[Firebringer 02] - Dark Moon (24 page)

“What have you done?” he asked Illishar. “What more have you done besides what I asked?”

He felt surprise, puzzlement, but strangely, no alarm. The gryphon looked at him and held the halter up.

“You have given me this,” he said, “to bear back to my people in token of our pledge. I, too, have given you a token to carry to your flock. One of my feathers I have woven into your mane. Let none of your boar-headed people dare doubt now that you have earned the goodwill of a gryphon.”

Once more, Jan shook himself, tossing his head. He felt elated and untrammeled. He felt like the strange, wild unicorns wrongly called renegades—who dwelt upon the Plain, unbound by the Law and customs of their cousins of the Vale. They called themselves the Free People, and wore fallen birds’ feathers in their hair.

“Go now,” the gryphon told him, “and treat with this Tlat of the shrieking herons. I will prepare myself for your return, when I will allow you to break and reset my wing.”

“So many,” Ryhenna breathed. “So many—I never dreamed!” But to the young prince’s eye, their numbers seemed alarmingly scant: almost no colts and fillies, very few elders. Even the ranks of the warriors were thinned. A pang tightened his chest. Eagerly he searched the herd below for someone he knew. Far on the opposite hillside, the healer stood among the crowd of older fillies and foals that could only be acolytes. Jan gave a loud whistle. The pied stallion raised his head, then reared up with a shout, his singer’s voice ringing out across the Vale.

“Jan! Jan, prince of the unicorns, returns!”

Jan loped eagerly down the slope, Ryhenna in his wake. Astonished unicorns thundered to meet him as he reached the valley floor. They surged around with whickers of greeting and disbelief, eager to catch wind of him, chafe and shoulder their lost prince. Jan glimpsed runners sprinting off to bear news of his arrival to the far reaches of the Vale. Laughing, half rearing, Jan sported among his people until cries of consternation rang out behind him.

“Look—hornless, beardless. Outcast! Renegade!”

He wheeled to find the whole crowd shying, staring at Ryhenna. The coppery mare stood alone. Jan sprang to her side.

“Behold Ryhenna,” he declared, “my shoulder-friend, without whose aid I could never have escaped captivity to return to you.”

The crowd fidgeted nervously, then abruptly parted, allowing Teki through.

“Greetings, prince,” he cried. “Yonder come your sister and dam.”

Looking up, Jan beheld his mother, Ses.

“My son, my son,” she cried.

Behind her, Lell eyed him uncertainly with her amber-colored eyes. Jan held himself still as the tiny filly approached, sniffing him over. The sharp knob of horn upon her brow, just beginning to sprout, told him she must be newly weaned. Gazing up at him, she smiled suddenly and cried out,

“Jan!”

Teki began to speak of the winter past. Jan listened, dismayed how precisely his dreams had already revealed to him his people’s fate. Sheer madness and bitter waste! Under a sane and reasoned leadership, the herd might have fared the brutal famine and cold with far less loss of life.

“Where is Korr now?” he demanded hotly.

“In our grotto,” his dam replied with a heavy sigh. “He grazes only by twilight now, eats barely enough to keep himself alive, though forage is once more plentiful.”

Jan bit back the grief and anguish welling up in him. “You say he turned against Tek and drove her from the Vale—why? Why?”

The pied stallion cast down his gaze, shook his head and whispered, “Madness.”

“But what has become of her?” Jan pressed. “You say she was in foal?”

Teki’s face grew haggard, his eyes bright. “We have no word,” he answered roughly. “Dagg, who went in search of her some days past, has not yet returned.”

The healer stopped himself, regained his breath. His chest seemed tight.

“We fear she may be dead.”

Jan stared at the others, staggered. He turned from Teki to Ses, but his mother’s gaze could offer him no hope.

“Nay, not so!” a voice from across the throng called suddenly. “I live!”

The whole herd started, turned. Jan’s heart leapt to behold Tek, long-limbed and lithe, her pied form full of energy, loping toward him, flanked on one shoulder by the Red Mare and on the other by Dagg. Others, less plainly visible, trailed them but the young prince’s gaze fixed wholly on Tek.

With a cry, he sprang to her. The press of unicorns had fallen back to let her and her companions through. She stood laughing, no sorrow in her. Her breath against his skin was sweet and soft, her touch gentle, the scent of her delicate as he recalled, aromatic as spice. He nuzzled her, whickering, “My mate. My mate.”

She gave him a playful nip, then started back suddenly. “What’s this?” she cried. “How came you by this gryphon plume?”

He felt her teeth fasten on it, tugging angrily to work it free, but he pulled back, nickering. “Peace,” he bade her. “Let be. I will tell you when you have told me of yourself. How fared you this winter past?”

“My daughter sheltered in my cave,” the Red Mare answered, “as safe and warm and well-fed as were you, prince Jan, in the sorcerous City of Fire. You have freed another of its captives, I see, and brought her home with you.
Emwe!
Hail, daughter of fire,” Jah-lila called. “Do I guess thy name aright:
Ryhenna?”

The coppery mare stood staring at Jah-lila. “It is true, then?” she stammered at last. “Ye are the one that erewhile dwelt among my kind?”

Jah-lila nodded. “Born a hornless
da
in the stable of the
chon.
Drinking of the sacred moonpool far across the Plain, I became a unicorn. So, too, mayst thou, little one. Follow, and I will lead thee there.”

“I will accompany you!” Dagg exclaimed. He stood transfixed, staring at Ryhenna as though in a dream. Jan watched, taken by surprise, as the other approached the coppery mare. “I am called Dagg, fair Ryh—fair Ryhenna.” He stumbled over the unfamiliar name. “The way to the wyvern-infested Hallow Hills is long and dangerous. For all the Red Mare’s sorcery, I would feel easier for you with a warrior at your side.”

The prince of the unicorns bit back a laugh. Plainly his friend was smitten. After months moping beside the Summer Sea a season past, the dappled warrior seemed finally to have found a mare to spark his eye. The swiftness of it astonished Jan. Ryhenna was now returning Dagg’s gaze with shyly flattered interest.

Jan shouldered gently against Tek, nuzzling her, glad to steal a caress while others’ eyes fixed on the dappled warrior and the coppery mare. Beside the prince, his mate stood sleek and well-nourished—and plainly not pregnant. Just when her belly ought to have been swollen to its greatest girth, ready to deliver any day, it clearly held no life. An overwhelming sense of loss mingled with his joy at finding the healer’s daughter alive and hale.

“Teki told me you were in foal,” Jan whispered in her ear. “My love, I am so sorry to see that you have lost it. Later, in a season or two, when you are ready, we can try again.”

Shrugging with pleasure against his touch, Tek laughed. “What loss?” she asked. “Nay, Jan. Behold.”

Baffled, the young prince of the unicorns turned, following the line of Tek’s gaze. It came to rest upon the small figures that had followed her, Jah-lila, and Dagg. Two were unicorns, and two—astonishment pricked him as he realized—were not. The latter were pans, young females both, not yet half-grown. Jan felt his spine stiffen—yet surely such young goatlings must be harmless enough. The two stood calmly beneath his scrutiny, the younger pan pressing against the Red Mare, who nuzzled her.

The other two members of the party were infant unicorns, flatbrowed still, horn buds mere bumps upon their wide, smooth foreheads. Whose progeny were they, Jan wondered? Surely they could not be earlyborns, for though small, each was perfectly formed, surefooted, sound of wind—yet what mares would consent to tryst with their mates so early the preceding summer that they bore their offspring in late winter, before spring forage greened the hills? Madness! The tiny pair gazed up at him with bright, intelligent eyes.

The coloring of them was like none he had ever seen. The young prince shook his head, astonished. The filly was on one side mostly black, with silver stockings and one jet eye outlined in silver. Her other side was mostly silver, black-stockinged, her dark eye black-encircled. The foal was purest white, not a mark or a dark hair on him, and eyes like cloudless sky. The two seemed to shimmer before his gaze: brightening, fading. Tek was laughing at him. He blinked. Slowly, realization dawned.

“Nay,” he whispered. “Truth, Tek, these cannot be—not both of them!”

She nodded. “Aye. Born early, by my dam’s design—though without my foster sisters’ aid, none of us would have survived to greet your homecoming.”

“Pans!” Jan exclaimed, turning to stare once more at the young goatlings flanking Jah-lila. “Pan fosterlings?”

The Red Mare nodded. “Aye, prince. Orphaned young, they took me as their dam. Their care has kept me much from the Vale in recent years. Though passing freely among their own kind in the Wood, they know the ways of unicorns as well.”

“Emwe,” the younger of the pan sisters said to him, gesturing with one hairless forelimb. Jan felt a tremor of recognition. Their speech was like that of the two-foots—more fluting, less guttural—but clearly recognizable.

“Emwe,” the prince of the unicorns replied. “Tai-shan nau shopucha.”
Hail. Moonbrow greets you.

“Greet-ings,” the elder of the two replied, enunciating the words of the unicorn tongue carefully, “great prince of u-nicorns.”

All around, nickers of astonishment, alarm from the nervously milling herd—to hear supposedly mute goatlings speak.

“I am Sismoomnat,” the young pan replied, “my sis-ter, Pitipak. Our fos-ter dam, Jah-ama, has taught us u-nicorn speech. We al-so speak in the way of our own folk. We are glad to have come among you at last, fair u-nicorns. Our dam has long pledged to bring us to you when time grew ripe.”

Swallowing his astonishment, Jan managed a low bow. Perhaps more treaties than he had hoped could be struck this spring.

“Greetings to you both, pan fosterlings of the Red Mare,” he answered. “Doubtless you know of the long enmity that lies between our two peoples. Perhaps time indeed grows ripe to resolve our differences. Would you be willing to act as envoys between your people and my own?”

Happily, the young goatling nodded. “It is the task for which Jah-ama reared us. Glad-ly will we bear words of peace between our two tribes.”

Beneath the goatlings’ smooth, long-fingered forepaws, the black-and-silver filly and the flawless white foal fidgeted, shouldering one another playfully and eyeing Jan with frank, fearless curiosity. The young pans stepped back as the prince of the unicorns moved forward to nose his daughter and son. The nameless filly and foal frolicked against him, their long, delicate legs tangling, their tiny, ropelike tails spiraling with nervous energy. Jan breathed deep, exploring their every curve. Their scent reminded him of Tek—and of himself.

“The foal is Dhattar,” Tek told him softly, “the filly, Aiony—”

A low moan cut short her words. Starting up, Jan beheld a dark figure on the near slope. Unicorns fell back, some hissing with disgust. The other did not approach. Moments passed before Jan recognized the haggard stallion. The young prince stared. Could this wasted figure truly be his sire, once the robust and vigorous king of the unicorns? In less than a year, Korr seemed to have aged many.

“Freaks!” he groaned. “Begotten in lawlessness and borne in wychery. They will bring destruction! The goddess’s wrath—”

Jan stamped one heel, furious, moving forward to stand between his family and the king.

“What wrath?” he demanded. “Father, what makes my heirs abomination in your eyes? And how is it you claim to know the goddess’s will—does Alma speak to you?”

The bony figure stared. “I—nay. I…used to think so,” he mumbled, shifting uneasily. Then he raised his head, voice growing stronger. “You should never have chosen the pied wych, my son. I warned you sore—”

“My mate is no wych!” Jan retorted hotly. “She is Tek, that same brave warrior whom, before this winter past, you always honored high. Why are you so against our pledge?”

But the dark other only shook his head, muttering. “Nay, it was a long time past, upon the Plain. The wych…I never…”

As the Red Mare stepped forward, he shied from her as from a gryphon.

“You speak in riddles, Korr.” She eyed him steadily.

“Wych! Wych!” the mad stallion cried, rearing, flailing at the air. “See what your wychery has wrought? I trusted you!”

Gazing at him still, Jah-lila never flinched. “My prince,” she said, “you and I alone know what befell upon the Plain so long ago, who trusted whom and who betrayed. Honor binds me to hold my tongue until you speak.”

“Never!” the haggard stallion shrieked. “Your spells ensnared me once—”

Members of the herd scattered as, for a moment, it looked as though the wild-eyed king might fly at her—but the Red Mare held steady, her gaze fixed upon him square.

“I charge you now,” she answered, “for your own honor’s sake, speak plain. It is your only hope of peace.”

With an inarticulate cry, the mad stallion wheeled, sprang away up the slope. Below, all around Jan the unicorns watched with expressions of anger, or pity, or scorn. Not until the king’s form had nearly reached the treeline did the young prince come to himself with a start and spring forward to follow. His dam stepped quickly to block his path.

“Hold, my son. It is himself he flees—and none of us may catch him till he turn and stand his ground.”

Jan snorted, dodging, but it was hopeless. His sire’s form had vanished into the trees, the thunder of his heels already faded. Restlessly, the young prince paced a circle.

“What maddens him?” he cried.

Ses shook her head. “Only Korr may answer that.”

She did not stand aside. The prince’s eye fell on Jah-lila, facing him with calm, unfathomable black-green eyes.

“What do you know of this?” he demanded. “Why is my sire in such terror of you? What befell the pair of you upon the Plain?”

The Red Mare’s glance flicked after the fugitive king, then turned to rest ruefully upon her daughter Tek. Bitterly, wordlessly, Jah-lila turned away.