By the Silver Wind (35 page)

The mussels were for Thyra, who in the late stage of her pregnancy couldn’t seem to get enough of them. Ragna cared for her, because helping Sigrun took her mind off other things, and she felt that showing Thyra respect won her some peace from the Aesir.

“Kind lady!” other gulls called, floating above her. “Lovely lady, kind queen, a little food? Ahh? Food for poor and loyal beggars? Ah!”

Ragna growled. She remembered how Stigr used to lure in hordes of gulls with herring scraps, then dive into their midst just to watch them explode into winged clouds of white. Hard longing for her brother and her son must have made her look wretched, for even the gulls decided not to trouble her further. The youngest beggar took off, crying for its mother.

“Pale fools. Not two thoughts to bash together and make an idea.” A sharper voice, edged with more intelligence, addressed Ragna from above.

Mantling over her precious pile of delicacies, Ragna peered up to see a skua on the boulder nearest her.

“Now
I,
” croaked the dusky seabird , “I would give you news, great lady, in exchange for a bite. News, from over the sea.”

Ragna huddled over her hard-collected treasures. Skua were notorious bandits, unscrupulous thieves. As a fledge, she’d been attacked by a pair, and lost the very first fish she’d ever caught. “What news?”

“First, food.”

Ragna grabbed a mollusk and made to toss it to him.

“Crack it!” demanded the pirate bird. “Crack it, or I’ll forget everything I know from hunger.”

“Pest,” Ragna growled, and smacked the shell against the boulder. She tossed it up to the skua, who caught it in his beak, then picked out the meat. Ragna waited.

“Many creatures,” he said, one webbed foot nudging the discarded shell off the boulder. “Flying this way over the sea.”

Her blood surged and she stood, wings open. Maja, at last! Or maybe even Shard. She hardly dared to hope. “From what direction?” Instinctively, Ragna looked windward. “How far away, by your reckoning?”

“Not far. But I can’t quite remember.” He opened his long wings and bobbed his head, opening his beak. Ragna grumbled and cracked him another morsel, tossing it high. He caught it, ate it, eyed her, and laughed, shoving from the rock to glide out over the choppy water.

“Wretch!” Ragna shouted. His laughter rolled into long calls, and frigid water washed over her toes, as if Tor scolded her for dealing with thieves, anyway.

“Can I be of help, my lady?”

Ragna whirled, ready to snap and pluck the next Nameless bird to interrupt her solitude. But rather, there stood Vidar, his presence oddly like a balm.

Like her, he was ever-wrapped in his mourning, his losses clouding him like fog over clearer water. Though it had only been three years, the sight of him still surprised her. The sight of every face that had gone missing during the Conquering and in the years after surprised, delighted, then saddened her. The way he had forgiven Sverin made her proud of him, sad for him, and glad to know him.

He was a well-built Vanir, slender, but every rift of his body lined with muscle from fishing and flying. His feathers were like Sigrun’s, brown but intricately patterned as the pale sand of a river bed. The sight of him brought Ragna comfort, for it reminded her of happier days, her kithood, her old friendships. She longed for Baldr, for Stigr.

At least,
she thought, fighting bitterness,
I still have my wingsister.
Though Sigrun would be run ragged until the females whelped, and her heart ran ragged by Caj tending to Sverin.

And now Vidar, back from exile, father to a slain son, watched her with the implacable calm of a still lake, reflecting her own musings back at her. She remembered, with painful nostalgia, that he had once thought to court Sigrun, but Stigr would brook no competition even for a gryfess he hadn’t openly claimed, and had driven him off with a single spar.

“Yes,” she managed tightly to his offer of help, realizing she stood there silently. “If you would help me carry these to Sigrun’s den, I would be grateful.”

“Shall we gather more, to replace what you gave the bird?”

“Yes,” she said again, with relief. Clouds crawled along the dawnward horizon, and she wanted to enjoy the weather while she could. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the cliffs just yet, not face anyone else. The gulls had left and so she felt less wary of leaving her bounty. Keeping some attention trained on the pile, she walked with Vidar farther down the beach.

“How fares Dagr? He seems to have fallen in well enough with the others.” By others, she meant the males his own age, the half-bloods, and the other Aesir.

“Well enough. He barely leaves Astri’s side, and I believe she finds true comfort there.”

Ragna felt a little relief. They walked on in quiet for a few moments before Vidar spoke again.

“I saw Eyvin this morning.”

She had noticed that Vidar and Eyvin were no longer nesting in the same den. Ragna hadn’t intended to ask him anything about her, but since he started it, she lifted her ears. “Oh, yes?”

Vidar looked impossibly weary, his voice dull and deep. “She isn’t the gryfess I remember. After the Conquering, Ragna, I . . . She seemed so strong, so sure.” He paused to dig at a promising pockmark in the sand. “We did love each other. I wanted a family. She was honorable. Like Caj, I suppose. I thought she would accept me back.”

“She is honorable. But even the best of us have our breaking points. Sverin sent you away, and killed—”

“Yes.” With a huff, he shoved his talons into the sand, and came up with a clam. “Ha.” Crouched, he turned and tossed the clam to the rest of Ragna’s forage. Then he remained there, staring at the line where the ocean met the sky.

“Vidar,” Ragna murmured. “Are you all right?” The moment she asked, she felt like a fool. Of course he wasn’t.

“I miss him,” he said tightly, looking down at the sand on his talons. “I miss my son, and my mate, and the life we were trying to make. Curse it! Bright Tor’s wings, I never should have flown that night. I don’t know what I was thinking!”

As if a wing slapped her, Ragna realized, suddenly, how self-absorbed she had been. She’d been avoiding Vidar, but he didn’t blame her, or Eyvin, or possibly even Sverin for any of it. He blamed himself for being exiled.

“Oh, my friend,” she whispered. “Vidar . . . It was Per’s ridiculous laws. It was never your—”

“I left my sons,” he snarled, turning his eyes to her, his features ragged, beak agape and eyes wide as if in physical pain. “All because I just wanted to stretch my wings in the starlight. I knew better. Ridiculous laws or not, I knew them, and I made a choice.”

Watching him, Ragna saw as if in bright crystal what Sverin saw when he looked at her. Regret. Anguish. Useless remorse over things that could no longer be changed.

The regretting, waiting Widow Queen.

Perhaps, in this, the Aesir had the right of it.

“Let us mourn,” she said, haltingly extending a wing to cover him. He thrust up his wings to shrug her off. “My friend,” she continued. “Let us mourn, and then move on. There’s much to be glad for. You have a son, still. You have a new daughter, who will bear Einarr’s kit. And Eyvin—”

“That is all true,” he said gruffly, not looking at her. “But not Eyvin. I’ve begged her forgiveness. She won’t give it. She thinks I exiled myself on purpose. I cannot be with her now. I hope . . . I hope she returns with the Aesir to their land.”

Never in all her days had Ragna heard of a mated pair of gryfons parting ways except by death. Such a bond was unbreakable in Tor’s eyes. Sigrun had once said she thought love was like a broken wing, to be set and re-set after such tests and trials, and grow stronger at the broken points.

Ragna wasn’t sure she could agree. How many times could a wing be broken and re-shaped until it lost its power, and never could fly true? If Vidar and Eyvin had changed too much, perhaps they couldn’t love each other anymore.

Ragna wondered, then, if the opposite were true of enemies.

A stiff breeze gusted off the sea, and the skua’s words came back to her.

She embraced her new thoughts with relief. “I believe it may almost be time for those decisions. The thief told me he saw creatures flying over the sea, a great number of them. It could be Maja, or even Shard.”

Vidar looked at her, ears flicking back. “Creatures, though? He didn’t say gryfons?”

The question Ragna had dismissed before rose again with his simple observation. “I . . . thought he’d said it that way just to vex me.”

“That sounds more like something a raven would do.” He studied Ragna thoughtfully, then looked out over the ocean, squinting against the gray glare on the waves, his voice dipping with foreboding. “Whatever he meant, I’m sure he meant it truthfully.”

Feeling suddenly chilled by the rising wind, Ragna looked out toward the water as well.

How far, by your reckoning?

Not far.

Not far for a small seabird was not far at all, for a gryfon.

“My lady,” Vidar murmured, and pointed his talons windward. A creeping cold gnawed up Ragna’s muscles as she followed his indication, and along the horizon, she spied a dark line. She would have called it clouds, but it undulated with the movement of living things. It might have been a mass of gryfons, but she knew in her heart it was not.

She knew the flight of gryfons, even an unorganized group, but she knew not this movement, this slower, writhing mass of bodies flying hard toward her islands.

“What in all blazes,” Vidar breathed, pressing protectively closer to her. It was tempting to stand there, to stare, to wonder, as one might halt in the path of an avalanche to behold its might even at the risk of burial.

Queen,
her heart reminded her in a whisper.
Act.

“Come,” she said, steeling her voice. “We must tell everyone. We must go. Now. Find Thyra, and Sigrun, and bring them to Sverin’s den.”

She didn’t know the name of the nightmare flying their way, but she had a feeling that an Aesir would.

“Yes, my lady,” Vidar said, and took off. Ragna followed. A few gryfons stood on the cliffs, looking out over the sea. She heard remarks of wonder and fear as they, too, spied the dark mass.

Flaring hard, Ragna dropped onto the rock landing outside Sverin’s den. The guards at the mouth of the cave, Andor and Halvden, startled aside.

“My lady—”

“Fetch Caj,” she said. “Bring him here, and any elder Aesir you see along the way.” When they blinked at her, she gaped her beak and flapped her wings once, raising her talons. “Do I mumble?”

They sputtered and jumped from the cliff. The wind of their beating wings swept across Ragna’s face and back and she shouted into the den.

“Sverin! What blight is in my skies? Sverin! Come out now, and see what I see!”

So bright was the day, and so dim the cave, she barely saw him until he emerged from the back of the nest, where he’d clearly been sleeping. He slept too much. It wasn’t healthy for a grown gryfon to sleep so much, but then, she thought, what else was he to do?

After his atonement, as Thyra called it, when he’d finally heard the last of those who wished to lodge complaints against him, he barely stirred from his nest but to eat. Ragna didn’t pester him after that, and got her reports on his sanity from Caj.

“My lady?”

She’d never seen him look un-regal, except in his madness, but now his feathers pressed flat to one side of his neck and a small twig stuck out from the long feathers of his chest. Ragna managed not to slap it aside so he would look more like a warrior, more ready to deal with whatever was heading their way.

He shook himself, rustled, sleeked again and gazed at her, puzzled and wary. They had barely spoken since the end of the atonements.

“Come here, and look. What do you see?” She resisted the urge to shove him, not that it would have done any good. He looked as though he weighed much more than he did, for how slowly he picked himself across the stone floor. But he stepped outside with her, and narrowed his eyes against the light.

“You haven’t come in days.” His voice barely registered, low and rumbling.

“Look, look, there.” Ragna jerked her beak. Standing a wing-length away from him, she watched his neutral face, then looked out to the horizon, peering at the strange, squirming shadow.

“Clouds,” he rumbled. “The shadow of a storm.”

“It isn’t,” she hissed. “Look at it. What is it?”

His crimson hackle feathers, those that faded like sunset fire in scarlet on his back and wings, slowly ruffed. “Clouds.”

“Son of Per.”

His black talons clenched so hard at the rock she thought they would break. “It isn’t possible, they don’t fly in the day.”

“Is this your scourge?” Ragna backed away from him, seeing a change stealing over his face, seeing horror seal back his ears and turn the blacks of his eyes to pin pricks. “Did you bring this to my home? What is it, Sverin, speak!”

His name was slipping from him, Ragna saw. He didn’t hear her as he backed away, back toward the darkness of the cave. “They only fly at night, this can’t be—”

“This is your curse?” she hissed. “You brought your curse to my islands, and you will not flee it now! Stand and be a king! Be the king you never were.” She leaped, and without slicing with her talons, slapped him across the head.

In shock he fell back from her, and stared, half crouched. In a fight, she was no match for him, for any Aesir, but he looked cowed, amazed she would touch him.

“Sverin,” she growled. “Son of Per. Father of Kjorn. Once-king. You will not flee this fight again. Tell me what flies our way.”

He stared at her, and she knew he saw her, heard her, that he still knew his name. But the breath came from him in hard gasps, his wings twitched under golden chains and he seemed to have lost his voice.

“For Kjorn,” she said, and watched light come into his face again. “For Kjorn, Sverin. For your pride. Tell me what flies our way.”

His beak tapped together. He stepped toward her, looking grateful, his gaze fixed upon her face—as if to look away, or to look outside again at the encroaching monsters—would drive him back over the edge. “I can’t,” he breathed.