Birth of the Firebringer

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  Jan scanned to westward, straining his eyes. Then he saw, suddenly, two figures very far away upon the crest of a roll. They stood splay-legged, heads high as if surprised, watching the herd loping by. They were unicorns.

  “Tek!” cried Jan, veering back with Dagg toward their mentor. “Do you see them? What are they?”

  He saw the healer’s daughter turn and her green eyes narrow as she spotted the figures on the distant rise. She glanced at Jan. “Renegades.”

  Jan wrenched his gaze back to the pair. They had passed the midpoint of his gaze, and he had to turn to keep them in view. Renegades—those who had deserted the Vale, forsaken Alma and broken the Ring of Law. Outcasts, criminals, infidels. And I almost became one of them, he found himself thinking, his mind going back to the day of the gryphons. Jan stared at the figures on the hill.

  “Watch,” Tek was telling him.

  She let loose a long, loud warrior’s cry. The pair upon the hillside started and wheeled, vanishing over the crest of the rise. Jan thought he could hear their wild, high whinnies very faintly on the breeze. He saw his father snorting, refusing to acknowledge the Ringbreakers’ presence by so much as a glance. The band galloped on.

  Time passed. Hours, and then days, almost a dozen of them. Sunrises and moonsets fell behind them as they ran, and the land seemed to roll away under their hooves. For Jan, their days were all loping, snatched rest, and sparring. The warriors taught them battlecraft, how to stalk, how to follow a trail. The healer told them the properties of herbs and where to find water on the Great Grass Plain.

  Their nights were all greedy feeding and singers’ tales and sleep. Korr showed them how to find their way using the stars. The whole sky had become strangely tilted now; new starshapes looming before them as they traveled north, the old ones slipping beyond the world’s rim behind.

  Sometimes at night now, gazing into the pattern of Alma’s eyes, Jan felt himself taken from himself, made hollow. If only he gazed long enough, deeply enough, it seemed he might begin to read some great mystery in their turning, something deeper than simply where on the world he stood. As if the stars might, very gently, bear him away.

  But despite the unceasing cycle of busyness and rest, busyness and rest, Jan felt a restlessness within him growing. Though he guarded himself very close now, keeping himself always within the band as his father had commanded, more and more he found himself gazing off across the Plain. That strange little voice he could not quite hear whispered in his mind still: What lies beyond your band, beyond the vastness of the Plain? Come, come away. Come see.

  Sometimes, in the distance behind, he glimpsed a figure that did not stop and stare at them, as Renegades did. And sometimes he caught the far, faint drum of heels after the band had already come to a halt. Only Tek seemed restless, too, though she said no word. Twice more he glimpsed her slipping off into the dark.

  Something moved out there, just beyond his range. He felt it to the marrow of his bones. Not all its cunning could keep him from beginning to suspect that something watched him, or awaited him, or both. Its hold on him that had blocked his vision for so long, at last was growing tenuous.

  So it kept itself nearby, but circumspect. And the prince’s son stayed baffled still, for it dared not risk letting him—letting any of them—learn who it was that ran behind.

  Renegade

  11

  The twelfth day of their travel upon the Mare’s back was stretching on toward noon. Jan and Dagg ran with Tek near the middle of the band. A light rain must have fallen the night before, for the ground over which they ran was damp. They had seen no hard rains yet upon the Plain.

  The prince before them crested a rise, and Jan saw his father come suddenly to a standstill. At his whistle, the pilgrims plunged to a halt. Jan stood a moment, puzzled; the day was early yet for halting. The sun had not yet topped the sky.

  Jan trotted forward, and a few others followed. He halted near his father, who stood gazing down the slope. Then Jan started and cavaled as he saw what had caught the prince’s eye. Below them lay a unicorn, pale blue and bloodied, her horn stained red. The great vein of her throat had been torn; talons had scored her flank and neck. Nearby lay a banded pard, gored through one shoulder and the ribs of one battered side staved in from a mighty kick.

  No spotted kites yet circled the sky. The blood upon the grass was wet. Jan stared, realizing: It could not have happened an hour gone. He heard his father give a great snort, then, as though he had unwittingly smelled fetor.

  “Pard,” Korr muttered, starting downslope at an angle, away from the dead. “Renegade.”

  “See the mistake she made,” Jan heard Tek telling Dagg. “She let it clasp her by the throat.” Her warrior’s voice was flat, dispassionate. Jan wheeled to stare. “If ever one of those springs on you, buck—roll. Don’t gore. Use your heels—and run.”

  Jan turned back to the fallen mare, pity mingling with his horror. She was so young; she could not have been much older than Tek. And she had died bravely, fighting for her life—as I once fought for my life, Jan found himself thinking, not so long ago.

  Others of the band, he realized, were already following the prince. Though some of the initiates still stood staring, the warriors turned them, hurrying them off, themselves trotting by the dead with hardly a glance.

  “But,” Jan started, “shouldn’t we bury her?”

  The prince broke into a lope at the bottom of the hill, whistling the others to follow him.

  “But,” cried Jan, “she’s dead. Shouldn’t there be rites?”

  His father wheeled. “Less noise,” he called. “We move on.”

  Jan stared in disbelief. They could not simply abandon the dead. It was against Alma’s Law. It was shameful. “We can’t go yet,” he burst out. “A warrior deserves. . . .”

  At that, Korr wheeled and smote the ground with his forehooves. “Hold your tongue,” he thundered. “That is no warrior.” He tossed his head toward the fallen mare. “She was a Renegade, and died as all outside the Circle must—unmarked and unmourned. The Law is not for her. Now come.”

  Others of the band had strayed to a stop, stood watching the prince of the unicorns and his son. Korr wheeled away. Jan stood confounded. A Renegade? But she bore a horn upon her brow. Her hooves were cloven still, not solid round and single-toed. And even if she were a Renegade, what could that matter now? She was a unicorn, and she was dead.

  His father gave no backward glance. Jan found himself shouting, “This isn’t right!”

  But a sharp nip on the flank cut him short. He spun around. Tek shouldered against him, shoving him after the herd.

  “Enough,” she whispered. “Don’t contest with your father.”

  “No, it’s wrong,” cried Jan, “leaving her.” He threw his weight back, resisting. He felt hot and rash.

  Tek bullied him forward, nearly knocking him down.

  “Be still, Jan. Just come!” he heard Dagg call.

  The prince and the others were cantering away. Dagg lingered, but Teki shouldered against him, turning him. Dagg tried to duck around, dodge back to Jan, but the healer herded him away after the rest. Dagg gazed back over his shoulder helplessly. Jan stared. The others’ dust clouded the air. Another sharp nip on the flank brought him back to himself.

  “Hie!” Tek shouted. “Now, or we’ll not catch them till noon.”

  Jan kicked into a gallop, seething with rage. He and Tek breathed dust, running hard for a mile until they caught the herd. Korr called a halt not long after. Jan threw himself down at the edge of the Ring. At the prince’s nod, Teki kept Dagg with him across the Ring, away from Jan. The healer began to sing them a lay.

  “I’ll tell you now of the Renegades, how each was a unicorn once, but failed initiation, or else was banished for murder or some other crime, or else faithlessly broke Ring and ran away to live wild, godless, Lawless, hated of Alma upon the Plain. . . .”

  Jan could not listen. His thoughts were in a snarl. Fury mad
e his jaw ache, his ears burn. His blood felt feverish. After a moment, he pitched to his feet and left the Ring. Tek beside him showed no interest at his going. The others were all either absorbed in the tale or intentionally ignoring him, as Korr was. Jan trotted around a low rise, out of sight of the camp. He had to get away.

  The sentry eyed him indifferently, then turned his attention back to the camp. Jan pawed the turf, frustration biting at him. He did not care if the mare had been a Renegade. What they had done was dishonorable, simply leaving her, as if she had been no more than a dead gryphon or pan. No! Jan shook his head. She was a unicorn. She had killed a pard at the cost of her life and deserved a hero’s death rites.

  Something occurred to him then, a possibility he had not considered before. He halted, turning it over in his mind. Did he really need anybody’s leave? Anyone might perform the rites. And if he ran quick and light, keeping low behind the brow of the swells before striking out across the Plain, he could be halfway back to the mare before he was spotted—if he was spotted. It was almost like a game.

  Jan glanced at the sentry on the hill. The warrior’s ears were still pricked to the sound of Teki’s voice, his gaze inward turned, not scanning the Plain as it should have been. Jan made up his mind in a rush and plunged into the dry gully across from him, putting another rise between himself and the camp.

  He followed the streambed back the way they had come, then clambered up the short, steep bank onto the grass again. Behind him, the sentry was a small, gray figure against the sky, and the fallen Renegade lay only a couple of miles’ hard gallop off. Jan sprinted across the Plain.

  The Renegade was not difficult to find. Spotted kites had begun to circle now. At home, in the Vale, Jan had seen the rites for the dead, how the fallen were laid upon the outer cliffs with forelegs extended, their heads thrown back, manes streaming and their hind legs kicked out behind. Nearing the spot where the dark birds circled, he told himself he would lay out the fallen mare and be back to noon camp before he could be missed.

  Jan topped the gentle rise before the slope on which the Renegade and the pard that had felled her lay—then pitched to a halt, snorting, staring. Someone had been there before him, and whoever it was had been laying out the grasscat as well. The pard lay stretched now, paws folded, a Circle trampled in the grass all around—just as for a warrior.

  Jan glanced about him, puzzled, and suddenly uneasy, wondering whom he had interrupted at the rites. He gave a whinny, then another, and listened. No answer came. The legs of the mare had been laid, but her head was not yet lifted. The Circle about her was only half complete. The shadows of the dark birds wheeled and floated over the grass.

  He had no time to waste on wondering. Jan descended the slope. He took the young mare’s horn in his teeth—carefully, lest it prove brittle. To his surprise, it was strong and hard. Horn in teeth, he lifted her head and laid it so her silvery mane streamed long and knotted on the grass. He had to work quickly. The kites were dropping lower in the sky.

  He had just finished the stamping of the Circle about her when he caught the sound of hoofbeats. He whirled, fearing for a moment that it was members of his own band, before realizing that the sound came from the wrong quarter, from the west.

  A unicorn topped the rise. He was young, no older than Dagg’s young mother, Leerah, and color-of-evening-sky. His mane was long, with feathers tangled in it. He bore a horn upon his brow. A pale orange mare joined him in a moment, then a crimson filly almost half-grown. They stared at Jan. Jan stared at them. They all had horns. The evening blue came a few steps down the slope.

  “What do you here?” His words were quiet, odd. A moment passed before Jan understood him.

  “I was burying them,” he answered. “Weren’t you here before?”

  The other shook his head.

  “We saw the kites,” the pale mare said.

  The blue was eyeing him more closely now. “You have not the look of one from the Plain,” he said. “Nor the speech of one, either. Whence come you?”

  Jan gazed at them, startled. “I come from the Vale of the Unicorns. On Pilgrimage.”

  All three of the strangers started.

  “He’s a Moondancer,” the pale mare muttered. “One of those who drink of the wyvern pool.”

  Jan glanced at the dead mare, then turned to the one who stood before him. “I didn’t start to bury her,” he said. “I only finished the rite. Was it none of you?”

  The dark blue unicorn shook his head. “Nay. And I know of no one else who runs in these parts this moon. It must have been the Far One.”

  “The Fair One,” the pale mare said, and the filly echoed, “The Red One, the Rare One.”

  “She is often on the Plain in spring,” the blue unicorn added, and Jan realized he must have looked confounded. “She is a strange, dark mallow color, without any yellow or amber in it. She is holy, and very wise. Her hooves are oddly made, for she comes from a far place. And once, it is said, she was not a unicorn.”

  Jan had to listen very hard to be able to follow. Their speech was strange, like a singer’s cant—and much of it he did not understand at all.

  “She is known and welcomed everywhere among the Free People,” the crimson filly said.

  Jan shook his head; he had never heard of such a one. “You have seen her?” he asked.

  Now the filly shook her head.

  “They say a young prince of the southlands found her, years ago, lost and wandering,” the orange mare said. She came a few steps downslope to stand beside the blue. “He told her of the wyvern country far across the Plain, that she might go there in summer, and drink of a miraculous spring that would make her a unicorn.”

  “What prince was that?” cried Jan. He had never heard of such a deed in song or lay.

  “The one whose name means ‘thunder,’” the blue one said. “The black one. . . .” He glanced at the mare beside him.

  She told him, “Korr.”

  Jan started like a deer. “My fa. . . .” He caught himself. “A prince of the unicorns would never do such a thing—let drink of the scared pool one who was not of the Circle.”

  “Circle?” the red filly asked.

  Jan stared at them. “Don’t you know? You’re Renegades.”

  “Renegades,” the evening blue murmured, tasting the word as though it were strange upon his tongue.

  “Weren’t you born of the Circle, in the Vale of the Unicorns?”

  The blue shook his head. “I was born here, on the Plain.”

  Jan breathed out hard, feeling as if his ribs had been kicked. They were not of the Circle, had never been of the Circle. They were not runaways from his people at all. They were, instead, of another clan, another—he searched for the word—tribe altogether, like the gryphons, like the pans.

  Then his skin grew cold. For they were unicorns. They had never sipped of the Mirror of the Moon, yet their horns had not fallen, nor their cloven hooves grown single and round. Wispy tassels tipped their ears, and their heels were fringed with silky hair. They were bearded. He could not seem to catch his breath.

  The blue unicorn shrugged. “I have always lived here.”

  “I have heard of this Circle of the southerners,” the pale mare said, coming forward now again, “this Ring of War, this Circle of the Moon—and your Vale. My mother fled them when she was no more than a filly.” Her words were sharp. “She said you southlanders think much of your Ring, and bind yourselves to it until you cannot see or say or think or do a thing that is not within it.”

  She tossed her head and snorted.

  “Well, we are not bound to your Circle. We come and think and say as we please. We are the Free People.”

  Jan blinked and stared at her. He had never been so spoken to in all his life. And what was this they said of Korr—that he had broken the Circle, broken the Law, to tell the secret way to the Mirror of the Moon to one who was not even a unicorn. Or what had they said? Who had once not been a unicorn? He saw the blue
unicorn eyeing the sky. The shadows of the kites had grown sharper, their spirals tighter. They circled lower to the ground.

  “The time turns short that it would be proper to remain here,” the blue unicorn said. “Soon it will be the kites’ time.”

  Jan’s gaze went once more to the fallen mare, pale middle blue against the dark earth of the Plain. Her blood on the grass was dry. She looked as though she were springing free of the Ring that encircled her. He glanced at the dark blue unicorn with feathers in his hair.

  “Did you know her?” Jan asked him. The other shook his head. Jan turned back to the fallen one. “We have a song for the dead,” he said, “when we lay them out to greet the sky:

  “Fate has unspoken one of the Circle,

  Pride of companions, wonted of fame.

  Vouch for her valor, her heart of a hero,

  Fellow of warriors, fallen in battle:

  Rally, remember her name.”

  He was no singer, but his voice was young and strong. Jan stopped himself at the last word.

  “I don’t know her name,” he said.

  “The Mother knows,” said the blue unicorn beside him.

  The filly told him, “Álm’harat knows.”

  Jan turned, drawn up short again with wonder—though he was already so stunned it almost seemed nothing should surprise him anymore—that any dared speak the truename of Alma here, so openly. He had always been taught that those outside the Ring had cast off the Mother-of-all, had forgotten her.

  The plainsdwellers joined him at the Circle’s edge. He saw them dip their heads, going down on one knee first to the fallen mare, then to the pard. Jan blinked, frowning. It was no gesture he had ever seen before. He bowed his own head to the mare, then after a pause, to the grasscat as well. The plainsdwellers rose.

  Then the pale orange mare turned to him and went down again on one knee for a moment before him. Jan drew back, not knowing what to make of it.

  “My words were harsh to you before, young stranger,” she said, rising. “For that, I ask your pardon. You have honored our dead in accordance with your custom, and that is unlike any southlander I have ever heard of.”