A Shard of Sun (46 page)

At a loss, Kjorn appraised the rogues. Some watched him with ironic suspicion, like Rok, some with an empty sort of surrender, and some, like Frida and Fraenir, with true hope. He wondered how many more there might be, if these were only the swift bunch Rok had gathered before finding Kjorn again.

“I can’t promise you anything,” he said quietly.

Rok ruffled his feathers. “When I was captive, the Vanhar told me, with no small disdain, mind you, that you told them to let me keep this chain, when you might’ve had it back from me. Is that true?”

“It is.”

Rok looked Kjorn over, perhaps gauging what sort of gryfon he’d been before he washed up on the shore of the Winderost.

Then he answered, quietly, for only Kjorn to hear. “Long ago, my father swore an oath to serve Per, but that duty was taken from him. From my family.” His gaze slid to Fraenir. “And a naive young gryfon recently reminded me that keeping your oaths is a matter of honor, not gain. Though I can’t imagine where he got the idea.…he’s right.” The rogue inclined his head, but didn’t lower his gaze from Kjorn’s eyes. “So I will help you find your wingbrother. Then, after that, if I think you’re worth serving, consider me your loyal subject.”

Kjorn could say absolutely nothing. He couldn’t help but glance at Nilsine, and though he could tell she seethed, she had no argument. She’d said Fraenir would turn against him or disappoint him, but already he proved her wrong, and quite.

Still, she managed her bite. “If Kjorn cannot restore you to the Dawn Spire,” she said to Rok, “I suggest you find your new place not at the Vanheim, but the Ostral Shore, where they know less about you.”

Rok’s laugh was thunderous, and Nilsine laid her ears back. “I’m flattered that I bother you so much, my lady. Well, Your Highness,” he said to Kjorn, and shifted, displaying the chain that Kjorn had left him, “what say you?”

He saw Nilsine give a slight shake of her head. Then he considered young Fraenir, the other rogue gryfons, young and old, with talons splayed and ready. He thought of when, seemingly so long ago, he’d told Fraenir his own definition of honor, and saw now that it had truly taken hold.

“I accept your fealty,” he declared, formally, as he had seen Per do, and Sverin. “And will return that fealty with reward as I can, with protection, and loyalty.” He raised his head and spread his golden wings wide, looking over the ragged band. “That goes for all of you.”

Fraenir, nearly beside himself at the scant ceremony, bowed deeply. A few more bowed more cautiously, a few only murmured a wary response.

“Well enough,” Rok said. “Now, where are we headed?”

The morning light remained dim enough that they saw the flicker of fire across the broadest part of the canyon that divided the Outlands from the Winderost.

“Kjorn,” Nilsine said.

“I see it.”

“It is gryfons,” Brynja confirmed, swooping ahead. “A whole gathering of them, and they have fire.” Her voice warmed with relish. She’d told Kjorn of the fires they used to burn, until the wyrm attack that had destroyed their pyres and doused them. They had no way to make new flames unless they were lucky and skyfire struck again.

Evidently, it had.

A gryfon flew up to meet them, halfway over the canyon.

“Hail!” Kjorn called, and introduced himself. “We seek Rashard, son-of-Baldr.”

“He was here,” called the female. Her gazed took in the war band warily. “And has gone.”

Disappointment and wild, lancing frustration almost drove Kjorn to a fit right there in the sky, but he managed to contain himself and only mutter, “Of course he has. Where has he gone?”

She looked nervous. “Come and meet with us at the fire.”

They did. Kjorn’s band winged over the canyon that marked the border. Many nervous gazes peered down at the yawning, bleak canyon, as if wyrms might lunge up from the murky depth and devour them in a gulp.

Without incident, they all set foot on the dusty ground of the Outlands, standing around the fire of the exiled Vanir. Kjorn noted also a few scruffy, bony, painted wolves, and ragged eagles. Bones of prey animals lay scattered and stripped, and he smelled water, faintly.

Impressed with his wingbrother’s strategy, Kjorn let the Vanir gryfess lead him to the fire, which burned low but steady. Haunted, hollow gryfon eyes stared at him from around the fire, and he knew what they saw.

Aesir. Conqueror. Son of the Red Kings.

For the not first time that winter, Kjorn laid his ears back in uncertainty and shame. Then, he bowed his head to them.

“I seek my wingbrother, Shard, who is your rightful king. Who among you leads while he’s away? Who knows where he’s gone?”

“Starward,” said an old male. His wings hung wearily from his sides, ribs sticking out against his dull pelt. “That’s all I know.”

“Not to face the wyrms? Alone?”
Not even Shard is that naive. He tried once, and failed
.

“Seeking more Vanir,” the old male growled. Tension flickered as sure as the flame.

Kjorn kept his head low, and inclined it. “Of course, I understand. But do you know—”

“I’ve told you all I know. Leave us. We want nothing more to do with you.”

“We’ve come to help Shard,” entered Brynja’s silver-smooth voice. “To help
you.
He has made peace with the Aesir, and hopes to keep ties between us. Let us help.”

“Find our prince if you want to help.” Ears flat to his head, the old male didn’t move nor soften.

The wind stirred the ashes of the fire and the ash on the ground, and Kjorn took a deep breath of the thick air.

A hesitant, young male voice spoke up from the group. “You said he went starward, seeking Vanir?” He looked at the old one, and his voice rose, almost in accusation. “You didn’t say that’s why he’d gone! You should’ve told me—”

“You’ve only just arrived,” growled the old Vanir. “Settle down.”

The young male stepped forward, a Vanir almost exactly Shard’s age. “Frar, you don’t understand! If he went starward seeking Vanir, he had be looking for
me
.” He looked between the old one he’d called Frar, and Kjorn. “For me, and my mother. We’re the only gryfons I know of who still nest starward of the Voldsom.”

“But you came alone,” said Frar.

He bowed his head. “I fled when the wyrms came back from the mountains, but Mother refused. She told me to get to safety, and insisted she wait.” He looked around, perhaps fearing disapproval for leaving his mother alone. “She insisted. She thought he would come back if she waited...”

“Where is she now?” Kjorn asked, lifting his head. “Can you take us to where Shard might be?”

“It’s wyrm territory. But I will show you.” The young Vanir looked grim, and opened his wings.

“Wait,” said Brynja, looking to Kjorn, then the bonfire, which gleamed reflected in her eyes. “I have an idea.”

S
HARD REACHED THE STARWARD
border of the Outlands before dawn of the second day he’d flown from the Vanir and the bonfire.

When he’d heard the cracked screams of the wyrms in the night, he’d landed and ranged along the ground, wanting desperately to shout but knowing it would only draw them to him. Now in the deep hour before dawn, he trotted along the rim of the vast canyon that divided the Voldsom Narrows from the Outlands. He knew the canyon stretched deep into the earth and split off into the Narrows, but he saw little of it through the dark and the ash. That far starward, haze still blanketed the air, obscuring his vision and his sense of smell.

His hearing though, remained sharp. Guttural wyrm snarls and shrieks from high above and across the broad canyon warned him to remain low. When he found a pile of rocks, he ducked into its shadow and waited for the sun to rise and the wyrms to go to ground. His eyes stung from the haze, and exhaustion. The brief nap at midnight near the bonfire did little to help him. He stretched out on his belly, ears perked toward the yawning canyon before him, and waited.

Dim sunlight suffused the haze. The air glowed golden, then amber. Gradually the wyrms fell silent as they went to their nests. Shard rose, ears twitching back and forth, and crept to the cliff edge, his talons curled over the rocks before the face plunged down into the hazy deep.

Shard held his breath a moment, tail flicking as he squinted across the canyon, which was a good fifty leaps. The dim humps of rock and stunted trees looked passingly familiar. If that was where he’d wandered, Nameless, then he could find the old Vanir gryfess and her son again.

As surer rays of light beamed through the gloom, Shard leaped, gliding over the vast, dead canyon. Dust filled the air, joining the haze, and he sneezed, then resisted the urge to cough. The sound bounded down and through the canyon. His feathers prickled and he paused, hovering between cliffs, ears perked.

Nothing. Either the wyrms had not heard, or they avoided the morning light. Shard flew on across and landed.

He
knew
then that he’d been there before. The very shape of the trees looked familiar, and the layout of rocks. Head low like a wolf, searching for any scent or sign of life, he trotted on. That part of the Voldsom looked no better than the Outlands, with dry, baked earth all coated in dull ash, the grim haze, and no scent of water or life.

Ahead he saw a stack of boulders that he knew, and perked his ears before breaking into a sprint.

“Hail!” he called, trotting up to the boulders. “I’ve returned, Shard, son-of-Baldr.” He circled around the den, wary, trying to catch a fresh scent. “You called to me. A moon or two ago, I came this way, lost.”  Shard stepped forward hesitantly, poking his head into the dark cave. “. . . Hello?”

Ash swirled in eddies around his talons.  “Hello? I come peacefully…”

But there were no gryfons in the den.

Out hunting,
he told himself. The wind shifted, bringing him the faint, distant scent of wyrm flesh and old blood. He shuddered, unsure if it was the blood of wyrm, pronghorn or gryfon. They couldn’t be dead. He wouldn’t be frightened off. The Vanir gryfess had called to him, and he owed it to her to bring them home again.

They’d gone hunting, and they would return.

He sat down to wait.

Afternoon stretched to evening. Shard shifted anxiously in the fading light, his energy sapped out into the dead land, the dry ground, the thick coat of ash everywhere, and a nagging sense of foreboding. He curled in the den for a time and rested, rousing again near evening. At last he could wait no more, and struck out in the direction of the strongest gryfon scent.

Catori and Stigr had taught him the best way to track on the ground, and he’d learned a little from Thyra, as well. Because of all the dangers flying in the Outlands posed, he thought the best course for any gryfon who lived there might be to hunt on foot. Sure enough he came upon a faint gryfon track in the ash, perked his ears, and trotted forward, head low as he followed the trail.

A few times he lost the footprints where wind had kicked up the dust and ash, but followed a faint scent and, here and there, a bit of down or tuft of fur caught on the brittle twigs in the ground. A gryfess had passed that way, hunting.

Maybe I should’ve waited for her at the den. What if, even now, she’s returned?

The wiser, deep part of him knew that was wrong. The tiny, silver whisper in his heart knew that he would have waited forever. The part of him that the dragoness Ume would’ve called
sky
knew what he would find at the end of the trail. Still, stubbornly, he followed it as darkness closed a wing around him.

He coughed against the haze, and his steps slowed to a reluctant drag as the scent grew fresher, and it was not the proper scent of gryfon with a fresh kill.

In the last evening light, Shard rounded a tumble of rocks that stank of wyrm flesh, old blood, and rotting meat.

Deer bones littered the ground. The gryfess had hunted, indeed, but too far. Too close to the wyrm’s nesting ground within the walls of the canyon.

Shard saw her.

For a moment he couldn’t look, then, feeling it was his duty, he walked to her body. The rising night wind brushed up feathers from the still flesh, giving her the brief illusion of breath.