A Shard of Sun Read online

  “And a young prince named Kajar.”

  ~ 2 ~

  Flotsam

  WAVES SMASHED AGAINST SHARP, wind-battered rocks along the inner curve of a crescent coastline. The worst of the storm had already passed, but pale clouds still gusted low, raining on the ruined shore. The rocks hugged small patches of gravel beaches, some ten leaps long, others wide enough for only a single gryfon to stand. Dead and dying sea creatures littered the small beaches, tangled in mats of seaweed or sprawled on the sand. Fish, seals, a handful of unfortunate seabirds.

  Four scavengers ranged among the sea-wrack—three winged, and one on four paws. The painted wolf found the first fish and, with an eye to the gryfons above him, bolted it down without offering to share. If they found out, it would be his hide. But they wouldn’t find out. He chuckled to himself and picked up to a lope, stretching his full belly and licking his jaws.

  The gryfons shouted above and he saw the source of their excitement. A dead seal. Large enough to feed three starving, rogue gryfons, and one painted wolf. The storm had been the worst one all season, but it left riches for those who knew where to hunt.

  A scent on the wind distracted him. As the gryfons fell on the dead seal, the wolf turned back into the wind, ears perked. Downwind, he raised his nose and followed it.

  Rocks scattered at the edge of the beach and lanced out to sea, forming a barrier between him and the next beach. But the scent came from the next beach. Gingerly, not wanting to slip, the wolf climbed up the rocks, ignoring gryfon shouts for him to come and eat. He spotted his quarry crammed in the rocks unnaturally, not as if it had washed up, but as if it had swam, or desperately crawled, at low tide, into the shelter of the tide pools. Oh, he’d been correct. The scent was worth following.

  He quirked his head, thinking.

  “What’s all this?” demanded Rok, winging up to hover over the wolf. “Ha. A fallen exile? We could use more talons. Is he alive?”

  Rok didn’t land at first, eyeing the gryfon warily, and the wolf shifted, lowering his head to sniff. Both of them studied the washed-up gryfon in the rocks. Large, big-boned, with golden feathers micah-bright against the stone and seawater.

  “Breathing,” Rok confirmed. He landed near the wolf, carefully gripping the stones. “Healthy. Big. Looks to be outcast from the Dawn Spire, if I had to wager. This could be good for us. Can you haul him out?”

  The wolf tilted his head the other way, studying. “Halfway,” he grunted. Words were always an effort. He roamed Nameless so often these days…”You can pull him the rest.”

  “Good enough.” Rok looked back over his shoulder. “Hey, you worthless, lice-infested vultures,” he called affectionately to the other two in their band, “over here!”

  The two gryfons, a young female of plain brown coloring and a male her age with feathers like sand, ignored him to continue eating. Meanwhile, the painted wolf negotiated his way down to the hollow, to the water, and the washed-up gryfon.

  As he drew close, something brighter than the feathers caught his eye. He thrust his face under the feathers to loop the strange material over his nose, and tilted his head toward Rok.

  “Rok. What is this?”

  The gangly rogue cocked his head. “Hm. Is it metal? I think it’s called…a chain.” A strange light brightened his eyes.

  The wolf wrinkled his nose. “A chain? What does it do?” He shook his head free of the delicate metal and clamped his jaws on the gryfon’s scruff. True to his estimation, he was able to haul the limp body halfway back up the rocks by standing on his hind legs, then Rok caught the gryfon under the forelegs and dragged him over the rocks to the beach.

  “A chain,” the rogue confirmed, his expression guarded. “Gold. I’ve heard stories of it.” The wolf’s hackles prickled. He knew when Rok was scheming. “I know a few creatures who might have an interest. Fraenir!” He barked over his shoulder, “Frida! Come over here now.”

  “Can you eat it?” The wolf sniffed again at the gold gryfon and the chain, curious at his foreign scent, his size, and the bright coloring of his feathers.

  “No. It’s metal. Don’t be foolish. You’d just as well eat rocks.”

  The wolf bared his fangs, then the unconscious gryfon’s tail flipped up and smacked his face, just as the other two of their band walked up beside Rok.

  Rok slipped his claws through the chain to tug it free from the unconscious gryfon’s neck.

  Talons locked on Rok’s foreleg and the golden gryfon coughed seawater. “…that…is mine.”

  “Ha,” Rok growled, lifting his wings in surprise at the challenge. “Why, I’ll skin you and line my nest with gold feathers. Everything that washes up on this shore’s mine, including your chain there.”

  “Who are you?” asked the wolf of the gold gryfon, almost remembering his own name—realizing, just then, that he had forgotten it. It slipped away again and he let it, unworried. With the name came some dark memory, a fear greater than he wanted to remember.

  The gryfon hacked again and Rok chuckled, lifting his ears. “Kjorn,” wheezed the gryfon. “Son-of-Sverin. Prince of…of…” Either he couldn’t remember, or couldn’t decide, but he didn’t finish, and his gaze slid between the three gryfons. Fraenir stepped in front of Frida as if to shield her from his gaze, and she dipped her head, peering at the stranger with narrowed eyes.

  “Ha! Hear that, my friends?” Rok looked at all of them to make sure. Fraenir chuckled, Frida didn’t and Rok looked back to the stranger. “Lucky for you, I’m a prince too. Prince of all you see here on the border of Vanheim. Prince of this mudding cranny between the high-beaks of the Reach and the stuff-beaked Vanhar. What brings you here?” He chuckled, as if it were a delightful conversation on a sunny afternoon.

  “Starfire,” whispered the gryfon who called himself Kjorn. “Shard. Have you seen…?”

  “Shards?” Rok repeated. “What kind? Rocks? We’ve got plenty.”

  Shard. The wolf twitched one ear back as something nagged his mind, like a flea. He sat, scratching vigorously as if that could relieve his head. A name, not his own name, which he couldn’t recall, but another. He remembered a rainstorm and a thick sense of terror. He shut it out, stood, and shook himself of drizzle.

  Nothing to be frightened of, there. Nothing he needed to remember. He had food and a pack, even if his pack was made of gryfons.

  Kjorn tilted his head back, gaze rolling to behold the littered shore. Then he looked up and down the three gryfons, and the wolf. His eyes narrowed. He uttered something. The wolf heard it, and laid his ears flat. Rok didn’t, and leaned forward.

  “What?”

  “Poachers,” Kjorn croaked again. “You’re part of no pride. That I can see.” He tried to push himself up, quivered, and fell again. The wolf saw blood oozing from a wound behind one wing. He must’ve been dashed against the rocks before finding his safe hollow.

  Rok’s hackle feathers lifted at the word, and his tail lashed. “Oh, is that the way of it? Well, son-of-Sverin.” He grabbed the golden chain again and yanked, snapping the delicate links and making Kjorn grunt in pain. “Consider yourself poached.” He stalked off, the chain in his fore claws, and said over his shoulder, “Take him.”

  The wolf exchanged a look with Fraenir, and they braced for a fight—but the large golden gryfon had fallen unconscious again on the sand.

  Kjorn opened his eyes. He lay on cold rock inside a cave that reeked of old fish and brine. Swiveling his ears, he determined the sea now lay below him, that he’d been hauled to a cliff-side den near the shore. Bright moonlight washed everything, showing him mostly rock and a night sky.

  Voices made him alert, and his instinct for danger flared. He recalled the exiles.

  “He’s awake!” reported a female.

  Kjorn tried to sit up, but something bound his forelegs and his hind paws. By the scent, it had to be thick ropes of seaweed. He squirmed and twisted his talons but he was tied so closely to the digits that he could neither slice th
rough the thick vines nor pull free. He managed to scoot up to a half-sitting position, leaning on his bound forefeet, by the time the leading male approached him from the back of the cave. Kjorn, his eyes adjusted to the dark and moonlight, looked around to see the female who’d spoken. He was surprised to see that she stood smaller, compact and thin, built almost like a Vanir. Her eyes, when she met his, were guarded and hard.

  “Welcome awake, Your Highness,” said the lanky male.

  Kjorn growled low, spying his chain, tied roughly and glinting around the arrogant poacher’s neck. “Release me. I have no quarrel with you.”

  The gryfon tilted his head, then sputtered a laugh and mantled his wings, mocking. “And I have no quarrel with you.” He mimicked Kjorn’s speech—his own was rough, but his eyes were keen. “But I do have a use for you.”

  “Return that chain. It was my father’s.”

  “Oh? Well now it’s mine. The price for saving your carcass. You’d have bled out or drowned at high tide if not for us.”

  Kjorn growled, trying to flare his wings, and found they, too, were bound by seaweed. He knew he’d been foolish to take anything from his father’s old nest, especially a golden chain that was an icon of the very war that had started all the wrongs Kjorn hoped to right. But he’d seen Sverin wear it often, the gold against the crimson chest, and it helped to have a little piece of his father close by.

  Serves me right. He took a slow breath. At first, no one had wanted him to go, seeking Shard, except perhaps for Ragna. When it became clear that Sverin would likely not return to threaten the pride, that everyone was weary of fighting, and that Thyra and Ragna could handle any disputes which arose, Kjorn had decided to go. He had to find Shard, and make amends, and decide, together, the future of their prides.

  He decided it would not do to make enemies his first day in the Winderost. Though he was bound, he was alive, and perhaps what the outcast said was true, and he would’ve died without help.

  He managed to keep his voice neutral. “I do thank you for your help. You have my gratitude. But the chain is of no use to you and neither am I. I’m here…seeking a friend.” He decided not to tell them the rest. If he’d had his wits about him before, he wouldn’t have named himself a prince at all. He’d let them decide if that was true or part of sea-washed delirium. Kjorn shuddered at the memory of the storm closing on him over the sea when he’d been at the end of his strength, and the final wind that had shoved him into the sea.

  But bright Tyr bore me to my homeland. At least part of the way. The rest, it seemed, would be up to him.

  “What friend?”

  Kjorn could see no harm in telling them that, at least. Knowing Shard, he might very well have made allies of scoundrels like these. “His name is Shard. Rashard. A gray gryfon, about your height.” He nodded to the female, who darted her gaze away, tail flicking. “A Vanir.”

  “Vanhar? No, they don’t come this close to the Reach.”

  “No,” Kjorn said, curious at the similarity. He didn’t want to test Rok’s patience by asking, though. He felt he had a limited number of questions the rogue might answer. “Vanir. From a group of islands far starward, the Silver Isles.”

  Rok looked suspicious. “Never heard of them. Or your friend. You?” He asked the female, who shrugged her wings. Kjorn saw another male, closer to the back of the cave. He merely grunted a negative.

  Perfect. The wolf seer said Shard landed and found my kin, was welcomed into the Dawn Spire with open wing, and I land among scruffy, honor-less thieves.

  Kjorn tried to fluff his feathers and look proud, though he was certain he looked no better than any of the dead creatures that had washed up on the shore. “Take me to the Dawn Spire. They’ll give you a reward for me there.” He wasn’t strictly certain that was true, but all that mattered was what he could make them believe.

  That gained the big male’s attention. “Food?”

  “Of course. Lots of food. More and fresher than you’d find here. Red meat, not fish.”

  The leader cocked his head, calculating. “What about this?” He slid his talon along the gold chain, admiring it against his dull brown feathers. “Is there more of this?”

  Kjorn switched his tail, meeting the hard, keen gaze. “No. My pride took all the gold from the Winderost. You hold all that’s left.”

  “Ha! So why should they give me anything for you at the Dawn Spire? Hm? Are you high tier? A good warrior? Not from what I’ve seen.”

  “Look at his eyes, Rok,” burst out the female, as if she couldn’t stand the big gryfon’s ignorance any longer. “You fool. Look at his eyes.”

  Rok snapped his beak at her, lifting his wings, then settled in front of Kjorn and peered at his face in the moonlight. Kjorn knew what he saw. Gold feathers, bedraggled but true in breeding, and the rare eye color of bright sky blue. What it meant to them, he didn’t know.

  “I see,” Rok murmured. “I see now. I thought it was a trick of the ocean.”

  “What do you think the queen will give for him?” the female asked eagerly, and Kjorn wished she’d stayed silent after all.

  “I don’t know.” Rok stood, stretched luxuriously, and scraped his talons across the rock floor of the cave.

  Kjorn’s tail twitched. “Enough to satisfy you, I’m sure. Take me there and I’ll reward you myself.”

  “You’re alone,” Rok said. “You washed up half-dead. I don’t think the Dawn Spire even knows you’re here and alive, and I don’t know if they’ll want you.” His eyes glittered. “But I’ll let others figure that out. I think I know someone who’ll pay more.”

  Kjorn’s belly dropped out.

  “Don’t look so forlorn, Your Highness. Consider the good part—we don’t have to travel as far as the Dawn Spire.”

  “Where will you take me?” Kjorn demanded. “To whom?”

  “Feed him,” Rok said to the female, stalking away. “Let it never be said that I was responsible for letting a prince go without his supper.”

  The female eyed Kjorn, then tossed a fish at him. It smacked him in the face before he could snap his beak to catch it. Rok and the other male broke into coarse laughter, taking up the game and pelting him with small fish.

  “Stop this!” Kjorn roared, flinging himself against his bonds but succeeding only in throwing himself to ground. The younger male exploded into laughter again, and Rok strode forward, planting his talons on Kjorn’s shoulder.

  “You should stay down for a while.”

  “I have no fight with you. I’ve earned no disrespect. Free me and I’ll help you hunt, and you can help me find—”

  “I’ve no desire to help you with anything,” Rok snarled, squeezing his talons against Kjorn’s shoulder. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and for the first time, Kjorn recognized not just a desire for food and gain, but true contempt. And recognition. “You, or any other relation to the Dawn Spire.”

  Kjorn hesitated, studying the gryfon’s hard, bitter expression. “Why—”

  “Check his binds often,” Rok said, and shoved away toward the back of the cave. Kjorn watched him go, then tried to catch the female’s eye. She looked away, leaving Kjorn to consider his situation, half buried in fish in the moonlight. Not quite idly, he wondered what Shard would say, to see him bound and treated so, and wondered, with apprehension, if his once-wingbrother wouldn’t think he deserved it.

  ~ 3 ~

  The Star Dragon

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  Shard jumped at the voice, bashing his head against the hard, gleaming scales of Amaratsu’s side. “Hikaru. I thought you were sleeping.”

  “What are you doing? Are you digging? Are you digging out?” The young dragon slipped forward, peering at the shallow beginning to Shard’s escape route.

  “That was my idea. I don’t want you near it, though. The wyrms might get a better scent of you.”

  Hikaru sat up on his haunches, arching his head back. Shard marveled at his size. In another two days, he would
be as large as a gryfon. Their sanctuary grew crowded indeed.

  “I want to help.”

  “You don’t need to help.”

  The ground under them shivered and they both tilted their heads back, looking toward the shadows outside. The wyrms, back from hunting a meal, filled the cavern again. Their muffled roars pressed against the walls and Hikaru reared up to place his paws against the shining scales.

  “What do they want, Shard? Can they speak like us? Can we talk to them?” His large eyes searched hard against the shadows, then he tilted his head to look at Shard, waiting for all his answers. Shard wished he had more to give.

  “I don’t know. I tried to speak to them once…” That horrible night. He ruffled his feathers. “I know they want you, and they hate me.”

  “Why?” Hikaru relaxed back to sitting, his long tail twitching. He narrowed his eyes. Shard tried not to look surprised at the new, growing depth of his voice. “Will they try to kill us? They seem so angry.”

  “I don’t know. I told you everything that passed between them and the gryfons, and the dragons of the Sunland. That’s all I know.”

  “Nameless,” Hikaru murmured, not to Shard in particular. “Voiceless. It’s not right, is it? It’s not right for them.”

  “No,” Shard said quietly. “It’s not. Tyr and Tor gave all creatures under their sky life and purpose.”

  “I want to help them,” Hikaru said firmly, and love and fear strained against each other in Shard’s heart. He briefly forgot that the dragonet was only two weeks old, and would live only one year.

  How his heart must race. Shard thought of all that had befallen him in only a year—not even a year yet—and understood a little how a dragon of the Sunland must think they lived a long, rich life indeed.

  “So do I,” Shard said belatedly. “And I’m certain we can. And if we can help them, I know it will help all the struggles I’ve told you about in my own islands, the Winderost, and maybe even your homeland.”

  Hikaru turned large eyes to him, scrutinizing with frightening maturity. “Truly?”