance. Stigr is my friend since he helped me once, as a cub. What else do you want to know? You don’t know the joy I feel seeing you out in the night, son-of-the-Nightwing.”

  The breath left him. “I think you’re toying with me. And I’m through with it. Your brothers would’ve killed me for the acts of others. Why should I believe that young wolf didn’t attack Hallr for the same reason?”

  She flashed her long white teeth. “You’ll fall back on the way of the Aesir, then? Or the witless beasts? You’re stronger. My brothers are weary and angry and have run dry of forgiveness. Have you?”

  “Forgiveness? They attacked me. What should they forgive?”

  “The crimes of your king! Once, wolves and gryfons shared these isles in peace but now, after so much death…Rashard, which came first?”

  “No!” His shout cracked off the stone and then fell dead in the night. “No more riddles, no more songs, leave me in peace!”

  “Which came first?” Along with her voice, in his head he heard the gryfon in his memory, strong and gravelly. Shard lunged and she darted away, her voice quick and sing-song.

  “The mountain, or the sea? Not even the eldest could say—” she leaped away from his snapping beak and he tripped, stumbling across the strange, dusty ground. “—whether first came wave or tree.”

  Shard paused and she stopped with him, ears perking, then skittered away when he leaped. She laughed as if it were a game.

  “Which came first? The silence, or the song? Not even the rowan could say–”

  “Be silent!” The lion roar shook his voice. Catori spun to face him, crouched and ready.

  “…had it a voice,” she intoned, calm as a summer night, “and lived so long.”

  Shard crouched to spring, wings tense, when a rumbling voice cut through the air between them, a barrier as real as stone. It echoed what Shard knew, in some dark forgotten place of his kithood, was the rest of Catori’s song.

  “Only in stillness the wind

  Only from ice the flame.

  When all were Nameless, the wise will tell

  It was only by knowing the other

  That they came to know themselves.”

  Shard looked up to see Stigr lounged on a slab of rock above them. Clouds drifted free of the moon and revealed the exile’s color, the same dusty black as the volcanic rock. Shard realized at once that those weren’t raven feathers braided into Catori’s fur. Stigr’s tail coiled and uncoiled in lazy sweeps as if he’d been lying there watching the whole time.

  “Children,” he greeted both. “Welcome. Shard. Show respect. This is hallow ground.”

  Shard glanced back to Catori, then to his uncle. Something in the exile’s face made him look slowly around, now that the moon shadows had cleared, and sharp light shone down. There, under the pale, bright moon, he at last truly noticed the ground on which he stood.

  Across the entire surface of the isle, from where his talon touched to the farthest edges falling into the sea, were scattered the bones and skulls of gryfon dead.

  ~ 12 ~

  Under Tor’s Light

  “What is this?” Ice clawed Shard’s heart as he lifted his feet, stepping up and around gingerly. There was nowhere to step that wasn’t bone. He shifted in place and then leaped onto Stigr’s rock, scrambling away from the ground.

  “Your forebears,” Stigr said, watching him. In the bright moonlight Shard could at last see some of his features, and he swallowed a squawk. A slashing scar gnarled the place where Stigr’s left eye should have been, and he was as lean and wiry as a gull.

  This is what becomes of an exile. Catori remained on the ground. Magically, her paws seemed not to disturb anything.

  “A cursed place,” Shard breathed. “Why did you ask me here?”

  “Cursed?” Stigr tilted his head, then stood. He was taller than Shard by a head, giving Shard distracted hope that he might yet grow taller himself. “This is hallow ground, nephew. The place where Vanir lay down their last, and go back into the earth. We are not just lords of the sky. We are of the earth, and must return there. What do Aesir do with their dead? Eat them, I suppose? Wear their feathers as remembrances?”

  “Don’t mock them.” Shard absently shuffled his talons against the rock to brush off the dust of bones. “They fly the dead to the fire hills of Pebble’s Throw.”

  Shard recalled in sudden blazing memory the funeral flight of Per the Red. Gryfons had filled the sky, every gryfon old enough to fly, and some mothers with kits in their claws. He’d barely fledged then, but he remembered seeing the old king catch and burn, red feather becoming red flame. He shook himself.

  “That way, in flame, they can join bright Tyr—”

  “As if it is this feather and bone that flies to the Sunlit Land.”

  “They burn the flesh to be free of it.” Shard supposed the old exile would have found a way to mock any answer. He fluffed and then shook himself, standing proud. “You asked me here. Why? What will you show me?”

  Wind shifted uneasily between them. “This alone means nothing?” Stigr extended a black wing to encompass the burial ground. “All who came before you? Who died before and during the Conquering? Your past means nothing to you? This place that you’ve never seen before, a place sacred to your bloodline, your ancestors…it means nothing?”

  At Stigr’s words a shivering chill raced across Shard’s skin, and the wind sang through the hollow bones, lending whispers to the dead.

  Shard swiveled one ear back, listening to the whistles through bone. Before and during the Conquering. Despite his promise to Sverin that he didn’t care about his father, Shard couldn’t help but wonder if, somewhere, on this ground, his father’s bones were turning to dust.

  Catori perked her ears as if the dead might actually speak words to her, but otherwise remained silent, letting Shard and Stigr speak.

  “It’s not my past,” Shard finally managed.

  “Then you are an Aesir in the skin of the last-born Vanir,” Stigr growled. “I should have seen it when I rescued you.”

  “Rescued? You helped, and I’m grateful, but—”

  “You’d seemed interested in learning something,” Stigr said quietly. “But I see now I was mistaken, since you already know everything.”

  “You should have warned me what I was coming to. Where I would be walking. I don’t–I’ve never…”

  Stigr studied him quietly. “Then you do, at least, feel something.”

  “Of course!” Shard stared around at the bones,
his feathers laying sleek and tight with anxiety. He doubted Stigr would share his knowledge if Shard confessed what he was feeling.

  “Good.” Stigr turned to climb higher on the rock. “Then follow me.”

  Catori snuffed against the ground and sprang up to follow them. Shard paused, letting her pass him, not willing to let her walk at his back. She hesitated, giving him a rueful look, as if she knew why he let her go first. Before Shard could say something, she bounded past to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Stigr.

  It looked bizarre, Shard thought, a wolf and a gryfon standing as close as wingbrother and sister. Hallr’s bloody wolf blazed again in his mind. Distracted from the climb, he slipped and stumbled when rock broke under his claws, wondering why they didn’t just fly. But he climbed dutifully to humor Stigr.

  “Behold,” Stigr boomed, startling Shard from his thoughts. They reached the crest of the rock pile and Shard stifled a sigh, wondering what other sacred horrors lay in store on the exile’s island.

  His wings drooped from his shoulders when he saw, feathers thumping on the ground.

  From this height under the white moon and with his eyes more adjusted to the dark, Shard saw why the islands had looked strange and large during his flight.

  From the coast of Black Rock all along the sea channel between the smaller islands and the Sun Isle, the sea had pulled away, leaving solid beach between. It looked like a massive, mountainous single land broken by cliffs and canyons. The waterfalls of the Sun Isle crashed down to empty beach and the wet sand gleamed silver between all the islands.

  “This night,” Stigr’s voice thrummed, “once a turn when bright Tor is at her fullest, she pulls away the tides to show us that the Silver Isles are one isle. That we are bound together.”

  Shard realized his own beak hung open, panting. It was beautiful. Shocking. He never would have thought the tide could pull away so far. Leagues away, he saw the hulk of Star Island and realized Catori hadn’t mocked him. She had, truly, walked to Black rock between the islands.