Birth of the Firebringer

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  But the strange mist, oddly warm and dry, made his eyes smart and his throat feel dusty. So he drew away. And then he knew nothing for a little time. He had no memory of walking; it was as if someone or something familiar bore him along without his knowing.

  The next thing he was aware of was that he stood before a cave. It tunneled gradually downward into the hillside, disappearing around the bend. Wisps of scented smoke trailed upward along the ceiling like a slow, misty stream. Jan, peering into the cave’s dimness, breathing its earthy air, entered its coolness as in a dream.

  Pale limerock walls reflected the daylight streaming in behind. The floor looked worn, as though smoothed by water, its surface rosy crystalline, or green, or amethyst. The color changed as Jan entered deeper, as the angle of the light striking his eye altered. The floor seemed duller, somehow, softer than stone. It clicked like the substance of horn beneath his heels.

  Jan picked his way down and around the turns. Every dozen paces or so, some cranny burrowed down from the surface. Wan patches of light lay on the lime walls, glimmered on the crystal floor. The meandering ramp leveled out at last into a broad, straight hall. The light was dimmer here, the walls tunneling farther from the surface overhead.

  Jan moved forward, gazing dreamily about. Smaller corridors angled off on either side. All around him lay drowsy still, but even so far down, so deep in the earth, the air was not stale. A faint breeze trickled in with the light. Jan scented the air, still following the smoke tumbling languidly overhead.

  He came aware of a faded odor now—it smelled barely, hauntingly sweet. Yet underneath ran a slight stench, like moldering flowers, or damp rotted leaves. The scent itself was not faint, he realized, but subtle. It had taken him a long time to discover it under the keener, more pungent odor of smoke. But it had always been there. And the scent was old, very old, though lingering.

  The smoke overhead had begun to grow thicker, wider in its stream. Jan spotted where it bled into the main hall from a side corridor. He followed it. The way was narrow, very dark, and doubling back upon itself. Jan had to pick his path by feel. Then the alleyway sloped suddenly, steeply down, and angled into a larger hall.

  High, shallow tunnel windows provided light, while the smoke pooled and tumbled overhead. Jan set off down the broad, well-lighted corridor still in a dream, but beginning to come to himself now, a little. The hall came shortly to an end. Jan saw ahead of him a natural doorway, and a glimpse of chamber behind.

  Warm, changing light played on that snatch of wall, the white smoke spilling through the door’s archway. Jan approached without volition, unaware of his own motion, as though he himself were smoke, only spilling toward the chamber, not away. He heard some slight movement beyond the door, just at the threshold of his hearing. The scent of rotting flowers had grown stronger. He reached the doorway and gazed through.

  Fire lay in a golden bowl, which rested on a ledge of rock beside the far wall. The dish was circular, a pace across, and shallow like a shell. Within it, curling branches of milkwood lay upon a bed of fine gray dust. Those underneath were red and glowing, the ones on top blackened and covered with flickering tongues of flame.

  At the foot of the altar lay a heap of dead milkwood branches, and upon the altar face itself, beside the bowl, a little pile of withered herbs. The wall just behind was a broad column of stone, grooved and water-stained.

  Water had worn a depression in the wall overhanging the fire. The stone was eaten very thin there, translucent: Jan could see the water through the stone. The little crescent-shaped cistern was full to the brim. As he watched, a clear droplet condensed through a crack in the rim and fell into the flames with a hiss.

  He had no idea how long he stood there. Time had become suspended, as it does in dreams. It seemed a long time. The room was warm, Jan realized suddenly, warmer than the cool, shaded corridors down which he had just come, warm almost as the air outside. The air above the firebowl shimmered with heat.

  He watched the smoke arise and swirl about the ceiling, some of it escaping through the light well illuminating the chamber’s center. It was then Jan realized that he had entered the room, skirting the sun curtain as if by instinct, staying in shadow. He stood, now only a few paces from the firebowl, and felt the last of whatever influence had brought him there dissolve. He was himself again, fully aware. And then a cold, sliding voice behind him said:

  “When you have had done admiring my fire, little dark thing, turn around, that I may look you in the eye.”

  Mistress of Mysteries

  14

  Jan spun around. The wyvern lay on a bed of great, round stones, a sort of ground, he guessed, for sleeping. Larger than himself, larger even than Korr, the white wyrm reclined, its tail coiled langorously about itself, and forked at the end into three arrowhead stings.

  Pearly, like the inside of a seashell, the creature stared at him. Its slender torso was propped on stubby forelegs, broad and clawed like a badger’s, but hairless, white-skinned, and translucent in the firelight. Jan could see the fingerbones through the flesh.

  The wyvern had three heads. Jan felt a shudder run through him as he realized it. The long, sinuous neck was divided near the base, with the lowest head being also the smallest. On the other side, a higher, thicker branch bore a larger head. But only the tallest, central head had spoken. The other two hissed softly, shifting and swaying. All three were looking at him.

  “I said come away from my fire,” it told him again, and the second added, its voice lighter than the primary’s, somehow younger, “Stand in the sunlight.” And when Jan hesitated an instant’s breadth, the third head snapped, “Can you not understand a civilized tongue? Be quick.”

  The creature lay between him and the door. Jan’s heart beat hard and slow inside his ribs, and his throat was desperately dry. But strangely, curiosity very nearly overrode his fear. It scarcely resembled anything he had imagined of wyverns from the singers’ tales: white and sinuous, yes, but not noxious, not hideous. Very lithe and supple, rather—almost . . . almost beautiful. Jan stepped forward into the light.

  “What is it?” he heard the two heads whispering. The primary head poised, eyeing him.

  “What manner of creature . . . ?” the second head began, but the tallest laughed.

  “A unicorn! I have not seen one alive since my babyhood four hundred summers gone. Speak, unicorn. Tell us your business and your name.”

  Jan felt his blood quicken. The white wyrms were sorcerers that could fell kings with a kiss. To give one his name, even his usename, would be a dangerous thing.

  “Speak,” the third, smallest head hissed at him. “Your name.”

  Sunlight was dazzling him; he could scarcely see for the glare. He shifted his stance till one eye moved into shadow.

  “Do not approach,” the second head started, but the great one snapped at it.

  “Oh, peace,” it ordered, languidly. “A little silence.”

  The wyvern reared up, flexing and extending both powerful, stunted forepaws so that only a toe or two remained in contact with the ground. It was, it seemed, less looking at him now than scenting him. Jan noted the sickle-shaped nostrils, the catfish whiskers, and wondered how well this wyvern could see him out of strong light. He took another sidelong step, getting his other eye out of the glare.

  “I have heard,” it began, almost companionably, “that the unicorns now live in a valley far to the south. They are ruled by a prince, are they not, a black prince?”

  It settled back upon its bed of stones. Its three heads tilted and bobbed. Jan gazed at it and racked his brain. How to get past? He needed a stratagem, for it was huge. He could never hope to best it in a fight.

  The wyvern did not seem to mind his silence. “You, too, are dark, little unicorn,” it resumed presently. “You would not by chance be some relation of his—his nephew, perhaps? Perhaps his son.”

  If that last word was accented, ever so slightly, Jan hardly heard. His gaze had fixed on the
wyvern’s tail. Its triple-barbed tip twitched and lashed as it spoke, sometimes coiling and knotting back on itself. Above, its three heads lazily bobbed and swayed. He found their ceaseless weaving fascinating.

  “You are admiring my three heads,” it said suddenly. The flanking two hissed and intertwined, whispering to each other now. The central one continued mildly. “You know something of wyverns? It is unusual, yes. But I am very old. Only the very old among us grow more than one head.”

  Its voice was strange, hollow, oddly modulated. It shifted up and down scales weirdly, invitingly. Abruptly, Jan shook himself, on guard against its spells.

  “Yes, I am old,” the wyvern sighed, “and only the king has seen more years. Lynex has lived to seven heads.”

  Lynex. Jan felt a bolt go through him. Surely not that same Lynex from the old lays? The wyvern paused, surveying him, he guessed, to see whether its wordspell was having an effect—and felt a small triumph to see its flash of disappointment. But the wyvern hid it swiftly, and resumed.

  “I was not sleeping, just now when you entered. Oh, no. I do not sleep much in winter, as others do. Do you know why we sleep the winters by, most of us? Too cold.” It shimmered, shrugging. “And not enough food in the cold season, too.”

  It nodded past him toward the golden carrying bowl. There was no wind in the still chamber, but Jan could feel the fire’s heat along his coat in gusts.

  “But I am mistress of the wyverns’ fire. The king granted me this honor when I was no more than a slip, barely hatched, not long after we won these shelves for our own from you unicorns.”

  Jan felt a spark of anger then. Almost, it overrode his fear. The other’s eyes darted wickedly, as if expecting him to understand something that he did not. The firelight glinted in them, and ran over the walls in watery streams.

  “Lynex’s reward for my part in the battle.”

  The wyvern laughed suddenly, throwing back all her heads, her mouths gaping wide, and Jan caught a glimpse of her teeth for the first time: like ice-splinters, or fishes’ spines, rows of them.

  “There, my little cloven-footed visitor. Now do you understand who it is who commands you to speak—or does my greatness overawe you?”

  Jan found his voice.

  “You are a wyvern, hatched just before your people drove mine from our homeland through trickery and deceit. That is all I know of you.”

  He saw the other’s eyes flash then. She reared again.

  “Oh, you are full of contempt, are you, little four-foot, for me and my kind? Because we use stratagems to gain our ends when it suits us.”

  “Proud beasts!” the second head spat. “Do you think that you yourselves are above such games—that none of you ever harken to the whispers of power?”

  The littlest head spoke now in a voice gone suddenly quiet, almost sweet. “Did your own princess not cut down her father, seizing his place four hundred years past, just before we took possession of these hills?”

  Jan stared at her, and felt his blood burning. That she could even speak of such a thing! But he had no time to make reply.

  “Has your own father not held you back from initiation because he fears you? You are cleverer than he, and see much he cannot or will not see.”

  Jan clenched his teeth. Lies, all of it.

  “And does the prince’s mate not scheme against him by urging you to follow your own heart, not his commands . . . ?”

  “Not so!” cried Jan. “Halla was a brave princess and a true warrior who struck in her own defense against the king, who was mad with a wyvern in his ear and fell dead when the thing had eaten out his reason.” He drew breath, shaking with rage. “And as for Ses, and Korr my father. . . .”

  “Ah.” The wyvern smiled. Very white she looked suddenly, very cool and deadly. Her teeth snapped, still smiling. “So you are the prince’s son.”

  Jan choked to a halt, startled, staring. The wyvern’s gaze had grown keen now, her eyes like polished stone. The flanking heads growled, deep in their throats, but the main one snaked closer to him.

  “Listen to me, Aljan son-of-Korr, did you think I would not know you? That I had drawn you down into my den with a spell of fire to no purpose?”

  Her whiskers bristled. The ruff of gills on her three heads spread. Jan felt astonishment flood him. She knew his name, his own truename, and had known it all along. Fear sprang into his mind again, cold as river ice. A wyvern magicker held him in her power.

  “I am the mistress of mysteries,” she whispered. “I gaze into fire and much I see there. I know your people dream of a great hero, one who would make war on the wyverns and drive us from our dens. . . .”

  “The Firebringer,” breathed Jan.

  “Your name for him is unimportant,” the wyvern snapped. “I care only that he is to be color-of-night—a black warrior such as this Korr who rules you now.”

  “My father,” murmured Jan. Did she know, did she speak the truth? Was Korr to be the Firebringer?

  “It is he; it must be,” her third head was muttering. “What other unicorn is color-of-night?”

  “And yet, for a long time, I was not sure.” The second head mused now, seemingly more to itself than to him. “Though I watched him—and lately I have been at great pains to thwart him—for the patterns in the sky have told me this hero’s time is coming, very soon.”

  The central head was looking at him.

  “Yes, I can read the stars,” she said, “though their meaning is often veiled. And there are other powers within my skill. When upon my fire I lay certain herbs, I can walk in others’ dreams.”

  “Dreams,” murmured Jan, and just for an instant her voice became so familiar, eerily so, he could have sworn he had heard it somewhere, somehow before. “I dreamed once, in a gryphon’s eye. . . .”

  He remembered now, with perfect clarity, that dreamlike trance.

  “Dreamed I saw a fair serpent charming a hawk. Was it you?” He turned to the white wyrm again suddenly. “You who spoke in the gryphon’s dream?”

  The wyvern laughed. “I have seen many things gazing into my fire. One of them is how close the Gryphon Mountains lie to your Vale. And the gryphons are jealous. Shreel, the blue female—I spoke in her dream of the glory to be had if she and her mate destroyed the black prince of the unicorns.”

  Jan felt himself shivering, with revulsion, not fear. “We defeated your wingcats,” he told her. “Killed them both.”

  The wyvern shrugged.

  “And the pans?” Jan demanded suddenly, remembering now the sting of stones, the whistles of warriors, branches whipping, and horns crying in pursuit.

  “I told the goatlings when your pilgrimage would pass.” She smiled. “But my powers lie not only in the reading of stars and the directing of dreams. I can call things and conjure things, given time: raise wind and bring weather. . . .” Her long, sinuous necks shifted, swaying. She hummed a little, almost crooning.

  “The Serpent-cloud,” cried Jan, softly. His limbs prickled, momentarily weak. “You called the storm upon the Plain.”

  The wyvern’s middle head chuckled. “Clever. No. I did not make it—but I did coax one wheeling funnel of darkness to dance your way.”

  “We outran it,” Jan answered, defiant. “It passed us by.”

  “Well,” the wyvern said. “I am almost glad, for that has enabled you to come to me.”

  She shifted position, coiling herself more tightly about her sleeping-stones.

  “Smug unicorns,” her third head muttered, “thinking yourselves so secret and so safe. Did you think we do not know what you unicorns do, that you come each year at borning spring into our hills?”

  Our hills, our hills, she called them.

  “Come for your rites by the poison pool,” the second head added. “We find your marks, your hoofprints above the banks, traces of your passage along the paths.”

  The main head rested now upon the stones, seemingly unconcerned, letting the others talk.

  “We know a
bout your Circle,” the little head murmured, the last word hissed. “How you, all of you, pledge yourselves to it and serve it. And I know the reason you are with me now, young hothead, is that you are outcast.”

  That last she spat, crackling with contempt. Jan felt his bravado vanish instantly. Shame scathed him like a scourge. It was the truth. She spoke the truth. Her words needed no spell now to catch him in their teeth. The wyvern laughed.

  “Yes, little mud-prince, no more your father’s heir. That, too, has been my doing, in a way. Your hasty temper hardly needs much prodding, but I have teased it when I willed.”

  He stared at her, and felt again all at once that wild hotheadedness coiled inside him like a snake.

  “Oh, yes, Aljan. I have been watching you for a very long time. Did you think I would not keep one trick in the back of my teeth in case all my others against your father failed?”

  She had raised her central head again, and turned it slightly, eyeing him. Beneath that malevolent gaze, Jan felt his resistance vanishing. The two flanking heads chuttered and hissed.

  “Do you not remember all the dreams that I have sent you?”

  And the memories came then, unclouded, unimpeded at last, and terrifying: a longfish swimming in the water, a winged serpent that hatched out of the moon, salamanders that burst bright into flame—and a dozen others such as he had had before the coming of Jah-lila. But now the passage of time and the white wyrm’s words, her burning smoke and Jan’s own efforts to recall had at last swept all the wild mare’s protections away.

  The wyvern’s eyes blazed into his.

  “Dreams, Aljan, to wean you away from the unicorns and win you to my cause, though you did not until this moment know it. The length of your life I have prepared for your coming. And now, at last, at long last, my unicorn, you are here.”

  Jan forced himself to speak, forced his lips and teeth and tongue to move, for he felt paralyzed, exactly as he had in the gryphon’s cave, as he had in the first moments of the pans’ attack. He knew even now that he must fight, fight the urge to surrender to her spells. He could not take his eyes from the white wyrm before him.