Birth of the Firebringer

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  “‘The red dragons cast out the wyverns from the Smoking Hills in wintertime and drove them away across the Great Grass Plain, hoping to spell their death. The wyrms had been let live among their hosts as scavengers and carrion clearers. The dragons claim no kinship to them.

  “‘But when the wyverns began to breed out of hand and grow past a moderate size, and carry off dragon pups to devour, and rob the earthen tombs—the firedrakes bury their dead in the earth—then the dragons set snares and caught them at their plunder, fell on them and drove them from their burrows with fire.

  “‘But Lynex, the wyrms’ leader, and some others escaped them. The dragons let them go, thinking surely upon the Great Grass Plain they would die. But Méllintéllinas, who is queen of the red dragons, warns you, Halla, princess of the moon’s children, that this Lynex is as subtle as craft and she believes, though she cannot be certain, that he has stolen from their godstone a golden carrying bowl, and in it, the secret of their fire.’”

  A bowl. Jan wondered what a carrying bowl could be. He had never wondered it before. He drew breath to speak then, but Dagg beside him in the darkness murmured, “List.”

  The healer’s daughter had turned in her Circle under the moon. The soft songshadow still repeated her words.

  “Hearing these things of the wyverns, the unicorns cried out in consternation, but Jared shouted them down. ‘Let be! Let them be. Why should we trouble the wyrms? They have done us no harm, caused us no alarm....’

  “‘They have stolen our children,’ cried Halla, ‘both the born and the unborn, and our people, and our dead. They have drunk of the well of the unicorns, and hide in their holes when we call them to task.’

  “‘Lies,’ cried the king, ‘all lies by your followers to unseat me. I know who the true friends of the unicorns are. You have defied me! You have moved in secret against me. Now this messenger of yours brings more lies.’

  “‘There is a worm in his brain,’ chanted Zod, low like a dirge. ‘I have seen it in a dream, and it eats away his reason.’

  “‘You traitor,’ Jared cried, broken-eared, deaf—and his words still tumbled out in that strange hollow voice unlike his own. ‘Usurper. No longer my daughter. Death for what you have done to me! You shall die.’

  “And before another unicorn could utter a word or draw a breath, Jared the king reared with hooves and horn poised to strike down the princess of the unicorns. But Halla fended him off, though all unwillingly. She smote him a great blow to the breast with her forehooves and struck him with the flat of her horn to the skull.

  “Then the king went down, unexpectedly, to everyone’s surprise. He fell like one shot through with poison, and lay at the unicorns’ feet, stone dead. Those assembled watched his wilted ear twitch once, twice, and a tiny wyvern crawled forth, long as a foreshank and fat with its feasting. Its forked tongue flickered between needle teeth.

  “Halla cried out and rose up to smash the murdering thing with her hooves, but Zod the singer sprang between them, crying, ‘Beware, princess. Even newborn, it carries death in its tail. Its spittle is sweet poison on teeth sharp as fishbones, and its breath is a bringer of nightmares. I know; I have seen it, I who dream dreams.’

  “But even as he was speaking, a cry went up in the south and east, from scouts flying to bring the alarm:

  “‘The wyverns, the wyverns—to war!’”

  Above the Vale, the full moon floated, serenely bright, nearing its zenith. Tek stood in perfect profile now, her voice pitched to carry; she sang out like a bell:

  “All about the gathered unicorns, the wyverns now came streaming, slithering like flood rain—many more than there had been at midsummer, many more than the unicorns were. Most of them were little things, no bigger than hatchlings. Quick as kestrels, lithe as eels, they darted about the heels of the unicorns, stinging.

  “And snaking at the head of them, Lynex shouted, ‘Ah-ha! Ah-ha! Did I not say our younglings thrive fast? Come, prit; come, pet.’

  “Then the wyrmlet that had crawled from the dead king’s ear flashed to the wyvern king and twined about his neck. And seeing this, Halla rose up, shouting a war cry. Her warriors rallied. The unicorns charged. All day the fighting lasted. Many wyverns were slain, the great ones pierced through the vitals, the little ones trampled underfoot.

  “But the warriors were scattered and few. Some were yet heavy in foal or only recently delivered. Many shattered their horns against the wyverns’ breasts, for the wyrms were made with a bony plate under the skin and above the heart that could not be pierced. And those that had been stung felt a langor overtaking them, till they sank to the ground, unable to rise.”

  Jan squirmed in the dark in his place beside Dagg. He champed his teeth, hardly able to bear that Alma should grant all things in season—even defeat for the unicorns. The singer sang:

  “Slow and by little, the unicorns fell back, and the wyverns poured after them in fierce hordes until the westering sun hung like a gryphon’s eye, and the unicorns fought upon the last slope of the Hallow Hills, upon the verges of the Plain.

  “Halla cried out then, ‘Is all lost? Hoof and horn prove no match to the barbs of the wyrms. So many lie slain. Another hour and we shall all of us be dead. Is no hope left?’

  “‘One hope,’ answered Zod, the singer of dreams, for still he fought alongside her, protecting her flank. ‘Fly—away across the Great Grass Plain. These wyrms will gorge themselves upon our dead and theirs, and will not follow.’

  “‘Run?’ Halla cried, staring at him. ‘Leave the Mirror of the Moon for them to lap and paddle in?’

  “‘The Moon’s Mere is now bitter salt,’ the seer said, ‘and poison to them. You have said yourself, O princess, another hour’s fight will see us dead. Better for us to fly now and live, to grow many and strong again, one day to return and reclaim our land—than to die to the last here and now, giving it up to them forever.’”

  Jan kicked one leg in silent protest. His young heart cried out, No. Better to die, die fighting to the last, than to live with the shame. But that was foal’s talk, and he knew it, that no warrior would countenance. The healer’s daughter turned some and spoke, soft echoes shadowing her speech:

  “‘But how may we ever reclaim it?’ cried Halla, like one dying for grief. ‘How long must we wait?’

  “Then her companion’s eyes grew far and strange. ‘I have heard in dreams,’ so the seer said, ‘that it will not come in our lifetime. Our sons will not see it, nor our sons’ daughters. But when at last the night-dark one shall be born among the unicorns, then the Mirror of the Moon will grow sweet again, and the wyverns shall perish in fire. Our people shall call him the Firebringer: a great warrior as are you, O princess, and a seer of dreams as am I.’”

  “How does he know that?” muttered Jan, hardly realizing he spoke.

  “Seers know things,” whispered Dagg. “Alma tells them, and they know.”

  Tek stood now as she had at the tale’s beginning, and the moon hung above her at zenith in the sky. And it seemed to Jan, as he lay listening, that that soft songshadow, faint on the very verge of his hearing, still sounded from before him, from the far hillside, though the healer’s daughter now faced wholly away from that slope as she sang.

  “So Halla, hearing the dreamer’s words, ate at last the bitter root of defeat, bowing to the wisdom of the moon, which says that all things wax and wane, even the greatness of the unicorns. She bade her warriors escape and save themselves, flee away into the dusk while the wyverns in the foothills sat howling their glee.

  “But glancing back, Halla—the very last to leave the field—saw Lynex holding aloft in his teeth the bough of a tree all ablaze with amber flowers. Beside him upon the ground tested a golden bowl of glowing stones.

  “‘What, fly, will you?’ cried the wyrm king through his teeth. Then let this pursue you in our stead. Never think to trouble us again, vile unicorns!’

  “Then he cast the scarlet brand upon the Plain, and where it cam
e to earth, suddenly the stubgrass bloomed as well with wisps of light that danced and ran before the wind. Clouds of choking dust arose beneath the fury of their passing, and they left the grass behind them blackened in curling crisps.

  “Those whom the hot, darting dancers touched screamed wild in pain. Not horn nor hoof availed against them, and any who fled slow or wounded, the flames ran down like pards upon the Plain. The unicorns fled rampant then, terrified, for two whole nights and a day, till spring storms trampled out the deadly flares, and the children-of-the-moon dropped where they stood, to sleep like dead things in the rain.”

  The healer’s daughter fell silent then, and her echo fell instantly silent as well. Very like her own voice it was, only a little deeper. Jan sighed heavily, studying the ground. The story always ended the same, with the rout of the unicorns. If only. . . . He screwed his knees tighter into the turf. If only, if only—he knew not what. Tek made an ending to the tale:

  I have sung you the Lay of the Unicorns, how we were cast from our lands by wyverns and wandered many seasons, south over the Plain, till at last we came upon a Vale. And here, by Alma’s grace, we have begun to grow strong again.

  “But we have never forgotten that these are not our own true lands. One day we shall regain the Hallow Hills. Each year some of us must return: quiet, careful, on dangerous Pilgrimage, to drink that drink which makes us what we are, unicorns, warriors, children-of-the-moon.

  “The sacred well, the Hallow Hills, are not yet ours again. The Firebringer is not among us yet, but he is coming. He is coming—soon.”

  Tek stood a moment on the ledge and then descended. Those in the Circle began to stir. Dagg in the moonlit dark beside Jan whispered, “She changed that last.”

  Jan was still gazing after Tek as she lay down beside her father now.

  “She didn’t just say the Firebringer was coming. She said he was coming soon.”

  Jan nodded absently, thinking of something else. “I wonder,” he murmured. “Did this valley belong to anyone before we came here?”

  Dagg eyed him with a frown. “It was empty. Everyone knows that.”

  “I wonder,” murmured Jan. “Someone told me once . . . it seems....”

  This valley was ours before you stole it. Ever since the day of the gryphons, those words had been in his mind. Who was it that had told him that? Every time he strove to picture the speaker, the image slipped from him. It was like a dream he had awakened from and now could not recall.

  Khraa upon the ledge had begun to speak, but Jan hardly listened, still trying to puzzle out those strange, half-remembered words: This valley was ours. . . .

  Dagg was nudging him. “Do you think she’s a dreamer? Tek, I mean. Maybe she’s foreseen the Firebringer.”

  Jan felt his skin prickle. For a moment the thought quickened his blood: that the Firebringer might be more than just an old legend, that the prophecy might one day come to pass.

  “But do you think,” whispered Dagg, bending closer, “she could have meant Korr?”

  Jan started and stared at his friend. The feeling of exhilaration passed. The prince’s son snorted and shook his head. “Zod foretold ‘a seer of dreams.’”

  “Yes, but the dreaming sight doesn’t always come early,” said Dagg. “And your father’s coat is color-of-night.”

  Jan looked away. Could that be—his sire, the Firebringer? The idea unsettled him somehow. True, Korr was black and a great warrior, the first black prince in all the history of the unicorns. But his father had no use for dreamers and their dreams. He would have no truck with them at all—except that once with Jah-lila, the healer’s mate, who lived outside the Vale.

  Jan snorted again. No, it could never be Korr. Impossible! He rolled onto his back and scrubbed himself against the soft, grass-grown dirt. His winter coat was still long and shaggy from the cold months, and he wished it would shed. Spring was early this year, and it itched.

  He shook himself then, and settled himself. Dagg beside him had closed his eyes. The gray king had quit the ledge, and all around, Jan heard other unicorns preparing for sleep. He let his breath out slowly; his eyelids drooped.

  Above him the moon, mottled and bright, fissured down its middle like a ripe eggshell. Out of it crawled a winged serpent that hung above him in the starry sky, breathing a sour breath upon him and speaking words he could not understand.

  Jan’s limbs twitched in his sleep; his nostrils flared. Breath caught and shuddered in his throat. Dagg jostled beside him in the dark. Jan rolled onto his other side and breathed more deeply then. His eyelids ceased to flutter. The snake in the heavens flew away.

  It was very late. He realized he must have slept, but he could not remember having closed his eyes. The unbroken moon, whole and undamaged, had tilted a little way down from its zenith. Jan saw a figure standing among the sleeping unicorns.

  It turned away, walking toward the Circle’s edge, then it sprang lightly over a sleeper and cantered noiselessly toward the far hillside. Jan felt the drumming of heels through the ground and lay wondering. By Law, no one was allowed to break the Circle until the moon was down.

  As the figure disappeared upslope into the trees, Jan realized suddenly that it seemed to be heading toward that point whence the echo had come while Tek had been singing. He frowned, shaking his head. The valley stood empty now, the Circle around him still and undisturbed.

  It’s restlessness, he told himself. I imagined it. He felt no drum of heels in the soft earth now. He shut his eyes, shivering with fatigue. And as he slipped again into that country between waking and sleep, it seemed the night air brought to him, just for a moment, a delicious odor like roses in summer. He slept deep without dreams then, till morning.

  The Pan Woods

  8

  The trees leaned close around them as they walked, and bird cries haunted through the gloom. The air was cool, with gray jays and redwings flashing through the wells of light. As Jan watched, golden foxes slunk through the bracken. There a hare crouched, its eyes as black as river stones, beside a skeletal thicket all budded in yellow-green. Deer browsed among the shadows, raising their heads as the unicorns passed, gazing after the newcomers with great, uncurious eyes.

  The pilgrims slipped through the still Pan Woods that forested the folded hills as far as the Plain, a day’s journey to the west. They had risen at dawn, all those within the Circle, sprung up and shaken the sleep from them, while those forming the Ring around them had lain sleeping still. At a nod from the prince, the initiates had turned, leapt over the sleepers, and stolen from the valley—silently, lest any left behind awaken, breaking the Circle before the pilgrims were away.

  They moved in single file now, the colts and fillies behind the prince and flanked by warriors here and there. Over the long train of backs wending before him, Jan caught glimpses of rose and black, the healer’s daughter, and sometimes white and black, her sire. Others he remembered from the battle of the gryphons, for Korr chose only the worthiest warriors to accompany the initiates over the Plain.

  The Hallow Hills lay far to northward, a half month’s running. By then the full moon that had set over the Vale a half hour gone would be dwindled to nothing. By the moon’s dark, then, while the wyverns slept, the unicorns would keep Vigil beside the sacred Mere; and at daybreak they would dip their hooves and horns and drink a single sip of its bitter waters.

  So much Jan knew of the ceremony at their journey’s end. So much and no more. He and Dagg filed on through the trees of the Pan Woods, near the tail of the line. And the morning passed.

  They halted near noon to lie up beside a tangle of berry brush. Splendid curtains of sun streamed into a small clearing nearby. Jan and Dagg threw themselves down upon the soft brown carpet of bracken leaf, near the clearing’s edge but out of the light, and lay there, not talking. The morning’s long walk had tired them.

  When Alma first had made the world, so the singers said, she had offered her children the gift of speech. The unicorns took
it gladly, and sang their thanks to her. The gryphons took it, and the dragons, even the wyrms. But the goatling pans ran away into the woods, hiding themselves from the Mother-of-all, refusing her gift. And for that, the unicorns despised them.

  Jan and Dagg had even seen one once, a pan—a small, cowardly thing. The previous summer they had stolen high upon the slopes, looking for red rueberries to roll in so that, returning to their companions below, they might game them into believing they had been sprung upon by bobtailed hillcats.

  But unexpectedly, they had come upon a strange beast: round-headed, flat-faced, and horned like a goat. Its hairless chest was broad and shallow, with a bluish hide, its forelimbs fingered like birds’ feet, and the hind limbs shaggy brown with cloven heels. A slight figure, it would have stood only shoulder high to Korr.

  It had been crouching when they had come upon it, plucking ripe berries from the ruebush with the long toes of its forelegs; but it had sprung up and dashed away when it saw them, upon its hind limbs alone, like a wingless bird. He and Dagg had chased it, but it had disappeared over the hillcrest and down into the Pan Woods quick as cunning. What an odd, ungainly looking creature. Ugly as old bones.

  Remembering, Jan smiled with the easy arrogance of unicorns and nibbled the young buds from the briar beside him. It was Alma’s frown upon the goatlings that made them so. Only her favored ones, the moon’s children, walked truly in beauty. He swatted at a deerfly that lighted on his rump. The shoots of the bush tasted tender and green.

  The handful of warriors stood guard about the dozing initiates, or moved silently among the trees, scouting for pans. Jan watched them idly, and presently he heard a strange sound far in the distance, drawn out and windy, like the whooping of herons. It died down after a few moments, then began again, nearer. And as he listened, it seemed to Jan he could discern a pattern in the cries, calling and replying to one another through the trees.