By the Silver Wind (23 page)

“I only hope we don’t have to fight. Again.”

She nuzzled under his beak. “So do I, Shard. So do all of us.”

Shard drew a breath, letting her scent calm him. “I can sense that Rhydda
feels
, but I can’t get through to her.”

Brynja watched him through the dark, and he heard her talons shifting in the grass. After a long moment, she spoke. “Maybe you haven’t tried to rise too far, Shard.” She leaned in, pressing her shoulder to him, giving her strength. “Maybe, to do what you hope to do, you must still rise higher.”

The words struck to his bone.

Brynja nipped him lightly and stepped away, raising her head. “Now light your fires, my prince. Let them see the blessing of Tyr!”

Shard nodded and withdrew his fire stones. Yearling lions clustered in a tense ring around them, cubs, younger lionesses, all watching with gleaming eyes. Sparks fell to the tinder bundle as Shard struck the stones together, then caught and flickered and smoked. Shard coaxed them with little drafts from his wingtips, and a rolling gasp and murmur of appreciation swept the lion pride as true flame crawled over the tinder.

Delighted, the lions frolicked around the fire. The gryfon band gathered from the river and slowly the two groups merged. Shard observed that the Vanhar had an easier time speaking to the lions, but many of the Lakelanders didn’t understand them at all. This made for a few misunderstandings, but Asvander remained close to his group, keeping tempers in check. Shard grew restless, and remained at the outskirts of the firelight.

Around him, the courteous, cautious voices of lions and gryfons made a low, pleasing murmur in the night. Kjorn hadn’t yet returned from his meeting with Mbari, but the yearling who’d led them there assured them Kjorn was safe, that they were only talking. Asvander and Dagny were indignant, and agreed they would seek Kjorn out if he didn’t return by midnight.

Shard’s belly was too tight to eat anything, though not because of Kjorn. He trusted the lions. No, he needed more help.

Before, he’d sought out Ajia on her own ground. Perhaps, even now, she still expected him to do the same. With a quiet word to Brynja, he left the circle of firelight completely and walked out into the night.

S
HARD CREPT THROUGH THE
dark. A breeze that mingled the humid scent of spring with the chill of winter brushed his flanks and face.

He walked, almost gingerly, knowing the lions probably had eyes on him though he couldn’t see them. He walked until the sound of voices faded and there was only wind, the river, and his own footsteps. Insects chirruped and pulsed in their song. As his eyes adjusted to the dark and the familiar sea of stars above, Shard stopped, craning his neck to look. His gaze followed the clustered band of silver that stretched from one horizon to the other, the dragon stars. Midragur.

He didn’t think he heard anything, but a sense drew his gaze back to earth, and a small hope kindled in his chest.

“Ajia, the Swiftest,” he greeted, mantling though he didn’t yet discern her through the grass and blackness.

Then grass shifted and he turned his head, seeing her outlined against the sparkling reflection of stars in the river. “Star-sent, you return to us, with your Prince of War.”

“He isn’t. He hopes for peace.”

“Hope is not a goal.” She was facing him, her tail toward the river. “Peace is. Even now, the Sunwind rises. All of his preparations are not toward peace, but war. “

Shard hadn’t thought of it quite that way, but he inclined his head. “Yet, I chase the wyrm in my dreams, and Kjorn promises if I can find a peaceful solution, he’ll honor it.”

When Shard stood tall again, the lioness had stepped closer, and he caught her scent. The familiar tang of it reminded him of the first time he’d seen the wyrms, and he shivered.

Her eyes glinted like stars in the gloom. “I have watched you, and him, and I see that you hold each other’s hearts. So I will trust what you say. But keep a steady eye, for he comes from a history of war, and sometimes we can only walk the paths we know.”

“We’re making a different path now,” Shard said, defensive but proud. “He and I together, and the others. Trust me in that.”

“Still Tor shines on you, Star-sent. I hope your wings will part this growing storm. I hope the breath of Tor will disperse the wind of war.”

A memory came to him, odd in that place, of a forest turning sweet with autumn. He remembered the caribou king, Aodh, telling him a new rhyme he’d heard in the wind, a song that, coupled with the starfire, had spurred Shard to travel to the Winderost, then on to find the dragoness Amaratsu and Hikaru.

It is for gryfons to see,
Aodh had said, a lifetime ago.
To hunt, chase and catch.
It was for the hoofed to listen, he’d said, to listen to the wind and earth.

I hear the Silver Wind itself.

He’d said it was for gryfons to see and hunt, and to see, one must look. But Shard had looked, and he hadn’t seen. He couldn’t see what Rhydda wouldn’t show him. He should have learned the whole truth while he was in the Sunland. He shouldn’t have let the dragons imprison him, shouldn’t have fled. He should have learned the truth, and now he had lost his chance.

Stigr had wondered what wind Shard was following. Kjorn was raising the Sunwind, the wind of war. The Vanhar had sung a song after the Battle of Torches.
A new wind, a bright wind, a silver wind is blowing.

From across the sea, a memory answered him.

The Silver Wind is the truth.

“The Silver Wind,” Shard breathed. “The breath of Tor. Is that what you speak of? The Silver Wind, the truth?”

“The first, the highest,” the lioness said, echoing the words Stigr had uttered to Shard what felt like a life time ago.

“I try to find the truth, to speak it, to use it. I try to reach the wyrm, Rhydda, but . . .”

“You still try to speak with the wyrms, but they don’t hear?”

“She hears, but then I lose myself in the vision, and I wake as if from a nightmare. If I could stay focused, and remember myself . . .”

Her head tilted, and he caught the outline of the feathers she wore about her neck. “Tell me your tale, young prince. Walk with me, tell me what befell you during the end of winter, and what you have tried with the wyrm so far.”

She turned and Shard trotted to her side, grateful to have found her, and found her welcoming. He didn’t question why she hadn’t come to him. It was probably right that he had sought her.

Together they walked upstream, with stars peering overhead and the river muffling his story. He told her everything from the time they’d met to him fleeing the Dawn Spire, taking Hikaru to the Sunland, and returning.

“A dragon,” Ajia mused. “A true dragon, and even he couldn’t speak to the wyrms? Something has eaten their hearts, or they have no hearts at all, as we feared. This does not bode well.”

“No,” Shard agreed. “It doesn’t bode well, but I know they have hearts. Rhydda feels, she feels for her brood, she fears the sun, but I don’t think they always lived in the dark. I dreamed with her, and I know she once flew in the sunlight. I don’t know what changed.”

Pain flickered in his mind, sunlight and pain, linked. To Rhydda, sunlight was pain.

But she once flew under the sun . . .

They came to a slow bend in the river and Ajia paused, turning to look at the water, ears perked. Shard remained quiet, certain she was seeking a vision in the starlight on the water.

“With the priestess of the Vanhar, you dreamed.” Ajia batted a paw into the water, as if to test the temperature. Shard found the gesture strangely endearing, and wondered if she’d seen a fish, or if it was simply a thoughtful sort of fidget.

“Yes. I saw her clearly, while I was awake.”

The lioness drew back from the water and faced him fully, her braid of feathers outlined by the crescent moon, her face in shadow. “Dream with me now. This is a hallow place, this river, old and steady and abundant. I believe it will give you strength, and I will help you to remember your purpose, and not be fooled by the dream.”

“I’ll try,” Shard said.

“Try?” Ajia asked. “Do you try to fly, or do you simply open your wings and soar? Do this with me. We will face the wyrm together.”

She stretched out on her belly and extended her paws toward him. Shard lay down in front of her, with the high grass on one side, the river on the other, sand under their bellies and starlight on their backs. He closed his eyes. He sought the net.

Ajia shifted forward and her large padded paws touched his talons.

Faster than before, perhaps because he’d already done it, or perhaps because he was much closer to Rhydda now, Shard found the wyrm’s presence. He slipped close to her with an image of rolling green hills, as she’d shown him before, the place he believed to be her home.

“Rhydda.” He tried to keep his voice light, soothing, as if speaking to a kit. “Don’t you wish to go home? Why all this anger, this mindless hate?”

“Hate stems from fear,” Ajia said, her voice thrumming and low. “As courage stems from love. What does she fear?”

“What do you fear?” To get the idea across to Rhydda, Shard painted a dream of himself, facing his first sea dive. He let the sense of fear wash over him. He showed her Lapu, the boar, and felt fear again, and sent her a feeling, a question. “What do you fear?” he whispered again.

Sunlight gleamed in her mind.

“Why?” Shard asked her.

Pain.

Her great wings flared and he felt caught, swept into the dream.

Warm paws flexed against his forelegs. Claws dug at his skin, not piercing, but reminding him where he was. “Smell the river,” murmured the lioness. “Feel the earth. You are safe here. Remember your purpose.”

The ocean and the priestess had given him strength to practice his dream weaving, but here, the lioness, with four paws firmly on the ground, kept him from forgetting himself. From his safe place in the grass with Ajia, he watched Rhydda’s memories unfold again, and was not distracted by her pain.

The voices of dragons overlapped with hissing and crackling fire.

“Kill him, beast, and you will be beautiful as we are.”

“Find him.”

“They are murderers and thieves—

“—took treasures meant for you . . .” a talon slid down her jaw, then pierced, a sharp pain like a hot coal.

“ . . . and the blessing of our blood. Kill him.”

They showed her a gryfon crafted in ruby and gold.

“Kajar,” Shard told her. “His name was Kajar, but he’s dead. He’s been dead for almost a hundred years.” He didn’t know how to show her at first, so he showed the sun and moon, rising, setting. He showed her green summers and white winters passing.

“Kill him.”

Somewhere outside himself he heard a deep hum, and knew Ajia was keeping him rooted to the First Plains.

“Kill all of them.”

Shard strove to tell Rhydda that all her enemies were dead. He showed wyrmlings hatching, as he imagined them to, gryfons being whelped, growing, dying, two generations of gryfons. He showed her Kajar and imagined a mate for him, their son Per, and his mate and their son, Sverin, a red gryfon like his grandfather.

A great red gryfon, with flashing eyes like gold.

Her thought of the ruby gryfon blended against Shard’s memory of Sverin. A vision of Sverin decked with dragon gold, scarlet in the sun, standing at the edge of the largest of six isles in the starward-most corner of the world.

A dry, wicked rumbling snarl coursed through Shard’s blood, and he and Rhydda turned their faces from the desert to behold the moonlit sea.

~

Shard gasped, jerking from the vision. His heart scrabbled at his chest. He stared directly into Ajia’s eyes, silver in the starlight.

“I have to find Kjorn,” he breathed, standing. “I fear I’ve just . . . I must go. Forgive me. Thank you. Thank you for your help. I don’t think I’ll lose myself again.”

She stood, like liquid moonlight. “I’m glad to have helped you, and I wish you fair winds.”

Her voice held a note of finality. Shard hesitated. “You won’t come and see the fire?”

“I have no need. I will stay in the dark, and keep vigil with Tor in her claw time.”

“You told me you would stand with me if we faced the wyrms.”

She watched him without blinking, and he wondered if she’d seen what he had, in the dream. “And, if we face the wyrms, I will. I wish you good hunting, Star-sent.”

The sharp moon edged her in pale light, and the river leaped and laughed. Her voice sounded like an intonation, warm, thrumming from her chest, from her heart. For a moment, Shard imagined she sounded like Tor herself. “And I wish you
peace
, Prince of the Silver Isles.”

I
T WAS NEARLY MIDDLEMARK
when Kjorn returned with Mbari to the fire and feasting. Brynja told him Shard had gone to seek Ajia, so Kjorn didn’t worry.

“So long as he comes back,” muttered Asvander, casting frequent glances beyond the fire.

“He’ll come back,” Kjorn said. “You’re fretting like a nesting grouse.”

“He has run off before,” said Dagny, defending Asvander.

“He’ll come back,” said Brynja, so Kjorn didn’t have to. Still, now Kjorn felt uneasy, and found himself checking over his shoulder more often than not, peering into the dark for his friend.

Meanwhile, Mbari told the tale that he’d told to Kjorn, of meeting Sverin and Caj. The lion chief held his pride rapt as he paced and cavorted before the dancing fire, shadows leaping and crowding around him.

“ . . . and so we three, new initiates in our own rights, meet over the carcass of a pronghorn. The red gryfon, red like the morning sun and Sverin by name, the son of a king, stands before me so.” He ramped to his hind legs, crouching back, and the shadows behind him almost looked like great wings.

All the gryfons sat utterly entranced. Behind Mbari, the lionesses hummed a low, pulsing rhythm. Kjorn glanced to Asvander and saw the Lakelander still looking grim, his gaze flicking to the dark.

“And the blue gryfon, blue as the summer sea, Caj by name and from a line of warrior lords, circles round me so.” Mbari dropped to all fours and prowled, drawing back his lips to reveal long teeth. He perked his ears alertly and narrowed his eyes. For as much as a feline could emulate a gryfon, Kjorn thought he captured Caj’s humorless demeanor well enough.