“Sip again, Firebrand,” she urged. “One last dragonsup to protect you from your own fire.”
Tek’s mate bent his muzzle to the dragon’s brow. The pied mare noticed for the first time the shallow depression, perfectly round, like a little Mirror of the Moon. Dark waters swirled there. She saw Jan drink.
“My thanks to you, Dark Moon,” said Wyzásukitán, her white breath smoking, “for rousing me from my long sleep and guiding me here. Dance fire now through all the stinging wyverns’ dens, that none may ever return to trouble you. Fare well.”
Lifting her whiskered head, she scanned the unicorns. Around her, Tek saw her new-met, shaggy allies all stood with heads bowed. The dragon queen smiled.
“And fare well to you, proud Scouts of Halla, who lately dwelt among my kind. My sisters and I will miss your beautiful singing. We must find us other songs to haunt our dreams.”
Her ruby eyes found Jan again.
“Firebrand, I take my leave. May the light of Her of the Thousand Jeweled Eyes illumine you.”
Pulling herself upright into a crouch, the vast dragon sprang skyward. Her breath flared out in mighty bursts of flame, coruscating in the air, which hung thick and dark, full of particles. She coursed upward, as though to overleap the strange black cloud. Lynex’s wails and cries receded. The darkness swallowed them. The great belling notes of the dragon’s voice shot away to the northeast, back toward the Smoking Hills.
Tek stirred, saw Jan ramping, striking his heels and his horn to the ground. Sparks flew up, showering, setting the bone-dry wisps of grass ablaze. He dashed for the largest entrance to the wyverns’ dens, the one through which Lynex and his bodyguards had emerged. A swarm of burning stars swirled in the wake of Alma’s Firebringer as he disappeared into the cave.
Tek heard a roar, as of some resinous substance kindling all in a flash. Fire spouted from the mouth of the wyverns’ dens, accompanied by roiling smoke. Tek saw smoke and flame begin to pour from other openings. Within moments, every lightwell in the porous limestone blazed with preternatural light. Crashes and rumbles, as of tunnels collapsing or bursting. The battlefield rocked. Tek heard those wyverns who yet remained screaming in fear.
“Let them go! Let them go,” the pied mare shouted as the white wyrms slithered like stormwater toward the Plain. “Let the dogs and grass pards finish them!”
Her own folk milled, but held their ground. The shelves trembled and jarred. Pain in her side bit deep.
“That was Jan!” she heard Dagg beside her exclaim. “Jan, in the hand of the dragon queen.”
“The holy Firebrand,” Oro beside him whispered.
The dappled warrior turned to the shaggy stranger. “He’s gone down into the wyrms’ dens and set them alight.”
Dazed, Dagg took a step in that direction, as though he half meant to go after his friend. The red mare Jah-lila called, “Hold. We cannot follow.”
A dark grey ash began to fall. Tek realized for the first time that the mysterious black cloud was descending, enveloping them. It was made of cinders, tiny particles of soot. The stuff felt warm and gritty, feathery at first; then heavier and heavier it fell. It caked her ears and mane and the lashes of her eyes, coated her pelt and the pelts of her fellows. It covered the earth upon which they stood. Beside her she heard Teki the healer breathe,
“Álm’harat spare us. It is the end of the world.”
25.
The Son of Summer Stars
Jan’s hooves sparked against the flammable crystal lining the wyverns’ dens. As he galloped deeper through the twisting warrens, everywhere his heels touched was set alight. The fire ran after him through the caves, casting a blinding glare and billowing heat which did not trouble him, any more than had the airless cold above the ashcloud or the fever of the molten firelake. A tireless velocity carried him through all the length and breadth of the wyverns’ dens, always faster than the fires he danced. Its flaring brilliance illumined his course.
He galloped through caverns and chambers, needing no guide. Alma showed him ever and always the way. All the dens through which he passed stood empty. He became aware presently that they were collapsing behind him, the superheated tunnels cracking and shattering, giving way in a series of terrible concussions. This would go on for a long time, he knew. Even after he departed these grottoes, they would burn for days.
The glory of Alma sang in his blood. Fire like the sun gusted beneath his heels. The moon upon his brow gleamed. He felt unbounded by physical body, unencumbered by space and time, keenly aware that before the new could be born, the old must be scoured away. He felt the agent of both that imminent demise and the coming rebirth, at one with all things, with Alma. It seemed the fire he danced was the great Fire, the One Dance that circled the world and the stars, the Cycle of All Things.
When at last his exultation waned, he understood that the dragonsup was ebbing, his divinity passing. Mortality returned. Time to make his way aboveground. He veered upward. As he emerged from the burning maze, air’s coolness washed like a long drink of water against his skin. In the darkness of falling ash, he could not tell if it were day or night.
A dim, round orb that might have been either moon or sun gleamed wanly overhead. Canted off to one side, it threw only the slenderest of light. Ash lay thick upon everything, changing the look of the land, painting it grey ghostly as the realm of haunts. He found he was not lost, knew himself to be at the southernmost edge of the wyvern shelves, where they intercepted the Plain.
The Mare’s Back, too, lay deep in cindersnow. He shook himself, dislodging a soft cloud of the fine, feathery ash from his pelt. Moments later, it began to coat him again. He turned northward, toward the Hallow Hills and the cliff beneath the milkwood groves where the heart of the battle had raged, certain that soon or late, if he followed this course, he would rejoin Tek.
Barely awake, Lell lay listening to the soft lap of the water supporting her. The world around her stood dark and very still. Ash was falling onto her half-closed eye. It piled in a downy heap on her eyelashes. She blinked, stirring. The water felt deliciously cool after the terrible sensation of burning that had troubled her dreams. She rolled, floundering, and found herself in shallows. Her folded limbs touched bottom, her knees and hocks in contact with coarse, shifting sand.
“Get up,” she heard Aiony saying faintly, but quite distinctly, from somewhere nearby.
Dully, the amber filly struggled to untangle her disobedient limbs. A moment later, she was able to stand. The scent of milkwood blooms wafted all around her, their aroma heavy and all-pervading. She felt the tingle of the milkwood buds she had eaten, and the resinous smoke she had inhaled, suffusing her blood.
“Pull Illishar out of the water,” Dhattar’s soft voice chimed. “The moon’s mere has seen to his burns, just as it did yours—but he’s not awake yet, and it’s time he came out.”
Lell stood trembling, feeling the soft weight of ashfall. It clung damply to her pelt. There was no shaking it off. So thick were the cinders sifting out of the sky that the world seemed dark as twilight. Was that the moon shining above her, or the sun? She saw Dhattar and Aiony standing at the edge of the circular mere. The pure pallor of the white foal’s pelt and the silver of Aiony’s pied coloring seemed subtly, inexplicably, to glow.
“Where am I?” Lell muttered thickly, snorting to get the ash-mud from her nostrils.
“The Mirror of the Moon,” Aiony replied, her voice strangely far-sounding, “where Illishar bore you to douse the flames. He knows naught of its healing powers, but he knew it was water, the closest to be found.”
“Illishar!” Lell gasped, fully awake now, her heart giving a sharp, silent thump. “Where…?”
“Behind you,” Dhattar replied.
Lell wheeled unsteadily, spied the gryphon tercel floating half submerged in the clear surface of the mere, which was littered with milkwood flowers, she saw. The ashfall did not seem to affect the pool’s clarity. Instead, inexplicably, the cinders appear
ed to vanish upon contact with the waters, which remained crystal clear, the mere’s sandy bottom still snowy white, unsmirched. Its whiteness glowed almost as distinctly as Dhattar and Aiony.
“Pull him out,” Dhattar was telling her.
Lell waded to the unconscious wingcat, bent to grasp one splayed, waterlogged wing in her teeth. She backed toward shore. He drifted amazingly easily, supported by the mere. She managed to drag his head, neck, and most of his shoulders onto the shore. He twitched, sputtered, but did not wake. A bright silvery substance spattered his throat and chest. It coated most of his pelt and much of one wing. Curious, Lell bent to sniff. The fur and feathers there smelled odorless and new.
“What is it?” she stammered.
“The bright spots?” Aiony asked.
“Where the fire burned him and the mere healed him,” Dhattar replied.
“Healed you as well,” Aiony continued.
Lell glanced down at herself. She, too, was covered with patches of pale new hair. She stared at it.
“Burned?” she murmured, mystified. It had been a dream.
“The mere saved you both,” Aiony replied, earnestly, distantly.
“Illishar’s scorched pinions and pelt have come back silver. Your own burnt hair has sprouted gold.”
Lell turned to stare at the twin filly and foal. They stood quietly, only a few paces distant, still glowing softly, oddly in the dim ashfall. Lell shook herself, felt the ash upon her pelt dislodge. None, she realized suddenly, was settling on either Dhattar or Aiony. It was falling through them.
“The ash…,” she exclaimed.
They glanced at one another. “It hasn’t reached us yet,” Aiony said.
“How are you come here?” Lell whispered, too stunned to think clearly.
“We’re on the Plain,” Dhattar replied, “with the Plainsdwellers and the rest. We’re three days’ journey from you still. The ash won’t reach us for hours yet.”
Lell could not take her eyes from them. Their translucent brightness fascinated her. “But where—how…?”
Aiony shrugged. “We stand by an oasis pool, gazing into it.
We see you and Illishar, the Mirror of the Moon.”
“We watched the battle thus, earlier,” Dhattar went on. “We only called you now to wake you, urge you to come out. It was time, and you were very deep asleep.”
“The battle,” Lell gasped, casting about her suddenly. “How goes the battle?”
“Peace,” Dhattar answered. “It’s won. Wyverns routed and Lynex borne away. Jan is returned. All’s well.”
Her mind a tangle, Lell half turned, but Aiony called, “List. You need not go down to them so soon. Rest. Illishar will want you by him when he wakes. Ample time betides. The Hills are won, the old age slain, a new age about to be born. Sleep. Regain your strength.”
Her voice faded, retreating further and further as she spoke. Her image and that of Dhattar grew thin, finally vanishing altogether. Only ashfall drifted where the pair had stood. The amber filly felt her trembling limbs give way. How foolish to think she could have taken another step. Of course she must stay with Illishar, must tell him everything when he woke.
“Illishar,” she murmured, bending over him. The slumbering gryphon stirred. Soft growling or purring sounded deep in his throat, but his eyes remained shut, limbs loose, his breathing steady. Her own eyes slid closed. She sank into sleep with one cheek pressed against his feathery breast.
The end of the world lasted three days’ time. For all that while, the grey ash fell, gloaming the sun to a pitiful light weaker than the moon and stealing all warmth, so the days were cool and the nights chill dark. Cinders covered all the Hallow Hills and the wyvern shelves and the Plain beyond as far as any eye could see. And by the close of that period, these things had been achieved: Jan emerged from the wyverns’ dens; Lell and Illishar awoke and descended from the moonpool to rejoin their folk; Ses gathered her filly to her with joyous cries, then bowed in gratitude before her gryphon rescuer.
Jan found his mate, and told her all—in confidence, away from others’ ears. Still ignorant, his kith and folk and shoulder-friends embraced him, full of marvel and delight. He promised to give them the tale of his year’s adventure as soon as the herd could be reunited and cinderfall had ceased. Meanwhile, the gloomy grit sifted down and down, drabbing all hues, making ghostly the world. Most of the slain lay beneath the milkwood cliffs, heaped upon the wyvern shelves where fighting had been fiercest. Those limestone hollows collapsed in a grinding roar of smothering fire at close of the second day, consuming their dead. Other wyrmsmeat Jan and Tek ordered brought to the same spot to be burned. The unicorn dead they carried to the ancient burial cliffs and laid out beneath the sky.
By afternoon of the third day, the ashfall began to thin. As evening neared, the red mare Jah-lila stood upon a rise overlooking the Plain and called in a storm. All night fell the warm, hard rain. Sun rose undimmed on the following morning, the first real dawn since the ending of the world. The Scouts of Halla gazed upon their new homeland, admiring its splendor at the break of day. Then they departed, pledging to return ere summer’s end with their elders and young, whom the red dragons had secreted safe away during the late upheaval in the Smoking Hills. Oro bowed low to both Tek and Jan, then turned and chanted to his band, singing them into single file across the green and rolling Plain.
The Mare’s Back, too, had been washed clean by recent rain, free of the haunt-grey dust which had shrouded it. Calydor also took his leave, along with Tek’s runners, bearing news of the warhost’s victory and summoning those of the herd awaiting at oasis. On the twelfth day after the battle which had marked the close of the Era of Exile and begun the Age of the Firebringer, the herd’s colts and fillies, suckling mares and their foals, ancient elders and the halt of limb entered at last into the Hallow Hills, lush with verdant foliage and summer grass.
Jan and Tek greeted their twins, and Ryhenna and Dagg their tiny son with relief and joy. The Plainsdwellers, to no one’s surprise, evidenced little interest in the herd’s newly won lands. Jan suspected they now regarded the Hallow Hills as both battlesite and gravelands, sacred and terrible, and not to be trespassed lightly. Those who ventured the Hills escorting new arrivals took their leave hastily, almost precipitously. Tek and Jan spoke their thanks and let them go. Calydor had not been among them. His absence puzzled and saddened Jan. But he had long since learned how strange were the ways of the Free People. They came and went capriciously, often as not without farewells.
Jan called the herd together on the fourteenth day, moondark, the time of portents and miracles. On the open meadow below the milkwood cliffs that housed the sacred mere, he sang them the lay of his journey through Pan Woods and across the Mare’s Back in pursuit of Korr. He sang freely, in the manner of the Plain, of his travels with Calydor, his overtaking the mad king. His voice was strong and sure and omitted nothing, not dying Korr’s revelation of Tek’s parentage, not his own lost wandering across the Salt Barrens, not his encounter with Oro in the Smoking Hills, nor his sojourn below ground with the Scouts of Halla, nor his long rumination with Wyzásukitán.
Nothing he told his folk was by that time news to Tek or his closest kith. He had told them all in private, days before, starting with his mate. He had watched her hark to his news with tangled emotions: relief to discover at last her unknown sire, horror to find him to be Korr. And she had answered nothing, neither flying at Jan nor cursing, nor weeping, nor fleeing, nor falling into frozen gloom, nor any of the other wild responses he had dreaded. Instead, she had only stood beside him and nuzzled him, till he had cried out in helpless exasperation,
“And knowing this, what will you do?”
“I will think on it,” she had told him quietly. “Come, love, let us bury our dead.”
So they had done, while the cinders fell, till the rain of the midwife washed clean a world newly born of ashes and dust. Now Jan told the rest of his folk as well. Their reaction was st
unned silence. Yet none cried out in condemnation against him or Tek. Any outrage was for Korr, and he was dead. Rather, his people heard Jan to the end. Doing so, he realized, because they loved him for his deeds alone. Prince or Firebringer mattered not.
Finishing his tale, Jan turned to me, Jah-lila, to verify my daughter’s parentage. I did so, affirming that I had indeed loved the black prince of unicorns in his youth, a year before he had taken the pale mare Ses as mate. I had encountered him upon the Plain shortly after my escape from captors far to the south. Not yet then a unicorn, I had known naught of unicorn ways. Korr had pledged himself to me, but later broke the vow, deserting me upon the Plain and returning to his folk, sure I would be unable to follow him.
But follow I did, already in foal, and found him in his Vale. He pretended not to know me, to mistake me for a Renegade. I saw that should I attempt to lay a claim on him, he would declare me outlaw and cast me from the herd. So I called Teki, who sheltered me, my mate. In exchange for my silence, Korr allowed me to remain. I pledged never to reveal my knowledge of him until he himself had spoken. Still the prince’s mistrust and fear begrudged me any peace. I left the Vale, exiling myself. When my daughter was weaned, I brought her from the wilderness and left her in Teki’s care, that she might be reared within the herd and perhaps one day reclaim her birthright.
Jan bowed to me as I concluded, then turned once more to address his folk:
“A year ago, I knew nothing of these things. Until his dying words, I was ignorant of Korr’s deception. When I succeeded him as prince, I did so in good faith, believing myself to be his heir. But I am not. Tek is the late king’s firstborn. It is she who must reign now in his stead. Though I have been your prince, I cannot become your king. I call upon the Council to proclaim Tek queen. Would that you follow her as loyally as you have followed me.”
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