Birth of the Firebringer Read online

  “And you have honored her slain enemy as well, as is fitting,” the blue unicorn said. “That, too, is unlike what we have heard of southlanders.”

  “I didn’t,” Jan started. “We don’t. . . .” He stopped and gazed at the three plainsdwellers before him. Then he blurted out, “A gryphon came, a month ago. . . .”

  “Gryphon?” the red filly said.

  “It’s like a pard,” cried Jan, “but wingèd.” He caught himself. Why was it so urgent he give these strangers only the truth?

  “‘Wingcats,’ my mother called them,” the pale mare murmured. “They don’t come here.”

  Jan drew breath and made his voice as steady as he could. “We killed it—it had attacked us—but we didn’t bury it. We cast it over the cliff.”

  The dark blue unicorn frowned. “That is strange.”

  “Why do you dishonor your enemies?” the red filly asked. “Was this wingcat not brave?”

  “Is all that is true to its own nature not worthy of honor,” the evening blue said, “being part of the Cycle?”

  A kite passed very close overhead. Jan felt the wind of its passing against his brow. He flinched, frowning. “I thought you said you disdained our Circle. . . .”

  The plainsdweller shook his head. “Nay. That is not the Cycle of which I spoke . . . hist. Come away.”

  A kite had alighted on the grass, across the Circle from them. Jan came with them, following the plainsdwellers up the slope. The sky in the south was dark with cloud. More kites were settling on the grass below. The blue unicorn raised his head, his nostrils wide.

  “A storm’s in the wind,” he said.

  Jan glanced at the sun. “I have to go back,” he told them. “Noon’s almost done.”

  “Farewell, then, young stranger,” the evening blue said.

  “Swift running,” said the pale mare, “and no pards behind you.”

  “Light sleeping,” the filly bade him. “Far seeing.”

  “Alma keep you,” Jan found himself saying. He was bowing—he almost wished he could stay. They were so strange—unicorns, yet not like his own people at all. He wished he could understand them, grasp more of what they had said to him, but he dared not linger. The band would be breaking camp before long. He could not stay.

  The plainsdwellers dipped to their knees in leave-taking, then wheeled, whinnying and tossing their heads, and galloped off across the Plain to the west. Jan shook himself, then turned at last. The storm in the south had drawn nearer. He sprinted northward. Behind him, the spotted kites were dropping from the sky.

  He found the gully he had followed before and slipped into its shelter long before the gray speck of a sentry could take note of him. He sprinted along the dry channel’s flat, even bed until he was almost to camp. The lookout on the hill above was still attending to Teki’s lay. Jan crept past, around the rise. The unicorns yet rested in their Ring, all eyes upon the healer reciting his tale:

  “So that is the lay of Aras, the first Renegade, false Ring-breaker, who spurned Halla the princess’s rule and forsook the herd. . . .”

  Jan spotted Dagg across the Ring, staring off miserably at nothing. Korr’s gaze was turned pointedly away from Jan’s empty spot. As Jan slipped into place beside the healer’s daughter, Tek hardly glanced at him. Teki was singing:

  “So he perished horribly, as I have told, for Alma’s wrath. And all of this took place after the unicorns had been cast out of the Hallow Hills, but before they came upon the Vale that is now our home. My tale is done.”

  Jan lay at the Ring’s edge, catching his breath. No one even seemed to have noticed he had been gone.

  The Hallow Hills

  12

  Teki finished his tale, and the unicorns broke camp. They trotted at first to loosen their limbs. Jan felt wobbly, short of breath—he had spent none of the noon halt resting—and Korr still kept Dagg between him and the healer, apart from Jan. A line of tall, dark thunderheads crowded the distance behind.

  By midafternoon they had swallowed the sun, bringing in their shadow a rush of cool, southern air. Jan felt his old wildness at thunderstorms rising. Stormwind riffled his winter coat, lifting the dust, bowing the grass. The smell of water hung in the wind. Then the gusts grew stronger suddenly, buffeting, the dust rising in whirlwinds.

  Korr whistled the band to a faster lope, and Jan wondered if he hoped to outrun the storm. If so, it was to no avail, for within minutes rain began to lash at them. The stormshadow around them had grown very dark. Great bolts of blue lightning vaulted overhead.

  And then Jan caught sound of something, another sound above the rain. It was a rushing as of many gryphons’ wings, a roar like hillsides breaking and plunging away. One moment it sounded faint and far, the next almost upon them, coming and going in the gusts of storm. Ahead of him, Jan saw his father’s head come up.

  “Gallop!” thundered the prince. “Full gallop, all!”

  The band sprang into a run.

  “What is it?” cried Jan, drawing alongside Tek.

  “Serpent-cloud,” she shouted at him. “A great destroyer!”

  Jan felt his legs tangle, his breath grow short. The old lays sang of Serpent-clouds, great tunnels of storm that ran down Ringbreakers and Renegades. He cast a wild glance over one shoulder, but could see nothing for the blinding, choking rain.

  “Where is it?” he shouted at Tek. “How if it catches us?”

  “Fling us to bits,” the young mare answered. “So fly!”

  They ran. The ground over which they galloped was slick, treacherous with mud. Thunder snorted and stamped. Jan felt the herd around him growing ragged. The eyes of some had begun to roll. Lightning fell to the right and left of them, the band flinching and veering at every crash.

  “Shelter!” he heard someone to the fore of them crying. “Shelter ahead!”

  Jan felt the pitch of the ground rise under his feet, then curve and fall abruptly away. He vaulted into a gully and then flung himself backward, folding his legs. Tek was scrambling into place beside him. They lay, shouldered into the steep curve of the bank, sheltered somewhat from the driving rain. But above the fury of thunder and wind, he still heard the wild crooning of the Serpent-cloud.

  “Where’s Dagg?” Jan said suddenly, and flung a glance over his shoulder. “Dagg?”

  He searched the downpour, up and down the line of other unicorns crowding the gully. He did not see him. Where was he—had he fallen? Was he still out upon the Plain? Jan bolted to his feet and struggled up over the bank again, shouting his friend’s name. Tek scrambled after him.

  “What is it?” she cried. “What are you doing?”

  The stormrain whipped at his face, his eyes. “It’s Dagg!” he flung back. “I don’t see him. Da. . . .” But then he saw another thing that drove even the thought of Dagg from his mind.

  It seemed that for a moment a lull descended on him. Despite the wind and dark, his vision cleared. The stamp of thunder, the lightning’s flare, and the wet pummeling of rain faded from him. To southward he could see a long flail of cloud spinning down out of the thunderheads. It was wholly black, writhing and dancing like a whipsnake upon its tail. Where it touched the Plain, great gouts of earth sprang up and whirled away.

  But before Jan, between him and the storm, stood a unicorn, far away on the crest of the long gentle slope down which the band had just run. He could make out nothing more about it, neither its color nor its gender nor its age. The stormwind seemed to make its short, thick mane stream upright along its neck.

  The unicorn was singing. Jan was certain of that. His body heard it through the air; it reached his hooves as a kind of trembling in the ground. It made his eyes water, his breast burn—and he wanted to follow, follow without thought, that music, wherever the singer might lead.

  The unicorn turned then, westward, trotting away in a dancing stride. The low, magical singing floated back, sweeter, immeasurably sweeter than panpipes to his ears. The Serpent-cloud veered sluggishly. It see
med to hesitate, and then drifted after the retreating unicorn, docilely as a nursling after its dam.

  Jan cried out as he realized they were going. He staggered after them a few paces—and the vision ended. The rush of stormwind returned, and the lightning’s clash. Feeling the wet hooves of rain upon his back, he blinked and snorted. The water stung in his nostrils, splashing his eyes.

  “He’s well,” he heard Tek shouting beside him. “I saw him take shelter.” Thunder swallowed her words. “. . . down the bank by Teki! He’s safe.”

  Jan realized dimly she was telling him of Dagg, and felt her shouldering him back toward the gully.

  “Who was it?” cried Jan over his shoulder, once he and Tek were again safely dug into the bank.

  “Who?” she cried back. “I saw no one.”

  “The unicorn,” he shouted, “at the top of the rise.”

  “I couldn’t see the top,” Tek called back at him.

  “You did,” cried Jan, suddenly desperate. “You must have.”

  The wind lashed furiously above them now. Tek bent to his ear. “What are you talking of?” she exclaimed. “I don’t follow.”

  “You do,” Jan yelled. “It was in the Vale at Moondance; it sang then, too. And in the Pan Woods—it cried out to Dagg and me and led us astray.” The angry timbre of his own voice surprised him. He could not stop. “And it’s been behind us, on the Plain,” he cried. “You know it has. You keep slipping away from camp to look for it, or talk to it, or. . . .”

  Tek did not reply.

  “Now it’s called away the storm.” Jan demanded, “What is is? Who is is?”

  “I don’t know!” Tek shouted at him. “I don’t know what you mean—what you’ve dreamed here, in the rain. . . .”

  The wind tore the last of her words away. The storm had grown too wild to let them talk. She did know. She knew something and was not telling him. Frustration burned in him. He turned furiously away from Tek and settled himself to ride out the storm.

  Eventually the gale lessened, the rolling thunder receding to north and west. Jan laid his head against the wet bank, aware for the first time how weary he was. Around him, the unicorns lay still. Gradually, the light rain subsided, and at last the sun broke through the parting clouds.

  Jan stumbled to his feet, his fury spent. He heard others around him doing the same. He clambered from the gully and up the far bank, shaking off and struggling to the top of the next gentle rise. Dagg stood there. Jan went to him, and no one parted them. The storm seemed to have washed away all memory of the Renegade and Jan’s disgrace.

  Dagg shouldered him companionably, and the two of them stood gazing toward the west. The thunderheads hung there, small and distant now, edged red-golden by the sun.

  “Look,” Dagg said.

  And when Jan turned, he realized for the first time that they stood in sight of the Hallow Hills.

  The prince’s son and the dapple colt stood watching the dusk stream over the far line of hills as the sky behind them deepened past violet to black. The band spent nearly the whole night feasting then, waiting for the ground to grow dry enough to lie upon, and eating all they could; for there would be no feasting on the morrow, the night of the nothing-moon.

  Jan alternately browsed and dozed, toying with what Tek had told him during the storm. Perhaps panic had misled his eyes; and he had imagined it all—for he had half believed, while they had fled, that Alma had sent her Serpent-cloud for him, to strike him down for having broken the Ring and consorted with Renegades. Jan snorted then. But that was nonsense, surely, and the unicorn leading away the storm, a dream.

  He slipped into genuine sleep near the end of the night, and a scant slip of waning moon appeared barely an hour before dawn. Korr roused them. They broke camp before sunup, and day broke over the Hallow Hills as the unicorns loped toward them under the horns of the moon.

  Korr called a halt again, still early in the day, not a half hour’s distance from the slopes. Jan watched his father scanning, testing the wind. He had ordered scouts ahead to comb for wyverns, for spring was coming in apace that year. Who knew when the wyrms might wake? The initiates he bade rest while they might, for there would be no sleep that night as they kept vigil beside the pool.

  When by midafternoon the last of the prince’s scouts were safely returned, having found no sign of wyverns, Korr whistled the pilgrims into line, and they entered the Hallow Hills. Their pace, a trot, seemed leisurely after so many days of hard running.

  Jan found himself traversing gentle, rounded slopes newly in grass, small groves, and wide, sprouting meadows. The groves of hardwood and evergreen that they skirted looked cool and dense. After a time, Jan noticed that the hills had begun thrusting up in short cliffs. Beneath the dark topsoil, patches of pale chalk showed through.

  In the late afternoon, they reached the base of a steep hillside with a narrow trail wending its face. Korr ordered them to climb. The stone proved very soft and crumbling; Jan and Dagg had to struggle to keep their footing while showers of scree from pilgrims above skidded about their hooves.

  The last dozen paces of the slope were the steepest. Jan braced himself, shouldering Dagg up over the rim of the cliff, then scrambled up himself. They halted a moment, catching their breath, and Jan found they stood in a grove of hardwood trees with pale, rutted bark on twisted trunks. They were still in leaf, and their foliage had a silver cast. Jan lifted his head with nostrils wide; the scent of the trees was like mare’s milk and honey.

  As they moved away from the cliff’s edge, deeper into the grove, Jan scented water under the fragrance of the trees and peered ahead of him. Then he caught his breath, for it lay before him, through the treeboles: the sacred pool of the unicorns, the Mirror of the Moon.

  And it was round, perfectly round, twenty paces across and shallow near the banks. But it deepened at the heart, falling away in a blue cavern that went down, down it seemed into the heart of the world. No plant, no fish blotted the whiteness of its bottom or banks. No ripple marred the eye-smooth surface of the pool.

  Only the flat, flaked sand at the cavern’s edge fluttered in its depths like flurried snow. Jan gazed, unaware how near he had drawn. That flickering reminded him of something: birds flocking, a dance of unicorns seen from a high slope, strange stars. They seemed to form a pattern he ought to study, read. But as he started forward again, Tek moved suddenly across his path.

  “Hold, prince-son,” she said. “It’s not yet dusk. Let the warriors prepare.”

  Dimly, Jan realized he had come to the grove’s edge, and Dagg was no longer at his side. Jan shook his head to clear it now, and glanced about him. Warriors were stepping onto the flat, sandy bank and approaching the Mere. Initiates hung back among the trees. Jan’s eyes returned to the water.

  “Nothing grows there,” he heard himself saying.

  “Too salt,” the healer’s daughter said. “But with the coming of the Firebringer, they say it will grow sweet again.”

  Jan glanced at her.

  “Come,” she told him, moving away among the trees. “I’ll show you the grove.”

  It was late afternoon as they walked among the trees. Jan gazed more closely now at their papery leaves: rounds and hearts and slender crescents, with pale undersides that reflected the light. Tek moved before him through the slim, twisted trunks and Jan followed, leisurely. The sun ran in dapples over her odd, pied coat.

  “They are called milkwood,” Tek was telling him, “because the sap is thick and white, sweet to the taste. The rosehips—the fruit of their flowers—drip it when ripe.”

  Jan was only half listening. He felt very calm, suspended almost, neither hungry nor tired now. A thick carpet of pale, wispy leaves rustled about his pasterns as he walked. Their light, rich scent hung in the air.

  “It is good against toothache, pain in the bones, and some poisons.”

  Jan halted a moment. “They’re dropping their leaves.”

  Tek nodded. “They do that in spring. To
bloom.”

  Jan drew nearer to one of the trees and saw green buds upon the limbs. A breeze lifted, then fell. The slender, knotted branches shivered, and a flock of bright leaves shimmered down. The scent of resin underlay the waft of honey in the air.

  “What will they look like, the flowers?” Jan asked her, trying to see past the green in the buds.

  “Deep rose,” the young mare answered, “or pale, with five petals, yellow at the heart.”

  The light wind breathed again, and the whole wood sighed. More leaves flickered, silvery in the sunlight. Jan lifted his head suddenly from the low bough he studied.

  “How do you know that,” he asked her, “their color and shape? You’ve only been here once before, and that was at first spring, too.”

  The young mare smiled, to herself, looking off. “My mother told me.”

  Jan glanced up. “How does she know?”

  Tek’s expression never changed. “My mother is a magicker, and knows many things.”

  “Like how to sing away my dreams,” murmured Jan.

  “Yes.”

  The healer’s daughter still looked away. He could not see her face now, but suddenly her stance seemed very sad.

  “You do not see her much, do you?” Jan ventured, trying to remember the last time he himself had seen Jah-lila. It was only that once, when he was young. “She is hardly ever in the Vale.”

  Since then, he had only heard of her, in whispers. Tek seemed to be looking down.

  “My mother is in and out of the Vale more often than you think,” she said quietly. Then, almost sharply, “But you are right. She does not come to visit me.” Abruptly, she began to move away. Jan sprang to follow. Tek snorted. “Well, no matter. I do not miss her anymore.”

  Jan stared at her, not understanding. How could she say that? If his dam had chosen to live apart from him, he would have missed her terribly. “Why is that?” he asked of Tek.