By the Silver Wind (27 page)

“Won’t you take more?” Asvander asked. “We’ll send along more Lakelanders and the Aesir of the Reach to protect you.”

“No,” Kjorn said. “I don’t want to look like I plan to attack. An escort will do.”

Asvander exchanged a dark look with Shard.

Ketil listened to the plan, and spoke up quietly, surprising Shard. “As much as I wish to stay by your side, my prince, I will go with Kjorn if you permit it, to represent the Vanir.”

Shard tilted his head, studying her stiff posture, and worried that she might hold too much of a grudge against all the Aesir in general to make a good representative. But then, so had Stigr. With her eyes she challenged him, lifted her beak, and opened her wings a little in deference.

“Thank you,” he said at length. “I accept. I know you’ll speak well for us.”

“Thank you, my lord. Please tell Keta and Ilse.” She mantled. Shard fluffed and resettled his wings, and looked at Kjorn, gauging him.

Kjorn nodded to the rest, and drew him aside to speak privately. “I haven’t forgotten your worry. Send your scouts to the Outlands and see what the wyrms are up to.” His gaze trained starward, toward the Dawn Spire. “I want to be prepared as soon as we arrive.” As if sensing Shard’s unhappy expression, Kjorn finally turned about to meet his gaze. “Shard, if you can reach Rhydda before we go to battle, and change her mind, all the better. If she’s gone,” he drew a deep breath, “we shall make all haste to the Silver Isles.”

“I feel strongly you shouldn’t go,” Shard said quietly. “Even more strongly that I should be with you.”

“I do too.” Kjorn loosed a wry chuckle. “I don’t have a warm feeling about this. But I have keen huntresses at my side. We’ll remain aloft as long as possible. Shard, you have to investigate whether the wyrms have gone or not. I must attend to Rok and make sure they’ve treated him well. He’s been loyal and I can’t return that favor by ignoring his capture.”

Shard had almost forgotten about Rok. “Curse your sense of honor,” he said, nipping the air in frustration.

“You would do the same for one of your own.”

Shard tried to think of another argument, but by the fierce light in Kjorn’s face, he knew it would be windless, get him nowhere, win him nothing, and now he was just wasting time.

He remembered what Asvander had said. “I suppose I won’t do you any good at the Dawn Spire anyway. Orn hates me.”

“That too,” Kjorn said.

Inspired, Shard slipped the pouch with the dragon firestones from around his neck. “Here, at least. Take these.” He stretched his foreleg, offering. “Give them back their fires. Return to the Dawn Spire in glory, bearing Tyr’s flame.”

“Ooh,” Dagny said, and they both realized the others had been eavesdropping anyway. “Breezy. Good idea, Shard.” At Kjorn’s look of confusion, she added, “The wyrms destroyed our fires when they attacked. Pyres fell or were allowed to die.”

Asvander stepped up beside her. “We don’t have firestones like the dragons—we came upon it by luck after skyfire struck dry wood a long time ago. Now you can bring it back. A fine idea, Shard.”

“A fine idea indeed,” Kjorn said, accepting the pouch and slipping it by the leather thong around his neck, where it rested with the golden chain. He drew close, resting a wing over Shard’s back to say farewell. “Never fly alone,” he said, voice low. “Promise me, Shard, that you will not face her alone again.”

“I won’t,” Shard said. When Kjorn didn’t move, he echoed Kjorn’s words. “I promise I will not fly alone, Kjorn. Never again. For you, for Stigr, my mother, and my pride. I promise. And
you
stay alert.”

“Of course. Fair winds,” Kjorn said tightly, drawing away. “We’ll meet you and the rest at the Voldsom within five days. If we don’t—”

“Five days,” Shard said. He stretched out his wing, and Kjorn extended his to cover it.

Kjorn looked at the others who were leaving with Shard. “Fair winds. Thank you.”

The gold prince’s ears lay half slanted, his tail twitching intermittently. Catching Shard’s gaze, he dipped his head, then looked starward. “Let’s not delay any longer.”

“We fly,” Shard said.

With a firm nod, Kjorn turned away, jumped into a lope, and took to the air with the gryfesses forming an honor guard behind him. Shard stood, watching Kjorn’s bright form against the sky, and his throat caught.

“Shard.” Asvander bumped him firmly. “It’s the right thing. Orn wants no part of you, and maybe it’s better this way. Kjorn can reunite with his mother’s sister. The queen,” he reminded Shard. “He can make his first approach to the Dawn Spire alone. We’ll be there for him at the Voldsom. It’s only five days.”

“Yes,” Shard added dryly. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Thinking of at least a dozen possibilities in the span of a heartbeat, they all looked skyward again. But, rather than make him feel worse, Shard found the thoughts made him break into nervous, hearty laughter. Asvander followed suit.

Brynja spread her wings. “Let’s fly. We have a lot of ground to cover, not to mention explaining to rest of the allies why Kjorn has left without so much as a fair-winds-to-you.”

“Let’s fly,” Shard agreed. The chilly wind grew damp as they soared, and rain speckled the dry ground as they reached the lions’ den again.

There, they told Mbari of Kjorn’s invitation to the Dawn Spire, and they bid farewell to the lion pride, promising to meet them at the Voldsom in five days.

By the time they explained everything to rest of the gryfons and convinced Nilsine’s Vanhar not to go after her, and Keta and Ilse not to go after Ketil, low gray clouds rushed across the plains as far as a gryfon could see. Rain lashed down as they took wing, and the ozone scent of skyfire suffused the air, along with rain and the petrichor from the earth.

“I hope this isn’t an omen,” Asvander shouted at Shard over the rain.

Shard thought if it were any omen, it was a good one. Rain was spring. Rain was change, and life, and skyfire. “Maybe it’s a blessing,” he offered. “Fire, and then rain. Perhaps it’s a blessing from Tor!”

Some of the other Lakelanders had words for that, but thunder cracked and drowned them out.

“We need a warrior blessing,” Asvander said grimly.

“Or a huntress,” Brynja said, eyeing the sky.

To Shard’s surprise, Keta stroked hard against the rain to catch up with them. “Prince Rashard and Brynja are right! My mother taught us a rhyme.” She raised her voice high, cutting through the rain, her gaze on Asvander now. “Tor is the mother, but also the huntress!”

Ilse’s voice raised with Keta. “Tor is the thunder, Tor is the thunder. . .”

“Tyr is the wrath and the rain!”

Keta spun, flapping, looking surprised as a Vanhar gryfon swooped in below them, echoing and adding to the rhyme. “We know this one too. Surely the Vanir of the Silver Isles are one blood with us.”

Shard laughed, and called out as rain battered and slid down his face. “Tor is the thunder . . .” He would have answered Asvander’s grim look, but a low, thrilling hum wove through the storm. The Vanhar, and the Vanir, chanting.

“
Tor is the thunder, Tor is the thunder!

Tyr is the wrath and the rain.

Tor is the thunder, Tor is the thunder!

Tyr is the wrath and the rain!”

Thunder boomed and broke across the sky and the flying gryfons shrieked, then laughed and soared high, weaving in dodgy imprecision that neither Asvander nor Brynja bothered to correct.

“I’m coming, Rhydda,” Shard whispered into the storm, his words in time with the chanting and the thunder. “I’m coming to face you again, and you will hear me.”

Thunder rolled out in growls like a gryfon mother warning a beast away. Rain fell, and they flew hard, rebelliously high, toward the Voldsom Narrows and the Outlands where the wyrms dwelled.

K
JORN FLEW AT THE HEAD
of his small wedge of companions, every now and then eyeing the dark storm that had rushed in windward of them. Shard would be flying in that storm.

“Shard,” he muttered, “watch your back.”

“What, my lord?”

Brought out of his thoughts by Nilsine’s frank, clear voice, Kjorn shook his head, shifting his wings to soothe his irritated flight. “I was thinking aloud.”

He felt the stares of the gryfesses on his back, and kept his eyes resolutely forward. Behind him, Nilsine resumed her conversation with Ketil, about the similarities of their prides. The other half of the wedge, Dagny and Sigga, caught up on tidings from the Dawn Spire. Kjorn flicked an ear to that, to the news that Dagny’s family was well, and Brynja’s family was well, though watched. Orn spared no one if they were suspected to have helped Shard, or incited the attack on the Dawn Spire.

“Be prepared,” Sigga said to Dagny, and he thought, a little to him. “It will not be as you remember. Many of the outer towers are toppled. The great red bridge on the dawnward border—”

“No,” Dagny whimpered. “Not my bridge?”

“Smashed,” Sigga confirmed. “The smaller three to the starward outskirts remain.” She watched Dagny, then averted her gaze. Kjorn’s feathers prickled with further unease.

“Brynja and I would always meet under that bridge,” Dagny said quietly, her wing strokes leaden. “In the evenings, to catch up on the news after I lit the fires.”

Sigga made a clipped noise of sympathy, and when Kjorn peered back at them, she was looking at him. When he met her eyes, her ears slicked back and she looked away, dawnward, folding her talons in what looked like apprehension.

Outer towers, toppled. A stone bridge smashed.

A shudder rippled over Kjorn’s skin to think of the wyrms, powerful enough to smash rock. A warm, climbing thrill followed the shudder. They had routed the monsters once, and they could do it again if needed.

Then he thought of Shard’s dream, and at the idea of the wyrms marauding in the Silver Isles, his skin went cold as snow.

“I have fought and won against the wyrms once,” he said, forcing himself to remain in the present. “If honor and courage remains, then nothing is broken. The Dawn Spire is more than towers and stone.”

Sigga sniffed, one ear ticking forward, then back, and he knew her thought.

How would I know such a thing?

“Wait until you see it,” Dagny said, her voice brightening, though edged, and Kjorn understood why she and Brynja were wingsisters. Her determination to be cheerful was impossible to break, and always a comfort.

Meanwhile, Nilsine and Ketil had fallen quiet. “Beware, my lord,” Nilsine said, “of any expectations.”

The heavy scent of rain gusted intermittently, but the storm crawled along the border of the First Plains and didn’t drift starward. For a moment, Kjorn suffered the mad fantasy that the rain was following Shard, and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Good, he thought after a moment. It would wash away the ash from Midragur, and Shard liked the rain.

He registered Nilsine’s comment. “How do you mean?”

“It would be wise not to have expectations about what it will be like when you return,” Ketil chimed in, her voice warm and warning.

Kjorn eyed the Vanir thoughtfully. “I suppose you’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Returning home, I mean.”

He didn’t mean it to sound cruel, or like anything but an observation, but she looked struck, and turned her face from him. “Ketil,” he said swiftly, “forgive me. I’m on my own wind, thinking of Shard, and my aunt at the Dawn Spire. I didn’t mean any offense.”

With a quick glance at him, she rolled her shoulders in a shrug and said quietly, “I only meant it might not be as you remember.”

Kjorn nodded once, turning forward to behold the distant outline of the Dawn Spire. “Fortunately for me, I remember nothing at all.”

Kjorn had plenty of time to ponder his past and his legacy as they soared closer to the Dawn Spire, but still he was not prepared for the sight of the aerie. As late afternoon touched the face of the Winderost in pale light, Kjorn stared at the place of his birth, and at the ruin that had surely come with the attack by the wyrms.

Towers of stone jutted from the earth and stood tall, but some were only half as high as the others, with newly crumbled red stone around their bases. Kjorn counted at least four of those, smashed. Arches of stone rose and thrust toward each other fruitlessly, spanning only half the distance between each other. Broken bridges lay in marbling shades of ochre, umber, and red, red stone.

He’d thought he would remember it, but the only thing vaguely familiar was the drifting scent in the air. Nilsine flapped up closer to Kjorn as he lifted his head, grasping for something, anything familiar. He curled his talons, staring hard.

“My lord,” Nilsine said, her voice touched with warning.

Kjorn realized voices called to them, ordered them to land. He flicked his ears, noting that sentries stood on the high towers and some even on the piles of rubble. He remembered nothing about any of it. He didn’t remember the ancient formations of stone, vast and dazzling in their color and formation, nor the lay of the landscape beyond it. He didn’t remember the way the sentries were posted, nor the stream that ran out of the aerie and broke into the lands beyond.