Tai-shan glimpsed a handful of purple-plumes breaking through the daïcha’s green-plumed defenders to rush the dais. Ryhenna dashed to the foot of the platform’s ramp, blocking their path. The purple-plumes fell back in confusion as the wild mare reared and struck at them. Tai-shan returned his attention to the chon, countering the other’s lunges and blows, parrying each feint and thrust. The nimbleness of this puny, upright creature astonished him. Though the chon possessed not nearly the strength of a full-grown unicorn, the sweep and agility of his forelimb gave him great range. Tai-shan had never fenced such a dexterous foe. The dark unicorn plunged, pivoted, ramped, and dodged.
His hooves grew hot. Churning and plunging through the dry stuff strewn about the platform, he felt his heels striking the flinty stone beneath. Flashes of white and amber light leapt from his hooves. More flashes showered down as his horn grated against the skewer of the chon. Sparks! Sparks of fire were falling from his horn as it struck against the skystuff — more springing up from his hooves as they skidded on the stone: sparks such as he had once seen leap from the tools of the two-foot firesmith. Now his own hooves and horn were doing the same! Astonished, the dark unicorn stared.
“Look! Look!” Ryhenna below him cried. Many of her fleeing companions had halted, gazing in open wonder at the bright rain falling from his hooves and horn. “Here standeth the true Dai’chon, full of the divine fire!”
Lighting upon the platform’s thick carpet of dry hay, withered flower petals, and aromatic wood shavings, the sparks began to smolder. Black stormclouds were fast sweeping in across the sea. A warm, wet wind picked up. Bits of burning chaff gusted from the dais to the open space below, catching in the dried stuff there. A thick pall of smoke rose, filling the air with cinders. Plumed two-foots of both colors tore off their outer falseskins and flailed at the spreading flames.
Choking, the chon covered his mouth and nose with one forepaw — yet still he fought. Tai-shan clashed and countered, gasping for breath, until in a furious assault, he drove the two-foot ruler to one knee and disarmed him with a parry that knocked the skewer from his grip and sent it, like the flail before it, spinning away into the emptiness beyond the cliff. The dark unicorn ramped before the defeated chon, whose bloodshot eyes glared back at him, full of hatred still.
“Tash! Tash so bei!” The daïcha rushed past Ryhenna up onto the platform to interpose herself between the dark unicorn and the chon. “Tash bei im chon!”
Tai-shan knew she must be saying, No, don’t kill him. Don’t kill my king.
Fury burned in the dark unicorn. At that moment, he wanted nothing other than to skewer the treacherous two-foot ruler — but the daïcha stood suppliant before him, and he owed her his life. Forehooves touching the ground once more, Tai-shan shook himself. A kind of silence fell around him. With great difficulty, summoning all the agility of lips and teeth not made to frame such speech, he strove to pronounce clearly the words of the firekeepers’ tongue.
“Undan ptola, daïcha,” he told her. As you wish.
The other’s eyes widened. She gazed at the dark unicorn as though unable to believe her ears. The purple-plumes below the dais stood halted in wonder. The green-plumes, too, had heard. They stood staring. Beyond them, the daïcha’s companions sank to the ground, two of them weeping. On the dais, ashen-faced, the chon shook his head.
“Tash,” he gasped. “Tash — ipsicat!”
Tai-shan did not recognize the second word, but he could guess its meaning: No. No — impossible. The chon made as if to rise.
“Tash! ’Omat!” the dark unicorn ordered. No. Stop. “Himay.” Keep still.
The chon choked out something else, too fast for Tai-shan to follow. What was he saying now, the dark unicorn wondered, that daya — even miraculously homed, outland daya — ought not be able to speak?
“Jima ’pnor!” That’s enough, the dark unicorn commanded, cutting the chon off as he spoke. “Asolet.” Silence. Again the other made to rise, but the dark unicorn stopped him with a feint of his horn. “Tash bim!”
He did not know the phrase for Come no nearer and so had to settle for Do not come. Tai-shan stamped angrily, galled by his lack of words.
“Ipsicat!” the chon whispered again. Impossible. Then, gesturing with his forelimb, he shouted suddenly, “Punuskr!”
Tai-shan recognized the term: demon. A string of epithets followed, too rapid for the dark unicorn to decipher. From the other’s furious tone, however, it was clear they were dire threats. The chon motioned to his purple-plumes, shouting.
“Bei so! Bei so ahin!”
The dark unicorn needed no translation to tell him the chon was shouting, Kill him. Kill him now! But the purple-plumes at the foot of the dais stood motionless, eyes wide with awe. Several fell to their knees, gasping, “Dai’chon!”
The cry was taken up among the green-plumes, a ragged chant. “Dai‘chon! Dai’chon!”
Upon the dais, the daïcha sank to her knees as well, bowing her head and crossing her forelimbs over her breast. Below, her green-plumes did the same.
“Emwe,” she murmured. “Emwe, Dai’chon!”
Below them, the whole clifftop seethed in confusion. Wildfire leapt and crackled. Stormwind had picked up, fanning the flames. Screaming daya dashed madly about. Frightened two-foots cowered or tried frantically to flee, but the passageways beside the palace had become so crowded as to be impassable. The palace itself was on fire now. Heaped about the base of the dais, offerings kindled and burned.
A scream from Ryhenna caused Tai-shan to wheel. Fire from the burning offerings had set her mane alight. With shrills of terror, the coppery mare bolted. The dark unicorn sprang after her, vaulting down from the dais through a veil of fire and smoke. He sprinted behind her, crying her name.
“Ryhenna, stop!” he shouted. “Turn — you’ll run over the edge!”
The smoke and cinders grew so thick, he could not see her. Then he caught a glimpse of coppery flank. The smoke parted suddenly — just as the earth vanished beneath his heels. Ryhenna hung in the air before him. He glimpsed realization in her eye, felt horror clutch like a many-toed suckerfish at his own breast.
He tried to wheel, to regain solid ground: far too late. His legs flailed only empty air. Ryhenna plunged helplessly beside him. The roiling white sea dashed upward toward them. A great crack of thunder sounded, accompanied by a bitter odor and a blue-white flash. Lightning had struck the clifftop behind — above them now. They were falling.
So, too, did I fall, a voice whispered to him, not so long ago. It seemed to take forever — though I fell toward frozen earth, not foaming sea.
The dark unicorn twisted, astonished, still capable of astonishment even now. The quiet voice was infinitely familiar to him — surely the same that had spoken half a year before to him standing nameless upon the strand.
“Who are you?” he cried out.
Your own granddam, of course, the whisper replied. Who else would I be?
Memory stirred in him, hazy and distant still. “Sa? My father’s dam?”
The hurtling wind whistled past his ears. Once I was Sa. I am part of Alma now.
“You told me to find the fire. But the fire was within me,” the dark unicorn gasped. “It was within me all along!”
The sky around him seemed to nod in affirmation. Ever since your initiation pilgrimage, two years past, when I touched your hooves with fire in the Pan Woods, and then your horn in the wyvern’s den. He remembered suddenly, clearly, standing upon the banked coals of a goatling campfire and later bathing his horn in the firebowl of a wyvern sorceress. The air sighed. I have been waiting such a long time for you to discover that spark within.
Falling, he answered bitterly, “I’ve set the clifftop alight with that spark. They’re all trapped. Now two-foots and daya alike will perish — ”
No one will perish, the voice murmured. Any moment, my Red Mare’s conjured rain will douse that blaze. The fire you have kindled in their minds, however, will burn
a long time after this day. Your spark will transform the city. The power of the chon lies in ruins now. The daicha will lead the firekeepers from this hour forward, and Dai’chon come to be worshiped in a new and gentler way. It will take time, to be sure, but it will come — because of you, my Firebringer. Did you think it your destiny to dance fire solely among the unicorns?
Beside him in the air, Ryhenna screamed and flailed. Droplets pelted them. He thought at first they were spray from the frothing waves below. Then he realized they came from overhead: rain — a driving rain hard enough to damp the wildfire raging across the clifftop above. In that, at least, the goddess spoke true: those trapped on the cliff would live, though he and the coppery mare perished.
“Take my life,” he besought Alma, “but spare Ryhenna.”
The goddess laughed, very gently, as he and his companion plunged. The storm-tossed sea surged up to meet them. But I already hold your life, Aljan, son of my son, Dark Moon.
22
Moondark
The pain had passed. A dim haze of morning light filtered into the grotto, augmenting the wan lichenlight of the cavern’s walls. The pied mare lay quiet, unable to focus her thoughts. A delicious drowsiness enveloped her. Her mouth tasted smoky-sweet of rosehips. She had no memory of chewing the herb, only of hours of travail the evening before. She was alive, and the knowledge astonished her.
Warm, dry hay had been heaped around her. Sismoomnat, the elder of her foster sisters, crouched nearby, stroking her neck and crooning in the oddly musical, half-grunted language of pans. The goatling held a clump of dried seedgrass near the pied mare’s nose, offering it to her. Tek managed to turn her head away. She had no desire as yet for food.
The young pan vanished from beside her, to reappear holding forepaws cupped before her. Tek’s response to the smell of water surprised even herself: slurping the delicious contents of her foster sister’s palms in a single sup. Twittering with pan laughter, Sismoomnat brought her another drink, another, and another yet. Dozens of swallows at last assuaged the pied mare’s thirst.
The muffled sound of her mother’s voice reached her then, muttering low and urgently. A strange aroma pervaded the cave: a faint, slightly bitter savor, as of chewed roots or bark. Tek tried weakly to raise her head, and Sismoomnat helped, lifting the pied mare’s cheek to rest on her shaggy flank. Their dam stood across the grotto, in the shadows where few of the faintly glowing lichens grew. The Red Mare swayed, lock-kneed in trance, chanting softly: “Brothers-in-ocean, sisters-in-the-waves: swift-coursers, far-rovers, aid us! Two of our kind are in gravest peril. Dreams speak to me of this.”
Tek had no notion what her mother might be doing — petitioning some unseen listener? The Red Mare’s chanting continued, endless, monotonous. Tek’s perceptions grew foggy. Even the slight effort of resting her head on Sismoomnat’s flank exhausted her. She felt herself drifting into sleep.
Something nipped at her, rustling the hay. The pied mare jerked awake, struggling feebly. Her limbs did little more than twitch. Sismoomnat stroked her neck and murmured soothingly, then gently turned the pied mare’s head, holding it so that Tek could view her own side and flank. Her belly, relieved now of its months-long burden, seemed oddly flattened to her eye, grown accustomed to the huge swell of her pregnant side. The younger pan, Pitipak, crouched near the pied mare’s hindquarters, stroking something which nestled against Tek’s belly.
“Seek them for me, my sisters-in-ocean!” Her mother’s soft, urgent chanting continued. “Already you are coasting the Summer shore, traveling to the sacred shoals off the Gryphon Mountains to calve. My fellows are struggling not far from you. Aid them, my brothers-in-the-waves.”
Tek paid scant attention, gazing instead at the young pan beside her, who sang and murmured while she herself stared blearily, trying to focus her eyes. A warm tide of relief flowed through the pied mare suddenly as she spotted the tiny, newborn unicorn lying suckling beside her. She felt exhausted and euphoric and utterly light. The little creature struggled, shifting the hay. Tek felt its toothless gums again, nipping insistently at the teat. Deeply, she sighed,
Not ill-omened, she told herself. Miraculous. Full of mystery and joy.
But was it filly or foal? She could not tell. The heaped straw and crouching form of Pitipak obscured her view. Her nursling seemed to shift and blur. The pied mare blinked. At times her doubled vision saw twin images: one dark, one light, so that she could not be certain of her young’s true color.
“Hear me, comrades-of-the-deep,” the Red Mare murmured. “My fellows are weary and in need of rescue. Do not let them perish, I beseech you. Buoy them up against the waters that would claim them.”
The words continued, urgent, ceaseless — just at the threshold of Tek’s hearing. She ignored them, too spent to listen, to puzzle them out.
I must think of a name, she thought languidly. A truename for my child.
As dam, she alone could fashion her offspring’s secret name and whisper this first and most closely guarded gift into that newborn ear alone, never to be repeated to another unless the greatest of trust lay between them. Jan had told her his own truename — Aljan, Dark Moon — on his pilgrimage of initiation, two years gone.
And that was when I knew, she thought, knew beyond all doubts and shadows that this young firebrand was the one for me, even if I had to wait years for him. And he was worth the wait. As this moment has been worth the wait, to feel our young suckling at my flank.
“Unicorns-of-the-sea! Unicorns-of-the-sea!” her mother chanted softly, tirelessly. “Fierce, fearless single-horns — you who are also the beloved of Alma and who, like us, also call yourselves children-of-the-moon. Bear my fellows safe to land!”
Tek drifted, as on gentle swells. Sleep was dragging at her. She could not remain afloat a moment more. Return to me soon, O my love, my Dark Moon, she found herself thinking, as though her mate somehow floated beside her, able to hear her thoughts. Return and share my joy in the birth of your heir. Sleep rose like a wave and overwhelmed her. Unresisting, she let herself slip down, down into the darkest depths, devoid of light and sound and dreams.
23
Unicorns-of-the-Sea
The driving rain no longer fell, but stormwind continued to batter. The dark unicorn panted with effort, churning with all four limbs just to keep his head above water. Waves heaved and tossed. Land lay nowhere in sight. He could not tell if the darkness were that of storm alone or of night. It had all come back to him now: his people and their Vale, his title among them — Korr’s son, prince of the unicorns. He remembered his journey to the Summer Sea at solstice time, the long months of mock-sparring and wooing. A flush of warmth suffused him as he recalled the courting dance on equinox eve. Memory of Tek blazed up, and wild longing filled him to return to his fellows and rejoin his mate.
Too weary to fight the riptide anymore, Jan lay in a daze as the cold, gusting stormrain began to abate. His limbs felt violently jolted, his ribs badly bruised. After he and Ryhenna had sprung from cliff’s edge toward the storm-high surf below, strong ocean currents had dragged them far from shore. Alongside him, whenever the wind fell, he heard the coppery mare’s panting breath as she, too, struggled against the fierce, running sea. After a time, her thrashing roused him.
“Don’t . . . ,” he managed, slinging a wet draggle of mane from his eyes. “Don’t fight the waves. Breathe deep, and keep your nose just above water. Use your limbs as little as possible.”
Eyes rolling and wide, the coppery mare turned to him with a gasp of relief. “My lord — great Dai’chon — ye stir!”
Jan shook his head weakly. “I am no Dai’chon. Ryhenna, I am Aljan, prince of the unicorns. I have remembered my own truename at last.”
“Alj — Al-jan?” she stumbled, still flailing frantically. “But — I saw the divine fire spring from thy hooves and horn....”
Again the dark unicorn shook his head. Breathing hurt his ribs. He had suffered some injury in the fall. The pain wea
kened him. “Don’t swim so fiercely,” he urged her. “You’ll spend yourself.”
Reluctantly, Ryhenna slowed her vigorous paddle. She seemed fearful of sinking without the constant motion of her limbs.
“Call me Moonbrow, as before, if you wish,” he said, snorting cold seawater, “though that is not the name by which my people know me.”
The coppery mare gazed at him. “Tell me of thy people, my lord Al-jan, Moonbrow,” she whispered, “and whence thou comest.”
Jan told her of his people, the children-of-the-moon, and of his life among them in the Vale. He spoke until his voice became ragged, rough. Ryhenna’s breathing calmed. Her efforts at remaining afloat grew more steady. She paddled determinedly now, no longer desperate, and listened, hushed, as he described the free lives of unicorns.
“Ye have no keepers,” the coppery mare murmured, awed, “and yet ye do not starve? Ye find your own shelter against the cold and wet, and defend yourselves from harm? And ye follow your own god, this Mother-of-all, this Alma?”
Jan nodded, talked out, spent. His tale had taxed his waning strength. He let himself drift, treading the waves as slowly as possible, saw the coppery mare watching him, trying to do the same. The grey sea had calmed somewhat, though the sky remained windblown, dark. Abruptly, she turned away.
“I have no such loving god to watch over me,” she murmured bitterly. “My god was a sham, naught but a mortal two-foot in a mask. Oh, Al-jan — Moonbrow — if only I might see this marvelous Vale of thine and meet thy fellows and know the blessings of thy goddess Alma, I might die content.”
Jan stirred uneasily, thinking of his dreams. He remembered only snatches — of killing winter cold and starving unicorns; his own father with a false moon painted in white clay upon his brow, ramping and shouting as one mad; Tek and Dagg fleeing together through driving snow, pursued by haunts or wolves. The dark unicorn shivered. All around, the cold waves heaved and chopped.
Dark Moon Page 18
