Birth of the Firebringer Read online

  “Jan!”

  That other voice cut across his senses like a slap of cold seawater. Jan started, coming to himself. The cave stood narrow and solid about him. The wingcat crouched, eyeing him, and Dagg was calling him from somewhere up the slope.

  He heard the formel clucking in frustration as she saw him wake. Only then did he realize what she had been doing—mesmerizing him while she crept close enough to spring. The distance between them had halved. Jan saw the formel’s pupils dilate, ruby colored in the flame-colored sunset. She sprang.

  Jan dodged, his bad leg giving under him, and his knees struck the stone floor of the cave. The gryphon shrilled as she missed her strike, coming up hard against the wall. The narrow grotto echoed with her cry. The lunge had taken her past him. Jan skittered to his feet and spun around, vaulting over the staggered gryphon. With a surge of speed he never knew he had, Jan sprinted for the egress of the cave.

  Battle

  5

  Jan bolted for the mouth of the cave, clambering over the heap of fallen earth, and suddenly stopped short. There was nowhere to flee. The ground a pace ahead of him dropped away in a sheer precipice. He caught a flash of green and gold among the tops of the trees below: the dead tercel.

  Then he heard a rush in the cave behind him and sprang hard to one side just as the beak of the formel snapped empty air. A narrow goat trail appeared from nowhere, threading the cliffside before him. Jan dashed along it. The gryphon shrieked, scrambling after him, her wings thrashing. He heard her talons scathing the soft, wet rock.

  “Jan!”

  The cry rang out from the slope above. He saw Dagg standing near the lookout knoll.

  “Fly!” Jan shouted. “Dagg, fly!”

  Behind him the gryphon screamed and rose into the air. Dagg stood staring, too astonished to move. The goat trail had vanished. Jan threw himself up the steep, rocky slope, the ground crumbling and sliding beneath his hooves. His injured leg wobbled like a dead tree limb.

  “Shy!” shouted Dagg.

  Jan shied, stumbled, and fell to one side, too late. The formel’s talons dug into his shoulders. Jan thrashed wildly. He heard Dagg crying out—alarm or battle yell, he could not tell—as the wingcat hoisted Jan aloft. They hovered just below the hillcrest, almost eye to eye with Dagg.

  Jan kicked and twisted, and felt one heel strike home. He kicked again, harder—again. The formel shrieked and snarled, holding him away from her. Then Dagg was charging, rearing, lashing out with his forehooves. The formel pulled back from the hillside, straining to rise.

  Jan felt dizzied, as though he had been dancing in circles. His vitals turned. The world below him was sinking, sinking by hoofspans away. Beneath, Dagg yelled, flailing desperately, but the formel had managed to rise beyond his range. Her wings heaved and struggled. Jan’s senses swam. He knew beyond all hope that he was lost.

  Then another unicorn burst from the trees. She sprang past Dagg, her wild, ringing battle yell snapping Jan back to himself. Tek lunged at the gryphon with head down, her horn aimed. Jan felt the formel tense and twist away as the skewer grazed her side. She writhed.

  Tek came to earth. She lost her footing and went down. Dagg charged and leapt, missed, leapt again. Jan glimpsed his friend’s unsharpened colt’s horn draw blood from the formel’s flank. She stamped him hard across the forehead with her lion’s paw. Dagg fell to earth, rolling, then staggered to his feet, shaking his head.

  Jan twisted in the gryphon’s grasp, throwing his head back, trying to bring his own horn into play. He felt it glance across her throat. She screamed again, grappling with his horn, holding him with only one claw now. Her talons grated against his shoulder blades.

  Jan felt his head wrenched painfully, and at that moment nearly slipped from her grasp. They fell a few feet in the air, the gryphon trying again to seize him. Jan felt his heels brush the crest of the hill. Tek came charging up the slope and wounded the formel in the shoulder, from behind.

  The wingcat staggered in the air, whirling to bat Tek’s horn away. Jan pitched forward. His knees struck earth. The gryphon’s weight came down and knocked the breath from him. He could not gather his legs beneath him.

  “Run!” shouted Tek. At first Jan thought she was talking to him. Then he saw Dagg before him on the hillcrest, blinking at the blood from a long scratch on his forehead. “Away. Give the alarm,” Tek was calling. “Go!”

  She reared and brought her forehooves down on the fallen gryphon, but was driven back by the great, thrashing wings.

  “You’re too small to aid me here. Fetch help!” cried Tek. She whirled on Dagg and struck him across the flank with the flat of her horn. “Haste, away!”

  Dagg bounded over the hillcrest, shouting the alarm.

  The wingcat rose to her hind legs and scrambled to turn. Jan felt himself clutched again; she dragged him with her. As she and Tek faced each other now, the formel began backing away. Tek pursued her, slowly, over the brow of the hill. The young warrior’s head was down, her horn ready. The gryphon held Jan between herself and Tek.

  The formel edged backward through the trees. Jan caught a glimpse of open space behind. The Vale spread out below them. Dagg’s distant cries told him his friend had nearly reached the valley floor. As the gryphon edged toward the end of the trees, Tek feinted and sidled, seeking to drive her back into the wood. But the wingcat screamed, snapping and holding her ground.

  The slope opened treeless behind them. Jan felt the formel spring backward once, twice. He was dragged along—and they were airborne again. Jan struggled furiously, for if she got him away from the ground this time, he knew he was lost.

  The formel’s wings caught an updraft, beating hard. Tek sprang from the hillside, seeming to fly herself for a moment. Jan still thrashed in the gryphon’s grasp, but could not break loose. Tek passed beneath them—too low, and cold anguish filled Jan as he realized she had missed her lunge.

  Then the wingcat lurched downward suddenly, losing her hold. Her talons tore across his shoulders. He slid free and dropped to the rocky slope. Jan bolted to his feet, wheeling about, and saw Tek skidding downhill with the gryphon’s tail caught fast in her teeth.

  Tek scrambled to brace herself. She turned, her forelegs splayed, weight thrown back on her hindquarters like a wolf cub playing tug-at-bone. Jan saw her head shaken from side to side, the sinews of her long neck straining, her forehooves lifted from the mountainside as the wingcat fought to flee.

  Abruptly, the formel faced about, tearing herself loose. The half-grown mare ducked and dodged. The gryphon struck at her with beak and talons. Eyes half shut against the buffeting of those massive, blue-gold wings, Tek feinted clumsily twice, three times with her horn, but missed each time. Jan saw lines of blood against the pale rose of her neck and shoulders.

  He yelled, bounding downslope, and sprang between them. Rearing, he struck the gryphon with hoof and horn. Anger welled in him. Why wouldn’t Tek fight? She merely stood, her head bowed, backing slowly downslope while the relentless formel boxed and buffeted her. Jan drove the gryphon back.

  “No!” Tek shouted furiously, and shouldered him roughly aside. She snatched the formel in her teeth again, by the wing this time, dragging her forward, past Jan and farther downslope. Below, behind them in the Vale, Jan heard Dagg’s alarm cry taken up by other voices.

  And he understood then, suddenly. It was a trap, a game. Tek was baiting the gryphon, holding her until the warriors arrived. Jan bounded after the pair of them. If Tek would drag, then he would drive.

  He reared and fell on the formel’s furred and feathered shoulders. She wheeled, freeing herself from Tek, and struck at him with her great, hooked beak. Jan fell back, feinting at her. He had seen young warriors do that when they sparred.

  “Stay back!” Tek shouted. Jan circled downslope, drawing the gryphon after him, toward Tek. “You’re too small. You’re not a warrior,” she cried. “Get behind me. Get back!”

  She interposed herself between him and the
gryphon. Her backward stepping forced him farther downhill. Too enraged to think of escape, the wingcat lunged after them, screaming and snapping. In the distance behind, he was aware of war cries, the drumming of hooves upon the slope.

  “Let me by; let me fight,” Jan yelled at Tek. He dodged, trying to slip past her. Tek sidled and kicked at him one-footed to keep him behind.

  “You haven’t the skill,” she snapped, parrying a feint from the formel’s claw. She kept herself squarely between the gryphon and Jan. “If she catches you again, she’ll carry you off. She can’t lift me—stand back! You’re in my way. Keep b. . . .”

  Her words bit off suddenly. Jan saw a stone skid from under the young mare’s heel. She sprawled sideways, head up, her throat exposed. The formel’s beak darted, and Jan cried out, vaulting forward before he could even think. He was aware of yelling, keening some terrible war chant.

  And suddenly, unicorns, others of his people were surging around him. He glimpsed Tas snorting and plunging, and Leerah his mate. Tek had found her feet again and was fighting like a hillcat. The formel was a fury of screams and talons. Jan saw Dagg charging amid the fray, tearing at the gryphon’s wings.

  Then someone was rearing, fighting beside him—massy and powerful, blacker than storm. His mighty voice thundered, “Alma, great Alma! Stand at my shoulder, O Mother-of-all!” Other warriors took up the cry. The formel shrilled. The sky above spanned amber and amethyst. The sun in the west was fire.

  Jan saw his father rise to stand against the sky, a poultice of chewed medicine wort above his eye now beginning to flake and fall away. A gash. It was only a gash! Jan felt relief flooding his limbs. Korr glanced at him, and Jan saw a gleam he had never seen there before.

  His heart lifted, soaring. His aching limbs felt suddenly wondrously strong. Pride, pride lit his sire’s eye! He let go a war chant, sang wild and high. He was redeemed. It made him giddy. A deeper trumpet sounded from the prince of the unicorns.

  Then it was over, all at once, too suddenly. Jan realized dizzily the fight was done. He came to a halt, and let the careening world around him steady. Unicorns ringed the fallen formel. Fur and feathers lay on the ground.

  Dagg stood across from Jan, panting and grinning. His father nearby him pawed the earth gently with one forehoof. Beside him Leerah, pale with dark red dapples, nudged the dead formel with her horn. Tas bent to clean the blood from a nick in his mate’s neck.

  Jan shook his head and snorted. The fire in his blood had not yet stilled. Tek stood two paces from him, putting no weight on her near foreleg. On the others, Jan saw only a few feather cuts and bruises, a slash or two. He was astonished how unscathed they all were. He ached to the very bone.

  Jan turned then to look at his father. The look of approval had not faded from Korr’s eye. “Have I not always said,” the prince was saying at large, “what a clever colt I sired—to spot the gryphon that got away when none of the rest of us saw? A fighter, too.”

  The warriors snorted, stamping their assent. Jan’s ears burned. Korr was deceived. The prince knew only half the truth. But at that moment, Jan would not have enlightened his sire for all the world. He shook himself. And, if he had not entirely earned his father’s goodwill, he was resolved to do so faithfully from this day forward. No more Lawbreaking. He swore it.

  More quietly, his father was asking him now, “Are you hale?”

  Jan nodded. “Aye.” His voice was hoarse from yelling. “And you?”

  The prince nodded. “I’ll mend. Come, then.” He turned, and Jan went beside him. “Teki the healer should see to those cuts.”

  Jan felt a throbbing in his wounded shoulders then. His side felt bruised. His hurt leg bore his weight only unsteadily. Slowly, he and his father started down the slope. Below them, on the valley floor, Jan saw others waiting. His pale dam, Ses, her round belly heavy and ripe, stood among them.

  Glancing back over his shoulder once—he realized then how much his shoulders hurt at the slightest move—Jan saw Tek coming carefully, three-footed, down the slope, flanked by Tas and Dagg. Upslope, he caught sight of Leerah and the rest of the warriors lifting the dead formel onto their shoulders to bear up the hillside and cast over the cliff.

  The Lay of the Unicorns

  6

  Each month the unicorns gathered at dusk to dance in a Circle under the full, dusky moon. They were the only race they knew of that did so. For when Alma made the world, she fashioned all the other creatures first, out of earth, wind, water, and air—then invited them to dance. But the pans turned wordless away from her, and the gryphons flew to find mountains to nest in, and the red dragons burrowed deep into the Smoking Hills, and the wyverns laughed.

  So Alma created the unicorns after her own shape: sleek-bodied and long-limbed for swift running, wild-hearted and hot-blooded to make them brave warriors. Then she took from the cycling moon some of its shining stuff to fashion their hooves and horns and make them dancers. So the last-born and best-beloved of Alma called themselves also the moon’s children, and each month danced the ringdance under the round, rising moon.

  Equinox fell on the night of the full moon that spring. Jan stretched out beneath its pale, smoke light falling from among a river of stars. The ground beneath him was springy soft and thawing with the year. His shaggy winter coat, not yet begun to shed, kept out the coolness. He stretched his limbs among the fine shoots of new grass that threaded amid the old.

  Lifting his head from his knees, he gazed at the other unicorns assembled in the wide, rough Circle on the valley floor. Some were standing lazily, three-footed, regaining their breath. Others bowed their heads to nibble the new grass. Murmurs of talk and nickers of laughter drifted on the still night air. The moon had risen a quarter of the way toward its zenith, and the dancing was over now.

  Jan lay inside the Circle with the other initiates. He gave Dagg beside him a nudge with his hind heel, murmuring, “Wake,” for on the low rise jutting near them at the Circle’s heart, Khraa the king had gotten to his feet. The tales were about to start.

  Jan’s grandsire was old and did not seem it. Strong-built like his heir, but leaner, Khraa stood upon the ledge, pale gray as cloudcover, with a coal-dark mane and hooves. He was the king, and would have ruled the unicorns in a time of peace. Even now he retained his place as high justice, head of all ceremonies save those of battle, and would rule as regent during the coming absence of his son.

  But Korr the prince led the unicorns now, for the children-of-the-moon were at war, and had been at war for four hundred years.

  “O unicorns,” cried Khraa the king, “here we stand under the rising moon, midwiving in the birth of the new year with our dances and our songs. The dancing, it is done, and the singing is to come. On the morrow’s morn, our young fillies, our young colts will slip away unseen upon their Pilgrimage through the dark Pan Woods, over the Great Grass Plain, and across the crumbling shelf-land of the sleeping wyverns—let them not wake—until they come upon the Mirror of the Moon, our sacred well, there to perform their rite of passage.”

  The gray king paused, drawing breath. All the unicorns had lain down now. Night stretched dark and bright around them. Jan listened to the king.

  “The time has come,” he said, “for singing the Lay of the Unicorns, which tells of the beginning of this war and how our race was driven from its territories by treachery and forced to abandon the Moon’s Mere—long, it was a long time past. Singer, come forth! Let the story be sung.”

  Khraa slipped silently from the ledge then and lay down beside his mate. Jan spotted the healer lying within the Circle. Even by moonlight he could make out the great black patches patterning the other’s white coat, the dark spot encircling each eye so they stood out huge and seemed never to blink. But the one who rose from the grass at the king’s nod was not Teki, but another lying beside him.

  “Who is it?” whispered Dagg.

  The young mare mounted the rise, her black and rose coloring pale ghostly under the moon.
Jan hardly recognized her at first. It had been nearly a half-month since the battle of the gryphons—his shoulders were healed—and he had not seen Tek, save in far glimpses, since then. He had not realized before this that the healer’s daughter was a singer of tales.

  “Hail,” she cried out, her voice low, harsh-sweet, “I’ll sing you a tale of when Halla was princess of the unicorns, and a rare princess was she. This was while her father Jared was yet alive and king, and in the time when queen or king still ruled the unicorns.

  “And this was long after the great Serpent-clouds had scoured the Plain. And this was some after the war with the haunts had been fought and won. And this was just after the spring fevers had carried off Halla’s first mate, and her two younglings, a twin filly and foal—but before she had taken Zod the singer to husband as her second mate, while the unicorns still lived in the Hallow Hills by the sacred well, in and around the milkwood groves that now are called the Wyvern Wood. Because of the things I shall tell of in this tale. Because of the coming of the wyrms.”

  “What’s milkwood?” murmured Jan, to himself. He had never wondered it before.

  “Hist,” Dagg told him. “I want to hear.”

  Tek changed her stance a little on the rocky platform, facing now a slightly different quarter of the Circle.

  “It was summer, midsummer, the solstice,” she sang, “and winter a long time gone. But winter touched the hearts of the unicorns still, for the herd was shrunk and saddened at the death of so many fine warriors and weanlings, the young with the old, from a spring plague that year, the princess’s own nurselings among them. Zod the singer was just coming into the full glory of his voice, and aging Jared, Halla’s father, was king.

  “Then Halla, dawn-colored like fire, stood beside the moon’s pool, sad in contemplation, asking Alma why That One had seen fit to steal away the flower of the unicorns.”

  Jan felt another wondering. “What’s fire?” he said aloud.