by Jess E. Owen
“You sound like a Vanir,” Sverin growled, his anger growing, but he was unable to attack the apparition that looked and sounded like Kjorn. “He did that to you.”
“Shard,” Kjorn said. “My wingbrother. I should have listened to him more.”
“No,” Sverin said. Snow flurried between them and he felt trapped, surrounded, gryfons cornering in on all sides.
Halvden glided down from the rocks to stand by him and Sverin sidled closer, pressing his wing to Halvden’s. He spoke to Kjorn again. “Don’t you see, don’t you know what comes of that? They killed your mother!”
“They didn’t,” Kjorn said, his voice low and quiet. “And you know that.”
For a moment Sverin panted, his heart tight at what he saw in Kjorn’s expression. He couldn’t tell if it was pity or loathing, each one worse enough to break his heart again.
“It’s lies, Vanir lies, my son, to ruin me!”
“Halvden,” Kjorn said, “you’re his wingbrother now. Tell him that I’m real and let us end this.”
Halvden seemed at a loss, looking from one face to the other. Then his expression darkened. “Be cautious, my king. He’s clearly an apparition sent by the wolves to drive you off. You were right.”
Sverin angled his head, studying Halvden sharply, then Kjorn.
He could attack neither one.
Kjorn gave Halvden a disgusted look. “The Vanir will return,” he said. “Father, Shard will return. And our time here will end.”
Each word fell like a blow. Sverin crouched. “No, my son, then we will have no home—”
“We have a home,” Kjorn corrected, though his voice cracked. He had been raised in the Silver Isles and barely knew of his other birthright. But, it seemed, he had learned enough. “And I mean to return there.”
“You have no idea what waits there, what hungers for our blood!”
“Then I will find out.”
He stood in the snow calmly, the wind brushing up his feathers.
Sverin’s every muscle screamed to attack, to silence him as he had silenced Einarr.
“This is not your son,” Halvden hissed. “Kjorn would never turn on you like this!”
Sverin looked from Halvden’s face to Kjorn’s. The uncertainty and memories and shame welled up in him. The ring of gryfons pressed close, staring. Their disapproval and their fear and anger crushed in on him.
He couldn’t catch a breath. He could not fight. He had to flee.
“Father,” Kjorn whispered. “I see your pain. We can mourn together—”
Sverin could take no more.
He whirled, flaring his wings, slashing talons at any who approached, and launched himself into the sky, fighting wind and snow.
Wings beat behind him and for a moment he knew it was Halvden.
Then he let go of the name, fell away from himself, from the green gryfon shouting after him.
He flew, hard and fast and Nameless, away from all of it into the sky.
Kjorn watched them go, then crouched, opening his wings to follow.
“No, my prince!” An older Aesir female bounded forward. “Please, don’t leave us again. Sverin has driven himself mad. He will turn on you in the end, or Halvden will. Please don’t leave us again.”
Kjorn hesitated.
What would a true king do?
Not abandon his pride, something in him whispered. He closed his wings, straightened, and spoke to the small ring of gryfons around him.
“What I said to my father was true. I will leave the Silver Isles to see what remains in our homeland. I will seek Shard. I think he knows more of all this than we do, now. I ask any of the Aesir elders to tell me everything you know of the threat in the windland. Our…our homeland. Everything about Kajar’s war, and the truth of why Per came. Then I will fly. Alone. But you need not fear any enemy in the Silver Isles any longer. I’ve made peace.”
There were murmurs of assent, the relief sighing through those gathered so great that Kjorn felt relief in his own heart.
He tried not to look to the side, tried not to think of the red gryfon flying away from him. He had to be stronger.
I tried my best.
“There will be changes,” Kjorn called, raising his voice.
The pride—his pride—gathered around him, their faces bright and hard and ready to listen.
50
Lakelander
He stood on the Ostral Shores, the great muddy lake glimmering before him. His home. Far on the windward horizon the peaks and spires of the Winderost and the Dawn Spire irritated the sky.
A vivid blue fledge cavorted along the water’s edge, slapping at fish and water beetles. He watched, surprised to realize he was watching himself.
I always liked the water, he mused. Maybe it’s why I never hated the Vanir.
Per the Red flew in that afternoon, to select new bachelor warriors for the Guard, and left his son near the shore.
Sverin already knew how to fly, and he spent the afternoon showing off. Then he taught Caj what he knew. In return Caj taught him refined hunting skills and secret fighting moves he had devised on his own. Sverin spoke of the glory and honor to be found at the Dawn Spire, and occasionally of his own fears and frustrations, being a prince. Caj understood, for his family was one of the leading clans of the great salt shore. They had much in common, and also many differences.
Sometimes, deep friendship was formed through battles, or courageous hunts, or a shared fear that two friends vowed to conquer together.
Sometimes it was as simple as knowing you had found your reflection, and that afternoon by the lake, they did. By the time the sun set they took the wingbrother pledge. When the long day was over, Caj left his proud parents to learn from Per the Red and remain by Sverin’s side.
Wingbrothers.
Cold wind made him shiver. The Winderost turned white with snow.
He smelled the painted dogs hunting.
No, it was not the painted dogs…
Stinging cold and a sharp scent brought him awake to black, frosty night. Something warm curled next to him on each side. He felt like a kit in a nest until the heavy, dander and musk smell of wolf coated his senses.
What is this?
“You like your supper warm?” he growled. He twitched, shoving at the furred bodies all around him. “Get away from me!”
“Oh what days I have lived to see,” murmured a female voice, whittled with age. “When the noble should outfly their king.”
Caj weaved to his feet, upsetting the tumble of wolves around him. Agony cracked through his wing and he gasped. Stars glimmered down on them, achingly bright in the winter night.
“What do you want?” he demanded of the she-wolf before him.
“What do you want?” she murmured cordially in return.
He had never seen a wolf so old, her face ghostly white, her fur white, her eyes pale gold. The snow beneath them threw up light as if it were false dawn and he saw little details he wouldn’t normally see in the night. Under the stars, her fur caught odd silver and blue glints, iridescent like gryfon feathers, her eyes bright yellow.
She was a snow wolf of the high mountains, of the far, frigid shores of the Star Isle. He’d had no idea they mixed with the forest wolves. Oddly, she reminded him of Ragna, though Ragna wasn’t as ancient. A sense about her was similar, a quietness, like the eerie moon.
Surrounded, he had no choice but to answer. “I want to go home.”
“Which home?”
The Ostral shores, he thought, the dream washing back to him.
“My wing is broken,” he growled. “So it doesn’t matter. Go on and finish toying with me. A grounded gryfon is a dead gryfon.”
“Yet here you stand.” The other wolves rose and padded cautiously away from him, though they circled, sniffing, listening.
“I’ll die here. By a boar. Or you. Or the cold.”
“We have slain the youngest son of Lapu, so he is no threat. And if I wanted to kill you, Noble Caj,
I could have days and days ago. I have every reason. Your wingbrother killed my mate.”
Caj stared at her. Under the starry night, he wasn’t even sure if she was real, or a ghost. The starlight caught strange, alien green light in her eyes. “Helaku. The wolf king.” With a grim flash he recalled the wolf pelt in Sverin’s nest. “So you’re his mate, and mother of this cursed pack. He attacked us and chose that death.”
“I know it. The king of the Star Isle,” she murmured. “The dashing prince who sang me down from the mountain top and gave me seers and warriors for cubs, and fought the mad Red King.” The dry edge to her tone didn’t go unnoticed, and for just a breath, Caj thought she sounded like Sigrun, impatient with ideas of glory and fighting and wanting only to have her family safe. Her eyes stared through Caj as if she could see all those thoughts. “He hunts with the High Pack now.”
Caj knew Helaku had been ancient. His death, it seemed, wore on his mate. He couldn’t fathom how old this creature must be. Still clinging to life.
He glanced sidelong, seeking a path for escape, then almost laughed at himself. What would I do, hobble for my life? Still the ghostly she-wolf didn’t advance, and the others only watched.
“Do you know why we named it the Star Isle?”
“It lies starward of the Sun Isle,” Caj said, ears tracking the rest of the wolves. He shifted his foreleg and it throbbed. Crusted blood flaked and fell off, and he winced. Halvden’s talons scored deep.
She dipped her head, ears forward, and the other wolves laughed in warbling voices.
“Not all things lie oriented to the gryfon realm. As you call yourselves children of the sun, we call ourselves children of the stars.” She raised her pale muzzle and howled low.
The long, hollow, shifting note sent the night through Caj’s blood. He stood firm, refusing to be intimidated.
She lowered her head, ears perked to him. “You see that cluster of stars, that lies between the two high peaks of the White Mountains on the Sun Isle?”
Hesitantly, Caj turned his gaze from her toward the Sun Isle. He could barely see the far peaks on the next isle. He must have wandered, drunk on pain, to the top of a hill, for he could make them out a little. His breath clouded the air in front of him, then cleared to show him a tightly packed cluster of stars. He counted eight.
“The First Pack,” murmured the ancient she-wolf. “The High Pack. Sons and daughters of Tyr and Tor, who ran down the dragon’s back of stars and dug the Star Isle up from the sea with their claws. They carried seeds from the First Forest in their coats and dropped them in the new earth, making a place of good hunting for us. When we die, it is joyous. We join the great hunt among the stars.”
Caj gazed at the glimmering pack of stars, then flattened his ears, peering up and around. He didn’t enjoy the idea of being surrounded each night by an uncountable number of wolf spirits.
“What do you want from me?”
“Friendship,” she said blandly. “I thought it was obvious, but perhaps your injuries dull your mind.”
“You’ll find my talons sharp enough.”
“What will you do, Noble Caj? Return to your splintered pride, tell the king he is mad, and mend it yourself? With a broken wing, you will have to pass under the isles, or swim, and neither could you do without our help. Once there, you would have to turn on your wingbrother, which you will not do.”
“I’ll do what I need to!”
“You haven’t done it yet,” she murmured. “After all the wrongs you saw. Now it’s too late. I see myself in you. I saw my beloved king sliding into witless anger and I did not stop him, for I couldn’t bear to see that anger turned on me.”
The words chilled Caj as sure as a winter wind.
“But there are others who can help, others who can end this in a better way than brother turning on brother.”
Shard, Caj thought. She means Shard and the Vanir. Caj considered, found that he believed her, nodded, lifting his one good wing. “Then we have a pact—”
“No,” she said softly. “Not a pact. Not an agreement that will break like an old, frozen branch at the first test of strength, or once our ends are met.” She raised her pale head, gaining the scent of the night air. “We must have friendship, durable, flexible, like the rowan in the time of rain and new leaves.”
“Why me?”
“Because you have already opened your heart. Even now, I speak to you in the language of the earth, the language your wingbrother will never comprehend, flying too high, and you speak it back without even knowing. So many Aesir turn their backs on their second birthright, being children of the earth as well as the sky. But you, Caj, in being broken, have become whole.”
Caj shifted his talons in the snow. With his broken wing, he could do nothing for anyone, and it had already begun to heal wrong. He would never be able to fly. The she-wolf, quiet, reasonable, hadn’t threatened him. She had used her fellow wolves to keep him warm through—he didn’t want to think of how many long, cold nights.
Everything he knew began to splinter, and so he clung to one thing. He had to survive, to save Sverin from himself, to save the pride. If he needed a new friend, if however strange, to do it, then…
“If I was winged,” murmured the ancient wolf at last, “if I was a gryfon, would you think twice?”
Caj knew the answer, and suspected she did, too.
After a moment under her frank gaze, with a dozen other wolf eyes on him, he bowed his head in gratitude. There was no other choice.
“Thank you for your help. I…I’d like your friendship. And for whatever it’s worth, I offer you mine.”
Gleeful warbles and howls met his words. Caj shuddered and tried not to look up at the stars.
“Then fear not, Noble Caj, and hope,” said the ancient wolf queen of Star Island. “We’ve a healer among us who knows the set of a gryfon wing.”
Caj tilted his head, wary. The wolves parted to allow one through. At first he thought it was a pale wolf, larger than the others, and graceful. Then the gleaming stars picked out the edge of a wing, feathered ears, a lovely, fierce face.
Caj stumbled forward in disbelief.
“Sigrun.”
She leaped, and nearly broke his other wing in their reunion.
51
The Tale of the Red Kings
Shard woke from a dream of his nest-father. A foreign scent surrounded him and he held still, then remembered.
Amaratsu.
She watched him with unblinking eyes.
“You called to me,” Shard said. His aches had gone, he was clean. She must have washed him in his sleep like a mother gryfon, cared for him. He didn’t know whether to be reassured, or terrified, for she looked uncertain and unhappy, herself.
“I called the Summer King,” she said. “But I thought…”
“You didn’t expect a gryfon.” Shard studied her face. Her voice sounded old and brittle, as if she were ancient, but there was an incongruous freshness to her expression, a wonder and naïve softness of the very young.
“The song has been sung,” Shard said quietly, standing. “And I answered. My father saw this very mountain in a vision. Did you call to him, too?”
“How long ago?”
“Ten years.”
Slowly Amaratsu shook her head. “No. No, it could not have been me. Perhaps he knew that this mountain would bring us together. It was only this autumn, when the starfire flew, that I called for the Summer King in the wind. But you flew so late.”
“The signs were wrong,” Shard said, battling guilt over being late for a meeting he hadn’t known he was due for. “I didn’t know who the dark gryfon was in the vision, I didn’t have skyfire, and the mountain peak had no snow.”
A tremble shook her body, a tremor he realized was a growl. “The signs? Signs? You should flown when you knew the time was right, never mind the signs! You don’t understand signs. Arrogant gryfon!”
Shard crouched, lifting his wings to shield himself. “I didn’t
know! My father died for acting on the wrong vision…I didn’t want to make the same mistake.”
“I was the snow on the mountain!” Amaratsu stretched her gleaming white wings. “You were the gryfon in your vision, dark with grief, and the skyfire you carry is here.”
She jabbed a claw at his chest and Shard flinched but she only tapped him hard for emphasis. Tapped his beating heart.
Shard’s skin crawled with shame and understanding. “I’m here now. What do you need from me? You sang the Song of Last Light, has someone died?”
Her whiskers twitched in the air. Shard realized he had no idea how long he’d slept, if it was night, or how long until the dragons of the Outlands found him.
“No,” Amaratsu said, calming as he offered his help. “Not yet.”
“Tell me why you sang to the winds.”
“No,” she said again, and raised her head high above him on her long, long neck. She wove to one side and then the other like a snake. “First tell me why you answered. Why a gryfon heard my song.”
Shard began to answer, but a glimmer caught his eye and he looked, spying something protected within her coils. It looked like the smooth side of a large, white pearl. A light, muffled tapping made his ears swivel. Amaratsu shifted until the giant pearl was hidden again.
“Shard. What do you want from me? For surely you must want something too, if you followed a vision and my song.”
Again that strange mix of age and young suspicion.
Shard stepped away from her, stretching his wings, his legs, testing his muscles. Everything still felt raw and sore, and he was groggy with hunger. Amaratsu watched him, then slipped something from within her coils. A strip of dried fish.
“Forgive my rudeness. Eat.”
Shard leaned forward, sniffing. The fish smelled heavily of smoke and had an odd, bendable texture like damp bark. But it was food. He ate, chewing hard until the meat softened.
“Thank you.” Feeling more refreshed, he stood before the dragon and lifted his wings. “You should know, the dragons are hunting me. I don’t know how long until…”
