[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  Lell came to herself with a start. Would her brother, Jan, have stood gaping so, like a witless foal, when there was a task to be done? Sky above was turning from golden to amber. She must kindle fire. No time to lose, for the twins had told her she must bring fire to the battlefield before the setting of the sun. Clumsily, Lell bent to strike the tip of her horn against one flinty heel. A spark leapt up, flared, then fell to earth and died. Nervously, Lell tried again. No spark this time. A third strike. This time two sparks glowed, but each snuffed out in midair before reaching the ground. Tinder, she realized. She must use tinder to catch a spark, nurture it. Frantically, the darkamber filly cast about her for something dry and fine. Dead grass or shredded bark, anything would do. Below her, the battle raged on. Overhead, the sky blazed, the fiery tinge intensifying with every second that passed.

  23.

  Wyrmking

  The pale mare tossed back her poppy-colored mane and lunged again at another wyvern, piercing the fibrous breastplate beneath its skin and bringing it down. It writhed and thrashed, already dead. She felt its sting glance heavily against one flank. The wyvern’s colorless blood ran down her horn, soaking her brow, burning. Ses slung her damp forelock out of her eyes and fought on.

  The clatter of battle rattled around her. The sun hung low, already hidden by the limestone cliff overlooking the wyvern shelves. The Mirror of the Moon lay on that forested plateau, she knew. She killed another wyvern. Were the wyrms being routed? She did not know, fought the more fiercely to keep from having to think. She had kept her thoughts from many such thorny mires of late—quandaries such as what she would do after this war, when Lell was grown. When she was free.

  What would she do if Jan never returned? Nay, he must! Alma had shown her in the vision of her initiation night that she was to bear the long-awaited Firebringer. Surely he would appear. The only mystery was when. But what then? Dared she tell him the truth, as she had sworn to Jah-lila she would do?

  She thought once more of that secret she had hidden from him and all the world since before his birth. Why had she done so? Self-preservation, surely. And at the urging of the Red Mare, who had assured her over and over that Jan must be born unto the Ring and reared as prince-to-be. Her own status as prince’s mate had meant little to Ses. She had kept silent to protect her son and to spare her mate, whom she had truly loved—hoping ever against hope that he would one day free himself of the dreadful guilt that had ridden him to his death.

  And yet, more than for any other reason, she had held her tongue for Lell. On the night of her initiation, long before either of her children’s births, Ses had seen not only her destiny to bear the herd a Firebringer, but another to come after him: a wingèd thing. What her filly’s dream pinions might mean, the pale mare could not guess. But she had named her daughter Álell, Wing. Regardless of her firstborn’s fate, the poppy-maned mare trusted her filly was safe, secure in the care of the Free Folk of the Plain, three days’ journey from this war.

  She fought on. The dust of battle rose all around, a white haze. The figures surrounding her seemed pale as haunts. Sky above now edged from golden into flame. The unicorns had secured most of the entries to the wyverns’ dens, she saw, preventing retreat back under the earth. The wyrms lay slain by heaps and dozens about the shelves. Her own folk’s losses, she noted with relief, were fewer than the wyrms’. The unicorns had formed a solid line, pushing the wyverns slowly, inexorably toward the Plain.

  The wyrms’ resistance was frenzied. After initial panic at the arrival of the stranger roans, some among the wyvern horde had rallied. Had they yielded, or rushed headlong with their companions for the Plain, Ses was certain Tek would have spared further bloodshed and let them go. But all who remained refused surrender. Seven-headed Lynex, surrounded by bodyguards, shrieked with multiple shrill voices at the remains of his horde to fight to the death and not to yield.

  Where was his fire, the pale mare wondered? All her life she had heard of wyverns hoarding flame, stolen from the red dragons so many years ago. Yet the foe had not used the deadly stuff even once this day. In dousing the wyrmqueen’s flame years past, had her firstborn robbed the wyverns of all they possessed? She could not say. She only knew Lynex wielded none as he towered above the wedge-shaped attack formation led by Tek.

  His bodyguards writhed and reared, striving to keep Tek’s warriors at bay, but one by one, the double-headed guardians were being seized and pulled down. Of the great scarred wyrmking’s original score, only a dozen remained. The odd-colored strangers, who called themselves Scouts of Halla, rallied around Tek, aiding her assault against the seven-headed wyrm. They fought tirelessly, like creatures possessed. Their leader, a small maroon stallion, conferred with the pied mare and followed her commands, singing out to his followers in a ringing chant that was nothing like the piercing whistles Vale unicorns used.

  For what did Lynex wait? Why did he still fight on? Ses could not fathom him. The golden-orange sky above grew more and more intensely flame. A sudden commotion interrupted her thoughts. She wheeled, half expecting to find wyverns had broken her fellows’ ranks, gotten behind her somehow. Instead, she saw a unicorn stallion come charging around the cliffside onto the battlefield. He cast feverishly about with the look of one taking no part in the fray, but desperately seeking among the fighters.

  He was tall and lean and long-maned. The gloom of the cliff’s shadow muted his coloring. From the toss of his head, from his gait and stance, she thought for one wild instant he was Jan. Then the actual hue of his coat registered: midnight blue scattered with silvery stars. A shock went through her: Calydor! What could his purpose be? Like his fellows, he had refused to join this fray, agreeing only to ward those of the Vale too young or old or infirm to fight. Spotting the pale mare now, Calydor sped toward her.

  “Ses,” he cried. “Is she here? Is she with you?”

  With the wyvern directly before her now dead, the pale mare turned to meet the Plainsdweller.

  “What do you mean?” she panted. “Whom do you seek? Why are you not with Lell and the others? “

  Searching still, the star-covered stallion pitched to a halt. “’Tis your daughter I seek! We discovered her missing the morn after your warhost departed.”

  “Missing?” exclaimed Ses. “What, how…?” Her balance reeled.

  “We combed the oasis, but found no trace—no pards,” he told her quickly. “I am certain she followed the host. Did she catch you up? Have you seen her?”

  “Come to enter the fray?” Ses cried, fear thudding against her heart. “My Lell is no match for these monstrous wyrms! She’s but a filly—and each of them larger than a full-grown warrior…”

  Hastily, she, too, began to scan the battle. The wyrmhorde teetered on the brink of overthrow. In time, the unicorns’ steady forward push would surely overwhelm them. But time, she realized, noting the brilliant color of the sky, might be what the unicorns did not have. As soon as the sun sank away, all odds might change. If Lynex could hold on just so long… Beside her, the star-strewn stallion spoke.

  “You have not seen her? She is not among you here?”

  “Nay,” the pale mare gasped, nearly frantic now, aware that simply because she had not laid eyes on Lell amid the day’s mayhem did not mean her daughter had not hurled herself foolishly into the fray. Even impervious to wyverns’ venom, the amber filly could still easily have been torn to bits by their teeth or claws. Calydor’s brow furrowed.

  “Mayhap she did not last this far,” he murmured. Ses wheeled to stare at him. He swiftly added, “She may have had sense enough to abandon her wild scheme, to turn back, and I missed her. By my reck, even with pards, she’s safer on the Plain than amid this slaughter…”

  Sudden shrill whinnying caught their attention. Whirling, Ses saw one of the wyrmking’s bodyguards deserting, thrashing to break free of the attacking unicorns and make its escape. Scouts of Halla fell upon it as it rushed by. Frenetically, it shook them off. Several gave chase while the
rest sprang after Tek, who now pressed forward in a fury, fighting toward Lynex as the sunset sky caught fire. The wyvern king and his ten surviving guards cursed their fleeing companion.

  The enormous wyrm was coming straight toward her, Ses realized with a start. A day of battle had dulled her wits. She felt Calydor spring past her to intercept the wyrm, moving with a grassbuck’s strength and speed. Coming as it did from one who once so coolly championed flight over combat, his action caused her an instant’s surprise. Then she saw that pressed as the pair of them were, so close against the limestone cliff, no room remained for flight.

  Ses sprang after the blue-and-silver stallion. She dived at the great wyvern’s tail, impaling its poison tip as it swung around toward Calydor. Her horn grated, sparking against the ground. It occurred to her what risk the singer had taken, venturing the battlefield in search of Lell, unprotected as he was from white wyrms’ stings. As the pale mare pinned the wyvern’s tail, the star-strewn stallion stabbed upward under its gaping jaw. Already the other of its two heads lay dead.

  Once more realization came: Calydor did not possess fire-tempered hooves or horn, could not have pierced the bony breastplate protecting the monster’s heart if he had tried. She heard the wyrmking’s guardian give a high-pitched scream. It stiffened. Calydor shook free, sprang away from the dying creature’s flailing claws as it toppled. Ses braced herself, kept her horn firmly planted in the creature’s thrashing tail lest the Plainsdweller be struck by a reflexive sting.

  “Look to your leader! Hie, Tek! Tek,” Calydor was shouting, sprinting suddenly toward the black-and-rose mare. Ses, too, leapt away, leaving the wyvern for others to finish. She had seen what Summer Stars had seen: Tek and her battlemates smashing through the ring of bodyguards at the weak point opened when the traitor fled. The Scouts formed a blunt wedge that shoved into the opening, forcing the guards farther and farther apart. The wedge then split, each half continuing to press outward, creating a corridor.

  Down this corridor charged Tek. Bugling her warcry, she hurtled at Lynex like a striking hawk. The wyrmking caught sight of her, reared back, but with a mighty leap, the pied mare caught his third-smallest head in her teeth. She gave a savage shake, like a wolf pup snapping a rock squirrel’s neck, then let go and dropped to the ground. There she half crouched, stance ready, horn aimed. The king of the white wyrms convulsed. A cry sprang from six of his throats. The third-smallest head lay limp, slain. The Scouts of Halla strove gamely to keep Lynex’s remaining bodyguards from closing ranks and pinning Tek inside their ring. Ses pounded across the corpse-strewn field, hot on Calydor’s heels.

  “Wretch! Wretch,” keened the wyvern king. “A hundred years and more have I tended that head.”

  Tek’s words rang boldly over the din of battle. Ses made them out with ease.

  “I’ll snap all seven like buds from a stalk,” the pied mare returned. “Four centuries have my folk suffered exile because of your treachery! Now we mean to put that wrong to rights and drive the last wyrm from our Hallow Hills.”

  Another of the wyrmking’s bodyguards broke from its companions and strove to flee. The Scouts of Halla pressed to hem it in. It writhed and flailed across Ses’s path. Ahead of her, Calydor’s way was also blocked as he fought to reach the corridor and Tek.

  “Hoofed grass-eater!” scarred Lynex shrieked. “Little whistling nit!”

  “A warrior of the Ring am I,” Tek threw back at him. Ses’s ears pricked. The pied mare shouted on. “Mate to the prince and mother of his heirs. Regent in his absence, I am your fiercest enemy. Scheming, deceiving tyrant wyrm!”

  Once more she sprang, from a standing start, with a vigor that astonished Ses. About the great wyvern’s central pate, his lesser crania darted, wove. The pied mare seized one of these in teeth, a nob larger than the first she had killed. It screamed and tore free. Tek landed, instantly sprang again. Lynex reared, lifting his faces above the reach of her teeth. Tucking her chin, she stabbed the injured head deep in its cheek. A sharp shake of her horn as she fell to earth reversed the slash into its eye. The wounded visage wailed, bleeding great streaks of near-colorless blood and entangling itself among the wyrmking’s other necks and heads.

  Again he bellowed, so loudly the pale mare’s ears flinched. Ahead of her, Calydor had made his way around the knot of Scouts attacking the fleeing bodyguard. She strove to follow him. Now the star-strewn stallion fought forward through the throng of unicorns that had once formed the corridor allowing Tek in to reach Lynex. The crush of battle was closing that opening, warriors backing and sidling into one another. The blue-and-silver stallion hurled himself into their midst. Ses shouldered after him. Beyond them—not far, but almost unreachable because of the press—Tek faced the wyrm.

  His rippling tail, like a mighty rapid, swept toward the pied mare, its seven-stinged tip brandished to flail at her. Tek overleapt it, slashing down in the same motion, and Lynex roared. One massive forepaw, broad as the mare’s ribcage, swung its saberclaws. Tek ducked, dodged, twisted, and ran it through. The bladelike claws of the other paw scored her shoulders. She pivoted and sprang free, laughing. Ses saw blood welling into the wounds Tek did not even seem to feel.

  The pied mare speared the wyrmking through the side. With a snarl, his great head swooped, sank its splinter-fangs into her shoulder. Tek struck him off with one forehoof, slashing a long, shallow wound across his throat. Ses watched his torn gills begin to bleed. The pale mare flung herself against the mass of unicorns grappling with towering wyrms. Calydor still forged ahead. She sought to trail just behind, squeezing through what gaps he managed before the surge of battle closed them. Beyond the shifting, near-impassable wall of warriors, the pied mare taunted the wyrms’ seven-headed king.

  “Surrender, Lynex,” Tek roared. “Give up this fight. Swear never to return, and I will let your folk depart.”

  “Never!” the white wyrm shrieked. “Not while I live will I allow my people to retreat.” He struck at her again with one massive forepaw. Nimbly, she dodged away.

  “Your bodyguards desert you! How long can you hold them to certain death?”

  “Where is your mate?” the king of wyverns snarled, his huge, main head darting to snap at her. Tek ducked and sidestepped, avoiding the clash of needle-like teeth.

  “On errands more pressing than pricking at you, wyrmking,” she answered. The unwounded maws of the great wyvern laughed. He slithered after her.

  “Jan, who killed my queen—was he too great a coward to come himself, but must send his mate to face my wrath?”

  “One warrior mare among my race is more than a match for you,” Tek spat, lunging after one of two midsized heads flanking the main one, champed it by the gill ruff.

  She got one foreleg over it, compressing its windpipe in the crook of her knee. With a squall of terror, Lynex tried to wrest his second-most-ancient head from her grasp. The pied mare held on with teeth and limb, her other legs braced. Ses saw the wyvern’s near forepaw pinned against his body by the taut downward stretch of the captured pate’s neck. His free paw tore at Tek but, too stubby and short, it could not reach around his scarred and bony breast. Tek dragged the head down, bowing her own head and leaning all her weight onto the forelimb that pinned it.

  “Surrender,” the pale mare heard Tek grate. “Yield, wyrmking, or you lose this head as well.”

  The huge white wyrm began to scream. His massive body rocked, trying to shake the pied mare free. Ses saw Tek let her standing limbs buckle, setting her down hard on the ground. The wyrm’s secondary head remained pinned in her folded forelimb, gill ruff held fast in her strong, square teeth. Maddened with fear, the three auxiliary nobs as yet unscathed flung themselves high and wide, shrieking, while the main head swooped, attempting to catch Tek in its jaws. Teeth still clenched about the captured pate’s gill ruff, the pied mare pointed her horn at the main head, keeping it at bay.

  Off to one side, Ses became aware of flashes of copper and yellow-grey. Ryhenna and Dagg had
seen Tek’s danger. As Calydor and she herself did, they, too, were struggling to reach their shoulder-friend. Beyond, Ses caught another glimpse: Teki and Jah-lila also fighting toward Tek. The maroon-colored leader of the Scouts of Halla battled hard at the edge of the ring of bodyguards. All strove to converge on Tek’s contest with Lynex—yet none, Ses feared, would be able to reach her. The crush was so great, finding space to plant a hoof, much less wedge one’s body, proved nearly impossible. Beyond, pied mare and wyvern king fought in an open space. The sky above blazed like burning grass.

  With a roar like stormwind, Lynex heaved. His massive body undulated, then torqued. With a powerful wrench, the wyvern king rolled. The force snapped the neck of his own head captured in the pied mare’s teeth. Unable to loose her grip in time, Tek was jerked through air and slammed hard to the ground. She lay a moment, motionless and stunned, as the wyrmking pulled free of her, three of his seven heads now dangling uselessly. Slowly, he reared up, paws raised, his dozen saberclaws bristling.

  Ses heard the red mare shouting her daughter’s name. Tek stirred groggily. Clearly the breath had been knocked from her, perhaps even ribs cracked. Hissing, Lynex swayed above her, savoring victory. The pied mare rolled painfully to her knees, shook her head, then struggled up. She stood unsteadily. Ses whinnied, barreling forward in Calydor’s wake. To one side, Dagg’s battle yell rose above the tumult, echoed by Ryhenna’s. Ses saw the pair of them plunging toward the pied mare at desperate speed. Beyond, the pale mare glimpsed Tek’s foster father, Teki, vaulting over the fallen, her dam, Jah-lila, charging alongside.

  Ahead of them all, at the battle line, the Scouts’ maroon-colored leader chanted orders to his troops. On every side, bodyguards toppled, pulled down. Unicorns hurtled toward their injured leader like a thunder of forkhorns spooked by storm. And none of them, Ses knew suddenly, with certainty, would reach her in time. She saw that Lynex understood this. The congestion of fighters and the piling of bodies around him was too great. The pied mare was his. He was sure of it.