By the Silver Wind (52 page)

Soon it will be Halflight.

He couldn’t place the voice. It sounded like the memory of his father.

The seasons will turn toward spring, toward summer.
Now it reminded him of Catori, or like the albatross he’d once met over the sea, Windwalker.

A year ago, Ragna named you the Summer King.

The memory of Ume drifted to him, the chronicler of the Sunland.

Then, a raven voice, but not Munin.

“He is borne aloft by the Silver Wind

He alone flies the highest peak.

When they hear his song at battle’s end

The Nameless shall know themselves

And the Voiceless will once again speak.”

Hugin, who called himself the keeper of time, winged by through the strange light of the dream. Munin tried to follow his brother, and Shard flung him away like a water droplet, pleased and surprised that it was so easy to do. Groa had taught him dream weaving, he had practiced, and there, snug in the roots of a familiar tree, his talons dug into the earth of his home, Shard felt more grounded and powerful than ever before.

He felt the dream net in the spiral of ferns around him, in the twisting branches that fractured off from the trunk of the rowan. He felt the spiral of Midragur, and all the dreams in the islands.

Rhydda.

Rhydda.

In his dream, he flew to Pebble’s Throw, following the heat of her anger.

He found the wyrm dreams. Blood, gold, and gryfons. She was pleased, pleased with something, and when Shard nudged curiously, she turned her thoughts away, as if hiding something from him.

Blood and gold.

I know your story now.
He tried a new tack, not wanting her to shut him out. He wove the wind and rock and lava into the story for her. Afternoon deepened around them, and the sea glowed blue, and the lava glowed bloody red. He layered his words in images so that she would understand.

A dragon has come, Rhydda. A dragon has come to make amends. They will speak to you once more if you relent, they’ll name your brood. I speak for them. Rhydda, I understand now.

Hot, heavy anger swirled around him. Great jaws opened, gnashing, a spade tail lashed.

I understand. Believe me, I do.

For her he spun a dream of his life in the Silver Isles. He showed her that he was forbidden to fly at night, forbidden to swim in the sea, fish, or believe in the goddess, Tor. Sverin appeared in his dream. Her own fantasy flashed back at him with relish—Sverin, dead and bleeding on the ground.

With surprise, Shard realized she was truly communicating with him, showing him what she wanted. Shard swept his talons, showing the red gryfon flying through the sky, alive.

No. No. You cannot kill him. He is the son of the son of the gryfon they wanted you to hunt.

He tried to explain the generations, he showed gryfons growing up, showed Kajar, Per, then Sverin. Maybe his own remnants of anger remained, for she seemed unconvinced. Her dream burned through his mind in molten fire. A red gryfon. A gryfon, dead on the ground.

I know. I understand what they told you, but it’s wrong.

Her rage slunk into his heart. He did understand. All the fury, the hatred, the anger. She had been a slave. Her children were Nameless and brutish and wild.

Rhydda, I know. You must listen . . .

Blood and stone. She blocked him. As she always did, she turned from him, even in the dream. She was waking. Something stirred and distracted her.

Desperate at the thought of failing again, Shard loosed an eagle cry and dove, dove hard, and fast, toward her horned head. She reared back, enormous wings flaring wide, and opened her jaws. Shard dove, dove, knowing it was a dream, and let his fear fall behind him. He plunged into her gaping maw, past the razor fangs, down to her heart. There, he spread his wings wide, trying to open her heart to him, then spun and roared.

She remembered everything.

Shard crashed through her memories, all as Hikaru had said, the mining, the dragons forcing her to fly only at night.

Her children, Nameless, scrabbling for scraps of food in the Winderost.

The scent of gryfon was on the wind, and always that scent made her remember the great, bright masters who had once given them beautiful jewels, honor, and Names.

Now it was all gone. It was gone, until the red gryfon died.

No, Rhydda.
Shard tried to wrap his wings around her heart, to fill her with his own sense of justice and peace. He thought of Sverin, and small bitterness flickered that the king who had wronged his pride was now among those he sought to protect.

Rhydda’s thoughts snared on Shard’s bitterness.

Too late, he felt her seething satisfaction. He saw her fantasy again, of Sverin dead.

NO.
Shard scoured for an idea, for anything to impart the idea of wrongness and loss.

Then, he remembered battling wyrms in the Winderost.

Your brood? Are they all your sons and daughters?

Rhydda.

He lashed together a memory as he circled in her waking dream. He rebuilt the memory of a huge, muscled, shrieking wyrm, dull of hide and jaws gaping. The wyrm had chased Shard at the Dawn Spire during the first, awful battle when Rhydda had cut Stigr down.

But the wyrm in Shard’s memory was dead now. Shard and Stigr had tricked it into flying head-first into the ground.

Clearly, he recalled the awful cracking of bones and thunderous quaking as the wyrm smashed into the mud. He formed the memory for her, in all its wretched detail. Then he showed her Stigr, cut down in the mud. The wyrm and Stigr, fallen.

He tried desperately to impart pain, loss, the wrongness of it all.

She went still.

Great, rank breath heaved from her nostrils and her open jaws as Shard showed her this wyrm. Alive, flying fast, a hulking picture of might and death. Then, dead. Unmoving in the red mud.

A low noise reverberated within her armored chest.

Was he your mate? Your son? He died in battle.

Did you grieve?

Did you feel anything at all?

Stigr’s voice resounded in his head.
Be careful how you put things to her. She might not understand.

A gurgling sound grated in her cavernous chest and roiled, building itself into a rolling, metallic shriek that threatened to shatter Shard’s skull.

With horror, Shard realized that she understood well enough—but rather than understand that he was trying to show her his own sense of fear and loss, he felt fresh rage licking up in her heart. She thought he was threatening her, or gloating, or—he didn’t even know what she thought.

Blood and jagged stone and hatred flung itself around Shard, seizing his spirit and drowning his will, trapping him in the darkest corner of Rhydda’s heart.

In the fury of her wrath, his name slipped from him, his heart, his purpose, and all he could smell and see was the walls and pits of her endless, mindless hatred. And there he stayed, shrieking, locked in a raging, Voiceless nightmare.

T
HROUGH THE POCKED BIRCH trunks
and their bare, whispering branches, Ragna heard the grating and rumbling of the wyrms. The river rolled at her side as she and nearly fifty of the Vanir, young and old, crept through the forest. The underbrush remained naked and spindly from winter, thin and offering little cover.

Still, the wind brushed their scent upstream, away from the wyrms, though that was all the help Tyr seemed able to offer them. The sun glanced down, mottling their feathers in the undergrowth. Mud and dirt from their crawl through the tight wolf tunnel helped disguise their scent and the sight of them in the woods.

Ketil stalked on one side of her, Istren on the other. Tocho had led them to the second entrance, where they’d had to dig out the remainder of brush the wolves had used to stuff the hole, sealing it off after the wolves’ attack on the Sun Isle last summer.

Even Ragna had barely fit through the tunnel, and she was glad no Aesir or half-bloods had attempted it. They would’ve been stuck fast.

Ragna’s feet seemed to prickle. She fancied she could feel Kjorn and his army beneath them, wrapping torches in sinew and sap, preparing to surprise the wyrms with fire in their ugly faces.

The squirming, massive bodies of wyrms caught her eye beyond the next stand of trees. Great chunks of earth flew up and dirt scattered the ground. Broken trees formed dangerous splintered spears, thrusting from the ground.

They would have to leap forward into the clearing near the water, then straight into the air, lest the wyrms catch them too quickly.

“On my mark,” Ragna breathed.

Her quiet command passed down the line.

She crouched, and in near-silence, the Vanir followed suit.

Hulking wyrms of dusty green and gray tore at the earth and the giant rocks that marked the main entrance to the river tunnel.

With a flash of relief, and worry, Ragna realized she didn’t see the great she-wyrm, the one Shard called Rhydda. Perhaps he was speaking with her. Perhaps, even now he was communicating with her . . .

“We wait on your mark,” Ketil reminded her softly, her voice tight with determination and fear.

Ragna loosed a breath. They could not wait on Shard. She had waited too long for everything. Even if Shard reached Rhydda, the prides were under attack
now.
They had to stop that, at least.

Ragna flicked up her tail and fanned the white feathers in the briefest signal, then plunged forward with a ringing, bellowing roar.

“By Tor! For the Vanir! For the Silver Isles!”

Vanir streamed after her, shouting a dozen battle cries.

“Tor is the thunder!” shouted Frar, with surprising vigor.

“
For the Vanir
!” cried Maja.

“
For the queen
!”

“
For Rashard, Rashard the true king!”

Wings filled her vision as they rushed to the sky. Wings, talons, hard, flashing eyes. Istren and Istra, Ketil and Keta side-by-side with Ilse, Maja, and Toskil. Old Frar, leading four older, seasoned Vanir. Ragna’s blood seized for a moment to see them, to see her Vanir home. Home, and fighting hard for it. For her. For Shard.

She prayed bright Tor would see them all through the battle, and knew that would not be so.

The wyrms scrambled back from their digging in wailing, gnashing surprise. Seven of them, she counted, only seven. Surely they could drive them off. They only had to harry them until Kjorn arrived with his fire.

“Form up!” shouted a clear, ringing voice. Vidar. He winged up beside Ragna, and strength flowed into her, hope. She fell into formation with Vidar and Toskil, forming an arrow that drove at the largest, gray wyrm. The beast reared up, slashing with both forefeet. Dirt flew from its massive claws.

Ragna and Toskil split, darting around its great, horned head, while Vidar plunged under the swinging claws, forcing the monster to lumber around, seeking him. Ragna tilted her wings to stay tight with Toskil, and they banked for another pass.

Vidar swooped out from under the wyrm and rejoined them, higher, but the wyrm remained planted on the ground near the broken trees.

Meanwhile, Ketil, Ilse, and Keta formed another triad, and with Frar and two other elders, they harried a smaller green wyrm from the tunnel entrance. All around them, darting wedges of Vanir swooped, banked, and circled the wyrms.

Wildly trying to keep an eye on every single Vanir, Ragna knew she would die trying to keep watch over them all. She stuck close to Vidar, who didn’t leave her side, and Toskil, who seemed determined to protect her in Shard’s absence.

They re-formed their triad and drove forward as the gray wyrm at last shoved from the ground to the sky, his deadly tail driving a furrow through the forest floor.

Frar’s group shot upward to aid Ragna’s triad, but the wyrm spun in a circle with shocking speed, flinging his massive wings open to knock the surprised gryfons away. One elder female careened into the splintered tree trunks, and Ragna, diving fast under the wyrm’s wings, saw Frar plummet down to her side.

Four smaller, green beasts leaped at the fallen with gleeful, ear-shattering shrieks and massive slashing claws.

The formations that were still flying broke apart, disintegrating into chaos and fear.

“Get clear!” Vidar shouted at Ragna.

Flying higher, Ragna saw Maja on the ground, mantled protectively over Keta, who nursed a twisted foot. Frar and Istren scrambled toward them, even as two green wyrms lumbered after.

“Get up!” Ragna cried. “Fly!”

“Fly, Vanir!” Vidar was there beside her again. His voice boomed with unexpected depth and a thrill shivered through Ragna. “Get up!”

Maja and Frar shouldered Keta up, and pushed her into the air. They followed, springing from the earth just as a green wyrm smashed its talons to ground where they’d stood. Its tail flashed toward Maja’s head, but Istren knocked her aside. The flat of the wyrm’s tail smacked into him and sent him sprawling to the ground amidst the broken, jagged trees.

Their simple distraction was already costing lives. Ragna forced herself to remember Thyra, Astri, Kenna, and all the other pregnant females, the fledges, the gryfons down in the caverns relying on them.

“Rise!” she shouted. “Fly! Don’t try to fight!”

The scent of wood smoke filtered to her.

Not long. Not long now.

The great, gray wyrm swooped about above it all, screaming, but the others didn’t heed it the way Ragna had seen them heed Rhydda. They flung themselves into the air haphazardly, snapping at darting, nimble Vanir.

The wind rose, cold and bracing, bringing the scent of the river and of the sea and earth.

For one breath, Ragna felt she breathed in the spirit of every Vanir to walk the Isles, even Baldr, her beloved Baldr, and that strength might be enough to see them through.

“For the Silver Isles!” she cried once more.

“The Vanir never die!” crowed Vidar, and those still flying re-formed their attacks, and plummeted at the wyrms from all sides.

Dizzying acrobatics filled the air over the river. Ragna grimly counted three gryfons on the ground, unmoving, but didn’t dare name them to herself yet. Vidar and Toskil stuck fast to her side like burrs.