Hikaru shook his short mane. “What do
you
fight for, Shard?”
Shard thought back. “I have fought for my honor—which isn’t always worth it, depending on who you’re fighting. I fight to defend the weaker, I fight for my family and my friends.”
“Your gryfon pride,” Hikaru said eagerly, and Shard fluffed his feathers. “Because you’re a prince.”
“Yes.” Shard had a pride waiting for him, hoping for his return so that he could be their king. With that thought and the sun shining on him and Hikaru’s gaze shining at him, he did feel like a prince, though his pride was far away. “Well, yes, that’s right. My pride.”
“And you fight for truth.”
Shard tilted his head. “Truth?”
“Yes. You told me you hoped to find the truth of why the wyrms are angry and hateful, that you’ve argued for them. You fight for truth. I will, too.”
“Oh, Hikaru. You’re brave. Your mother hoped you could bring peace and friendship to the Winderost wyrms, but it won’t be easy. They seem more interested in fighting and spreading fear, and we don’t know why.”
“They’re angry,” Hikaru said. “I wish they would say why, instead of just attacking. But I will learn the truth, with you.”
Shard picked at a bit of bone from the meal. “I’ll need all the help I can get. I tried to speak to them once, but they didn’t listen, or they didn’t understand.” The stormy night came back to him, the terror, the attacking wyrms and their pursuit of him all the way to the Dawn Spire.
Hikaru’s tail coiled around Shard’s feet—to comfort Shard, or himself, Shard wasn’t sure. “They didn’t listen to me either,” the dragon murmured, “in the cavern.”
“Well,” Shard said, ruffling off the memory of the battle. The last time he’d seen his uncle, his friends, and Brynja. “You might endure a battle yet. Aesir gryfons like battle. They win acclaim and honor, and titles.”
Hikaru considered that. “I don’t want all that. I just want to be with you, and to help the wyrms find peace.” He lowered his head on level with Shard’s. “But I would fight for you, Shard.”
Shard touched his beak to Hikaru’s nose. “I would fight for you, too.”
It occurred to Shard he’d never sparred with the dragon or attempted to teach him anything about it. He made a plan to do so.
Hikaru lifted his head, then stood and stretched his wings. After glancing at what was left of the deer carcass, scraps of hide and the bones sucked clean of their marrow, he looked at Shard. “What should we do with her?”
Shard twitched his tail, surprised. “Do?”
Hikaru hesitated. “Yes. It doesn’t feel right to eat of her flesh and then just leave her there.” His brows scrunched down, as if he was trying to remember something.
“Oh.” Moved, Shard stood and looked down at the bones. “It’s all right. She’ll feed the crows and return to the earth in her own time. It is the way. In the Silver Isles, the Vanir leave their dead on the isle called Black Rock.”
“I see.” Hikaru considered his own toes for a moment. “Do we return to the earth when we die?”
“All flesh does. Our Voice sings on, in the winds, in the sky. Our spirit flies to the Sunlit Land of Tyr.”
Hikaru sat back, considering the bones of the deer, then the clear circle of sky far above. “I don’t know if dragons go to the Sunlit Land.”
Shard cocked his head. All spirits went to the Sunlit Land. It was a very strange thing to say. “What do you mean?”
Hikaru folded his claws together. “I feel as if…well, I don’t know if I can explain. But I feel as if I’m remembering things from…from other times I’ve lived.” His large eyes focused on Shard. “I think dragons are born again, and again. I think our spirits dwell here forever.”
Shard flexed his wings, and tilted his head, indicating that they should walk on, under the cover of trees. He didn’t know what to say at all, so he spoke carefully. “That could be, Hikaru. I know that dragons are different. Your blood is like fire. You…well, what kinds of things are you remembering?”
Hikaru walked by his side, in graceful, undulating movement like a rising and falling wave. “Songs, mostly. Songs you didn’t teach me. Sometimes I remember other dragons, or things. I had a dream of a red stone gilded with bright gold.”
Shard navigated a path through the damp ferns, shaking off the dew every few steps and pondering. Privately, he thought that Hikaru might be a seer, like himself, that they weren’t memories but visions. But dragons were very different, and who was he to say?
“What songs do you remember?” Amaratsu had said that the songs of the Sunland would be in Hikaru’s blood. Shard hadn’t realized he would actually
remember
them, from a past life, through what power he didn’t know. If he was remembering them at all, and not hearing them through some power in the wind. It had happened for Amaratsu, and for Shard himself.
Hikaru’s warm voice broke the silence like a deep birdsong.
“
The noble draw wind from the water
The brave will call fire from stone.
The foolish seek gold in the mountain
The last know that wood grows from bone.”
“It’s beautiful,” Shard murmured. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“It’s a dragon song,” Hikaru said, certain of himself. Shard wasn’t going to argue. “Where are we going?”
“Nightward.”
“Yes.” Hikaru trailed him through the ferns, up a long slope through the hulking, ancient cedars. “But where?”
Shard climbed, opening his wings and checking the position of the sun that glinted through the pine needles high above. “For now, just away.” He pondered whether to tell Hikaru his true destination yet, for he wasn’t certain how to get there, or if it was the best idea. At that moment, it was the only idea he had. “Away from the Winderost,” he continued, “away from the wyrms, and the Dawn Spire.”
“And then?” Hikaru rolled and hopped after him, seeming to enjoy the freedom to stretch and work his growing body.
“And then…” Shard wove around a tumble of moss-covered boulders. Perhaps, if they crested the slope, they’d have a good view of what lay beyond the forest. He paused, looking at Hikaru.
I promised myself I wouldn’t keep things from him.
“We can’t speak to the wyrms. I have more enemies than friends in the Winderost now. We know that the wyrms are angry with gryfons and Sunland dragons alike, so—”
“You want to go to the Sunland,” Hikaru said eagerly. “Yes, I think that will be a good plan. There will be answers there, and friends.”
Shard chuckled, relieved. “Let’s hope so. But I don’t know the way.”
“I’m certain I can find it, when I remember more.”
“It may be a very long flight.”
Hikaru fluffed his wings. “I’m growing strong.”
Shard stepped forward to butt his head affectionately against Hikaru’s shoulder. “I knew you wouldn’t be afraid.”
He was glad Hikaru agreed with his plan, though he couldn’t shake his own feeling that he was just running away.
It’ll be best for Hikaru to see his homeland, and he’s right,
Shard tried to convince himself,
we may have friends there.
Together they turned and trekked up the remainder of the slope, where a line of trees marked a low ridge. Shard paused at the top. The ground swept back down in a wash of shale, toward yet more forest. Beyond, in the blue haze, he made out a long, flat plain with marsh grasses, and beyond that, more forest. He didn’t want to walk through a marsh, and Hikaru had eaten an entire deer. He looked up at the dragon.
“Ready to fly?”
Hikaru laughed and launched from the ridge, shooting ahead like a serpent. Shard leaped and glided after, soaking in the warm sun after the chill of the woods. Every so often he checked over his shoulder. The wyrms must have been hunkered down away from the sun. There was another possibility, though Shard guarded his hope. It was possible that the wyrms may have lost them completely when the volcano erupted, and hadn’t followed at all.
“Let’s race!” Hikaru challenged, looping back around Shard.
“Ha! All right.”
Without hesitation, Shard narrowed his wings and shot ahead, twisting his body like a falcon to streamline his muscles and feathers. Hikaru took a sharp breath, then loosed a warbling shriek of glee. They raced.
Shard gained height and then darted ahead, using altitude and wind for his advantage, working as he had never worked before, holding nothing back. Hikaru, forced to keep up with the swiftest gryfon known in the Silver Isles or the Winderost, tested his wings to the utmost. In that way, without words, Shard helped Hikaru learn what he was capable of, and pride warmed him every time the young dragon pulled ahead of him by a nose.
Now and then they laid back, gliding on high winds to save energy, then they resumed the race and mocking, challenging calls.
Far below, the birds chattered about them. Alternatively racing and gliding, they crossed the rolling cedar forest and the long, flat marsh. The land bumped up into wooded hills again, and though it was winter the plants bloomed green and Shard spotted flowers. They smelled only earth and rain, not snow, and thought the mountain ranges must affect the weather and create a bowl of warmth.
“I’m getting tired,” Hikaru said, and it had been almost a quarter mark. The sun slanted low toward afternoon.
“A little farther,” Shard urged. “You can do it. You won’t be able to rest at sea, when we fly to the Sunland.”
Hikaru looked uncertain, then narrowed his eyes and set his gaze forward.
They flew another mark, and Shard was about to call a rest when he caught a familiar scent. Sharp longing ached in his every muscle. Hikaru smelled it too.
“What is that?”
Shard shook himself and answered, as calmly as he could manage, “The sea.”
At last he understood what instinct had guided him nightward, what pulled him from the Winderost. The vast land did have an end, after all.
They came to a silent agreement to keep flying until they reached the shore. The young dragon followed Shard doggedly through the final, long stretch. The sun lay across their backs, then sat in front of them by the time they reached the promised shore. The scent was so woven into the strange, ancient green woods, infused in the trees and in the sticky, warm mist that shrouded the temperate land that Shard had expected to see the ocean over every ridge. But it was long in coming.
At last, when Shard thought he only dreamed the tantalizingly familiar scent, the evergreen forest broke.
Hills and cliffs stopped short and lunged down toward a crashing sea. The sky stretched beyond, gray and pink with sunset.
Breathless, exhausted, Shard keened in pure joy and dove, tucking his wings to glide and roll along the faces of the foreign cliffs. Confused gulls scattered and scolded him. Waves crawled onto the broad, sandy beach before the battered rock abutting the sandstone cliffs. Juniper trees clung stubbornly to the shoreline, roots mixing with mountain and salt water.
Without thinking, Shard snapped his wings out and soared over the water. The scent of fish clouded the air. He searched for only a few moments to find a school, dive, gulp down a fish, and dive again.
After a moment he remembered that he’d left Hikaru behind.
Blinking saltwater from his eyes with chagrin, Shard spun in the air. Water flew from his wings in silver drops that turned gold in the light of the dying sun. A fat fish wriggled in his talons. He could have eaten three more, but this one was for Hikaru
.
The black dragonet sat on the shore, his forepaws in the sand just where the littlest waves would roll over his front toes. His tail was coiled around his haunches, his wings open against his back, but drooping, his head dipped down to stare at the water. Shard raced back to him and thumped in the sand, laughing as he offered the fish.
“Hikaru, eat!” Shard sank his talons into wet sand and the feel of it brought a rush of bittersweet memories of his home.
Hikaru swung his head and stared at the fish, blinking. Shard realized the young dragon hadn’t been studying the water, he was simply so exhausted that he couldn’t raise his head. Then his jaws snapped out to gulp down the fish in one bite.
Shard made a sympathetic noise. “I’m sorry. I should have let you rest. You’ll feel better if you eat.”
Hikaru smacked his jaws together, tasting fresh fish for the first time, then turned his gaze toward the setting sun. His soft, deer-like ears perked. “The sea,” he whispered. “I wanted to reach the sea. I know you missed it.” His talons flexed against the sand. “The sea. Sand. Water. The sun.” He dipped his head low, but his gaze lifted to the clouds of pale pink and marigold, feathered across the pale blue horizon. Shard listened quietly as Hikaru reviewed, leading himself to sleep. His wings trembled.
“Let’s go up shore,” Shard murmured, leaning into Hikaru’s shoulder. “The tide will be in by dark.”
“Tide?” Hikaru murmured, absorbing everything as fast as he could.
He has to learn enough to keep up with his size
, Shard thought wryly. So Shard explained the tides and the moon as they walked up the beach to one of the cliffs, and climbed it to curl up in the shelter of a squatting juniper grove. Hikaru coiled around Shard, creating a warm, black nest of his scaled body. His enormous eyes barely blinked as he stared at the sunset. Every word from their travels was quietly reviewed as Shard let himself be lulled by the dragon’s voice.
“Earthfire…flight. Fear. Ash. Forests…” He yawned, jaws stretching and snapping shut. “Brother,” he mumbled, resting his head on the ground, eyes closing. The words rolled on and on and finally the last, always the last. “Shard.”
“Rest well.” Shard turned his face to the setting sun, and closed his eyes to breathe in the rich smell of the ocean. With that scent came a desperate longing for the Silver Isles, the crowding thoughts of the family and friends he’d left behind, and the resolve to do whatever he must to finish his growing quest and return home.