Onlookers shifted, rumbling, trying to push past the purple-plumes’ pointed staves as the chon grasped the old female’s falseskin and dragged her upright. She wailed and cowered. Impatiently, he shook her, as though demanding some reply. At her timid shriek, he flung her to the pavement once more. Outrage flared in the dark unicorn’s breast. Did these two-foots bear no respect for their elders? Was their leader allowed to abuse his people so?
“Tash! Apnor!” No, enough, he cried. “Homat!” Stop.
But the chon did not so much as turn his head. Once more, Tai-shan knew, the tumult of the milling, agitated throng had drowned out his voice. Desperately, he clattered across the cobbles to stand between the angry chon and the cowering firesmith. Another cheer rose from the crowd.
“Desist, I beg you,” the dark unicorn exclaimed. “How has this old one offended you?”
Eyes wide, the two-foot ruler fell back before Tai-shan — and the dark unicorn realized he had spoken in his own tongue, not the chon’s. Clearly, the other could not understand his words. Behind Tai-shan, the aged female wailed and wrung her forepaws. Gently, the dark unicorn bent to touch the old firesmith, hoping to reassure her — but with a shriek, she shrank away, lurched to her feet and, ducking under a purple-plume’s staff, disappeared into the crowd. More cheering. The astonished look upon the face of the chon changed rapidly to one of fury. His purple-plumes leaned against the surging, cheering throng, which had begun to chant alternately “Tai-shan!” and “Dai’chon!”
The chon roared orders, and purple-plumes dashed forward to surround the dark unicorn, their pointed staves braced and ready. Tai-shan wheeled to stare at them as shrieks of alarm and angry shouts rose from the crowd.
“Tash! ’Omat!” the dark unicorn shouted at the chon through the deafening noise. “Call off your minions. I mean you no harm....”
Tai-shan’s skin twitched as something brushed his near flank. A similar sensation slithered about his throat. Vines! At the chon’s command, the purple-plumes were casting vines to ensnare him. With a whinny of disbelief, the dark unicorn reared. He kicked desperately at the two-foot holding the vine that encircled his hind heel. The kick knocked the other to the ground. The vine slackened. Tai-shan danced, and the cruel pressure against his pastern eased.
All at once, his head was jerked violently around. Three purple-plumes gripped the free end of the vine about his neck, using their combined weight to anchor him while another pair flung a second vine about his throat. It tightened suddenly, throttling him. Choking, unable to breathe, the dark unicorn lunged at the three purple-plumes nearest him. Two dropped their vine and managed to dodge, but the third, slower than his fellows, suffered a slash across the ribs. With a yell, he sprinted away, clutching his bleeding side.
Tai-shan shook his head vigorously, trying to slacken the remaining vine. He needed air! The purple-plumed pair held on, hauling on the vine to keep it taut. The dark unicorn ducked and lunged at them. They dodged. Others darted near and tossed another noose. Tai-shan reared, flailing, to keep them back. His limbs were growing numb. Coming down on all fours again, he staggered.
The crowd heaved, thundering wildly. The dark unicorn saw, but could not hear, the chon bellowing orders to his minions. One of the purple-plumes strode toward Tai-shan with forelimb cocked, his sharp-tipped staff held level with his ear. Shouts and shrill cries from the crowd all around. The dark unicorn realized dimly that the chon’s advancing minion meant to hurl the pointed staff at him. Black spots wandered across his vision. Weakly, he shied as the purple-plume’s forelimb tensed.
A shout from across the square halted the two-foot in his tracks. Whirling, he lowered his staff. The chon and the others also turned. The crowd began to stamp and cheer. Tai-shan spun unsteadily to behold the daïcha hastening down the cleared path, flanked by her own, smaller company of green-plumes. Though they bore no staves, slung from the middle of each dangled a flattened skewer.
For a sickening moment, the dark unicorn thought the two armed groups would clash — but then the daïcha signaled her own followers to a halt while she hastened on alone, her expression one of outrage and fear. Straining for breath, Tai-shan stumbled toward her drunkenly. The throng was ranting, screaming now, the chon continued to roar. The dark unicorn felt his limbs buckle, his knees strike the paving stones as the daïcha wrenched the still-taut vine from the purple-plumes’ grasp.
As from a great distance, Tai-shan heard her frantic cries, felt her nimble digits clawing at the vines cutting into his throat. He tried to speak, but could get no air. The world had grown very still and dark. All around him, the frenzied noise of the crowd diminished to a whisper. “Dai’chon! Tai-shan!” were the last sounds he heard.
16
Swift-Running
Dusk had fallen by the time she reached the Vale. The deep snow and heavy cloud-cover, which had seemed so dark by day, now faintly glowed in a shadowy half-light that was brighter than true night: enough to find her way by, barely. Wind and snow continued to blow. Heaving, half-frozen, Tek stumbled into her father’s cave, nearly trampling a grey roan filly lounging just within the narrow entryway. The healer himself lay at the back of the crowded little cave, surrounded by his other acolytes, half a dozen fillies and foals well past weaning but too young yet to be called half-grown. The young ones looked up in surprise as the black-and-white stallion broke off the lay he had been reciting. Tek recognized it from even such a brief snatch: “The Mare of the World.”
“Daughter,” he exclaimed. “Is someone ill? Wind outside will be a blizzard soon.”
The pied mare shook her head. The sudden warmth of the grotto’s small, close space unbalanced her. She swayed where she stood.
“Sa is dead,” she panted. “Fell ... on the slopes. I found her. Two of the king’s Companions say I murdered her.”
Teki pitched to his hooves. His acolytes scattered. The pied mare sidled in agitation.
“They know I am in foal.”
The healer’s eyes widened. “Hist,” he said over his shoulder to one of the fillies, “keep watch and let me know at once if you see king’s Companions or any other.”
Tek’s eyes sought his, searching his face as he came forward to stand breast to breast with her. His nearness warmed and steadied her.
“Now tell me, daughter,” he continued, “did any see you come into the cave?”
The pied mare shook her head.
“Good. Snowdrift will soon cover your tracks.”
Champing, the healer ducked his head, deep in thought. Expressions curious and alert, five of his acolytes stood huddled to one side: three reds and two blues, the grey once more posted at the entryway.
“Mark you,” he instructed them all. “What now befalls must remain our secret. Breathe no word of it, not to your sires and dams, not to anyone. We never saw Tek this night. She did not come here. You understand?”
Solemnly, the acolytes nodded. Standing so near him, Tek noted all at once how small the healer was. More slight than most unicorns, Teki’s value to the herd had always lain in his knowledge of herbcraft and lore rather than prowess in battle. What the pied mare had not fully realized before now was that she stood taller at the shoulder than he. Being longer both of rib and shank, her robust, lank-limbed frame was of altogether a different sort than his.
How odd, she mused, her thoughts careening wildly. Unicorn colts almost always resembled their sires more than their dams, not only in the color of their coats, but in size and build as well. Yet, though pied like the healer, her colors did not precisely match his, being rose and black, not white and black. And though they had always gotten on famously from the day her dam had left her in the healer’s care, their temperaments, too, were dissimilar : Tek’s passionate and bold, Teki’s contemplative. Indeed, it struck her now that were a stranger to view them at this moment, side to side, surely that one would never guess them to be scion and sire.
Strange, she mulled. I never noticed this before.
&nbs
p; “You must flee, daughter,” Teki was saying, glancing up. “Nowhere in the Vale is safe for you now. And this is the first place the king’s wolves will come sniffing when they find Sa’s grotto empty.”
The pied mare felt her skin grow cold. Teki called a name, and the grey filly at the entryway pricked her ears.
“Go at once to the cave of Leerah and Tas. Fetch their son here as quick as may be. But mark you!” he called as the filly wheeled. “Do not say why I need him. Be certain Leerah and Tas know nothing of Tek’s presence here. Though Dagg is our ally, his sire and dam remain loyal to the king. Do you heed?”
Hastily, the filly nodded and dashed off. A blue foal stepped to take her place at the entryway. Gravely, the healer shook his head.
“Flee?” Tek pressed him. “Father, where am I to go? The king’s wolves will hunt me down even on the far side of the Vale. If I hide on the shelterless outer slopes, I will freeze. The Pan Woods beyond are full of vicious, hungry goatlings, and the Great Grass Plain too distant to even hope for....”
Her breath ran out, her agitation rising. The Vale was her home, the children-of-the-moon her people. She could never live content in the solitude beyond the Vale as her mother did — beyond the reach of the Ring of Law as the Plainsdwellers did. If she fled now, she would be declared a renegade and barred forever from return. Jan’s heir could never inherit.
“Come, daughter.” The healer turned and herded his acolyte away from the rear of the cave. “Eat of this herb. It will fortify you against exertion and the cold.”
Tek stared at the little clump of withered leaves drying on the low ledge bordering the grotto’s wall, each three-lobed leaf nipped to a spiky point. The musky, bitter scent wrinkled her nose. Her skin grew taut, for she recognized the grey-green clump: an herb so perilous that even her father — for all his healer’s skill — had always eschewed it. Though it temporarily masked hunger and numbed one to cold, its aftereffects were ravenousness and utter exhaustion.
Sometimes those who ate of it fell into such deep slumber they could not be roused. Others, tasting repeatedly of the herb, grew stark-eyed and wild, spooked by every bird and leaf, their ribs standing out like the bones of dream-haunts. Soon, even if they wished to renounce the herb, an irresistible craving compelled them to seek it out and devour it again and yet again. Eyeing the shriveled leaves, the pied mare shuddered.
“Would you poison both me and my unborn?” she whispered.
“List, daughter,” the healer returned. “No more than two mouthfuls, and only that small sup because we are desperate.”
He snorted unhappily, and the chill in Tek’s breast eased to realize that he regarded her sampling the herb with as little relish as did she.
“Your dam, Jah-lila, brought these sprigs to me,” he continued softly, “summer last while you were courting at the Sea. She would not tell me what purpose for them she planned, only that I should know their use when the hour befell. I suspect now that her seer’s gift must have foretold your need to her.”
His tone grew urgent.
“Great risk attends, to yourself as well as to your young — but even greater risk if you refuse it and remain here, or if you flee and have not strength enough to outrun your pursuers. I pray you, make haste and eat!”
Full of trepidation, Tek reached to nibble first one mouthful, then another of the shriveled wort, desperate enough to undertake even this to protect her unborn. The herb’s bitter taste made her mouth draw, puckering her lips tight against her teeth. Her eyes watered. Her nose stung. Teki stood watching her. Presently she felt a tingling invade her limbs, moving in waves along her ribs. Her shoulders twitched. The grotto felt uncomfortably warm. She cavaled, lashing her tail, a sensation like summer flies swarming her flanks. What lay in her womb seemed to quicken and shift. The grey filly stumbled through the cave’s entryway, and Tek jumped like a deer. Dagg followed, shaking heavy snow from his winter shag. He stared at the pied mare in surprise.
“What’s amiss?” he asked. “Tek, I see white rimming your eyes.”
Tek fidgeted, her heart racing. The herb kept it hammering against her ribs. She champed, trying to wash the unsavory taste from her mouth, but her tongue had turned to sand, her lips too numb to let her speak. Her throat closed up as she tried to swallow. Dagg’s puzzled look changed to one of alarm.
“What’s happened?” he demanded.
Quickly, Teki sketched the events of the previous hour. Dagg’s eyes grew wide.
“How fierce is the storm?” the healer asked.
Dagg shook his head. “A true blizzard. The drifts will be deep before the night is done.”
“Good.” At a startled look from the dappled warrior, the healer added, “Tracks will be obscured and pursuit much hampered. You must be off, daughter, for I see the herb has begun its work.”
Tek shook herself, sweating, unable to stand still. The heat in the cave oppressed her. She longed to be out in the battering wind, to cool herself by rolling in snow. The unborn young within her stirred and struggled. Her eyes felt glassy. Her mind seemed unable to hold any single thought for more than an instant before it buzzed away like a gnat.
“What ails her?” said Dagg.
Both he and her father seemed to be moving with maddening slowness. Still standing within the cave, she felt as though she were hurtling at a headlong run. Teki gave a reluctant sigh.
“I have given her swift-running.”
“Ghostleaf!” Dagg exclaimed, giving the herb its more common name. The dappled warrior stared at Tek in dismay. The pied mare glared back at him. She felt skittish and resentful without real cause. The eyes of Teki and his acolytes distracted her. She wanted only to run, to lose herself in endless, heatless flight.
“But where is she to go?” asked Dagg.
“To her dam, Jah-lila,” Teki replied. “Tek must seek out the Red Mare in the southeast hills beyond the Vale. Not even I know exactly where she dwells....”
Tek scarcely listened, scarcely able. Already, in her mind, she bounded effortlessly through wind and drifts in the semidarkness of snow-lit night toward the far southeast tip of the Vale and the wild hills beyond. She had spent all her nursling days there at the Red Mare’s side until, weaned, she had followed Jah-lila on the long trek to the Vale. Why had her mother done it? Why cast her away into the healer’s care?
Reared within the great valley’s sheltering slopes, Tek had never returned to the southeast hills since that distant time: herdmembers were forbidden to traverse the Vale’s boundaries on their own. Now she eyed the cave’s egress impatiently, chafing to be gone, eager to once more run breakneck over the southeastern hills, free of kings and Rings of Law.
“Then how will she ever find the Red Mare?” Dagg was asking the healer.
Teki shook his head, his movements troubled, stiff. His acolytes milled nervously. Again, the healer sighed. “She may not. In such storm, anything may befall.” Dagg stood speechless. The pied stallion glanced at Tek. “But she must try. You, Dagg, I would ask to accompany her — though I will give you none of the running herb. I doubt you will be able to pace her far, but I beg you to stay with her as long as you can.”
“Of course!” snorted Dagg, wheeling. “Come, Tek. We must lose no time.”
The healer leaned to nuzzle the young mare he had reared long years with brusque, awkward affection. She fidgeted away: the herb made her chary of any touch. Sadly, Teki gazed after her with ghostly, black-encircled eyes.
“All rests now upon the shoulders of the goddess.”
“Hist!” cried the foal standing lookout. “I see figures, but whether the king’s or others, I cannot tell.”
“Off with you!” Teki exclaimed. “At once! If the Companion who attacked Tek survives, I will doubtless be summoned to attend him. Out into the storm quickly, daughter — Dagg. Go now, and you will not be seen.”
Tek bolted through the cave’s entryway into the cool, stormy night. Snow lay deep; the wind gusted fiercely — yet neith
er seemed to impede her. She sprang up the Vale’s icy hillside easily. Glimpsed only dimly through the falling snow, figures converged on Teki’s cave below. Dagg had already fallen behind, panting with the exertion of the climb. How slow he was! Tek bit back a wild laugh. Giddy pleasure at her own miraculous strength surged through her. Let the king’s wolves think the pied wych vanished without trace in a storm of her own conjuring.
Suddenly she was among the trees, the lower slopes of the valley lost from view. Her breath steamed; her heart sprinted. She wondered how long before the effect of the herb wore off. Morning, Teki had said. Was she to run all night, then, without tiring? Without feeling the cold? The prospect thrilled her. So must mighty Alma have felt prancing across heaven, tossing her mane and digging immortal hooves into the turf of the world, casting up mountains with every step.
Tek sped on through the snowy scrub and trees, skimming the hillcrest rimming the Vale, heading south and east. She heard Dagg crashing through the underbrush in back of her, plowing gamely through knee-deep snow to catch her up. She wondered how long she must endure his floundering escort, poor mortal, as he battled wind and slope, snow and the cold to exhaust himself in her wake.
I am the Mare of the World, she thought: she who ran dusk to dawn, besting the sun in his race for horizon’s edge, to become the moon that rules the night and wards all unicorns....
Laughing, the pied mare galloped on through the frigid, stormy night, lost in godlike velocity, dream motion, preternatural speed.
17
Nightmare
The dark unicorn twitched, shuddered in sleep, the dream unfolding before him as real as real. He beheld a pied mare bounding through wind-whipped snow, her pace hurtling, effortless. Breath spurted from her nostrils in jets of white cloud. A dappled companion plunged determinedly along her snow-filled tracks, his own gait staggering with exhaustion, ribs heaving in ragged gasps. He ran with a limp in one foreleg, as though the pain of some old injury, long healed, now recurred to plague him. He fell farther behind the pied mare at every step.
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