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  Birth of the Firebringer

  ( Firebringer Trilogy - 1 )

  Meredith Ann Pierce

  He was born under a dark moon, Aljan, prince of the unicorns, high-spirited, impetuous. His constant questioning and recklessness are the despair of his mighty father, Korr. Reluctantly, Korr allows Jan to accompany the other initiate warriors on a pilgrimage to their lost ancestral home. There, they will view their destinies in the Mirror of the Moon, a rite of passage for all who wish to join the Circle of the Unicorns.

  It is a perilous journey, with ever-present threats from deadly gryphons, sly pans, wyverns, pards, and renegade unicorns. Jan vows to behave. But his curiosity and impulsiveness lead him, along with his friend Dagg and their mentor, the female warrior Tek, into the greatest dangers. Miraculously, though, they are always rescued, and as they travel through the Pan Woods, across the Great Grass Plain, and finally to the sacred Hallow Hills, Jan senses another presence, one who goes her own way without fear or favor from the unicorns or their enemies. She seems to be protecting him. But why?

  Birth of the Firebringer

  Meredith Ann Pierce

  Beginning

  When Alma created the world, most of it she made into the Great Grass Plain, which was not a flat place, but rolling like a mare’s back and covered all over with the greencorn and the haycorn and the wild oats, knee high, so that when the wind stirred it, billowing, it looked like a mare’s winter coat blowing. And that is why some called the grasslands Alma’s back. It was not the truth, for the Mother-of-all was not the world, but the Maker of the world.

  With the stamp of one hoof, she made the Summer Sea, running shallow and warm even in wintertime. And with a little dig of her other heel, she raised the Gryphon Mountains upon its northern shore. Ranging north from there spread the dark Pan Woods, tangled and close, where only the blue-bodied goatlings roamed. Somewhere to the eastern north lay the Smoking Hills, where the red dragons denned, and due north across the Plain lay the Hallow Hills, a sacred place to the children-of-the-moon.

  And that was all that was known of the world to the people I shall tell of in this tale. They lived in a great valley on the northern verges of the Woods. To the gryphons, they had always been a’ítichi, the enemy, and the pans murmured and gestured among themselves of the ufpútlak, four-footed walkers. The plains dwellers, being near cousins to those of whom I speak, called them simply southlanders. But they named themselves the unicorns, which means the “one-horned ones,” for each bore upon the brow a single spiral shaft as sharp as river ice and harder than hoof-breaking stone.

  I am one of the fellows of this tale—I will not tell you which I am, though I promise that by the end of the running you will know me. My tale touches how the Firebringer came to be born among the unicorns, and what his coming meant to Aljan, son of Korr. But to start my tale, I must begin a little before the Firebringer, on a day near winter’s end when Jan was six years old, nearly half-grown, though still counted among the colts. It had been a long, cold, dull winter, and the prince’s son longed fiercely for the fiery storms of spring.

  Stormwind

  Stormclouds were rolling in out of the south-east. They darkened half the sky. It had been storming all day over the Gryphon Mountains, far on the horizon’s edge. He had been watching the lightning there off and on since midmorning, flickering like great, violent fireflies, and he wondered whether the rain would spend itself before reaching the Vale of the Unicorns.

  Jan paused on the trail heading up slope through the trees. He lifted his muzzle, his nostrils flared. The savor of moist earth and evergreens filled him. Winter was done, the snow gone from the ground, but it was not yet equinox. No new shoots sprouted on the slope, no new grass yet scattered among the stubble in the valley below. The year was just now struggling into birth, still in its storming month, the time of cold gales and showers before spring.

  Jan lowered his head and shook himself, feeling his mane settle along his neck. He pawed the leaf mold with one cloven heel, swatted a pair of stinging gnats from his flank with his tassel-ended tail, and wondered where Dagg was. He and his friend had a standing agreement to meet on the hillside whenever a storm was in the wind. Jan nibbled at a fly bite on one shoulder, fidgeted. Then the sound of hoofbeats made him wheel.

  Pale yellow and dappled with gray, Dagg was like most unicorn colts, the color of his sire. Jan was not—the prince’s line never ran true, not since the days of Halla, four hundred summers gone. It was their mark, and set them off from all the herd, that no prince’s heir might ever be a match for him, so while Korr was as black as the well of a weasel’s eye, Jan, his son, was only sable, a rich dark brown like the color of earth. He spotted Dagg coming toward him through the trees.

  Dagg neared and nipped at Jan, shouldering him, and the prince’s son shied, kicking. They chased each other off the narrow trail, nickering and fencing with colts’ long, unsharpened horns that clashed and clattered in the heavy, storm-awaiting stillness. Then Jan broke off, dodging back to the path, and sprinted toward the hillcrest.

  “Hist, come on,” he cried over one shoulder. “The storm’s nearly here.”

  They sped up slope then through the patches of sunlight and shadows of the trees. Jan threw up his head, letting his long legs stretch. The wind fingered his mane and played through the shag of his winter coat. He felt young and strong and full of his power. The rush of air laid back his ears. In another moment—in another moment, he would fly. Then he felt Dagg pulling up alongside him from behind and dropped back to a trot. They had nearly reached the top of the slope.

  “Your father’ll dance thunder if he finds out,” Dagg said after a moment, “that we’ve come up this high, and with stormwind from the east.”

  Jan shook the forelock out of his eyes and nickered. Colts were forbidden to stray from the valley floor, away from the ready shelter of the grottoes there. The Gryphon Mountains rose barely a day’s flight to the eastern south, and a gryphon could fly far with stormwind at its back. The unicorns lost foals every spring when the gryphon formels, the females, were hatching their ravenous young. Jan shrugged and laughed again. “We’ll be back long before we’re missed.”

  “Aye, and what if we meet someone up here?” Dagg asked him. “Then we’ll catch a storm for sure.”

  “We won’t,” Jan told him. “With the rain so near, they’ll all be under hill.”

  A great thorn thicket sprawled across their path. They began skirting it.

  “But what about gryphons?” Dagg added uneasily. “They’re bigger than unicorns.” The yellow colt had dropped his voice. He crowded up against Jan’s flank.

  Jan shook him off. “Wingcats only hunt the east side of the Vale. We’re in the west. And my father the prince lives here—they’d never dare.”

  Dagg looked dubious.

  Jan snorted and sprang away. “Know what I’d do if I ever saw a gryphon?” The prince’s son reared, pawing the air. “I’d give it such a blow, it’d never rise again! I’d…”

  Then all at once he caught sight of something: motion, a shape. Choking off his words, he dropped to all fours and gazed ahead through the thick of the trees. The hillcrest lay not far up slope. They had nearly rounded the thorns. When Dagg started to speak, Jan shushed him with a hiss.

  “What is it?” breathed Dagg.

  Jan shook his head. He edged forward, peering. All he could discern through the undergrowth was a vague form, some animal. It was large and stood in shadow among the trees. A cold sensation touched Jan’s breast. Neither he nor any colt he knew had ever seen a gryphon, but the singers spoke of great hawk beaks and wings, talons, cat’s eyes, and hind limbs like those of the sabertoothed p
ards that roamed the Plain.

  Dagg pressed against him, making him jump. “Can you make it out?”

  Jan shook his head again and crept closer, putting his hooves down soundlessly. With so many trees blocking his view, he still could not determine any outline he recognized, and strained instead for a glimpse of vivid green and gold—the colors of a tercel, a gryphon male—or of blue and tawny—a formel.

  The creature on the hillside shifted its stance. Jan froze and felt Dagg beside him flinch. Jan felt the stinging gnats at his flank again and did not swat. They waited long seconds. He edged his eye slowly around a treebole and caught a clear view of the hillcrest at last through a gap in the trees.

  It was…another unicorn. Only that. Another unicorn. Jan snapped his teeth together and could have kicked. Of course it would be one of his own people. Of course! He had forgotten the lookouts. This crest commanded a view of the east. The prince must have ordered watches to scan the stormwind, because it was spring now. Gryphons never came in winter. He should have remembered that. Jan stood absolutely still.

  Dagg nudged him urgently. “What’s there?” he whispered. “Can you see it now?”

  “One of ours,” Jan muttered. “My father’s…oh, it’s Tek.”

  He stopped again, recognizing the other suddenly, for the lookout had stepped from the shadows into the sun. She was not the solid or dapple or roan of other unicorns, but paint: pale rose splashed with great, irregular blots of black.

  “What, the healer’s daughter?” Dagg was asking, his voice beginning to rise as though he no longer cared whether they were discovered or not. “We’re done for storming then.”

  “Hist,” Jan told him, eyeing the lookout still. She was a strange one, so he had heard. He hardly knew her. A fine warrior, all agreed, but very aloof and always alone—just like her mother, Jah-lila, who was the healer’s mate but did not live among the herd. The wild mare who lived apart, outside the Vale. Jah-lila the midwife, the magicker.

  Jan eyed the young paint warrior Tek through the trees; and as he did so, a part of his mind that he usually kept tightly guarded, opened—and a plan came to him, insinuating itself into his thought like swift, smooth coils. Jan felt his pulse quicken and his dark eyes spark.

  “Hist,” he said again to Dagg. “Let’s test this lookout’s skill.” He shouldered the other back into the shadow of the trees. “I have a game.”

  Jan kept his voice beneath a murmur and whispered the whole of his plan in two sentences. Then he and Dagg parted, and Jan lost sight of the dapple colt among the firs. Quickly, quietly, he himself circled back to the lookout knoll. Peering from behind a bit of ledge and scrub, he caught sight of Tek again. She stood facing away from him, her head turning slowly as she scanned the wall of cloud rolling in from the southeast. Jan waited.

  And presently he heard a noise downslope. Tek’s ears swiveled, pricked, but she did not turn. Jan watched intently, but as the sound died Tek’s ears turned forward again. She scanned the sky. Jan breathed lightly, one breath, two; he held his breath. Then the noise came again, closer, clearer this time. Tek’s ears snapped around. Jan champed his teeth. But again the sound ceased and quiet followed. The prince’s son settled himself to wait.

  The sound came for a third time, suddenly, much nearer, a low, throaty mewling such as the storytellers said gryphon hatchlings made. Jan found himself tense and shivering; his skin twitched. How real it sounded—Dagg was the best mimic of all the uninitiated foals. Tek’s head now had whipped around, her frame gone rigid. A rustling started in the thorn thicket. Jan had to duck his chin to keep from nickering. The half-grown mare on the lookout knoll stood head up, legs stiff.

  Silence. Jan saw Tek’s green eyes searching the brush. She touched the ground, pawing it gently, her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. Jan heard more gryphon cries downslope—just exactly as they sounded in the lays. Tek’s forehoof dug into the earth. He edged closer, keeping himself concealed. The young warrior’s movements fascinated him.

  He heard Dagg rustling in the thickets again, and saw Tek bowing her head to polish the tip of her skewer-sharp horn deftly against one forehoof. He had seen half-growns as well as the full-grown warriors doing that before battle. Then suddenly a sharp yell, like that of a wounded wingcat, rang out, and the sound of bushes crashing. Jan could almost believe it was a real gryphon blundering downslope. Tek sprang away, into the trees, so swift Jan almost lost her in a blink, for she ran silent, and gave no warning cry.

  Jan shook himself He felt elated—it had worked! Satisfaction slithered through him as he emerged from the trees and mounted the lookout knoll. He heard Dagg circling the crest of the ridge, giving cries now like an injured tercel, now like an angry formel. No sound came from Tek, and the prince’s son wondered if his friend was even aware yet of her pursuit. He hoped so. He needed the lookout kept away long enough for him to watch the storm.

  Jan stood on the crest of the knoll. The clouds before him were sweeping in fast. He felt the cool, muggy air beginning to lift, a faint breeze teasing along his back. It grew stronger suddenly, blew, smelling of rain. The thunderheads rolled, black foaming waves that scudded toward the sun. Unseen lightning illumined them in glimmers, like mosslight glimpsed beyond cavern bends.

  Thunder sounded in a low growling that crashed all at once like a hillside falling. Jan felt the concussions against his body, and threw back his head to let the thick, cold, wet wind buffet him. He watched the shadow of the storm travel over the Pan Woods below him till a bank of cloud extinguished the sun. The world went gray. Bird-foot lightning gripped the sky.

  The clouds loomed high, almost above him, over the Vale. As he gazed up into their wild, dark roiling, it seemed to Jan he could see—almost see—something. The sweep of them was like stars turning, like billowing grass, like mighty flocks of birds wheeling, like unicorns dancing, like…like…. He could not say what it was like. He only knew that when he gazed at the storm and lost himself, feeling the whirling turbulence of its power, his heart rose, carried away, soaring, and all the world rode on his brow.

  Below him, a few lengths down the slope, Jan heard a whinny from Dagg suddenly and knew that his friend was caught. Above the muting of the wind, Jan heard Dagg’s shouts of laughter, his protestations, and now Tek’s voice, stinging with anger. Jan snorted and shook his head, only half listening. A dark exhilaration still fired his blood as he watched the dance of storm clouds swallow up the sky.

  A pair of hunting eagles, huge ones, dipped out of the clouds far in the distance over the Pan Woods. They were in his sight for only a moment, stooping swiftly into the cover of the trees. He caught only the poise of their wings crooked for the dive and their size, great enough to carry off a young pan between them.

  Just before they reached the trees, a blaze of lightning flashed. The deep green of the foliage reflected off their tawny bodies for an instant, turning the near one greenish, the far one almost blue. They plunged into the forest then. Jan lost them amid the canopy of trees.

  Almost at the same moment, the sound of breaking brush distracted him. He turned in time to see Tek shoving Dagg out of the trees into the clearing of the knoll. Dagg was laughing so hard he staggered. The half-grown mare clamped the nape of his neck in her teeth and hauled him back as he made halfheartedly to bolt. She stood taller than either he or Jan, and had been initiated a full two years ago. Her young beard was already silky on her chin.

  “Gryphons—save me!” shouted Dagg, struggling some, but laughing harder. “I told you it wasn’t my game. Ouch! Not so hard—it was Jan’s. The whole of it was Jan’s.”

  “I know that very well, Dagg son-of-Tas,” replied his captor through clenched teeth. She released him, and Dagg collapsed to the carpet of fir needles at the wood’s edge. He rolled there, hooting. “I have heard of the games you two are so fond of.” She turned now toward Jan. “And you, prince-son. By Korr, you at least should know better.”

  Jan tossed his head, laughing in his
teeth, and shrugged. His father—no, he would not think of Korr. The prince was far below, seeking shelter in the Vale from the coming rain, and Jan was free of him for a little while at least. Free. He sprang down from the lookout knoll and trotted to Dagg, eyeing the hairless patches on his friend’s neck and flank.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Dagg groaned, laughing still. “Hale enough. She champs hard. By the Beard, Jan, you should have seen her when she realized I wasn’t some storm-riding gryphon.”

  Dagg rolled his eyes, ears akimbo, nostrils flared, and tossed his head like one who had just trod upon a snake. Jan put his head down, helpless with mirth. He laughed until his legs felt weak.

  “Both of you have borne yourselves like brainless foals,” the young mare snapped. “You, Jan son-of-Korr, haven’t you grace enough to speak when you’re spoken to?” Jan ignored her. Her tone crackled. “I am talking to you.”

  She marked that, when the prince’s son neither answered nor turned, by nipping him smartly on the shoulder. Jan jumped and wheeled. Disbelief, and a sudden odd heedlessness uncoiled in him. No one had ever set teeth to him, not in earnest, but his father. No one had ever dared. He felt the blood surging in his head. His ears grew hot.

  “You champed me!” he cried.

  Dagg on the ground had swallowed his grin.

  “You set teeth to me.”

  “Aye, and I’ll do so again the next time you ignore me. What have you to say for yourself?”

  Jan stared at her. Not even a word of regret—the arrogance! The astonishment in him turned to rage. He’d let no one, not even the healer’s daughter, treat him like a foal. He plunged at her, his head down, before he was even aware what he was doing—perhaps a slash across the flank would teach this half-grown better manners. Tek countered with her own horn, fencing him expertly, and threw him off with a sharp rap on the head.