The Son of Summer Stars ft-3

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  The prince of the unicorns nodded. “Aye. Peace is pledged. We are sworn to depart for the Hills at spring.”

  The red mare nodded, said firmly, “Good.”

  “How do my foster sisters fare?” Tek inquired.

  Jah-lila nuzzled her affectionately. “As you see. They spend much time in the Pan Woods now, midwiving their own folk’s young.”

  “And our allies there?” Jan asked.

  The red mare whickered. “Again, very well. The peace you forged in the Woods has been a lasting one.”

  Below, at herd’s edge, the elder of the pan sisters, Sismoomnat, chased half a dozen wildly fleeing foals while Aiony charged Pitipak, trying to butt her off her feet. Lell laughed and circled. Dhattar’s coat blazed fire-white among the burning colors of the rest. “Whence have the three of you come,” Tek was asking, “my pan sisters and you?”

  The red mare smiled. “From the shores of the Summer Sea,” she said. “We watched the narwhals calve…”

  Her words were cut short by a long, harsh wail more like a wolf’s cry than a unicorn’s. Sismoomnat, Pitipak and the foals halted abruptly. Around them, their elders started and wheeled. A haggard figure appeared on the near slope of the Vale, emerging from a dark hollow in the hillside. Jan’s heart jolted. He felt Tek beside him sip her breath. Once massy and robust, the tall unicorn at the cavemouth showed sunken flanks, his ribs visible, limbs bony and starved. Black as storm cloud, he loomed in the grotto’s entryway. Before him, the herd recoiled.

  “Gryphons,” the emaciated stallion roared. The cave amplified and echoed the sound. “Wingcats in our midst! First you dance the serpent’s dance, then don the quills of our sworn foes. Now you welcome the beardless wych. Traitors!”

  He drew nearer, descending the slope half a dozen paces. With shrills of terror, the youngest colts galloped to their dams. The whole herd fell back. Jan spotted Lell standing before young Ai and Dha, pressed close to the pans. He glimpsed Tek’s gaze of fury and loathing as she watched the dark figure on the hillside. The prince of the unicorns clenched his teeth and advanced.

  “Aye, night past we danced the serpent’s dance,” he called, “to make ourselves proof against such stings—in honor of That One who made both serpent and the unicorn. We treated with wingcats to win peace ere we depart this vale. And Jah-lila is our honored guest, dam to my mate and midwife to the herd.”

  He left unsaid the other, bitter truth: that the skeletal figure above was responsible for the deaths of countless fillies and foals before these. Their elders had not forgotten, could never forget, that terrible winter two years gone when this stallion had seized power in Jan’s absence and allowed half the herd to starve to death.

  “If Alma stands defiled, it is not by us,” the young prince continued. “Cry traitor elsewhere.”

  Jan heard his people’s mutters of assent.

  “Poison in your blood!” the haunt on the hillside before him shrieked. “You’ll never scratch my flank. No serpent’s taint to sully me!”

  The rumble from the herd grew louder. Dark clouds appeared above the edges of the Vale. Dawn wind blew stronger, gusting now. Sun flickered and flared, backlighting the shadowy thunderheads that moved to encircle it. Jan’s ears pricked at restless snorts and whinnies. He heard a mare’s voice call out, “Tyrant!”

  A young stallion’s echoed: “Murderer!”

  “Rout him,” another shouted. “Cast him from the Vale.”

  Jan felt hairs lift along his spine. He spun to face the herd. They shouldered and jostled about the council rise, seething with anger, eyes fixed on the hillside above. The young prince reared, struck the sparking stones of the rise with his hooves till they clanged.

  “Hold,” he shouted. “Hold! Think you that banishment can heal madness? All the herd ran mad that terrible winter—and those who meekly submitted to Korr’s tyranny must share his blame. No ruler reigns without the consent of his folk. Had we not rather seek to drive madness from our own hearts? Only then may the herd know peace.”

  The unicorns subsided uneasily, eyes cast down and askance, unwilling to face him anymore, or each other, or the figure on the rise. Sires gathered their daughters to their sides and nuzzled them. Dams stroked their tiny foals. Drawing breath, Jan turned once more to the figure on the hillside.

  “Father—” but the bony stallion cut him off.

  “You are not my son!”

  The black prince of the unicorns stopped short. Korr’s words tore him like a wolf’s jaws. Pulse pounding, Jan fought for calm, dismayed that even now, after all this time, his sire could still spit barbs to rankle him.

  “You were never my son!” the mad king snarled. “Wild, unschooled, spurning tradition at every turn. Then you pledged with that strumpet, pied daughter of a wych, and got twin horrors from her womb. I never sired you! You’re none of my get—”

  “Enough!”

  The word burst from Jan, its force bringing the other up short. The young prince of the unicorns shook himself as though to clear a swarm of gnats from his hide. Illishar’s feather batted softly against his neck.

  “Enough, I say! Two years have you railed against my mate, calling our progeny abomination, yet offered no justification for your charge.”

  The wind quickened, humming, full of moisture. Storm clouds gusted around the dawn-red sun. Jan snorted.

  “Where were you, my sire, when I was but a foal and needed your care? Off ramping with the warriors, haranguing them to endless clashes with gryphons, wyverns, and pans! It was I you shunned then. Not one word or deed of mine was ever worthy of your note.”

  The old resentment, so long unspoken, roiled up in him now. Jan cavaled.

  “Always it was Tek! Her you showered with praise. Tek the warrior, pride of the half-growns, model to all the younger fillies and colts. A stranger would have thought her your get and I the fatherless foal. Yet when we pledged, marrying our fates, a bond unshakable under the summer stars—suddenly she was not to be endured, her crimes uncounted, our offspring monstrous. Why?”

  The wind blew steadily now, grey clouds obscuring the sun. Jan scarcely heeded it. His smooth summer pelt riffled, teasing his skin. The long hairs of his tail flailed his flank.

  “In Alma’s name, father, what drives you mad and turns you against me, my mate and young? Speak! If you will but speak, perhaps whatever torments you can be allayed.”

  The mad king stood gazing at him, eyes wide, rolling.

  “Nay,” he whispered. “The red wych has cozened you, telling you lies!”

  Wind buffeted about them, slapping Jan’s forelock into his eyes.

  The Vale lay in shadow. Thunder growled like a hillcat. Dams and stallions bent over their young, shielding them from the coming rain—but none moved to seek shelter, all eyes fixed on the prince and his sire. Jan glimpsed Jah-lila leaving her daughter’s side.

  “Korr,” she called, “you know as well as I that I have revealed nothing. I have pledged never to speak of the history we share while your silence holds. I honor that pledge still—unlike the oath you once swore me…”

  “Never!” the haggard stallion gasped. “You bewitched me there upon the Plain. I was too young to know my own heart—”

  “But not too young to give your word.” The red mare spoke softly. Her black-green eyes gazed at him without hatred, only sorrow. “Speak of what befell us. Your own silence lies at the root of this madness, not the conduct of any other. Only speak! Be healed.”

  The gaunt stallion reared, scarcely darker than the storm clouds that towered above. Sudden lightning clashed, followed by deafening thunder. Korr flailed at nothing.

  “My mate!” Ses cried. Wind stole her words. “Come back to me. Reveal what troubles you!”

  Rain spattered down, stinging as hailstones. Ses moved forward to stand beside the red mare.

  “She troubles me!” Korr thundered back. “My mate—she is my woe. She stole my heir with her sorcery. Wych!” he shouted above the gale, eyes flicki
ng to Tek’s dam, then back to his mate. “You knew. You knew all along. From the time we pledged—you held your tongue and watched…” Again his gaze wavered. “I have no mate, no heir, no son!”

  His words had grown so wild Jan could no longer tell to whom the mad king spoke: the red mare or his mate. But the young prince had no time for thought. The king had already launched himself, charging down the rain-slicked slope straight at Ses—or perhaps at Jah-lila. The two mares stood nearly shoulder to shoulder now. Lell cried out and sped forward, as though to fling herself in front of her dam, defend her somehow by coming between her and the mad king’s charge.

  “No!” shouted Jan.

  He vaulted from the council rise, dashed to intercept his frenzied sire. Before him, Ses and Jah-lila parted, sprang in opposite directions to clear the raging stallion’s path. Jan managed to veer ahead of Lell, shield her. Korr plunged past in a dusky blur, a waft of rank air, a snatch of bright teeth and a slash of horn. Jan swung his head with all his might, brought his own weapon down with force enough to knock his assailant’s skewer aside. The blow clamored, reverberating in his skull.

  He felt the bite upon his neck begin to bleed, the long shallow rent across his chest blaze hot with pain. Beside him, Lell—scarcely half his size—dodged, trying to get around him, seeking to fall upon their attacker herself. Korr skidded, wheeled. Jan rushed him, mostly to keep himself safely between his young sister and the king. The black prince slapped hard at his sire with the flat of his horn, pounded him with his heels, driving him back, away from Lell and the others.

  At last, with a despairing cry, the mad king shook free, wheeled, fled across the valley floor and up the far hillside. Lightning shattered the sky. Rolling thunder pealed. The wind lashed, flailed. Rain became a downpour. Stunned, the herd broke and scattered, scrambling for haven in the caverns and hollows of the surrounding slopes. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jan sprang in pursuit of his sire. Desperately, Tek galloped to intercept him.

  “Jan,” she cried. “Hold. Forbear!”

  The young prince scarcely checked. “Nay,” he cried furiously. “Nay, not this time! He’ll not evade me more. I’ll have the truth if I must chase it to world’s edge! Take charge of the herd, Tek—I’ll return as soon as may be.”

  5.

  Rain

  Rain hammered down. Jan’s cloven heels bit into the soft hillside, sliding on slippery turf. Thunder crashed. Wind whipped at him. Having long since lost sight of Korr, he gained the trees. Jan shook his head, teeth champed, panting with effort. The downpour was blinding. A glimpse of shadow through the trees ahead. He dodged after it. Treeboles gave way once more to rocky slope. Above, a gaunt figure struggled to the hillcrest and vanished over it. The young prince redoubled his efforts, loose, wet rocks kicking from under his heels. As he topped the rise, rain pummeled him anew. Snorting, he pitched to a halt.

  Below him lay the Pan Woods, home to Sismoomnat and Pitipak’s folk, the two-leggèd goatlings. Until a few short seasons ago, the pans had been among the unicorns’ bitterest foes. Now both peoples enjoyed free forage through one another’s lands. Gazing down, the prince’s eye met nothing but dark woods, sprawling toward horizon’s edge through a grey curtain of rain. He listened, but discerned nothing above the deafening downpour. For all the king’s haggard appearance, he made swift quarry.

  The young prince cast back over one shoulder at the Vale, lying deserted in the rain. He eyed the council rise, empty and small-seeming, about which he and his fellows had lately parleyed and danced. He marked his own cave on the hillside below, where Tek and the twins now doubtless sheltered, and felt a twinge. Impatiently, he shook it off. He would be returning in a few hours—at most a day or two. Just as soon as he had found his sire and wrested his terrible secret from him. Surely then all could be put to rights. Jan set his teeth. Without another thought or backward glance, he plunged over the hillcrest into the dark Pan Woods.

  The trees rose thick around him, dripping with moisture. The morning’s deluge had subsided at last to a pattering drizzle. Jan trotted along a streambed, seeking tracks. He had combed for hours in widening circles, hoping to come upon his sire or sign of him, or else to encounter friendly pans from whom to ask news or aid.

  Jan splashed to a halt in the middle of the stream and bent his long neck to drink. The water tasted cool in the humid summer air. He shook his sodden coat for perhaps the twentieth time. His head reeled. He had not slept in an evening and a day. It was long past noon. Jan stumbled out of the streambed. He had followed it far enough and found no sign. The young prince felt the hollow ache between his ribs, the weakness in his limbs as he reentered the trees. He would have to feed soon, rest.

  A glade opened before him, perfectly round, vegetation carefully cleared from its center. Jan recognized it for a pan place, one of their ceremonial circles. A ring of stones enclosed a heap of ash in the circle’s heart. Young oats and rye grass sprouted among the trees bordering the clearing. Inhaling the lush, verdant scent, the dark unicorn bent his head, tearing greedily at the fragrant, juicy stuff. Leaves and buds augmented his fare. The hollow in his belly began to fill.

  A thicket of firs stood near the clearing’s edge. Their strong, resinous aroma beckoned him. Jan nudged aside a spray of boughs and pressed forward, shouldering past outer branches until he reached the hollow interior. The firs stood so close, their spreading foliage so dense, that despite the morning’s rain, the fallen fir needles beneath had remained dry. Only when he had sunk down and folded his limbs under him, did the dark unicorn realize how exhausted he was.

  His heart rocked against his ribs. Breathing deep, he settled himself into the soft, fragrant carpet. Jan laid his head along his outstretched forelegs. His eyes closed once, opened, closed again. He thought of Korr and resolved to rest only briefly before going on. The gaunt, dark unicorn fled before him in dreams. Hooded serpents swarmed. The young prince twitched, eyelids fluttering, as a viper rose to strike the king. He who had never danced the serpent’s dance, never scratched his flank or received the venom-proof blood, cried out as the dream nadder’s fangs pierced him.

  Jan felt himself racing, sprinting to fend off the serpent’s sting—too late. The haggard stallion reared, screaming, then fell endlessly away from Jan into a yawning crevasse. The speckled serpents attenuated into a tangle of stars. The young prince found himself still running, galloping along through dark emptiness high above the rolling globe below. Cold wind whipped his mane. He was crossing a bridge, a precarious curve that spanned the whole sky, arcing ever more steeply down to horizon’s edge. In a rush he realized he could not stop, momentum propelling him, hurtling him swift and inevitably toward the end of the world.

  Panpipes woke him, their low, susurrous music fluting through the quiet. Jan stirred, groggy. He lifted his head, felt the closeness of fir boughs. Peering through darkness, he realized it was night. In the clearing, just visible through the trees, graceful, two-leggèd figures crouched or reposed about a flaring fire: young pans and old, full-grown warriors, elders, weanlings and infants. Jan glimpsed roots and other forage passing from forelimb to forelimb, dams suckling their young. The guttural clicks and gestures which were the goatlings’ speech made little more than a murmur above the crackling of the blaze.

  The gentle trilling of their panpipes wove through the summer air. Halfway around the circle Jan spotted the piper. Beside him sat a grey-bearded male, horns ribbed with age, and a bare-cheeked female, skin wizened as willow bark. A much younger pair rose from the circle and approached with forepaws clasped. They bowed low before their elders and handed them sheaves of grass in exchange for garlands. By their rich, sweet scent, Jan knew the flowers to be night-blooming lilies. Their perfume blended with the tang of woodsmoke and the aroma of the trees.

  The young couple embraced, forelimbs entwining, and retired to the far side of the ring. Jan heard glad murmuring among their fellows as, each with a gesture and a word, the two elders rose and cast their shea
ves into the fire. Red sparks flared up, subsided. Jan could only conclude he had witnessed some sort of joining, perhaps even the pledging of mates, and was swept suddenly, keenly, by memory of his own pledging to Tek almost three years past, by the shores of the Summer Sea.

  The young prince shook himself, struggled free of the firs. Time to make himself known. The panpipes still crooned their haunting soft song amid the cheerful hubbub. The two elders resumed their places beside the piper as Jan reached the edge of the glade.

  “Emwe!” he hailed them, framing with care the difficult, champing syllables of pan speech. “Tai-shan nau shopucha.” Moonbrow greets you.

  He moved forward slowly, so as not to startle them, until the firelight illumined his dark form.

  “Have no fear. I am Jan, prince of unicorns, come in peace to seek your counsel.”

  The pipe player broke off suddenly as the pan campsite erupted in confusion. Jan heard cries of “Pella! Pell’!”—Look, behold–and “Sa’ec so!” Him! It’s him. Sires and dams caught up their young as though to flee. Others snatched and brandished wooden stakes. He saw children quickly gathering stones. The dark unicorn snorted in bewilderment. Peace with the pans had held these two years running without a whisper of strain.

  “Nanapo: peace,” he exclaimed. “I am no foe. I seek another of my race who has fled and taken shelter here.”

  The pans hesitated. Jan himself poised, determined to run if he must and shed no blood. With relief, he saw the old male rise from his haunches and hold up one forelimb.

  “Bikthitet nau,” he heard the greybeard urging: Calm yourselves. “This is not the same ufpútlak—four-footed walker—we encountered earlier. Though dark as the other, pella–observe—he does not have that one’s wild, unreasoning air. A great green feather tangles this one’s mane. And this ufpútlak speaks our tongue.”