A Shard of Sun by Jess E. Owen Page A

body knew he had more room.
    “Let’s hope so.” Shard laughed as the cold breeze picked up, giving them a strong tailwind. They lifted high again, to cover more ground, and Hikaru followed him without question, nightward. Shard harkened to a small, quiet instinct that drew him away from the mountain, also away from the Dawn Spire and the wyrms, away from all of it, as the sky darkened and ash flurried around their wings like snow.

~ 6 ~
Shard of Memory
     
    K JORN WATCHED AS R OK peered at the horizon, making a low, grumbling noise.
    They’d kept Kjorn bound, trussed like a fly in a spider’s web, with long ropes of seaweed tying his wings to his body, and separate binds wrapping his forefeet and hind feet together, respectively. Unable to fly with him bound thus, they all traveled on foot, and dragged Kjorn across the ground using more seaweed tied in knots to the main binding on his wings.
    For days they’d trekked roughly windward across the barren coast, beset by cold rain and salty wind. It reminded Kjorn of spring in the Silver Isles. Spring. Thyra… All the females of his pride would whelp in spring, of course, but only one of them was his mate. Only one had made him vow, under threat of talon, to return in time to behold the birth of his kit.
    Kjorn managed to flop onto his belly and see what the poacher saw. A thick haze hung over the far, distant horizon, strangely pale and dark at the same time, more like fog than cloud. His heart seemed to thicken in his chest.
    “Storm?” The female, whose name, Kjorn had gathered without official introduction, was Frida, walked up beside Rok and cocked her head.
    “No,” said Rok in a low voice, and his feathers prickled up.
    “Earthfire,” Kjorn offered, and the other male gryfon of the band, Fraenir, growled a warning.
    Kjorn snapped his beak in return, weary of being treated as a lowly prisoner, as a fledge who should remain silent. This land is my birthright. My great grandfather’s father ruled the Dawn Spire and all the gryfon clans of the Winderost.
    So the elder Aesir in the Silver Isles had told him. More than his father had ever told him. Sverin’s version of their leaving the Winderost, since Kjorn’s kithood, was that they’d left with honors to conquer new lands and claim them in the name of the Aesir. Now he knew the truth. Kajar had lost his war with the dragons, stolen what treasures he could, and brought a blight upon his kingdom in the form of Nameless, Voiceless, terrorizing beasts. Per, Sverin, and all those whose families bore the curse had fled the beasts to live in exile.
    My birthright, Kjorn thought. He shifted his talons against the tight seaweed binds. He’d hoped as it dried it would become brittle, but the long ropes only grew rubbery and tough, and if any of the band of poachers caught him gnawing at it, either he received no food, or a sharp cuff to the side of the head that left him reeling.
    “Rok,” Fraenir began, in a note of complaint. “His Highness won’t stay still.”
    But Rok was still gazing at the far horizon. “Earthfire, you say. Yes. An eruption. I’ve never seen the like.”
    “What does it mean?” Frida sounded breathless, and opened her wings.
    “Nothing,” Kjorn said, shortly. Like his father, he put little stock in omens—or perhaps his father did, and hid the superstition from him. Kjorn didn’t know anymore. He felt he didn’t know his father at all, had never known him, and swallowed a bitter taste. Kjorn had followed one sign. A starfire sign that led him to the Winderost.
    Or maybe it was only Shard’s sign, he thought. Maybe I stole that from him too, as I stole the Silver Isles. Perhaps so, but he had come to make things right, in his once-homeland, with his wingbrother, if he ever found him again.
    “Volcanoes erupt,” Kjorn went on when Frida cast him an irritated look. “It’s the way of the earth.”
    “The Horn of Midragur,” Rok murmured, as if none of them were there. “Has