[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  Abruptly, he swung and stumbled back up the trail. Jan watched the dark roan stagger, reeling almost, then rally and press on. Jan watched him disappear as the trail rose, curving away and passing into other, higher chambers. Oro’s halting hoofbeats gradually receded. Motionless, Jan listened until they faded at last. Then he turned and headed down to the lake of fire.

  The air about it shuddered with heat, the burning fluid Oro had once called dragonsflood, fiercely incandescent. The feather in his hair smoked slightly, fragrantly. Yet, he felt no fiery blast as he crossed the black and cindery shore. Near its edge, the glowing brimstone had darkened and solidified into a fragile crust. A great gust of heat shook the ground, rumbling like the breath of some immense creature beyond the subterranean lake of fire. Its sun-bright surface wrinkled, rippling.

  When the tremor had passed, Jan stepped out onto the first of the minuscule islands. Its pitted surface grated and clanged beneath his heels. Little showers of sparks fell into the radiant substance of the lake and disappeared. The dark unicorn moved cautiously, sometimes retracing his steps. The lake stretched on, its low, dark ceiling lost in shadow. Such must be the birthplace of the sun, he mused, whence mares of smoke and stallions of fire blazed forth to charge heaven.

  He saw lake’s edge ahead. At first it seemed but a far distant darkness upon the gleaming surface, but as he approached, Jan realized it was neither a cluster of islands nor floating slag, but the limit of the brimstone sea. He stepped from the last island onto the cinder shore, which rose gently toward a cavernous opening in the wall of rock ahead. The ceiling soared higher here, the gigantic cavern mouth smoothly oval in shape.

  Another glow lit the chamber beyond, steady and reddish. Jan walked toward it, up the beach. Pale smoke trailed through the crest of the entryway in a steady, tendriled stream. Another great sighing, accompanied by rumbling and shaking. The smoky mist redoubled. The dark unicorn halted till the quake subsided, then moved forward again. The black, pitted pebbles crunched and shifted beneath his cloven heels. He reached the great entryway.

  “Welcome, Firebrand,” the creature before him sighed. “For you I gladly suspend my contemplation. Enter and be welcome. I have awaited your coming four hundred years.”

  The dragon queen sprawled, inestimably vast, filling the great chamber before Jan. She was long and sinuous and covered with jewels. With a start, the dark unicorn noticed huge leathery wings, red as the rest of her, draping her back. Puzzlement made him frown. Living as they did, so far underground, he would never have imagined the red dragons to be wingèd. The old lays mentioned no powers of flight, and the remains of the old queen, Mélintélinas, had borne no wings.

  Wyzásukitán looked at him. Her head was wedge-shaped, the muzzle long and slim, with flaring nostrils through which her hazy breath steamed. Two long mustachios, like those catfishes bear, sprouted below each nostril. They floated fluidly on the air as the dragon moved and turned her head. Her ears were slim, like gryphons’ ears. A row of spiky ridges ran from the top of her head down the back of her neck, along the spine and tail to the tip, which ended in a flattened wedge.

  Her body was covered by a myriad of ovate, interlocking scales which shimmered, reflecting the light of the lake of fire. Innumerable round and faceted stones encrusted her scaly skin. Of every color, though red predominated, they caught and held the light, burning like distant fires. Her massive hind limbs bore immense, pardlike claws. Her forelimbs, smaller and more delicately made, sported taloned toes of a size to crush a unicorn in a single snatch. Her breath moving through her lungs and throat did so with a hollow rushing like surf.

  Upon her forehead, above the great ruby eyes, a circular depression lay, like a shallow bowl. In size and shape, it exactly resembled the slight hollow in the enormous skull of the late queen, from which he had recently sipped. The natural dish in Wyzásukitán brow gleamed, a dark, clear liquid pooling there. The firedrake kept her head perfectly level, he noted, as if on guard against spilling the precious contents. Jan bowed to her.

  “Hail, Wyzásukitán, queen of red dragons,” he said.

  “Hail, Aljan Firebringer,” Wyzásukitán replied. Despite the harsh susurration, her voice was surprisingly melodious. Her steaming breath smelled of resin and spice. “Before her end, my mother spoke of your coming.”

  “What word did Queen Mélintélinas say of me?” Jan asked, surprised. Oddly, he felt no fear.

  Wyzásukitán exhaled another cloud of fragrant breath and lowered her head, turning it slightly, only very slightly, to one side.” She told me one of your kind would come from beyond, bearing news of my great enemy, Lynex.”

  The dark prince nodded. “Lynex the wyvern king was driven from the Smoking Hills by your mother, Queen Mélintélinas, four hundred winters gone.” Jan recited what he knew. “He and his folk wandered the Plain until they reached the Hallow Hills, at that time homeland to my folk. Lynex inveigled his way into the good graces of my people’s then-king, despite protests by his daughter, the princess Halla. When the wyverns slithered into limestone caves hard by my people’s sacred mere, the Mirror of the Moon, Halla, her suspicions roused, sent scouts to find the Smoking Hills whence these white wyrms had originally come. Her scouts parleyed with your mother the winter’s length. She kept two here and sent the third back with warning of the wyverns’ treacherous ways… But surely Halla’s scouts informed your people of all these things,” Jan broke in on himself, “when first they arrived four hundred years ago.”

  The huge dragon nodded, her breath swirling about her. It rose toward the chamber’s distant ceiling. Jan guessed it eventually reached the surface of the hills to drift in the dense fog that gave the region its name.

  “Yea,” Wyzásukitán answered. “So they did. And the two who remained here at my mother’s behest became founders of the line that dwells here yet. Their chanting fills our meditations with beautiful song. We have lain very still these last four hundred years, harkening it.” One shoulder moved: perhaps a shrug. “In that regard,” she breathed, “your Scouts do for us much as the wyrms once did.”

  “The wyverns were singers?” Jan exclaimed.

  Again the red dragon nodded. “They patrolled our dens, kept them free of vermin. They ate our dead. But we prized them for their songs and the stories that they told, which nourished our dreams.”

  “They call themselves your cousins,” the dark prince told her.

  Wyzásukitán snorted. Her breath swirled. “They are no cousins of ours.”

  “What do the red dragons dream?” Jan asked.

  The dragon queen sighed. “Much in the heavens and under the earth. We live a long time, by your counting, and have no need to hurry about our affairs. Much time we spend in contemplation, envisioning what will come and what is and what has already passed—but I stray. I was asking of Lynex. We have heard no news of him since your late princess’s scouts arrived. Tell me what befell after the one who departed returned to the Hallow Hills.”

  Jan nodded. “He warned Halla of wyvern treachery. But too late. The wyrms had already bred. Come spring, they attacked, killing most of the herd before driving Halla’s small band of survivors away. These wandered until they found the Vale, which has sheltered us for forty generations. But our time there is almost out. My folk mean to return to the Hallow Hills within the year, to wrest them back from Lynex and his crew. We are told he lives and rules the wyverns still. In the way of his kind, he has grown more heads than the single one with which he started. We hear he is seven-headed now.”

  “And seven times more treacherous, to be sure,” mused Wyzásukitán.

  “Why do the red dragons hate the white wyrms so?” Jan ventured. “You lived in harmony so long. What trespass caused you to cast them out?”

  “Harmony would be too strong a term,” the dragon queen replied, voice darkening. “Suffice to say we dwelled without enmity until the advent of Lynex. Lynex was different from other wyrms. His tail bore a poison sting, unlike the blunt ti
ps of his fellows. He used this barb to hunt live prey, including his own kind. He ventured aboveground to stalk the shag-haired goats and bred with others of his kind to produce more sting-tailed wyverns, killing those of his broods that bore no stings.”

  Wyzásukitán turned her head, remembering. “He and his folk conspired many seasons, while we slept unaware of the plots fomenting around us. Lynex led his sting-tailed wyrms to kill or drive away all other wyverns. But we suspected naught until Lynex and his followers began to prey upon my people’s pups, carrying off eggs from the nest and stinging to death the newly hatched, then dragging away their bones.”

  The firedrake’s eyes smoldered, her beautiful voice growing tighter, more harsh.

  “Lynex declared himself king of wyrms and cousin to dragons. Master of fire he styled himself, porting coals about in a golden bowl. My mother awoke at last and roused her kith to drive the wyrms away. Lynex fled, and all his poisonous tribe. We trusted winter’s cold aboveground to kill them—but they huddled about their king’s firebowl and escaped to trouble your tribe as once they had troubled my own. My dam held herself responsible for this wrong. It weighed upon her, and upon my people. Four hundred years have we lain in contemplation since, considering how best to fashion a remedy.”

  “Remedy?” Jan asked. “Have you discovered one?”

  The dragon queen turned. “To understand that, Firebrand,” she answered, “you must understand my kind.” Again she shrugged, at once both languid and restless. “Behold my wings. My mother was already well into her prime, as we dragons count time, her wings long shed, when your late princess’s scouts arrived.”

  The dark prince listened as Wyzásukitán’s folded wings rustled softly, shifting.

  “She had flown her mating flight a hundred years previous and would lay eggs from that tryst to the end of her days. She had no wings anymore, nor had any other of her kith, for as you may know, among my kind, only the queen and her consort ever breed. My mother’s consort had long since flown. They always do, after the nuptial flight. Where a queen’s consort flies, we do not know, for none ever return. We are a female race. A male is born among us only once in a thousand years.”

  Before him, the great dragon’s voice warmed, gentled.

  “They are black, these firedrakes, most beautiful to behold. My own consort is so much younger than I,” murmured Wyzásukitán. “My mother hatched him only shortly before she died. He will not be ready to fly for three centuries yet. So darksome fair, he will make the perfect sire to all my progeny. My wings, how they ache from disuse! They are ready now, and I long to try them.”

  Realization jolted Jan. “Your…your consort,” he stammered. “He is your sib? Your own mother’s child?”

  The dragon queen flexed her massive, bat-form wings. “Of course. It is always thus among dragons.”

  A bitter taste rose in Jan’s mouth. He thought of Tek, his late sire’s own uncounted daughter, Korr’s first, unspoken child. Wary of offending the dragon queen, Jan swallowed hard. Yet such a union as she described was unconscionable among his own folk, even if his and Tek’s pledge had been undertaken innocently, neither knowing Tek’s secret parentage. Yet once done, it could never be undone: Dhattar and Aiony were the living proof. Shaken, Jan found his tongue.

  “You say Lynex, too, bred with his own kin?” The thought repulsed him.

  Again Wyzásukitán nodded. “As did your own scouts upon their arrival here.”

  “What?” cried Jan, shocked. “How do you mean?”

  Ever so subtly, the dragon queen cocked her head. “There were only two,” she answered quietly, “two that remained. They have had no contact with others of your folk these four hundred years. How did you imagine they had multiplied if at first sib had not pledged with sib?”

  Jan’s mind reeled. He felt his knees lock. How was it he had not deduced something so obvious? Inbreeding explained the striking resemblance among all Oro’s folk: modest stature, stocky build, dark roan or dapple coats, those odd, half-standing manes. Jan shook himself, staggered. Numbly, he strove to collect himself, to bring his awareness back to the firedrake’s lair. He opened his mouth to speak. But the dragon queen spoke first.

  “Your thoughts return to your Vale, I see,” she said, “and to those you cherish there. Come.” She bowed her head to the chamber’s floor. “Gaze into me, and you will see what is and is to be.”

  Jan breathed deeply, trying to clear his head. Shaken still, he approached the dragon queen. Her mouth was easily great enough to engulf him in a single snap, yet he felt no fear, only his own turmoil roiling within. Despite her reptilian shape, he doubted somehow that dragons ate flesh. Steaming, her fragrant breath enveloped him. Her enormous, ruby-colored eye watched him as he leaned to peer into the dark pool of her brow.

  15.

  The King’s Uncounted Daughter

  Tek stood in the entryway to the cave, gazing off across the Vale. Equinox was upon them. Brief summer had run its course. Soon days would last shorter than the nights. The tang of fall seasoned the air, though the grass grew green, not yet goldening, and evenings had not turned chill. Tek watched the long shadow of the Vale’s sunward side advancing toward the far sunlit slope. Unicorns still grazed the hillsides, or ramped and frolicked on the valley floor.

  The pied mare stood keenly aware that all she surveyed she beheld for the last time in season. Never again would she gaze upon the Vale on summer’s ending day, autumn’s eve. Come spring—whether or not her mate had returned—she and the herd must depart for the Hallow Hills. The creeping shadows overtaking the Vale advanced. Tek sighed, longing for Jan, heart filled with something akin to despair. Neither he nor she had expected his absence to stretch so long. Jan’s chasing his crazed sire had only achieved what Korr had striven toward all along: to part her from her mate and him from her.

  The pied mare set her teeth. She loathed the dark king with all her fury. Though as a filly and young half-grown she had enjoyed his high favor—exactly why, she had never known—she had always mistrusted him, kept her distance. About the time of his son’s initiation, she and Jan had become shoulder-friends, and still the dark king had smiled his approval. Only when Jan had grown old enough to eye the mares had the king’s mood inexplicably darkened—though never toward Tek, only toward his son. She had steered well clear of Korr then, never dallying with the young prince before his father’s eyes.

  Still, she never could have imagined the king’s rage upon her return from the Summer Sea when he learned of the sacred pledge she and Jan had shared, a vow unshakable in Alma’s eyes. The king had railed wildly against her then. When her burgeoning belly made plain that she was in foal, the dark stallion’s ravings tipped into madness, and he had sought her death. Fleeing the Vale, she had taken refuge with her then-outcast dam, Jah-lila, who had used sorcery to defend her and midwive her young.

  Again the pied mare breathed deep, the bare hint of a smile quirking her mouth. How the world had turned since then: now Korr was the hated outcast, Jah-lila the honored insider, advisor to the prince. Tek herself had returned in triumph, her eminence second only to that of her mate. Quietly, she studied the darkening Vale, which she had ruled all summer as prince’s regent. The herd trusted her, gladly followed her word. She had won their respect on her own merits. That she was daughter to the red wych and dam to the prince’s heirs only enhanced her station.

  Tek’s smile slipped, faded. A frown of frustration wrinkled her brow. Where was he? Where was her belovèd Jan? Weeks had passed since the scouts she had sent had brought back any useful news. At first, when summer had been new, she had waited. But when, after three days her mate had not returned, she had dispatched runners into the Pan Woods to look for him and his quarry. Her foster sisters, the young pans Sismoomnat and Pitipak, had set forth as well. All had returned with tales of Korr’s senseless terrorizing of the Wood. It had taken weeks for Tek to reparley the peace with all the goatling tribes.

  She had realized then that
Jan dared not return unsuccessful. The goatlings expected—indeed had demanded, and she confidently promised—that the dark marauder be captured and punished for his trespass against the unicorn’s allies. The pied mare shook her head. She had never considered herself a diplomat. She had none of Jan’s glib grace, his quick understanding. Still, she had evidently succeeded, for the pans had held their truce and agreed to wait the outcome of the prince’s quest.

  Meanwhile, the prince’s mate had learned, Jan had followed his sire onto the Plain. Again, Tek tasted despair. That limitless expanse gave Jan everywhere to search, Korr anywhere to hide. The herd’s lack of ties with the Plain’s few, scattered wanderers troubled her as well. For centuries her own folk had hated and feared these wild unicorns, believing them outcasts and rebels from the Vale. Tek knew differently, yet still felt the greatest unease at Jan’s venturing among such unknown folk. Outside the Ring of Law, who knew what customs they might keep? That the Plain was also home to great, banded pards and savage grasscats filled her with dread.

  Despite all dangers, Tek had found no dearth of volunteers to scout the Plain. The first to set out had brought back nothing. The Mare’s Back was simply too vast for outlanders to track either friend or foe. She instructed her next scouts to seek out Plainsdwellers and ask their aid. But, as she had feared, the ones most of her own folk still stubbornly called “Renegades” shied clear of dwellers of the Vale—and again her scouts returned thwarted.

  Her resolve only strengthened, she had called on Jan’s and her own shoulder-companion Dagg to lead the next search, and this expedition had at last borne fruit. Dagg had encountered Plainsdwellers, and though he clearly lost no love for ones he considered Ringbreakers or descendants of such, he had approached politely as many times as needed to persuade them. In the end, he had learned what he had come to learn: that Korr had rampaged across the Plain. The Free People called him the dark destroyer.