A Shard of Sun (15 page)

One broke the surface, chattering madly. To Shard it sounded like laughter. Then words.

“Ho, here, what have we?”

A long, creaking note laughed behind Shard and he spun, blind in the freezing dark, his wings drenched. Their voices sounded static, broken, he feared he might never understand them as well as an animal of the land or the air. Half of their conversation took place under the water, and the other half barely audible in the storm, barely recognizable as speech.

“Playmates for my calf?”

“No!” Shard shouted. “Stay away! Hikaru we must go.”

“Where is your calf?” Hikaru bobbed as the ice floe surged up and over another wave.

“In the water, lovely sky snake. Here in the water.”

Shard sucked in a breath against the sleet. Water loomed over them. He ducked under Hikaru’s wing as fast water flowed over their little ice raft.

“Hikaru, they will kill us—fly, now!” Though when Shard lifted his wings they felt heavy, sodden, stripped.
I am a son of Tyr. I will fly. A son of Tor. I don’t fear the sea.

“They won’t kill me,” Hikaru scoffed.

Arrogant fledge,
Shard thought wildly, angry, wondering where his sweet, adventurous, obedient dragonet had gone.

“As one!” sang one of the massive, black whales.

“What?” Hikaru cried, “I don’t understand y—”

“As one,” echoed the others.

Shard turned in time to see a strange wave bulging toward them. It wasn’t natural. “Hikaru, fly! Fly now!”

At last Hikaru heeded and crouched, opening his wings—but four whales shoved a wave over the ice floe, smashed their noses under to up-end it and knocked dragon and gryfon off the ice into the thrashing water.

Something slammed into Shard, driving him under. In the blackness and cold he kicked and flung his talons against anything that felt solid. The taste of salt water mingled with blood. The black waves roiled with whales and Shard clawed through them, seeking the surface. Their voices laughed and shrilled around him, filled the ocean with murderous glee.

“See how he squirms, little one!”

Shard stepped on a slick, muscled back and shoved, breaking the surface for a raw breath. A desperate look around showed him Hikaru, snaking through the water. He tried to make a sound so the dragon could find him. A calf the size of a full grown Aesir flung itself out of the water, laughing, and landed in the middle of Hikaru’s back, dragging him under the water.

“Stop it! Stop this now, we’re peaceful travel—”

A fin slapped him to silence, driving him backward under the water again. Teeth clamped his hind leg. Shard screamed, shocked by the pain. The whale dragged him through the water by his leg and tossed him into the air. The relief of air almost countered the dazzling pain in his leg. Shard flung out his wings and his muscles nearly snapped in protest from the cold. Water soaked him, too heavy to fly. He smacked into the water again like a stone. Frothing waves rocked him back and slapped his face.

“Hikaru! Get out! Get out if you…” He lurched back as a whale welled up in front of him and surfaced, water spilling down his face, jaws splayed. Shard dove forward and threw himself against the laughing face, slapped his talons out and raked the monster’s eye.

With a long squeal the whale thrashed away, shaking Shard off to dive deep again. He could not find Hikaru against the black waves, amongst the black, swimming bodies all around.

“Coward! Let us be! Hikaru, where—”

A female knocked into him. “Wicked, wicked birdie! Come play!”

“Shard, no!” The last sight he had was Hikaru, lashing toward him, only to be driven back by a laughing whale.

The female drove Shard down under the water, down, on the blunt of her nose, until he thought his chest would collapse and his head break from the pressure and the cold.

Lights flickered. He saw strange things. The red she-wolf Catori, sprinting toward him through the dark, howling his name, calling him toward moonlight above the clouds. He saw Stigr falling beside him, then turning, both wings intact, to give him a baleful, challenging stare.

Then he saw the dead. In the ice dark, he saw his father, pale Baldr, lit by a sun Shard couldn’t see. The whale shoved her nose against him, nearly breaking his back, and he saw Helaku the wolf king, his son Ahote, saw old gryfon and wolf kings and queens of the Silver Isles. With a shudder he saw the scarlet flash of Per the Red, laughing.

Then, oddly, Einarr. “My friend,” Shard whispered, seemingly in his mind alone, surprised. His body, shoved about by the furious whale, seemed a distant thing.

Shard!
Einarr appeared to shout.

Why do you stand with the dead?
Shard wondered, calmly. And why, he wondered, did there appear to be a vast, sunlit plain just beyond the bottom of the sea…

My prince
, he heard the younger gryfon say.
My king. My king.
Einarr opened his copper wings and a strange rush of air came to Shard, sweet as summer, and he took a single breath.

Pain lanced into his awareness. The whale was trying to kill him, which meant he was still alive.

He thrashed around, dragging his talons as deeply as he could through the thick, hard flesh. A squeal of pain filled the ocean, drowning on and on as if it were not water but a vast, echoing cavern. She rolled her massive body away from Shard and he kicked, rising. His head ached. His chest squeezed against itself. Nothing gave him any indication of a surface. He felt he would burst.

My king, my king.
The voice called him upward.

Hikaru,
he thought desperately. If he never made it alive back to the Silver Isles, he at least had to make sure Hikaru flew out of this cursed place.

Then, just as black and scarlet ringed his vision and it seemed the sea would break him, Shard broke the surface.

Sleet-filled air was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. He turned in the water, seeking Hikaru.

A strange sound pierced the storm, a long, hollow, harmonious roar like a lion and many eagles calling together. For a moment, Shard reeled and he thought gryfons flew at them on the wind, for those were the only creatures Shard could conceive of in that moment. But when they called again, he realized the sound was not even close.

A new, unnatural wind chopped up the water around the thrashing bodies of the whales and the chunks of ice all around. Wing beats. Great wings, stirring the wind.

“Petty blackfish,” boomed a male…a male…Shard shook his head hard, squinting up into the night.
Could it be?

“Back to the depths with you!” snarled a female…

It hit Shard like a slap.

“Dragons! Hikaru! Hikaru, dragons!”

He heard no answer. The whales laughed and Shard was aware only of pounding wings, enormous clawed forepaws raking the water. He threw himself across the waves toward a floating chunk of ice.

“H-help,” he gasped, at once aware of everything wrong with his body. One hind leg was surely broken, and ached with a wicked pain. The ice beneath him darkened from blood. He dragged himself out of the water, nearly splitting his talons on the ice. “Help! There’s a young dragon…”

But it seemed they knew. Whether sentries far out from shore, or dragons fishing and caught in the storm like them, they must have heard Hikaru and come. Shard hugged the ice, fighting the waves and rising nausea. Their beautiful voices, like giant birds, like Amaratsu’s, flickered around him.

“Witless bullies! I should skin them.”

“None of that, now. They’re gone. Where is he?”

“There he is.”

“Come, little lost one. Come home. You’re lucky we flew out in this storm.”

“Shard!”

Shard’s ears perked in relief. He tried to cry out again, to respond to Hikaru, but his chest clamped, his body wanted only to breathe. As long as Hikaru was safe, it didn’t matter. His charge, his brother. He gripped the ice.

One of the dragons laughed. “He’s not so little!”

“Winterborn, but growing strong. That’s good. Come now, young one.”

From the commotion and wing beats, Shard knew they dragged the young dragon from the water.

“Wait!” Hikaru cried.

“What’s that?”

“Shard, my…my brother.” Hikaru coughed. At least he was speaking. Speaking, safe, and surrounded by his own kind.

“Did Amaratsu have a second egg?”

“Only one.”

“He’s delirious. Come home. You need a meal, and fire, look at the state of you. Like a witless, wild beast.”

“What of
that
?”

Somehow by the tone, Shard knew the dragon spoke of him. He tried to move but it felt so good to be still, to let the ice cool his wounds. The whales were gone. The storm was passing. Or perhaps the dragons, with their power, drove it away. He bobbed and floated on a calming sea.

“That’s Shard. He must come with us,” Hikaru pleaded. Shard tried to open his eyes, then didn’t bother. It was dark. He couldn’t see the dragons anyway. “Please!”

“We can’t just leave it to the whales,” a female argued, and Shard was grateful to her.

“They won’t come back. And the land isn’t so far off.”

“Yes, he’ll drift in. Don’t trouble yourself.”

“Please, he’s my brother!”

“Shhh, you’ve had a difficult time. Ooh, there you are, heavy young one. You’re lucky your wing’s not broken, but let us carry you.”

“Wing breakers!”

“They don’t understand the crime. They’re of the sea. Besides, it’s not broken.”

“I’ll break their
tails
and see how they fare!”

“Calm yourself, Natsumi.”

“Shard!”

“No more,” rumbled the male. “Mind your elders.”

“He takes after his mother.”

Some halting laughter. Waves splashed at Shard’s heels and he clung to the ice, shivering.

“What of the…Shard?” The female again, the one called Natsumi.

“Leave it.”

That was the final decision, and the last Shard heard of them, except for Hikaru’s low, angry howls piercing higher and higher into the night air.

T
HE THICK SMELL OF
sulfur and something akin to sun-baked rock stung all of Caj’s senses as he crawled out of the cave.

Despite the falcon’s help, they had found no trace of Sverin on Talon’s Reach. Wary, Caj peered around for any marks of life, for Pebble’s Throw was one of the most dangerous islands.

A raven glided in happy circles above him, riding the buoyant warm air above the lava flows. Caj watched, one ear slanting back. Silently, the bird dipped down and lighted on an outcropping of dusty black rock, watching Caj in return. Ravens were wolf birds, Vanir birds, and he realized he waited with held breath to see if this one might somehow carry a message from Shard.

But the raven hopped up and flew away, almost
oddly
silent, into the mist. Caj sensed a presence behind him in the tunnel and crawled forward to make way.

“I will not go here,” whispered the golden wolf, Tocho, still crouched in the entrance of the cave. He’d shown Caj the particular tunnel under the islands that brought them out again to the surface of one of the scattered little isles of Pebble’s Throw.

Caj blew a long breath out through his nostrils, drew in again to satisfy himself that the air wouldn’t poison him, and turned to the wolf. “I won’t ask you to. But I have to search.”

Tocho took a moment to watch him, nose quivering. “Be careful. If I don’t hear from you by the evening mark—”

“I’ll be fine,” Caj murmured, surprised at Tocho’s concern and at his own growing sense of affection. In many ways, the young wolf reminded him of a gryfon fledge—bold, eager, a bit foolhardy. His help had been invaluable. “Go to your family, take a rest, and thank you. You’ve done enough today. I remember the way.”

Tocho’s ears flicked warily back and forward again, scanning the air, then he dipped his head to Caj and wriggled back down underground.

With another slow sigh, Caj turned to face the ragged heap of black rock and smoke. The heat seeping to him from all points soothed the ache in his mending wing and put him in a better humor than he’d been in for a while. Without the wolf, whose scent would either spook Sverin or put him on the offensive, Caj could afford to be less subtle.

“Sverin!” he shouted, and was answered by the hissing of steam somewhere several leaps off as searing earthfire trickled into the cold sea. “Son-of-Per, my wingbrother!”

You will know yourself again if it’s the last thing I do,
Caj swore silently. A bit of red caught his eye. He swung around, carefully favoring his wing, but the red was only bright trickles of lava. They wormed down from fissures in a jagged peak across a narrow river of seawater, glowing red in the low, gray light. Caj huffed, but was not disheartened. They’d searched Talon’s Reach, then tried the Star Isle on the word of a fishing eagle. Then a crow informed them that Halvden and Sverin had fled, driven off the starward edge of that isle by the snow wolves. All the isles, it seemed, knew of Caj’s hunt for the mad king, and seemed eager to help him.

For what it’s worth,
he thought, wondering if the crow had tricked them for some reason.

He walked forward across the surface of the rock on which he’d emerged. It appeared to be the largest chunk of the broken scatter that the Vanir called an island. Caj recalled the final flight of Per the Red. Caj and Sverin had borne the dead king over the other isles and, with the entire pride circling above, cast him into the large lava flow. The red feathers caught and burned, bones flowing down with the lava, burning, and what didn’t burn before they hit were buried in the sea, frozen in black rock. Perhaps in his feral state, Sverin had felt called to the last place he would’ve remembered seeing his father.

Caj shook himself and walked forward, calling Sverin’s name. The swirl of seawater between the broken rock islands, the hiss of steam, and the blast of poisonous gases from cracks on distant shores drowned out his calls. Voice hoarse, he finally fell silent. Then he reached the end of his little island.