A Shard of Sun (43 page)

“But it was not the Vanir.” Sverin’s voice boomed and cracked, broken, over the pride. “It was not Ragna who pushed Elena past her limit and skill, it was not Ragna who demanded that Elena try to match the hunting skills of the Vanir, not Ragna who fought viciously with her because arrogance, hunger and terror of that first winter had driven all the Aesir nearly mad.” He closed his eyes, as if unable to look at them and say the words at the same time. “It was me.”

Sverin looked at Caj, and he began to understand at last the true horror of his wingbrother’s confession.

“It was I who demanded that she try, that she prove herself equal to the conquered huntresses.
I
taunted her, I drove her out, and I watched when she fell, but I was too terrified to fly out and try to save her. And I watched as Ragna…” He straightened, lifted his wings, and forced out the last words. “…as Ragna, the only witness, calling for me to help, dove down to try and save my mate. But she couldn’t do it alone, the water was too rough and freezing, and Elena drowned still calling my name.”

No one breathed.

Caj could bring no expression to his face at first, no sympathy, no reaction at all. His stomach felt hot and hollow.

Sverin’s ears laid back slowly, watching him for some reaction. Caj drew a breath, managed to raise his beak, lift his wings slightly to acknowledge him.

You will never fly alone,
he thought, fiercely, hoping his wingbrother knew, hoping he saw it in Caj’s face.

I promise you will not fly this wind alone.

Everything became clear. Everything washed over Caj in a blazing, fresh new light. Their flight from the Winderost, Sverin’s stern rule, his unreasonable hatred for the Isles.

He had never hated the Islands, or the Vanir. He had hated himself.

Caj stood, slowly, not intending to go to him, but to show that he would not abandon him now, or ever again.

Sverin looked again beyond the pride, toward the mountains.

Before any other gryfon could close their beak or make a noise, Ragna took mercy on Sverin by speaking, for all could see that he had no more words. “We made a pact, that I would tell no one of what had happened, and Sverin would never allow me to be exiled from the pride.”

No wonder she never seemed afraid of him,
Caj thought, with a mix of bitterness and pity for them both. He wondered how much pain could have been avoided, if…
if.

“It was wrong of me,” Ragna said to all, though she watched Sverin, “to hold that terrible secret. Wrong of both of us, and it has brought nothing but ruin, guilt, and pain.”

Sverin’s wings closed slowly and he turned his face from the pride, who sat as frozen as rocks in the snow. “Forgive me,” he said quietly to Ragna. “I beg your forgiveness.”

“Since you ask it, I give it,” Ragna said, though her voice remained cold. “For my own part, for I see how you suffer from our agreement still, I forgive you, for I agreed to silence as well. But for the rest…”

She raised her voice, and Caj watched her expression grow icy. “For your crimes against the Vanir, wrought by your own dishonorable acts of cowardice and lying, for the exiles you sent to die, the scorn you showed my own son and the Isles…for that, you will await judgment, and beg the new king for forgiveness yourself.”

“The new king,” Sverin murmured, staring at his own talons as if in a dream. “Shard.”

“Shard,” Ragna said. Her voice grew from ice to heat, and as she spoke, the pride realized that her forgiveness did not mean mercy or friendship. “
My son
. The son of Baldr and the rightful prince of the Silver Isles who once loved you, you who returned that love and loyalty with scorn, mistrust and fear. When he returns, he will decide your fate. Thyra has agreed to this. Your own son said we should do with you what we saw fit.”

Speaking only to Sverin as if they were alone, and not in front of the entire pride, she finished.

“Until their return, I declare you a prisoner of war, charged with crimes against my pride and all the creatures of the Silver Isles. You will be imprisoned as we have been imprisoned these ten years.”

Looking dazed as the pride thought on that change of fortune, it seemed Sverin could only bow his head. Older Aesir in the crowd began to shift, rustle as if preparing to speak, but Thyra raised her head, staring them down. Caj himself could not move, could not argue with the queen’s statement nor sentence, grateful only that it was not a sentence of death.

Ragna called the names of four warriors loyal to her. “Take him to his nest. Bind his wings with the gold chains so precious to him, set a guard on him at all times, and let him await the return of the king.”

“What will become of him?” Caj demanded, at last breaking his silence.

When Ragna’s cool look switched to him, Sigrun stepped forward also, as if to shield him.

“Now?” Ragna watched Caj, he thought, with a mix of anger and pity. “Now that the truth is known, let him at last grieve his mate honestly, and face his failed rule. Let him hope that my son has mercy. Let him beg bright Tyr,” she looked to Sverin, ears flat on her skull, “for the pity and mercy that he never gave.”

“W
OULD HE THINK TO
come here, Asvander?” Kjorn mused.

“I don’t know.”

They’d gathered at the water’s edge, under the moon. The earlier clouds had cleared without dropping rain or snow. They had no fires, but stars and moonlight and the brightness of happy news and finding living friends made the shore seem light. A low murmur from the rest of the Ostral pride, talking in their various dens and hollows, underscored their quiet conversation.

Kjorn paced, tail lashing. “Or if your scouts found him, would they know him, and think to bring him back here?”

Asvander lifted his wings, sitting with Dagny and Brynja. “The last we saw of him—”

“We know the last anyone saw of him,” Stigr growled. “We don’t need to hear it again.”

“It’s been a long search,” Kjorn said, eyeing the black gryfon. “With challenges and heartache for all of us. We’re just talking it through, trying to think of things we haven’t yet.”

“Pretty words.” The black Vanir shifted, stretching out on his belly and leaning against Brynja’s aunt, Valdis. She didn’t intervene, but seemed content to watch Kjorn be challenged and to let them argue. “I heard your father was good with pretty words, too.”

“I know you’re afraid for Shard,” Kjorn said evenly. “And I am too. Now is not the time to argue about it.”

“Don’t presume to know how I feel about anything,” Stigr warned, “much less Shard.”

“Do you know how hard I’ve been searching for him?” Kjorn demanded. “Do you think I care less than you?”

“I think you care about yourself. What’s the worst outcome for you—that he’s dead and you get to be king of both the Winderost and the Silver Isles?”

“He said nothing like that,” Asvander broke in. “You surprise me, Stigr. Did your good judgment get severed with your wing?”

“Asvander,” Brynja gasped, her gaze shifting to Stigr’s mangled shoulder and the thick, raw scar there.

Kjorn laid his ears back. “I have no quarrel with you, Stigr.”

“Don’t you?” he asked shrewdly.

Kjorn did, once. It was Stigr who’d told Shard he was a prince, who had told him everything about being a Vanir. It was Stigr who had turned Shard against the Aesir. Against Kjorn.

“I’ve put it aside,” Kjorn said, shortly. “Can’t you, for Shard?”

“Everything I’ve done the last ten years was for Shard.”

“He’s my wingbrother,” Kjorn growled.

Stigr stood slowly, and ignored when Valdis tapped her tail against his hind leg. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“This isn’t helping,” Dagny said, stepping between them, her wings lifting. Her voice raised in pitch. “Can’t we all take a moment to remember how we felt when we thought the rest of us were dead?”

Stigr’s ears flattened, Valdis snorted, and Kjorn ground his beak.

Asvander paced around all of them, and stretched his wings. “She’s right, you know.”

“Dagny is right,” Brynja agreed. She looked from Kjorn to Asvander, and Stigr. “We mustn’t fight amongst ourselves. Shard hoped for peace between all of us. We can honor that, at least. And you mustn’t give up hope, Kjorn.”

When he remained silent, Brynja spread her wings, outlined in the hazy moonlight against the lapping waves of the lake. “You mustn’t. Shard wanted more than anything to see you again and reconcile. He believed in you. You must believe in him.”

“Brynja,” Asvander began hesitantly. “You must be prepared to accept if—”

“He lives.” She turned, her gaze hard and bright. She stepped back from them. “I know that he lives. He had so much to live
for,
and I…” Drawing a tight breath, she composed herself, folding her wings. “I believe that if he hasn’t yet returned, it’s because he had some purpose. Some greater purpose to attend to, some task, some reason not to return to us. He had larger designs than we might know.”

The waves lapped, and wisps of fog gathered over the water.

“What task?” Asvander asked at last, gently. “What task could be more important than finding his friends again, his allies, his wingbrother? If he came to his senses, what could be more important?”

Kjorn stared across the lake, and saw no answer in the dark.

Stigr broke the silence, his voice low and gravelly. “I know of one thing.”

I
T HAD BECOME TOO
easy to slip into Namelessness, to exist within his instincts and feel only the wind on his feathers and fur. He didn’t count the days flying from the Sunland back to the Winderost, he slipped away from himself and became wind, became his feathers and his breath. After the dark, cold hole of his imprisonment, flying free and wild was a relief.

He landed on a rock cluster and fished there, eating his fill. Then he flew on, following the line of two stars above him, two stars that shone like the wingtips of a swan in flight under the moon.

Follow Sig’s wingtips,
echoed a soft memory, a voice he knew he loved.
They will guide you.

One day, a new scent wafted to him under the constant wash of brine and fish.

Sage.

It brought many memories licking up like flames. Red rock. Hunting. Laughter. The face of a gryfess with keen, gold eyes and freckles of russet on the pale feathers of her face.

Bit by bit as the winter sea passed under him, he rebuilt the memory of his loved ones, his purpose, and his name.

By the time he saw, almost with surprise, the ragged, wind-nightward coast of the Winderost, he knew again that he was Rashard, son-of-Baldr, and remembered all the reasons he’d returned.

Brynja. Kjorn. Stigr.

Anticipation kindled in his breast to think of Brynja, to see her again, to speak his heart again.

Stigr, he tucked in the same corner of his heart as his father.

Moving from sad thoughts, he pictured Kjorn, who was surely in the Winderost, if his own visions were true, and what they might accomplish together if they could reconcile.

Skirting along the coast, he kept a hard watch for any creature in the air or on the land. He scented and smelled no wyrms, no gryfons. Only gulls watched his lonely arrival.

He worked to recall the lay of the land as Brynja had told it to him nearly a season ago, and angled his flight accordingly. The landscape lay different from the coast where he’d first landed, different from the land he’d first flown over with Brynja and her huntresses.

Not planning on returning yet to the Dawn Spire without a plan or allies, he soared high over unfamiliar rolling hills, toward a different destination, and a task more important than his own reunions.

He turned inland, and starward, toward the Outlands.

A long lay of gray, cracked earth stretched beneath him. A half day’s flight and the land changed after a range of gray, wolf-teeth mountains that showed little sign of life.

Shard saw no movement but for an occasional silent vulture. He hoped that meant the wyrms remained starward of the Voldsom Narrows, perhaps hoping to catch him and Hikaru coming from the Horn, or for other reasons he couldn’t understand.

A great gash delved into the earth, neatly dividing the dead spread of earth from the rest of the Winderost. Shard remembered it. He remembered from when he’d flown, ashamed and Nameless, away from the Dawn Spire—wandering, lost and out of his head, he’d traveled a canyon. He soared low now, searching the landscape. He’d been witless, but he remembered flashes of the landscape. And he remembered gryfons.

A female gryfon and her son had met him, fought him away from their den. Then, she’d recognized him. She’d recognized him and called out to him in his father’s name. Shard hadn’t even known his own name, much less Baldr’s, but he remembered now, and he knew what it meant.

There were Vanir in the Outlands of the Winderost.