By the Silver Wind (44 page)

The first two days passed in excited chatter, with fair skies the first day that took them across the Winderost to the dawnward shore. A brisk tailwind gusted them the second day, ushering the air toward spring, and the exiled Vanir toward their home.

A band of over a hundred warriors from the Dawn Spire, the Ostral Shore, and the Vanheim flew at their backs.

Taking Shard’s dire suspicions about the wyrms to heart, Kjorn had assembled an eager army to escort them home. Misgiving shifted in Shard’s heart to have them, though he didn’t dare tell Kjorn he didn’t want them. He hoped he could speak to Rhydda if she truly was there, could make her see reason.

“I made the mistake of not trusting you about them leaving the Winderost,” Kjorn had said when Shard commented on the size of the force. “I won’t make such a mistake again.”

There was iron in his expression, and Shard knew his golden friend thought only of Thyra, now, and what might await them at home. He said nothing about not wanting to antagonize the wyrms further, for he could see that having the warriors made all the rest of his pride feel more secure.

They flew in compact units, some as large as ten, most smaller than five. Each had a responsibility to know those in their group, to keep an eye on each other, to pause or slow if needed.

Nilsine, flying with Kjorn and Shard, had surprised them both by wanting to come. As a leader of the sentry warriors of the Vanhar, she insisted, said she wanted to see the Silver Isles, to meet the gryfons who she was certain had descended from the Vanhar in the Second Age. So she, Rok, Asvander, and Dagny formed an honor guard for Kjorn.

In Shard’s unit flew Brynja, Ketil, Keta, and Toskil, and they all flew close to Kjorn’s group at the head of the great company. Keta’s nest-sister, Ilse, flew just behind with three of the elder Vanir, and it took everything in Shard’s will not to constantly check back over his wing that everyone was still there.

Keta and Ilse had already proven their mettle by diving in and out of the sea for fish, and others of the younger generation followed, bringing small fare to the eldest and the middle-aged who led the groups.

When Shard did look back and see the clusters of Vanir with him, and the mass of warrior gryfons behind, he thought both of his ancestor Jaarl, one of the first gryfon kings of the Silver Isles, and of Per the Red, leading his loyal and cursed and blessed Aesir over the sea.

Were you running, or were you trying to help the Dawn Spire, or your son?
Shard supposed he would never truly know.

That first long flight, alone, Shard had fallen Nameless, had followed an albatross and his instincts. Now, there was too much to pay attention to. It had felt so long, the sea endless, fathomless, the sky both ally and enemy.

Now the sea lay still, rippled only by little, bumpy waves. The sky glowed with sunset. Shard spied a clear horizon, and the air filled with the stirrings of gryfon wings and voices.

The winds calmed in the evening and they flew high and straight, following the line of stars that Shard believed would lead them to the Silver Isles. Ketil agreed, recalling the way.

As night fell, he thought again of Hikaru as the great dragon band of stars blazed across the night sky.

The third day passed in surprising laughter, with the Vanir showing off in the water, with Brynja impressing even Ketil by managing to snare fish from the waves. Warriors who flew with them but had not practiced sea flight remained on higher winds, tense, alert, and growing weary.

Shard directed the Vanir to fly to them, to teach them how to better use the sea air for more dynamic, long-range flying, as an albatross had once shown him.

When Shard looked at Kjorn, he appeared to be constantly counting heads. Occasionally his wingbrother would glance around, find Shard as if to reassure himself, then look forward again. They shared an understanding, a tension, both trying to focus on the journey at hand, but worried for those at home. Shard didn’t dare try to reach out to Rhydda while he flew over the sea. It would take too much effort, pose too much risk.

That night, it rained. The slow, freezing drizzle was miserable, but not the kind of dangerous storm that Shard had faced when making the flight windward last autumn.

Dagny managed to keep spirits light by reminding everyone they would soon be home, they would soon build warm fires and taste the fish of their homeland and see their family and friends.

Shard was grateful for her. He knew he should be the one bolstering everyone, encouraging them, keeping spirits light, but he let others do it. The closer they flew, the heavier, rather than lighter, his heart became. His wings felt strained.

A darkness crept into his heart as he watched Kjorn’s face, growing tense, Shard thought, at the idea of perhaps seeing his father again, nervous over his unborn kit, and Thyra, and the pride while they’d been away. Shard knew the source of his own worry—fear that he had led Rhydda and her horde to the Silver Isles.

At last when he’d lost count of the nights, under a star-swept sky, Shard looked up at the sparkling band of Midragur, felt the arc of the curving earth.

In a dreamlike way, he almost thought he could see his islands laid out in the sky, islands like the pad of a gryfon’s hind paw.

The great Sun Isle, where he’d been born to a king and queen, where great, white mountains towered over broad fields of peat and birch forest. The Star Isle, where he’d met his friend and guide, Catori, and the boar, Lapu, and the dead wolf king, Helaku.

The stars seemed to raise their shining heads like wolves to call him, call him home, and a great pack raced along the dragon’s back across the sky.

Shard felt he could soar to Talon’s Reach, where the birds dwelled, Crow Wing, where wild horses ran, an island he’d never explored. At the far end lay Black Rock, where the dead were laid to rest.

Nothing moved, nothing breathed. Everything was hiding. The trees themselves seemed as if they would close in on the earth and hide. Flat. Still. Dead.

Then he beheld Pebble’s Throw, where the lava ran.

And clustered on Pebble’s Throw, Shard felt them. He felt them with a seizing thread of terror. He felt their anger, their pulsing, Voiceless rage.

Rhydda—

Amidst the unnatural stillness, ravens burst suddenly from all corners of the islands and swirled into the black sky, and formed a laughing, cawing storm. They clustered into a giant, wiggling mass and became Munin, laughing, but when Shard looked down, Munin’s shadow was not a raven’s shadow on the snow. The shadow of a horned head bellowed, a spade tail lashed.

Down on the pale, muddy earth in the shadow of the wyrm, a flame flicked, ran, singing across the snow, and he knew it was Catori.

She cried out toward the ravens, and their great shadow bled toward her across the ground.
Oh, what days have we lived to see?

Seeing that, Shard’s heart swelled, but not with joy. His blood and wings and heart expanded into a great, hot, beating heart of fury and anger and confusion.

But it was not
his
fury, or his heart. It was Rhydda.

He struggled to control the dream once he realized he was dreaming, to show her images of peace, rolling green fields and woods. Taking memories from her own dreams, he showed her waves of silver and gold.

Her blaring roar sucked the breath and the fight from him.

He dove, trying to outpace the surge of Nameless rage, and someone shouted his name.

“
SHARD!”

He woke just before he hit the ocean like a rock.

Seawater filled his beak and his eyes. Flailing, Shard sputtered, realized he had fallen asleep, dreamed, and dropped right out of the sky. Night sky and clustering wings and shouts surrounded him.

“I’m fine!” he managed, flexing his wings against the waves which were not wild, but had only shocked him.

“Give him room,” ordered Brynja from above. “Give him air! Shard, can you fly out?”

“I can.” So saying, Shard flexed his wings again, coughed out more saltwater, and kicked. Gaining momentum, he was able to force himself from the waves.

“What happened?” Brynja winged around him as Shard tried to shake off freezing seawater.

Kjorn circled back to them, his eyes enormous in the starlight, his voice hard with worry. “All well, Shard? You fancy a midnight swim?”

“Yes, next time join me,” Shard said, shuddering, pumping his wings to get away from the water and cold drafts near it. Brynja called out to reassure the rest, and they silently formed back into their groups. Shard looked around at the sky and saw familiar living stars, not the warped, eerie, vision of his dream.

“I . . .” He realized he’d been about to lie. It was so easy, so tempting to keep his fears and his failures from them. He thought of saying he’d seen a fish, had dived on purpose. “I dreamed,” he said, clearly enough for all to hear. “And she’s there. Rhydda. She’s in the Silver Isles.”

“No,” whispered Kjorn.

“Shard,” Asvander growled from above him, “are you
certain?”

Shard looked sharply at his friend. “Yes.” He worked his wings, and raised his voice, clear, hard, for all to hear. “Friends, hear me! The wyrms have flown to the Silver Isles. I’m certain of it now.” He circled, winding up to fly above them all. His voice rang out in the cold, cloudless night, and wary gryfon eyes watched him. “They have flown, and we must be ready.”

T
HE LAST DAYS OF THE FLIGHT
wore heavily on the eldest of their number, especially after Shard’s grim announcement. Old Frar flew slower and slower, and Shard often glided back to him to encourage him personally. It seemed to be the only thing keeping him aloft.

Meanwhile, Shard felt the pace like an ache. The whole group worked to keep him awake, present, alert, but a sickening, familiar sense stalked at the edge of his awareness. Alone, he was certain he could have reached the islands much faster. But he could not leave his pride, his friends. Stigr’s last words to him beat a steady rhythm in his heart.

Kjorn kept him present by working out their plan. “If all’s not well at the nesting cliffs, we’ll fly straight away to the wolf caves and see what’s happening. I’m certain they would have sheltered there, and they’ll be safe below ground.”

“Unless the wyrms dig,” Asvander said, having been listening from Kjorn’s other flank.

Shard recalled the images in silver and gold relief in the halls of the Sunland dragons, of wyrms mining gold and gems. “I think they do. They dug out the gold and stones the dragons used to make their crafts.”

Kjorn’s feathers pricked in alarm and Asvander eyed Shard with growing wariness. “Let’s hope they haven’t figured out where your pride has fled, then.”

Shard didn’t answer.

They all fell into a long routine of keeping each other awake, floating on the waves to rest briefly, slowing, and slowing more for the oldest of them who’d grown tired. Shard’s determination grew, and his sense of anger at the idea that somehow he himself might have led Rhydda to the Silver Isles.

Stigr’s warning rang truer, that everything he’d tried to communicate to the wyrm might have been misunderstood.

If that is so,
Shard wondered, and met Toskil’s gaze across the waves to let him know he was well awake,
then how am I to tell her anything or learn anything from her at all?

In the blur of travel with companions, Shard did not fall Nameless, but he didn’t track the days. He thought it might have been a fortnight of flying, which would put their arrival almost straight on the Halflight. The days grew longer, the nights shorter, and the stars shifted toward their spring and summer stories.

Then one morning, like a vision, a dream, in the soft dark before sunrise, Shard realized the clouds he’d been watching on the horizon were not clouds. They were islands.

His heart soared to his ears, to the sky, to the wind.

The last time he’d seen his home from this angle was the last time he’d glanced back over his wing when he left the islands, following a starfire. For a moment, he thought it was still only longing, and blinked hard.

Then Frar, old Frar, cried out, and Shard knew they saw the Silver Isles.

“Steady my friend,” Shard said, circling back to glide just under and to the side of the elder. “We’re almost there.”

“Yes, my king,” breathed Frar, his gaze locked on the little bumps in the distance.

His heart pounded hot. Silence clenched the flock of them and they all strained into the morning breeze, which flicked of ice and snow, but also that touch of spring that marked the Halflight coming.

The Sun Isle loomed first, jutting up from the water, crowned with the White Mountains that looked gray before sunrise. Behind and starward of it he saw the humped mass of the Star Island, dark with forest. They flew too low to see the rest, but the Sun Isle stood hard and gray and real in the morning shadow, and as the wind picked up, he discerned the first scent of pine in the wind.

“Shard!” Brynja’s bright voice called him back.

Shard wheeled, not realizing he’d pulled nearly a league ahead of the main group. He soared back to them, his heart light. Then, it grew heavier with each wing beat.

“Welcome home,” he said grimly to Brynja, swooping once around her. She laughed harshly, her eyes bright with a hunting light. They both knew danger lurked there, that it was not to be the homecoming either of them ever imagined.

Shard straightened into a glide beside her, raking his gaze over the distant islands. From there, everything looked as he remembered, but heaviness clenched his heart, and a shadow hulked and shifted in the back of his mind, the familiar shadow of Rhydda that lurked through his dreams in the Winderost.

“I wish I could have brought you here on a fairer wind,” he said quietly to Brynja.

She shook her head. “I would rather fly rough winds with you than fair winds alone.”

“Eyes forward,” Asvander said, not just to them, but to all the gryfons who were whispering and fidgeting. “Keep alert.”

“Remember the plan.” Shard raised his voice so all could hear. “If there is danger at the nesting cliffs, don’t stop to fight.
No one,
” he repeated, “will stop to fight yet. You flee. Flee to the forest near the river. If the enemy comes, Kjorn’s warriors will distract them until the eldest and youngest have time to escape.”