A Shard of Sun (39 page)

Caj had had time to think about that, too. “I wasn’t afraid of you, but Per.”

“You took Shard as your nest-son. I would have protected you both.”

Heat closed Caj’s throat for a moment. “I know that now. I didn’t then, and when Per died, it seemed too late.”

“You should have known.” Recovered to his senses, Sverin’s gold eyes pierced him hard, knowing, aware. “I never trusted the Vanir, but I did trust you. Though of course, now…” he trailed off and looked pointedly at Caj, and they both thought of Shard, now prince of the Vanir, surely planning on returning and claiming his Isle.

“While we’re speaking of lies,” Caj said evenly, keeping his temper only because he was happy to argue with words all day rather than with beak and claw, “what have you kept from me?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“It’s over, Sverin,” Caj said quietly. “During the Long Night, when we could all see you slipping from us, Ragna told me something.” At the sudden, guarded expression on Sverin’s face, Caj knew he was close to something important. “Sverin, it’s done. It’s over. Ragna rules as regent, Thyra waits for Kjorn—”

“Waits for Kjorn?” he asked sharply, ears perking. “Where has he gone?”

Caj sat, carefully folding his wing. “Home. To the Winderost.”

“No,” Sverin whispered, looking stunned.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Caj said firmly. “He’s gone to find Shard, and he’ll return or he won’t. Your line is secure, in Thyra.”

“I always hated your lack of tact,” Sverin said, ears laying back. With the same expression he said, “And admired your honesty.”

Feeling struck, Caj merely shook his head. “Now, I’ll tell you all you like about what’s happened since you left, after you answer my question. What secrets do you hold from me, still? What passed between you and Ragna? What secret does she know that you could not tell me? Tell me what drove you to this, what split the trust between us. I’ve owned my lies.”

Sverin looked at him, and a quick, burning gratitude flashed across his features so quickly Caj almost mistook it for sadness. “I know I owe you that. I will tell you everything, though most of it you know. My failure as a king, as a father. But you don’t know where my failure began.”

“You didn’t fail as a father…” Caj fell quiet at another hard look.

“And I will not tell you here,” Sverin said, raising his head as sunlight reached over the valley and fell across his broad, red chest. “I will go with you,” he said, gazing across the snow field, “you and the others, as their prisoner, if that is necessary.” He looked to Caj. “And I will confess everything, for I have committed worse crimes than you know, and I must confess it all, before the pride, before you, Sigrun, Thyra, and Ragna.”

“Sverin…”

Sverin’s gaze grew distant and shadowed. “And I must ask her forgiveness, though I fear it’s too late. My fear of you and Kjorn learning the truth—both of our coming here, and what came after—was so great that it drove all else from my mind, Caj. I wore my broken honor like a shield. But after all I’ve done to you, to Shard, to the pride, my offense to her was greatest of all, and it has lasted these ten long years. I can bear it no more, and surely she can’t either.”

“Who?” Caj asked, frustrated that he wouldn’t be plain, but relieved that he would no longer fight. “Whose forgiveness must you ask before we can leave this behind us?”

The weary golden eyes met Caj’s glare. “Ragna.” His voice was quiet. Broken. “White Ragna, who has more courage than ever I had, and made me a promise I never deserved.”

T
HE TRUTH WAS WROUGHT
in silver before their eyes.

And it was as Groa had told him.

“I knew it!” Hikaru said shrilly. “I knew that all those terrible things about gryfons couldn’t be true.” He slipped around Shard in a protective coil, as Natsumi, wide-eyed, peered at the new account.

Ume bobbed her great head. “The emperor of that time didn’t like being portrayed honestly, and commanded that the chronicler disguise the tale. So Umeko did, but it has passed from one of us to the next to remember, to know, that the truth was beneath.” She looked at Shard, ears perked. “And to wait until the right time to reveal it.”

Shard did note that the tale in silver was a bit more equal between Amaratsu’s and Groa’s stories. He noticed a bit more fault on the part of the gryfons than in Groa’s tale—more greed, more boasting, but the tragic ending was the same, with Kajar falsely accused of murdering a dragon and he and his band driven out with some of the treasures they’d been given. Neither side fully villainous, neither side fully wrong.

Shard thought of the Aesir and the Vanir, his divided family in the Silver Isles.

“See there,” Ume said to Natsumi as the younger dragoness read the tale, tracing intricate lines drawn into the background. “That is to show the elements at play—here is fire, and air, a volatile mix that ended in great sadness.”

Shard spotted a figure unlike any other. “There,” he said, opening his wings with excitement, “is that a wyrm, there?” He patted Hikaru’s coil and climbed out, peering up to see the higher panel.

“Yes,” Ume said. “You see here, after the Aesir left the Sunland, when we closed ourselves away.”

Shard followed the intricate reliefs in silver, marveling at the detail of the wyrms, the thick horns, the deadly tail. “It looks like a wyrm came to the Sunland?”

“That was Rhydda,” Ume murmured, touching a claw to the wyrm, flying over plains of pearl. “The last named wyrm. A year after Kajar left.”

“And then?” Shard asked. “Why did she come? What became of her?”

Ume rose higher, touching the silver panel as she opened her mouth to explain—then her ears laid back and she looked quickly toward the entrance.

“There!” shouted a new voice.

Hikaru and Natsumi’s heads whipped up, and Shard slipped around Hikaru, ears lifting.

Kagu charged into the far entryway, yellow scales blazing in the torch light, bouncing dazzling reflection off the golden pillars.

“I told you I saw them leading the intruder here!”

Blue Isora and two more fully grown sentries wound their way into the cavern behind him.

“I told you!” boomed Kagu.

A rolling growl began to build itself in Hikaru’s chest. Shard felt it thrumming against his whole body.

“Hikaru don’t,” Ume murmured. “Be still. Natsumi, be still. Show restraint and your youth may earn you some lenience.”

“You’ve been spying!” Hikaru burst out anyway, quivering with rage. Natsumi laid a forepaw on his wing, but he remained crouched and tense.

“Take the gryfon,” said one of the sentries, a sinuous jade female with a mane of lustrous gold. The other was flame orange, the same Shard had met on the first day.

Ume rose to her full height, spanning her wings as if to embrace them all. “Welcome, honored dragons of the warrior way. What may I do for you? Family histories, perhaps?” She bobbed her head once, watching them with hooded eyes.

Kagu snorted, and cobalt Isora silenced him with a look. He shrank back, but met Shard and Hikaru’s glare with a smug, fanged grin.

“Chronicler,” said the jade sentinel, dipping her head, though her gaze was hard. “You have much to answer for. The gryfon was not to see our treasures or our histories.”

“I cannot feel bound by an arbitrary rule,” Ume said. “We’ve had no rules about gryfons until the day Rashard entered our halls, and now rules come only by the empress’s whim. Tell me, how does your own upbringing console you to blindly following an unjust—”

“Be silent,” snapped the jade, her teeth gleaming in the torchlight. She reared up, but was still a head shorter than Ume. “I am loyal to the empress until my end.”

“Show them,” Hikaru cried, stretching up to point to the pillar. “Show them the truth, about Kajar, about the emperor—”

“Be still, hatchling,” Isora rumbled, and true to his new training, Hikaru huddled down, edging closer to Shard.

“Enough.” The jade dragon snapped her jaws. Her golden gaze traveled from Hikaru and Shard, back up to Ume. “You will all answer to the empress.”

The hall of ice glowed liquid amber in the light of only a few torches, held by careful young sentries who stood well away from the walls or supporting columns.

Isora tossed Shard on the ground in front of the empress’s great ice throne. He tumbled, scrambled to his feet and slipped, only for Hikaru to whip forward and catch him in gentle claws. He helped Shard stand upright while the golden dragoness watched in cold, beautiful silence. She’d been given word, apparently, and risen for the occasion, but Shard suspected she’d been asleep, for her mane looked wild, as if wind-tossed, and she wore no jewels but for the great collar of gold and ruby. She looked more mortal than the first time he’d seen her. Shard felt braver, but someone spoke before he could.

“Radiant One,” said Ume, walking sedately forward with Natsumi at her side. “Wise, just, and benevolent Ai.” She bowed deeply, her nose nearly touching the floor. “It is my honor to stand in your presence. I hope you will see it in your great heart to allow me to explain.”

“Explain,” Empress Ai said, with the barest flick of her tail, “quickly.”

Hikaru tugged Shard back and they stood side by side with Ume.

Ume paused only a moment to note that other dragons had risen at the commotion of them all being escorted through the mountain to the throne room. They had a silent, but large audience gathering.

“Radiant Empress, I would have hoped that the next generation would be more welcoming to the first outsider our land has seen in so many—”

“I said quickly,” Ai said. “Don’t waste your breath on flattery or sentiment.”

Ume bowed her head, but Shard stepped forward.

“I’ll explain, because it’s all my doing.”

“
You
will be silent,” growled the empress, and the light from the torches bobbed as the younger dragons holding them edged away.

“I won’t be silent,” Shard said. “I’ve been silent before, and always with regret. You will listen to what I say, then do as you will.”

“Shard,” Hikaru murmured, but Shard only dipped his head to the young dragon before stepping forward.

He bowed, mantling to the empress, who looked surprised enough to hear him out. “I came here to seek and offer friendship, to ask your help in resolving a mortal feud between wyrms and gryfon kind that I know now began in the time of Kajar.”

Her mane, though long and thick, seemed to stand higher, and it made her look feral and fierce, but she didn’t interrupt him yet.

Shard inclined his head. “I assume you are much wiser and more knowledgeable than your forebears, so of course I don’t hold you at fault for the problems between Kajar and the emperor of that time. As I expect that none of you would hold me at fault,” he glanced around as motion caught his eye, and saw that their audience had tripled, “for the deeds of gryfons nearly one hundred years dead.”

“I won’t bear your insults,” Ai said, her voice now a steady, thrumming growl.

“He hasn’t insulted you,” Ume said, “nor anyone. If you will only come with me, come to the hall of histories, I will show you the truth, as I should have shown you in your second season.”

“The truth,” said Ai, “as the chronicler of Kajar put it down? Umeko, so beguiled by gryfons that she slandered her own kind? No. I will not believe it.”

“You have never seen it. There is no slander but truth, only truth. Fault on both sides, redemption, acts of selfishness
and
love.”

“You should have asked my permission,” Ai said to Shard, turning from Ume.

“I would have,” Shard growled, “if only I’d been allowed to see you.”

“None of this is necessary. We know the ways of the world beyond our pure mountains and waters.”

“Do you?” Shard asked softly. “I don’t think you do, and I don’t think your mountains are so pure.”

“The world
is
terrible,” Hikaru said, loudly, more to the dragons around them than to the empress. “But it’s even more
wonderful.
I know, I have seen it.”

Ai rose, the breath of the movement setting the torches flickering and casting translucent shadow dragons on every wall. She raised her voice, addressing all those who now stared from every level. “We want no part of it. You have corrupted one of our own. You will not take honest responsibility for the greedy actions of your kind, and I will not trouble myself with affairs that no long matter to us. These wyrms in the Winderost, they’re not my concern.”

“I think they are your concern. There were never wyrms in the Winderost before the time of Kajar, not until he returned from the Sunland. They won’t hear me. I don’t know what they want.
You
might be able to get through to them.”

“At this, Amaratsu failed.”

Shard’s tail lashed, he raised his wings. “We must try again! What of your honor? What of a warrior’s responsibility? What of compassion, justice, mercy?”

She bared her teeth, paused and collected herself, rearing back to a more dignified pose. “I will not hear dragon teachings growled into my face by an uncivilized beast from a backwards, broken land.”