Skyfire

by Jess E. Owen

“What is your name?” she asked, straining for courtesy. As easily as the raven had drawn the male gryfon away, he could draw him back to Sigrun, and would, if she offended him.

  “My name is the way I am called,” he answered, strutted three steps away, then four toward her so that his large black beak nearly speared Sigrun’s leg. “My task is to know the songs, to know all names, to weave the tales and weave the tellers too, and at the end of days I will fly to bright Tyr’s shoulder—”

  “Munin,” Sigrun said wearily. “How good it is to see you again.”

  He stopped, not used to being interrupted. Far off, Sigrun heard another raven call, drawing Vald deeper into the woods. It seemed both ravens conspired to get her alone, and there had to be reason for that.

  “You needn’t be so twitchy, daughter-of-Hrafn. My brother has your escort well in wing.”

  Despite his strutting and his riddles, Sigrun trusted that much, and relaxed. “Very well. What can I do for you?”

  He fluffed and laughed, surprised, hopping away with his wings spread. “For me! How kind! How utterly thoughtful. A healer to the core. The Raven’s daughter from tail to toes.”

  Sigrun waited. It was good that Munin was supposed to be the storyteller, as much as he liked hearing himself speak. As a younger gryfess Sigrun had riddled with him, unafraid and without irritation. She wondered how long ravens lived, or if they died at all, if these two Named creatures really would be alive all the days of the world. Or maybe they had already died and simply taught their hatchlings to be exactly the same as they had always been.

  “But is there nothing I can do for you? My sister, the Raven’s daughter?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “You know the state of the islands. I’m not like my father, thank you.”

  “Ah, but you are. Great healer. Great trickster. Daughter-of-Hrafn.”

  Sigrun stood rigid. “I’m not a trickster.”

  He stopped hopping around and peered at her, his black eyes gleaming. “Are you not? Mother of Thyra, now a princess. Nest-mother of a prince, not a prince, mate to the Aesir, yet servant of white Ragna? Who could say what name the daughter of ravens will take today?” A beat of silence, then he guffawed at his own cleverness.

  Sigrun slapped her talons on the ground. “Stop this now! What do you need of me?”

  He stopped. Again he spread his wings as if he were a humble servant. “I need nothing. I have the wind, carrion to feast, and enough to watch and keep me amuse—”

  “Tell me what you came to say.”

  The woods were silent. Sigrun wondered why it couldn’t have been the other, saner, quieter raven to come and speak to her with whatever news or need they had. Then she realized Hugin had probably chosen the task of distracting the escort because Munin would’ve thought it funny to bring Vald back in the middle of conversation.

  She shuddered and wondered what Sverin would think of that—and Caj. She couldn’t humiliate Caj that way.

  “Winter stalks you,” he intoned, and Sigrun kept quiet, hoping he would give his news and go. “You must be prepared. There will not be enough meat.”

  “What do you know,” she argued in spite of herself. “Sverin has come to his senses. He sends the males to hunt. They will hunt this winter.”

  “They will hunt shadows and catch snow,” Munin whispered. “They will hunt the king’s nightmares. They will hunt, but you will feed on fear and songs.”

  At last, Sigrun crouched down to hear him, for his voice had changed to his dream tone, to prophesy and promise that held no trace of mockery. Munin blinked up at her, then pecked the ground hard, three times. “A prince has followed a flying star. But he will arrive Nameless, and not a prince, in the red, windward land.”

  “Shard,” she breathed. “He followed the starfire? He left us?”

  The raven seemed to blink back to himself and laughed. “Left the Isles. Never you. Always, he’s with you. Be alert, daughter-of-Hrafn. No one trusts a raven. Be alert.”

  He cackled and flapped away, his wings slapping Sigrun’s face. She shuffled back and opened her wings, expecting attack at that moment, never knowing if Munin’s warnings were for the immediate present or something yet to come.

  In his wake he only revealed Vald returning, bounding forward through the dim woods.

  “Mudding birds!” he swore, then saw Sigrun and dipped his head. “Forgive me, healer.”

  Sigrun fluffed her wings, trying to look normal, and remembering that she’d pretended to be worried about noise in the brush. “No wolves then?”

  “No wolves.”

  “A relief,” she muttered. Munin sang a bawdy song somewhere off in the woods, and she twitched, looking the opposite direction. “This way, then.”

  She and Vald explored the woods without further incident, his only duty to assist her with carrying. Sigrun found willow to dull aches, dying but plentiful chamomile to assist with sleep, and other herbs to ease the anxieties of her pregnant charges.

  At the appointed time, she met her apprentices back at the edge of the woods.

  They were buoyant with success. They’d found watercress and a rabbit. Their harried escorts trotted after them, covered in burrs and pine needles.

  “Well done,” Sigrun managed to say as her apprentices showed off their bounty. In the woods behind, a raven called.

  No one trusts a raven. But I’m not a raven. Or am I? Not taking sides, or seeming to change sides, only trying to protect those I love? Does Ragna even trust me? Does Caj trust me? She thought of the escort he’d sent and wondered if they were to protect Sigrun, or to protect her from herself. Threats without and within.

  “That’s enough for today,” Sigrun said, her stomach tightening as she recalled Munin’s warning.

  “Then back to the Sun Isle,” barked Vald, looking nervously out beyond the islands. Sigrun saw the source of his anxiety. Far away on the dawnward horizon, a dark storm brewed. Sigrun shuddered, thinking of Munin, knowing it was only a harbinger of the storms to come.

  13

  Windwalker

  The gale struck just after midnight. Shard curved his wings like a falcon and tried to outpace the wind and clouds, and for a time he succeeded. Racing over the broad, black sea, under the light of the moon, he had laughed at the storm. But the storm had faster wings than his.

  Lancing skyfire illuminated the lunging waves. Three times the height of the highest trees on the Star Isle, the waves rose like cliffs around Shard and threatened to knock him from the sky. If he fell, it would be no easy trick to get back into the air as he’d done before. Clouds flocked overheard, their roiling edges lit silver, then muddy gray as they covered the moon.

  Caught between surging clouds and a surging sea, Shard dodged along the coils of wind, breathless with weariness that ignited into fear. He tried to pretend he was back on the White Mountain, dodging cliffs.

  The rain began. He heard it like a rush of a thousand caribou. It wasn’t like the cold, slushy rain of the Silver Isles. Hard sleet pelted down with the force of a waterfall. Shard’s feathers shed the water as if he were swimming but it beat his wings—his head—his face. Shrieking into the black storm, he challenged an enemy that he couldn’t fight.

  His muscles screamed protest at battling the wind and lashing rain. A wave swelled and Shard banked hard, tail skimming the water. Another wave launched toward his face. Just like in a mountain canyon, Shard soared in a tight, angling flight between the massive walls of water. Once, the wind almost slapped him down, but he beat his wings against the water and fought to remain aloft.

  A sound distracted him from his choice. A sound, either hallucinated from his panic, or an impossibly far distance away, made him fling around in the storm to seek its source. For a moment it stole his world. He knew the words.

  Like a bird song, they sought an answer.

  “Which fades last—”

  Skyfire crackled in claws above and the pounding thunder that followed drowned out the song.

  I
t didn’t come again.

  Gasping, drenched and hardly able to breath through the rain, Shard angled upward. He had to fly above the storm.

  Icy black cloud closed around him. Within the raining, blinding fog, flashes of light spooked him in different directions, first one side, then the other, down, and up again. His feathers stood high at each stroke of skyfire. If he was struck it would be the end of him.

  Shard shrieked again.

  “I am Rashard the Stormwing!” So his uncle had nicknamed him, when he survived a storm flight against Sverin and a dive into the sea.

  “I don’t fear you!”

  Voice raw, wings leaden and aching, Shard found he had lost all sense of up. Or down. He wheeled and flared, peering around.

  Bright Tor help me. Father…

  Then he remembered. His father’s spirit no longer dwelled in the sea. Once locked there, Shard had helped to redeem him, and so his father’s spirit flew on to the Sunlit Land.

  Will I join him now?

  He had to find up and down. Sucking a breath, Shard shut his eyes, closed his wings, and fell. Wind shoved him, but he felt the drop. With below established, Shard flared, stroking upward again.

  Every muscle screamed.

  Shard pumped his wings harder, desperate to escape the tempest before a freak wind shoved him into the sea, or a massive wave dragged him under.

  The rain slacked, then was gone.

  Gentle, misty cloud swirled and broke before him, and Shard burst from the top of the thunderheads into the high, clear night beyond.

  His chest tightened against the thin air. Cold clamped his soaked feathers and the sodden fur of his hindquarters. Shard fanned his tail and glided, soaring higher under the still, white light of the moon.

  A distant flash of white caught his eye.

  It can’t be skyfire.

  It remained, floating, like a star.

  A bird. Shard’s mind reeled. It can’t be the owl, not here. Another trick of the eye. Shard flew toward it anyway, wondering if the strange song in the storm had come from the bird.

  Long, shaped white wings shone against the dark sky, like a gull, but too large.

  Shard stretched his wings against the cold and aches, shouting in the language of birds. “Wait! Please!”

  The white bird turned in a long, lazy sweep to fly back toward Shard, and he recognized it. An albatross. It flew in close to Shard and turned so that they glided side by side through the night.

  “You speak to me?” inquired a light, windy, male voice. A little scratched, as if he didn’t often speak.

  Shard knew then that the bird hadn’t been the source of the strange, high music in the storm. That was something else, some madness of his own, some remnant of his last vision.

  “A gryfon,” prompted the albatross, “lord of sea and land?”

  “I’m no lord. I wanted to…to greet you.” Shard found the current on which the albatross rode, and glided along. He tried not to sound disappointed, but he still puzzled over the song in the storm. If not this bird, then who? Or what?

  The bird’s long, long wings stretched almost the same length as Shard’s though he was a fifth Shard’s size.

  “To greet me?” The seabird made a low, soft noise. “I saw you challenge the storm. You fly over the sea, and in the night, a gryfon. Yet you come to greet me?”

  “Yes.” Shard tried not to feel guilty that he might not have cared about greeting the albatross had it not been for the mysterious song.

  “Then, greetings.” The albatross caught a draft and bumped higher. He seemed to float, effortless, not a feather twitching. Shard stared, and followed as the bird spoke again. “Where do you fly?”

  “Windward,” Shard answered. “To the home of the Aesir, to find a white mountain peak, and maybe meet with the Aesir clans there.”

  “Windward. Aesir.” The albatross let out a long, singing breath, and drew another. “I would not go there. I fly there no longer, not after the darkness fell.”

  Shard’s heart leaped, but not in joy, at getting some form of news. A chilly wind shivered his feathers and he glanced at the moon for courage. “What darkness?”

  “Speak of darkness, and darkness comes. I will speak no longer.”

  Befuddled, curious and so close to information, Shard winged in closer. “Please. I must know what’s happening in the windward land. Visions have called me there.”

  The albatross flew in silence. Shard blinked at him. His eyes looked distant, bright, full of only sea and sky. He looked witless. Nameless. Shard had seen wolves and gryfons lose themselves briefly in hunt or battle and this looked the same, but he needed information, not a silent, witless companion.

  “Friend,” Shard said firmly. “Bright flier, sea brother, windwalker—speak!”

  One wing twitched and the albatross peered over at him. “Have you named me, prince of the sky?”

  “What? Surely you already have a name.”

  “We of the winds have no names. Eagles of the windland do, perhaps, in their arrogance. But have you met a gull, a jay, an owl with a name?”

  “Yes! I—” Shard paused. He couldn’t remember if the white owl had ever told him a name. The only birds he had ever known to have names were two ravens back in the Silver Isles. “Only ravens.”

  “Ravens were tasked by Tyr at the dawn of the First Age,” the albatross said. “Tasked to watch and remember, so that at the end of days they may fly to him again, and tell him all the tales of the world.”

  “But you speak.”

  “Having a Voice is not the same as having a name. Many speak and remain a nameless part of the earth and sky. Just as the wind may speak. The earth may speak. But you have named me, lord, and I will keep it.” He gave a low, laughing call to the white moonlight and the storm that now roiled far below.

  “Windwalker,” Shard said quietly. “Will you tell me, now, of the darkness over the greatland?”

  “No.”

  Before Shard could argue, Windwalker added, “But I will lead you there.”

  He silently lowered one wing and turned. Shard realized he had been following blindly, with no care to which direction. He could have followed the bird all the way back to the Silver Isles.

  “Why do you help me?”

  For a moment Windwalker flew in silence. Then, soft as a breeze, he sang.

  “One will rise higher

  One will see farther

  His wing beats will part the storm.

  They will call him the Summer King—”

  “And this will be his song,” Shard finished for him. “How do you know that song?”

  “It has been sung, and everything in the winds of the world finds a way to me. If you are that one whose wing beats can part the storm, then I will take you where you wish to go. I will teach you to ride the wave winds, as I do, to fly like a sea bird wherever you wish to go.”

  Shard could only say, “Thank you.”

  “Since you’ll be flying far, and over the open sea, I have advice for you. Old advice, from my father and his, and his mother and hers, since the beginning of our kind.”

  Shard held his breath, talons clenched together. “Yes?”

  Windwalker tilted his head, peering with one bright yellow eye. “Never fly out farther than you can swim back.”

  Shard relaxed his talons and laughed. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Now this.” Windwalker looked forward again, and Shard watched him. “This long flight, my lord, comes at a price. You cannot think. You cannot think, ‘Oh, how tired I am.’”

  Windwalker stretched his wings, then settled them into a glide again, and Shard imitated him. Stars rippled above and the moon bathed them and the top of the storm clouds in silver.

  “You cannot think, ‘Oh, how far I have to go.’ You cannot think at all. For this long flight, you must give up yourself. To journey across the windward sea, you must let go of your name, and become part of the sky.”

  “My name?”


  “But it will come back to you. In time. Son of Tyr and Tor. You cannot truly forget, you who parted the storm, and named me. I don’t think you can forget.”

  “You don’t think? But are you sure?” Shard had forgotten himself once, briefly, after almost drowning in the sea. Witless, he had climbed to safety on pure instinct, and woken to remember himself just before meeting Stigr for the first time.

  “Trust you will remember. Too many thoughts will weaken you. You must be a bit of wind and sky, like me.” Windwalker stared ahead, unconcerned. Shard watched him, breathless fear crawling forward. “Remember only to follow me, brother of the sky. Remember only that.”

  “If I’m Nameless, witless, I might attack you.”

  “If you do, I will flee. But I think you will remember, Stormwing.”

  “My name is Shard. Rashard, son-of-Baldr.” He still savored saying his father’s name, for he’d spent so much of his life not knowing it.

  “Rashard. Now forget.”

  The stars blazed. Shard took a breath. Then another. He didn’t know if he could forget himself on purpose, or if he wanted to. But if that was the price of long sea flight, he had to pay it. He wondered if Sverin and the other Aesir had forgotten themselves in their journey over the sea, and remembered only when other gryfons called out to them from the Silver Isles.

  Was that why they had made war? Nameless, witless and wild, maybe they had attacked the Vanir of the Silver Isles as animals, no better than witless hawks battling over territory, and remembered themselves only later.

  “You will never make the flight if you cling to your thoughts,” whispered the albatross.

  Shard shook his thoughts.

  “You are wind,” Windwalker intoned. “You are feather and bone, and hunger, and thirst. And wind.”

  Shard focused on his feathers, loosing a breath. I am wind. I am feather and bone.

  I am wind. Feather and bone.

  Wind. Feather. Bone.

  Flight and blood and bone. Anything else is death.

  Hunger, thirst and hunt.

  Flight, feather and wind was life.

  Blood. Feather.

  And wind.

  14