“Did you see it happen?” the younger, spotted one snapped, advancing uphill.
Tek shook her head. “Nay, I—”
The older stallion, too, came forward. “Why did you let her climb that dangerous cliff?”
“I wasn’t with her—”
The younger stallion snorted.
“Why not?” the older, the dark blue, interrupted. “These slopes are steep.”
“And forbidden to any but king’s Companions,” his comrade added.
The pied mare blinked. No such proscription had been announced. She backed another step as the pair continued to advance. She could barely make them out now for the snow and the gathering dark. Heads together, the two began conferring in low voices, never taking their eyes off Tek.
“If she wasn’t with her, she should have been. Sa was an old mare.”
“It’s a crime not to protect the king’s dam.”
“Crime?” Tek’s jaw dropped. What new laws were these? The two stallions ignored her.
“Aye, but if she’s lying?” the spattered younger one asked. “What if she was with the mare?”
“What are you saying?” Tek demanded sharply. The snowy wind moaned. The air was grey and dark.
“Everyone knows you’re a wych’s child,” the midnight blue said. “Your dam was born beyond the Vale.”
“Korr banished her for magicking.”
“My mother lives in the southeast hills by her own choice,” Tek exclaimed. “She was never banished!”
“She enchanted Jan the prince when he was no more than a weanling,” the younger stallion insisted.
“To protect him from wyvern sorcery,” Tek snapped, outraged. Her mother, the Red Mare, had ever used her mysterious arts for the good of the herd.
“You’re no better than your wych mother,” the older stallion growled. “You seduced our good prince from the path of Alma.”
“Liar!” Tek burst out, astonished, stung. How dared the king’s lackey spit such filth at her?
“Traitor,” the other stallion continued. “You ran away when the prince was assailed by gryphons, leaving him to his death.”
“Untrue!” shouted Tek, half choked with wrath.
Her words echoed off the cliff. The king’s Companions tossed their heads, champing. The two of them continued toward her across the slippery, rocky ground. Tek could do little but retreat up slope. The narrowed eyes of the spotted Companion glinted at her from their mask.
“Ring breaker—you ran. Everyone knows it! It’s common knowledge.”
“ ‘Common knowledge’ to those who were not there!” She wanted to fly at him and skewer him. She wanted to trample him underhoof.
“You befriended our king’s dam,” cut in the other, older unicorn, “that you might share her cave and eat her forage when your own sire cast you out. Her kind heart was her own undoing.”
“What do you mean?” cried Tek.
The other bared his teeth. “That you lured Sa here, to dangerous cliffs, on the pretext of finding forage. That you were with her at her death and failed to inform the king.”
“Perhaps you caused her death,” the younger guard pressed.
“Never!” gasped Tek. “I had only just come upon—”
They gave her no time to finish.
“A cunning tale. The mare is cold. She’s been dead hours.”
“I wasn’t with her!”
“The king will decide.”
“Come with us,” his younger companion said. “Come willing, or we’ll compel you.”
Panic gripped Tek. If she went with these two now, she realized, she was as good as dead. They had the king’s ear, and their groundless accusations would carry far more weight with him than any truth. Then the king might do whatever he wished. Banish her, even attack her. Who was to stop him now? Under the watchful eye of the king’s wolves, the whole herd would stand silent, cowed.
The two stallions stood waiting. The spotted one’s eyes gleamed, gloating. Tek wondered what forage he expected in exchange for giving her life to the king. The dark blue stallion motioned impatiently with his head.
“Come,” he told her. “It grows dark, and the sooner this is dealt with, the better.”
“The sooner you will feed, you mean,” grated Tek.
A cold rage such as she had never known seized her, displacing fear: it would not be simply her own life lost, she realized in a rush, but that unborn within her as well.
“You lying wolves!” she cried. Through the gathering darkness, the rising wind and snow, they were little more than blurs to her. “Those of you who still have your wits, yet willingly follow him are worse than Korr! I carry the late prince’s get in my womb. Therefore harm me at your peril!“
Eyes wide, both stallions studied her midsection uncertainly. “Her belly’s swollen,” the older blue murmured.
His companion tossed his head as if to dodge a meddlesome fly. “Great with hunger—just as ours,” he snorted. “All the mares that conceived this fall past have miscarried, the weather’s been so foul and the forage so slight—her doing. Wych,” he snarled. Then, louder, “Wych!”
He started forward, but the older blue nipped his shoulder to stay him. “List! What if what she says is true, that she carries the late prince’s heir? That would make her more fitting regent than Korr….”
Hearing him, the pied mare started, appalled suddenly at how hunger and grief had dulled her wits. She had never once since discovering her pregnancy considered that as the late prince’s mate and mother of his unborn heir, she herself held a better claim to the regency than Korr. The king therefore could only view her burgeoning belly as a threat, invalidating as it did his young daughter’s claim and making him, as Lell’s regent, into a usurper. For an instant, surprise blinded her.
To what lengths, Tek wondered starkly, would his chosen Companions go to protect both their leader’s—and their own—unfounded authority? All at once, in wild alarm, she realized how rashly she had spoken. Her words, intended to keep these two at bay, were having the opposite effect. Their eyes—particularly those of the younger Companion—had grown even more hostile, and though she was a trained warrior, young and strong, one of the finest, she knew that, big-bellied now and half-starved, she had not the slimmest hope of matching two such strapping opponents. The pair glanced at one another.
“She lies. She’s a wych,” spat the younger, his spots shifting and shuddering as his skin twitched with cold. “If she carries a foal, it can’t be that of our late prince! Yet she’ll claim so to the herd—if we let her. She’ll sway them with her lies and turn them against the king.”
The other appeared dubious, but also alarmed. Despite the dimming light and thickening snow, Tek spotted the thin rim of white circling his eye.
“What are you saying?” he whispered.
The younger Companion set his teeth. “That we settle the matter without troubling the king. She’s clearly guilty of the grey mare’s murder. And she abandoned the late prince to his death by gryphons—that’s as good as murder.”
His eyes upon the pied mare narrowed. He dropped his voice yet lower still.
“We’ll say she resisted, tried to flee when we made to stay her.”
Fury filled Tek. She felt reckless, bold.
“Would you kill me?” she spat, coming forward. She snorted, teeth set, anger throttling her. “Alone on this hillside without witnesses to thwart or even question you? Who would be murderers then?”
The older blue fell back a pace. The spotted Companion champed impatiently, ignoring her.
“Nonsense! None would dare dispute us. We’re the king’s chosen Companions, empowered to act in his name.”
“Then the worst you may do me is banishment,” growled Tek. “You have heard that sentence from the mouth of Korr himself!”
Halted now, the older Companion shifted from hoof to hoof, tail switching one flank, clearly in a quandary. His eyes flicked from his fellow to Tek. Angrily, the younger stal
lion champed him.
“Coward! Are you afraid of a mare?”
“A wych,” he whispered. “A wych, you said.”
“The prince’s mate,” cried Tek. “Mother of his heir.”
“Are you not starving?” the spotted Companion demanded of his comrade. “Tell me how much forage we found today—scarcely a mouthful! Think of the feast we’ll be shown if we do this for the king….”
“Renegade! Lawbreaker,” shouted Tek. “All the herd will know.”
The older stallion sidled, still undecided.
His younger companion hissed, “Korr alone need know the truth of it. He’ll thank us for serving his interests and sparing him need of dealing publicly with the seducer and betrayer of his son. Are you with me? Then hie!”
Nipping his companion hard on the neck, he lunged toward the pied mare, his horn lowered. With a cry, Tek reared to fend him off. She had the advantage of slightly higher ground but knew her belly would make her slow. With a deft twist of the head, she caught and deflected the black skewer aimed squarely at her breast. Hard blows from both forehooves dashed its owner away. He stumbled upon the slippery, icy rock, skidding downhill.
His comrade, the dark blue, still cavaled uncertainly. Tek gauged him with a glance and decided he would not charge. Below, the younger stallion regained his footing and was lumbering up slope toward her again. She lunged, head down, forcing him to dodge—clumsily, because of the slope. Their horns clashed and grated. She grazed him along the neck and leaned into the thrust. Blood spattered. Ferociously, Tek parried his stabs, jabbing and slicing.
How long can I sustain such a pace? she wondered wildly. Summer last, sleek and well-fed, unburdened by pregnancy, I could have sparred all day and never lost my wind.
Already her breaths came painfully short, steaming white clouds on the air. Her assailant grunted and heaved, hard-pressed to hold his footing on the steep hillside, unable to fight his way up slope past her. Twice more her forehooves drove him back. Abruptly, he backed off, eyes blazing. Tek dared not follow, afraid to put his comrade behind her lest, despite his earlier hesitation, he move to attack at last. Panting, the pied mare held her ground.
All at once, the spotted stallion charged again and tried to bull his way past her. Head ducked, shouldering at her, he strove to knock her off her feet. Tek lunged, her forelegs bent, knees pressed against his heavy shoulder. Hind legs locked, he leaned uphill, fighting to keep from overbalancing. Desperately, the pied mare braced her own hocks and shoved with all her might.
She felt him topple. With a scream, he crashed onto his side, rolling and tumbling away down the ice-slicked slope. He managed to right himself—yet still he plunged, limbs folded, unable to slow his hurtling descent. At last, at the distant treeline, he slammed to a halt. Tek watched, full of wrath still, gasping for breath. She hoped all his limbs were broken. She hoped he never rose.
A snort and movement to one side of her made her whirl. The other’s comrade was coming forward. Hastily she scrambled back, readied herself for another clash—then realized he had no wish to engage her, only to peer over the steep slope’s edge to where his fellow now lay, struggling weakly. The older stallion stared a long moment at the writhing form far below before returning his gaze to Tek, his eyes glassy.
“Wych,” he whispered. “You truly are a wych! No mare in foal could overcome a stallion in full prime….”
She stood panting hoarsely, desperate for breath. Had she allowed him even a moment to consider, he surely would have seen how close to spent she was. She doubted herself capable of another such frenzied effort as had allowed her to overcome her first, rashly foolish assailant.
“Would you be the next?” she demanded. The blue stallion flinched. Her voice seemed thunderous. “Make but one move to harm the life I carry, and I’ll pitch you over the side as easily as I did your comrade.”
A faint whinny came from far down the slope, weak and strangled with pain. The blue glanced toward his injured companion, then warily back at Tek. The snowfall had become smotheringly heavy, the wind rising even higher and more fierce. Was it dusk yet? The pied mare shook her head, dizzy with panting. The afternoon had grown so dark she could not tell the hour. The dark blue unicorn glared at her, then with a champ of helpless fury, turned and started picking his way cautiously down the steep, slippery hillside toward the younger stallion below.
“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.
15.
City of Fire
Tai-shan shook himself full awake with a start. The warm enclosure was very still. Shadows slanted steep around him. All the lamps had been doused hours ago. Since resolving the evening before to explore the two-foots’ city of fire, he had little more than dozed the long, slow night through. He leaned to tug with his teeth at the peg fastening the gate of his stall, swung it open with a nudge.
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 ou
tside. 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.
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