A stirring among the daïcha’s retinue made the dark unicorn turn. A male two-foot approached, bearing a steaming wooden hollow. His falseskin bore a decoration of purple and gold. With a brief bow to the daïcha and her followers, the purple-badged male began emptying the hollow’s contents into the stall’s feeding trough.
Moisture came to Tai-shan’s mouth as the savor of steamed grain, chopped fodder, and dark, sweet canesap reached him. His belly rumbled painfully. It had been nearly a day since he had eaten last. The daïcha stood looking on with a puzzled frown. All at once, her nose wrinkled. Hastily, she caught the forelimb of the purple-badged male. With one forepaw, she brought a dollop of the mash to her lips. Her eyes widened. She spoke sharply to the purple-clad two-foot.
He bowed his head respectfully but stood firm, refusing to be ordered off. Tai-shan heard the word chon pass his lips several times. The dark unicorn eyed the provender in his feeding trough suspiciously. Obviously it came from the two-foot ruler—yet no chon’s minion had ever brought his feed before. Did the chon intend this gift as a peace offering? If so, what could the daïcha’s objection be—that the ruler had not come himself to deliver it?
At last, the lady broke off. Angrily, she wrested the wooden hollow from the male and emptied the remainder of its contents into the trough, then thrust the hollow back into the other’s grasp before striding purposefully off, gesturing her companions to remain behind when they made to follow. Tai-shan heard her utter the word chon herself a number of times before she reached the shelter’s egress—as though she meant to seek him out that very moment.
Gingerly, the dark unicorn sampled the fare before him, grinding the water-swelled grain between his teeth, crushing the tart, chewy berries and crunching the nuts. They had used honey, he decided, as well as cane. The mash was delicious. Eagerly, he bent his head to the trough. Swallowing proved painful still, but he was almost too hungry to care. The barest hint of bitterness undershadowed the sweet.
“My lord Moonbrow!”
The unexpected voice of Ryhenna snapped the dark unicorn’s head around. A green-garbed two-foot proceeded down the aisle between stalls, leading the coppery mare on a tether.
“Ryhenna,” the dark unicorn whistled in surprise, able to manage his own, fluting language well enough, though his throat still felt raw. Never before had he seen her—or any da—within this shelter, though obviously it had housed more than a few before his arrival. “What brings you here?”
The young mare tossed her head, crowding up against the gate of the stall. Before her, the two-foots fell back.
“I and my sisters are to be housed with thee now, by the daïcha’s command,” she told him. Behind her, Tai-shan glimpsed her fellows being led into adjacent stalls. “O my lord,” Ryhenna murmured, eyeing the bruises and abrasions about his neck, “tell me what hath befallen thee. The rumors have been wild! Such rushing about among our keepers this morn—stablehands beaten, stalls searched. When thou camest not among us in the yard at noon, I knew not what to think.”
The dark unicorn shook his head and sighed. He had had no inkling what an uproar his absence from the palace would cause.
“I ventured into the city…,” he began.
“Into the city?” Ryhenna exclaimed. “Alone, before dawn? But the gate is barred, my lord.”
Tai-shan cocked his head. “I went over the wall, of course. How else?”
Was such not the way daya departed the palace grounds when no two-foots were about to unbar the gate? The coppery mare simply stared at him.
“Over the wall?” she whispered. “My lord, thou’rt divine—no mortal da might ever hope to clear a wall so high! And to wander alone through the City of Fire….” Her tone mingled admiration and dismay. “How fearless thou art! What wonders thou must have beheld—”
Frowning, the dark unicorn snorted. “Ryhenna,” he asked her, “have none of the daya here ever ventured forth into the city?”
“Never, lord!” the coppery mare exclaimed. “The city is forbidden to the sacred daya.”
Tai-shan gazed at her in astonishment. Beyond her, more of the mares with whom he sported daily in the yard were being led into stalls. They glanced at him shyly, gladly, but said nothing. The daïcha’s followers, even the one holding Ryhenna’s tether, stood off to one side now, murmuring quietly among themselves and watching him. The dark unicorn shook himself. The firewarmed enclosure felt suddenly very close and still.
“Aye, I saw many wonders in the city,” he told the coppery mare. The tightness in his throat was growing painful once more. “I met a peculiar kind of da, Ryhenna. One that called itself a gelding. It told me two-foots maimed it as a foal. I saw a firescar upon its flank and welts from blows across its back. I saw other daya cursed and beaten, encumbered to heavy loads by webbings of vine.”
The coppery mare nodded, shrugged. “To haul and carry for our keepers—such is the gelded commoners’ lot. Ours is a lighter service: sacred mares for brood and stallions for stud.”
The dark unicorn blinked. “Brood?” he echoed. “Stud?” He had heard the odd words somewhere before.
Ryhenna nickered. “The taking of mates and getting of young,” she laughed, “according to our keepers’ pleasure.”
Tai-shan stared at her, open-mouthed. “Are you saying the two-foots choose your mates for you?”
“Of course,” the coppery mare replied. “Did we choose one another? Nay, for what mare hath wisdom enough to choose her stud, nor any stallion his mares? Our keepers choose.”
“How do they dare?” the dark unicorn burst out hoarsely. “What gives them the right?”
Ryhenna drew back from him, surprised. “They have every right, my lord,” she replied. “Our lives belong to them. The keepers own us, Moonbrow.”
The dark unicorn shook his head, unable to believe his ears. His limbs had begun to feel strangely heavy and numb. An unpleasant warmth stole through him. The cloying taste of sweetmeal clung sticky to his mouth. He shook himself. The coppery mare fidgeted.
“What are you saying?” Tai-shan demanded of her. “Are the daya prisoners here? Do the two-foots hold you against your will?”
“Our will?” Ryhenna exclaimed. “Lord, we have no will. All daya must bow to the will of Dai’chon.”
“What is this…Dai’chon?” the dark unicorn began. He felt flushed suddenly, and very thirsty. The coppery mare seemed not to have heard him. Her voice grew distant.
“Dai’chon directeth us to serve our masters. Thus hath it been for time out of mind. We know no life other than this.”
Tai-shan turned toward the hollow of water that always hung filled and fresh beside the feeding trough in one corner of his stall. The scent of sweetmeal lingered in his nostrils, sickeningly sweet. The water in the hollow looked cool and inviting. Moving toward it, he stumbled. His own clumsiness amazed him.
“The keepers provide for our every need,” Ryhenna was saying. “They feed, house, and protect us….”
“Choose your mates for you,” the dark unicorn muttered. “Trap you with walls, bind you to carts. Beat, brand, and geld you…”
“Nay! Not us, Moonbrow,” Ryhenna protested. “Only commoners suffer so, and what do they matter? We sacred daya never haul or carry.”
With an effort, Tai-shan turned to study her. She seemed perfectly in earnest, her amber eyes upon him clear and troubled. Behind her, her fellows milled whickering in their stalls, ears pricked. The dark unicorn staggered. The daïcha’s followers eyed him keenly.
“How then, Ryhenna, if you do no work,” Tai-shan mumbled, his lips sluggish, tongue unaccountably thick, “do the sacred daya…serve their masters?” He had trouble completing the thought. “What do you…give the two-foots, in return for your keep?”
He grew dizzy. His vision blurred. Ryhenna seemed no more than a chestnut shadow. His legs collapsed under him, settling him heavily to the soft straw bedding of his stall. The depth of his abrupt fatigue astonished him. The bittersweet mash lay in
his belly, weighty as a stone. The daïcha’s followers murmured gloomily. Soft, puzzled cries came from Ryhenna’s sisters. The coppery mare leaned toward him over the gate of his stall.
“We give up our lives for our keepers, Moonbrow.” Her words were the last he heard before darkness muffled all. “We die for them.”
18.
Magicker
Morning was half gone, bitterly cold, the sky above grey overcast. Not a breath of wind stirred. Not a feather of snow fell. The blizzard had blown itself out hours ago. Tek floundered through chest-high drifts. Wild, rolling hills beyond the Vale surrounded her. She had lost track of Dagg sometime the night before. Her limbs, no longer weightless, swung woodenly. The unborn in her belly lay motionless, still as the frozen air.
Keep going! she told herself, half rearing to shoulder through the next great swell of snow.
She must find her mother, Jah-lila, the Red Mare, soon, or she was lost. Wolves had been trailing her since daybreak. At first, the ghostleaf singing in her blood, she had easily outrun them. Now, the herb long spent, she staggered, hooves dense as meteorstone, near the end of her strength. Her pursuers’ cries floated eerily above the rolling meadow: eager yips interspersed with long, trailing notes. They were nearer now, much nearer than before. Trees marked a canyon many paces ahead of her. The pied mare struggled toward it.
Casting over one shoulder, Tek glimpsed the first of the pack. A second and then a third burst from the scrub into open meadow behind. They bounded through the deep snow, joyous harks rising into wails. Frantically, Tek hurled herself against the drifts, fighting toward the forested cliffside, but her strength was gone. She stumbled, dragged herself up, collapsed again. She realized she would never reach the trees.
A figure burst from the canyon ahead of her: a deep cherry color as brilliant as mallow-flower against the trackless snow. Too large for a wolf, the red figure plunged toward her, black mane flying, traversing the meadow with a will. Dazed, staring, the pied mare strayed to a stop.
“Keep coming!” the other cried.
Tek plowed on toward the tree-sheltered canyon. The other unicorn charged past her, straight at the wolves. Tek swung around, astonished.
“Go!” the other ordered.
The pied mare plunged on. The wolves behind were howling, in full cry now. Did the Red Mare mean to meet them all? Pausing as she reached the shelter of the cliffs, Tek saw her dam pitch to a halt beside a pile of drifted snow. Twin branches rose from it, stark and leafless against the whiteness of the field. Half a dozen similar mounds clustered nearby. Tek herself had wandered through the midst of them only moments before. Furiously, the Red Mare began to dig.
Tek stared, baffled. The coming wolves bayed. Every few moments, the Red Mare lifted her gaze to gauge the distance between herself and the closing pack. All at once, Tek realized that what the other excavated was not a snowdrift at all but the carcass of a great deer, twin antlers rising like leafless branches from the snow. Others of his kind lay all around—a whole herd stranded, frozen. They could not have lain winterkilled long. The last flurries of the dying blizzard had barely covered them.
The Red Mare scraped and pawed at the snowbound stag. The wolves were very near. Jah-lila leapt away just as the leading three reached her. Snapping and snarling, two fell upon the carcass. Only the foremost bothered to pursue the dark red unicorn even a few strides. Jah-lila pivoted and lunged, horn aimed. The wolf dodged, turning, loped back to the carcass as the last of her packmates arrived. They fell ravenously upon it, tearing the half-frozen flesh to pieces, which they fought over.
Thus would they have done to me, given the chance, the pied mare thought, heart beating like a bird inside her ribs. Or the king’s wolves.
Her dam plunged toward her across the meadow. Drawing even with Tek at the canyon’s mouth, she tossed her head, motioning the younger mare to follow.
“Ho, daughter! Well met,” she cried. “Come. My grotto lies not far above. Sooth, what a canny filly I bore, to recall the way home after all these years!”
Limbs tottering, Tek fell in behind Jah-lila, already climbing the steep hillside through the dark and barren trees.
The cave was deliciously warm. The narrow entryway turned back upon itself, kept out the wind and snow. Sunlight, too, faltered—but the grotto was not dark, for the upper walls and ceiling of the interior were covered with tier upon tier of fan shaped lichens and mushrooms. They glowed in luminous blues and reds, soft yellows, pale mauves—here and there a faint, brassy green. They emitted warmth as well as light. Shivering, Tek stared. She had forgotten the ghostlight of her mother’s grotto.
A huge heap of fragrant, dried grass occupied half the cave. The pied mare blinked, dumbstruck. How had such a vast store found its way here? The most any unicorn might carry was a mouthful at a time. Surely the grotto contained enough fodder for a dozen unicorns to feast the winter through without ever needing to venture outside for forage. How had Jah-lila acquired it all?
Exhausted, Tek shook her head. More than a day and a night had passed since she had last known food or sleep. She heard Jah-lila stamping in the entryway, shaking the snow from her pelt. A moment later, the Red Mare rounded the turn. In smaller alcoves adjoining the grotto’s grass-filled main chamber other provender lay: bark and berries, spruce boughs, roots, seedpods, and nuts. Their tang made the pied mare’s knotted stomach burn. “Lie down, my child,” her dam bade her.
Tek’s legs buckled like shafts of old, dead wood. Her cold-locked muscles ached in the musty warmth of the cave. She had forgotten to shake off in the entryway, felt the snow on her beginning to melt. Lying down beside her, her dam passed a warm, rough tongue over Tek’s shaggy coat, stroking her dry.
The pied mare closed her eyes. Her mother had changed little in the years since Tek had last seen her—coat still a brilliant mallow red such as no other unicorn possessed. Much about her mother set her apart, the healer’s daughter mused. Jah-lila’s black mane stood upright along her neck instead of falling silky to one side. Long, silken strands sprouted the whole length of her tail, not just at the end. Hers were a beardless chin, untasseled ears, and fetlocks unfringed with feathery down.
But most of all, Jah-lila’s black hooves set her apart. They were oddly round: solid and uncloven, not like Tek’s own split hooves—not like the divided hooves of other unicorns. It was those hooves Tek remembered best from her fillyhood. She had never realized how unique they were until she had followed her mother to the Vale and first seen the cloven heels and bearded chins, tasseled ears, fly-whisk tails, and fringed fetlocks of others of the herd.
Tek stirred, uneasy. Why had the Red Mare done so? Why abandoned her weanling to Teki’s care and returned to the solitude beyond the Vale? Tek tensed, remembering how as a tiny filly little older than Lell, she had overheard the vicious whispers of her Vale-dwelling fellows, hissing that Jah-lila was not and could never be a true unicorn, since she had not been born among the herd, but in some far, unimaginable place. Red Mare. Renegade. Magicker. Tek’s eyes came open with a start.
“Eat,” Jah-lila instructed, nudging a heap of sweet-smelling fodder toward her.
Eagerly, Tek champed at the withered grass. Unpalatably dry at first, it soon grew sweet in her mouth, more savory than rueberries, sweeter even than beeswax and honey. The trickling of water nearby reminded her that her mother’s grotto housed a spring. Thirst overpowered her. With an effort, she rose and followed the sound. The tiny stream at the back of the cave tasted warm compared to the frigid snow outside. In summer, she knew, it would have tasted cool. She drank deep.
“Rest, child,” her mother murmured as Tek returned. “You need rest badly now—but do not sleep. You must not sleep until certain herbs for which I have sent arrive.”
Sent? Tek scarcely knew what her mother could mean. Had the Red Mare acolytes, as her father Teki now had? All the Vale—herself included—had long believed Jah-lila lived alone, without companions.
“I,” Tek sta
rted, stopped. Despite herself, her eyelids drooped. Sleep dragged at her. Her womb felt lifeless, her thoughts a blur. “Jan is dead,” she managed. “Gryphons killed him. We pledged to one another at courting time….”
“Peace,” her mother soothed. “My dreams have already told me. I know that you are in foal to Jan and that the king runs mad for grief. I know that Sa, who sheltered you, is dead.”
Tek stared at her, eyes wide suddenly. In truth, her dam’s powers must be greater than she had guessed. The magicker smiled.
“Rest easy. Last night’s blizzard has sealed the Vale. None of Korr’s minions may pursue you now till spring.”
Tek felt a surge of relief. A great heaviness had settled on her. Fatigue washed over her in waves. She wanted only to sleep. A sudden smarting brought her out of her doze with a jolt. After a moment’s confusion, she realized the Red Mare had nipped her. “Forgive me,” the other said firmly, “but I am in deadly earnest. You must not sleep until the healing herbs arrive. Meanwhile, my dreams have brought me other news which may serve to keep you awake: they tell me that at the grey mare’s funeral this day, Korr means to declare himself the Firebringer.”
Tek turned to stare at her. “Firebringer?” she exclaimed, her grogginess fading for the moment. “Alma’s chosen prophet?”
“Aye, Korr will usurp his son in that office as well—though the marks upon his brow and heel be only smears of white lime.”
Despair swept over Tek. What did any of it matter anymore?
“Let him call himself the Firebringer if he will,” she murmured dully. “Who shall contest him—Jan? Dead. Sa, dead. Dagg, lost. I and my unborn, forever banished.”
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