[Firebringer 02] - Dark Moon (11 page)

“Flee while you may, wych,” he spat at her. “I must see to my comrade. But be warned, the king will send my fellows to hunt you down.”

Grey snow whipped between them in the dusky air, and for a moment Tek half expected him to change his mind, come charging back up the slope. She let no trace of fear show in her eye, making herself breathe slow and deep. The other’s injured fellow whinnied again. Angrily, he turned from her and continued gingerly down. Weak with relief, Tek wheeled in the opposite direction and fled.

He trotted down the aisle between empty stalls. The wide wooden closure of the shelter’s egress stood ajar. A thin mewl of protest sang from its hinges as the dark unicorn shouldered through. The courtyard outside lay deserted in the predawn darkness. A near-full moon hung low in the sky, barely topping the timber wall.

Tai-shan galloped hard, hooves ringing hollow on the frozen cobbles. He sprang and cleared the wall, clipped one hind heel painfully on the rough upper edge. Too long he had been lazing, feeding over-well in the palace of the
chon.
Time to be done with that! Coming down on the other side of the wall, he shook himself, full of energy. His breath steamed, curling in the frosty air. The layer of fat beneath his pelt kept out the cold. The stone-paved path sloping away from him lay empty and snow-covered, ghostly white. He trotted toward a distant glimmer of firelight.

Through a small, square opening in the wall of one of the wooden dwellings lining the cobbled way, he glimpsed a firelit room. The heat of the place was fierce. Two-foots bustled about, their falseskins folded back to reveal forelimbs coated in a fine, white dust. The stoutest punched at a substance resembling pale mud while her assistants plopped pawfuls of the stuff onto dustcovered flats. They pressed berries and nuts into each gooey pat before thrusting the flats into small stone chambers that were full of fire.

A savor of honey, oil, and grain pervaded the air. Tai-shan watched, fascinated, as the soft blobs sighed and expanded, then dried, hardened, and began to turn brown. The dark unicorn’s jaw dropped. What lay forming in the heated vaults were honey nutpods! As the two-foots retrieved the flats from the firechambers, Tai-shan shied away from the hole in the wall, his senses reeling. These two-foots created their own provender by means of fire! He would never have guessed such a thing to be possible.

Once more, he trotted down the cobbled path. Lamplight bled through a crack between wooden panels covering one of the square wall-openings in another shelter he passed. Halting, the dark unicorn nosed at the shutter, eased it back and peered cautiously through. A pair of two-foots knelt in the chamber within. The elder, a bearded male, kneaded a pale, doughy substance resembling the grain paste, but grey instead of white. It smelled like river silt.

Carefully, the elder male smoothed the silt into the shape of a hollow vessel. The dark unicorn had seen the two-foots’ stone jars used to store unguents, oil, and drink—but what possible use, he wondered, could exist for a jar made of mud, too soft to hold even its own shape for long?

Beside the bearded male, his assistant, a smooth-cheeked halfgrown, stood bundling himself into a thick falseskin. Carefully, his elder handed him the wet mud jar, and the half-grown ducked with it through an egress to the outside. Tai-shan let the wooden shutter swing softly shut. He trotted to the edge of the building and peered around.

The young half-grown stood in a small yard before a conical structure of stone. Heat rippled the air above. Another firechamber, the dark unicorn guessed. The young two-foot opened a port in the chamber’s side, placed the soft vessel of mud within and slammed the port. More vessels stood alongside the chamber, Tai-shan noticed. Stamping his feet against the cold, the halfgrown bent to catch up a pair, then turned and hastened back toward shelter. The jars clinked solidly against one another as he did so, the sound sharply musical.

Once again the dark unicorn’s mind raced. Had these hard vessels already been in the chamber of fire? Had flame somehow transformed the yielding clay as it had the grain paste? Were the firechambers themselves—indeed, the very streets of the two-foots’ city—made of stone at all, or of blocks of heat-hardened clay? Tai-shan shook his head, marveling at the vast and complicated city around him. Had fire been the tool to create it all?

The sky above him was lightening, the moon nearly down. Strange tracks in the snow beside him caught the dark unicorn’s eye. One set was clearly that of a
da,
the other, that of a two-foot. But two deep, narrow ruts scored the snow alongside, one on either side of the paired tracks. Tai-shan cocked his head. Frowning, he studied the parallel grooves, unable to make out what could have made them.

Dawn came swiftly. The stars above paled and began to fade. The dark unicorn followed the strange tracks as they turned off the main thoroughfare onto a narrow, winding side-path. His ears pricked to the sound of foot-traffic somewhere nearby. Rounding a curve, he found himself in a great open space, crowded with stalls. Stacks of painted tile and heaps of sweet hay, bolts of brilliant falseskin and fat brown sacks of grain, rows of fire-clay vessels and strings of pungent, edible bulbs filled the air with richly varied scents. Tai-shan’s nostrils flared. Before him, two-foots milled, the odd tracks he had been following obliterated beneath their trampling heels.

Intent upon their own tasks, the two-foots spared scarcely a glance for the dark unicorn. Wandering speechless between the stalls, he beheld a two-foot male, flushed and sweating over a red-hot rod of skystuff. With a heavy implement, the two-foot pounded the rod, reshaping it into a flattened skewer. The dark unicorn beheld other wonders, all engendered by fire: fresh herbs withered and preserved by parching on heated stones, brittle honeycomb softened and fashioned into burning tapers, muddied falseskins stirred clean in steaming cauldrons, and stinking, bubbling vats in which pale hanks of seed fibers steeped to vivid shades of vermilion, golden, bronze-green, and midnight blue.

The sun broke over the hills. More and more two-foots crowded into the square, surveying the contents of the stalls and conversing with their overseers. Goods and little disks of silvery skystuff changed hands. An oddly familiar scent reached the dark unicorn. Smoky and sweet, it clung to his nostrils. Turning, hunting it, he nearly stumbled over a very old two-foot who crouched upon a patterned falseskin spread upon the paving stones. Baskets of spicewood shavings and dried flower petals surrounded her, and figurines of blackened skystuff.

Tai-shan recognized their form: the body of a two-foot with the incongruous, flatbrowed head of a
da.
Fragrant smoke rose from the red-rimmed nostrils. A crescent moon blazoned the breast of each figure, most of which stood fiercely poised, brandishing in one forepaw a long, flattened skewer and in the other a tuft-ended vine. Tai-shan noticed, however, that a few of the figures were different. The skewer had become a horn upon the
da
head’s brow, the vine a unicorn’s tail sprouting from the base of the two-foot torso’s back. The crescent moon-shape appeared not upon the chests of these different figurines, but upon their brows.

Selecting a curl of spicewood from one of the baskets, the elderly two-foot cupped it in one forepaw and struck a sliver of skystuff against a stone. Sparks flew up, bright as fireflies. The dark unicorn stared, incredulous, as the spicewood curl began to burn, sending up a fragrant, smoky plume. The two-foot unfastened a hinge in the belly of the unicorn-headed figure before her and thrust the crackling curl inside. Smoke rose through the figure’s nostrils.

Tai-shan stood dumbstruck, staring. The two-foots could
make
fire! For all his hosts’ mastery of the sorcerous stuff, it had never once occurred to him that they held the secret of its creation. Fire was the greatest mystery his people knew: it glanced through storm-tossed heavens; its substance formed the sacred sun and stars. Generations of unicorns lived and died without ever glimpsing an earthly flame. Yet these two-foots could summon such at will. Tai-shan stood trembling—for it was a power he knew his kind could never share. Lacking nimble forepaws, no hoofed creature such as himself could even hope to manipulate skystuff and flint into striking a spark. No unicorn could ever kindle fire.

“Dai’chon!” The exclamation brought Tai-shan back to the wintry square. The two-foot firesmith had caught sight of him. Her eyes widened. She started up. “Dai’chon!”

“Emwe,” Tai-shan replied haltingly, pronouncing the difficult inflections with the greatest care. He bowed courteously. “Emwe ki Tai-shan.”

Greetings from Moonbrow
–with Ryhenna’s help, he had deciphered enough of the two-foots’ tongue to attempt a simple phrase. Fervently, he hoped he had spoken clearly. A rush of triumph overtook him as he saw comprehension light the other’s eyes. Dropping her flint and the sliver of skystuff, she sank to her knees, pressing her forehead to the patterned falseskin. Tai-shan frowned, puzzled by her response. Muffled sounds came from the elderly two-foot, like moans.

“Pella! Pell’!”
Look, behold.
He heard gasps all around him suddenly, shouts of dismay and cries of what sounded at first to be his name. Yet when he pricked his ears, he discovered that many of the two-foots were calling out “Dai’chon” instead of “Tai-shan.”

That baffled him. He had no idea still what the word could mean.

“Emwe!” he cried out boldly as two-foots began to cluster around him. “Tai-shan nau shopucha!”
Moonbrow greets you.
To his consternation, many fell back at the sound of his voice and, like the old female, crumpled to the ground. Were they so surprised to hear him speak? Others, by contrast, pressed forward eagerly, forelimbs extended as to caress him. The dark unicorn sidled.

“Tash,” he cried out quickly. “Homat!“
No, stop.

Mercifully, they seemed to understand. Others were sinking to their knees now. An onlooker tossed one of the tiny disks of silvery skystuff at him. It clattered onto the cobbles near his hooves. Tai-shan danced away, half shying in surprise. More disks of skystuff followed, along with bits of spicewood, dried flower petals, berries, and nuts.

“Homat!” the dark unicorn cried again:
stop.
“Apnor!”
Enough.
Instantly, the shower of offerings ceased. The dark unicorn cavaled. Before him, two-foots melted back, allowing him passage. Almost all had fallen to their knees by this time. The rest stood gaping. Tai-shan bowed his long neck to them all and hurried on. None followed. Relieved, Tai-shan slipped through the crowd. The possibility of admirers swarming after him, pelting him with gifts, made his skin twitch.

Dodging around a stall, he nearly collided with a
da
standing before a massive wooden bin heaped with tubers. They smelled musty of starch and earth. A webbing of vines lashed the
da
to the bin, which creaked and swayed atop a pair of great wooden disks caked with muddy snow. The dark unicorn stared. Dragging such a strange contraption, Tai-shan wondered, could this
da
–or another similarly burdened—have cut the odd ruts which had first led him to the square?

“Dai’chon!” the
da
exclaimed, falling back with a start. “Great lord, ye walk among us. So it
is
true. At last. At last!”

Dull brown like other
daya,
this
da
looked much thinner and shabbier than the bluebloods he had met in the palace of the
chon.
Odd marks crisscrossed the deeply swayed back, and one skinny flank bore a crescent-shaped scar. The
da’s
posture, formerly weary and slumped, changed to joyous cavaling as the scrawny neck bowed reverently.

“Nay, friend,” the dark unicorn answered. “I am called Tai-shan.”

Still bowed, the other exclaimed, “Ah, lord, by whatever name ye choose, your faithful know you at a glance.”

As Tai-shan shook his head, the
daïcha’s
adornment rattled loosely about his face. The
da
before him wore a similar device, the dark unicorn noted, one fashioned of brown strips of hide, not links of burnished skystuff.

“I am a stranger to this place,” Tai-shan told the other. “Tell me, what is this great burden you drag?”

The other whickered. “Truth, it is nothing, Lord. I haul it gladly, in your name.”

“What is it that you haul?” Tai-shan asked, scarcely following the other’s reply.

The
da
shrugged humbly. “Whatever my keepers put in the cart: firewood, grain sacks, jars of oil. Bolts of fabric. Foodstuff. Dung.”

“Why is that?” the dark unicorn persisted. The point of such labor escaped him.

“Our keepers have need of such goods,” the other told him. “We
daya
cart for them.”

Tai-shan frowned, eyeing the chafed spots on the other’s raw bones where the vines had rubbed. The cart looked heavy. Amid the myriad clashing odors of goods and two-foots all about, he caught scent of the
da
before him at last, a warm, musty aroma close to that of unicorns. Yet though clearly older than halfgrown and not past prime, the flatbrow had the air of neither stallion nor mare: genderless as a beardless newborn or the very, very old.

“Of course, my lord,” the other was murmuring, “the burdens of gelded commoners need not concern you, dwelling so far above us as ye do, First Stallion to your own sacred brood mares in the stable of the
chon
….”

Tai-shan’s frown deepened. Many of the other’s phrases were new to him.

“Gelded?” he asked. The word had an ugly ring.

The flatbrow’s head cocked, as though the explanation were self-evident. “Fillies and foals are born in equal numbers, my lord, as ye know—but only the finest colts become breeding stallions.” He sighed. “As for the rest, we are made geldings.”

Once more the dark unicorn shook his head, still not following.

“These…these geldings,” he said. “You get no young?”

The other glanced sadly away. “Nay. We lose all interest in the mares after the priests cut us.”

Tai-shan fell back a step, staring. “Cut you?” he stammered. “Cut you?”

The one before him nodded. “Aye, underneath. Back between the legs. Then they mark us upon the flank with fire. Thus we are gelded and given the brand. Then our servitude begins.”