Jan, too, apparently because of his similar coloring, had at first been mistaken for Korr and been shunned. At length, he had managed to gain the trust of a party of Renegades even as Dagg and his fellows now had done, and convinced them that he sought to contain the mad stallion, not repeat his crimes. Dagg had learned of the long chase Korr had led his friend, how Jan had sought and received aid of a seer or singer known as Alma’s Eyes. But when Dagg had eventually caught up with this one, the young prince had already left him, vanished away into the Salt Waste on the trail of the king.
“It was odd,” Dagg had said. “When first I saw him in profile, by moonlight, my heart lifted with joy. I thought he was Jan. They have the same legs and frame, the same muzzle and mane. Their voices, even some of their gestures, echo in the most uncanny way.”
The dappled warrior had snorted then.
“Of course, by day, none could mistake the two. The seer is an evening blue speckled with stars. His manner of speech is that of the Plain. He is older than Jan, not quite Korr’s age, and spent ten days in Jan’s company.”
Again the dappled warrior had snorted, remembering.
“After their parting, so I gather, this Alma’s Eyes went among his people singing the history of Jan and the Vale. Jan, it seems, recounted a number of our lays to him, which allayed much of the Plainsdwellers’ mistrust. Korr’s acts clearly had stirred much ill feeling against our folk.”
Dagg shrugged, sidled, seeming almost chagrined.
“I believe the links Jan forged during his sojourn upon the Plain will serve us well come spring. Jan, so it seems, made a fair enough singer to catch the ear of this Alma’s Eyes, who recounts nothing like our own formal singers of the Vale—and yet, a kind of wild beauty haunts his song. His folk admire him, and through him, Jan.”
Tek laughed quietly to herself, thinking of her mate. He had always revered her singer’s gift, declaring himself reft of any skill. Yet she had always suspected he, too, harbored the bent. How he loved the old lays, remembered them flawlessly, remarking even the slightest variation from one recitation to the next. He spoke with ease before even the greatest throng. What if until now, his musical nature had manifested solely through fiercely expressive dancing? She had always known him to be as much a singer as he was a warrior, a peacemaker, a dancer, and a prince.
Someone moved beside her on the slope before the cave. She started, remembering belatedly that she shared this stony spot with Dagg. The dappled warrior moved closer to her. She did not turn her head, the image of his robust frame, pale eyes, grey mane, and yellow coat firmly imprinted on her mind. The grey spots flocking his withers and hindquarters thickened into stockings on all four legs. He rubbed shoulders with her companionably. She leaned, shouldering him in turn. Quietly, unselfconsciously, Dagg voiced her greatest fear:
“What if he does not return? What if Jan does not appear by spring? What then?”
She shuddered, sighed. “We must honor our pact with the gryphons regardless. We must leave the Vale and press on to the Hallow Hills.”
“The herd will follow you, and gladly”, Dagg told her.
Tek shrugged, smiled. “In Jan’s name.”
Here Dagg surprised her. He shook his head. “For your own sake. You are a great warrior. Our folk would charge with you into the wyverns’ jaws for that alone.”
She felt a little thrill of gratitude, of pride, tried not to show it. “Now that Jan’s blood makes us all proof against their stings, such a charge should prove easier.”
Dagg chuckled softly. “I doubt you delude yourself thinking our task will be accomplished with ease.”
“First we must see the herd safe through winter—Alma grant us another mild one, I pray, for the sake of our fillies and foals.” Tek frowned, thinking. “Kindling marks the opening of winter, and Quenching its end.”
She gazed down at the valley floor where, in the lengthening shadows of evening, beneath a blue, brilliant sky, her twin offspring ramped whinnying along with Lell and with Dagg’s firstborn, Culu. Barely a year and a half old, the suckling foal sported forequarters of intense, true yellow shading to brilliant salmon at the rump, exactly the hue of the sundog for which he was named. The pan sisters Sismoomnat and Pitipak chased the four colts amid much whistling and squealing. Ringing their swirl, Jah-lila, Ses, and Dagg’s mate, Ryhenna, stood, shooing stray tag-players back into bounds.
Tek eyed the coppery mare, who, like her own dam, had been born outside the Vale to a hornless race, but who, upon joining the herd, had drunk of the sacred waters of the moon’s mere deep within the Hallow Hills and been transformed into a unicorn. Ryhenna’s coppery coat exactly matched the hue of her standing mane. Her tail fell full and silky. Like Jah-lila, she was beardless, lacking tassels to the tips of her small, neat ears and feathery fringe to her fetlocks. Instead of being cloven, her hooves were solid rounds.
Yet despite such differences, Ryhenna had been welcomed into the Vale even as Jah-lila now found welcome, hailed as Jan’s savior for aiding his escape from her own captors, the two-footed firekeepers. Ryhenna’s transformation had been celebrated in myth and lay, her copper-colored horn admired, and with her mate’s aid, she had set about learning the ways of a warrior with a will. Jan had declared her mistress of fire, and she presided over Kindling and Quenching, the herd’s newly created ceremonies at winter’s beginning and end, striking the sparks from which all the torches of winter would burn.
“By winter’s end, before we march,” Tek said to Dagg, “we must all harden our heels and horns that we may smite the wyrms’ bony breastplates without shattering our weapons.”
Dagg nodded. “Come spring, it will be time.”
The game below had broken up. Tek watched the figures moving up the hill toward her, colts and fillies frisking still, the mares moving more leisurely. Lell pranced alongside Sismoomnat, the elder of the two pan sisters. The pied mare caught a snatch of their conversation as they ambled by, Lell tossing the milk mane from her eyes, Sismoomnat resting one forelimb on the dark amber filly’s withers with a trace of a smile. Tek, too, smiled. Lell reminded her more than a little of Jan as a colt: hot-headed and passionate, fiercely intelligent but ruled by her heart.
“His wings were broad and green, and his voice so lilting sweet. He vowed to return to us, come spring, and accompany us to the Vale.”
Sismoomnat nodded gravely as Lell halted and began to graze. The young pan bent to pull and collect grass seed in one upturned, hairless paw.
“You must introduce him to me when he returns,” she murmured. Tek turned her attention back downslope. They were discussing the gryphon Illishar. Still. The pied mare marveled at it, that the green-fletched wingcat could have so captured Lell’s curiosity. Nothing seemed to distract her from speculating when he would return, expounding the magnificence of his flight and the sweetness of his song. She would prattle thus to any who would harken until their ears well and nearly withered. Tek regarded Dhattar and Aiony, accompanied by Pitipak, the younger pan. The three of them had begun another game on the slope. She heard white Dhattar saying, “Nay, we’ll not see him at all this winter.”
Aiony added, “Save in dreams.”
Pitipak made a small sound, as of sympathy. Tek’s ears pricked, but she dared not interrupt with questions. Like as not, such would only quiet her offspring completely, or loose a torrent of observations too tangled for Tek herself to sort. Quietly, their dam eavesdropped.
“He talks to the one with the red jewels now,” Aiony was saying.
“She’s older than we,” Dhattar laughed, “and goes about things very slowly.”
Chasing him around Aiony, Pitipak nearly caught him. The black-and-silver filly dodged away now, as well.
“She’s been sleeping a long, long time.”
Tek turned her mind away, unable to follow their thread. Almost certainly, she knew, they were discussing Jan, but she lacked any context with which to make their words meaningful. Reluctantly, she contented herse
lf with the assurance he was alive and hale. Ryhenna came up the hillside now, followed closely by her young one, Culu. With an affectionate nip, Dagg left the pied mare’s side. The coppery mare whistled a greeting to Tek before nuzzling her mate. The little foal began to suckle. Jah-lila and Ses came up the rear. They, too, spoke quietly as evening neared.
“I have often wondered where in the wide Plain he might be found, but of late the more intensely,” Ses was saying, head down, tone barely above her breath. “Then, of a sudden, to have news of him after so long, that he is well, a singer… I had always suspected—”
Her words broke off as she and the red mare drew close to Tek. Schooling her expression to betray nothing, the pied mare listened in surprise. Ses spoke of Jan, of course—who else? Yet, despite her obvious strong emotion, her words rang somehow odd in reference to her son. Puzzled, Tek glanced away and harkened without seeming to.
“Both you and I have forfeited much for the welfare of our young,” Jah-lila murmured to Ses.
The pied mare felt a telltale frown creasing her brow and dismissed it. Her own dam, she knew, had forgone a place in the herd for nearly ten years in order that her filly might be raised among them as Teki’s daughter. Tek—and all the Vale—now knew that the stallion whose namesake she was had not been her sire. To this day, the red mare continued to conceal that one’s identity. Some nameless Renegade was all the account Tek had ever been able to wrest from her.
Of her own dam’s sacrifice, the pied mare was well aware. But what of Ses? Did Jah-lila refer to the public repudiation of Korr by his mate when, during that terrible winter, his madness had threatened even Lell? Yet Tek had the strongest feeling that Ses’s unknown deed must have been to Jan’s benefit, not Lell’s. The pale mare’s eyes were closed, as if in pain.
“I count the days till Jan’s return,” she whispered to Jah-lila. “Though I could do no other and keep my offspring safe, I have held this silence far too long. By Alma’s eyes, Red Mare, I swear when next we meet, I’ll tell my son the truth.”
Jan felt himself returning. He became aware of the dragon’s den again, of the awful glare of the pool of fire, of its intense heat. Neither troubled him, though he was vaguely aware that he should long since have swooned. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he tried to remember what had caused this strange imperviousness—dragonsup?—but his thoughts were fluid, shifting still, and the query refused to come to the forefront of consciousness. Instead, a new need suddenly kindled there, bright and imperative: to learn the meaning of his mother’s vow. I’ll tell my son the truth. He had no inkling what she could mean.
“What is this?” he demanded. “What have I beheld?” Before him, the languid dragon stirred. Great lids slid down over garnet eyes, then up again. The pool upon her brow rippled and stilled. Her vast body stretched away across the chamber, enormous claws of her toes tightening. Her monumental, rose-colored wings flexed. The resulting gust fanned the steam of her breath in curling eddies about Jan. She chuckled very quietly, deep in her throat, at his sudden urgency, all trace of his former reticence gone.
“None but your home and friends, the unicorns of your Vale,” she answered, chiding. “I should have thought you would have recognized them.”
The dark unicorn let his breath out, chastened. “Your pardon,” he offered, then tried again. “What I meant to ask is: is what I see upon your brow that which is, or are these images your own inventions, conjurings…”
“Lies?” Wyzásukitán inquired mildly.
“Dreams,” Jan countered.
Again the red dragon chuckled. “You see what is. I see it, too, but it is no dream of mine. We dragons do not dream, in that sense. We contemplate that which is. The only conjurer here is you, invoking upon my brow those things you most desire to see.”
Jan frowned, unsatisfied. “But is it real?” he whispered. “Or only imagined by me?”
Wyzásukitán shrugged. Her massive wing moved, glittering. Her head remained perfectly still. “Does it feel real—or imaginary?”
“Real,” Jan answered, unhesitating.
The dragon queen nodded, closing her eyes again and inclining her head almost imperceptibly. The strange water upon her brow lapped, smoothed. “Then trust it as real, for I believe the truth, however harsh, is what you long to see above all things, even above soothing lies. A courageous wish, and a most unusual one.
Álmaharát-elár-herát, whom we call the Many-Jeweled One, or Her of the Thousand Thousand Eyes, has chosen you well for her purpose. You have seen what is and what has been. Come. Look again. I will show you now what is to be.”
16.
Kindling
Jan gazed deep into the dragon’s pool. The Vale lay below him in a gryphon’s eye view. He leaned closer, perception skimming lower through the air. Frost rimed the grass, brown stubble now. Wisps of snow sifted down, floating like feathers. Sky hung grey, early dusk drawing on. Jan watched his fellows gathering. When he spied the great heap of brushwood on the council rise, he knew the day could only be solstice, the start of winter.
His herdmates below looked well-fed, pelts thick and warm. Nearly all the many fillies and foals would be weaned by spring. When the herd must depart, Jan heard himself think, unsure if he spoke aloud in the distant dragon’s den. I must return by then, he thought. I must lead them. The notion filled him with dread, not of the task itself, but of the other that must accompany it: disclosure of Korr’s unspeakable secret.
Far below, Tek stood upon the council rise. She was a striking sight, bold black and rose, her particolored mane lifting in the slight, frigid breeze. The herd around her assembled joyously. How regal she looked, like a princess, like a queen. She is their queen, he thought. Leader of the herd now that Korr is gone—and not as any regent, but in her own right: undeclared princess of the line of Halla all the time that I have ruled.
Watching her, Jan felt terror and longing war within his breast. He did not know, suddenly, how he would bear yielding his station as prince. For honor’s sake, and out of love for Tek, he could consider no other course. Yet its taste rose bitter in his mouth—for another thing he must relinquish, too. And this he could not face at all: abandoning his mate, renouncing her. Not Tek, my belovèd! It was inconceivable.
Mounting panic took him by the throat. He gasped, shuddering. The image in the dragon’s pool wavered, obscured by snow. Frantically, Jan strove to still his roiling thoughts. Gradually, his inner clamor quieted, breathing eased. The images in the pool clarified. He gazed into them deeply, desperately. The scene below offered distraction, lifted him out of his turmoil and pain. His last awareness of the dragon’s den and his own identity faded as he grew wholly absorbed.
Tek spoke to the assembled herd, and they danced the great ringdance, trampling the snow. Much later, when the dance had ended, Tek again addressed the herd. Her foster father, Teki the healer, came forward and sang the lay of Jan’s winter captivity three years past and of his eventual return, bearing the secret of fire in his hooves and horn. Impervious to solstice chill in their thick winter shag, the resting herd stood harkening, or lounged at ease on the frosty ground.
Teki’s lay done, Tek called on Ryhenna to stand beside her on the rise. Dagg’s copper-colored mate had fought at the prince’s shoulder during his escape from the two-footed firekeepers. She too, like Jan, had trod upon the burning coals Jan had kindled that day, tempering her round, solid hooves to sparking hardness. Each year since the herd had acclaimed her its priestess, she had kindled the great bonfire that would burn all winter long.
Calling on Alma now, thanking the goddess for her gift of fire, the coppery mare reared and dashed her hooves against the stones on which the dried tinder rested. Sparks flew. Ryhenna rose and struck again, again. Whinnying, she cavaled, stamping her hind heels. All the herd whistled with her. More sparks. Some flew into the midst of the tinder and caught. Smoke curled up, then little tongues of flame. When the bonfire had become a blaze, Tek called members of the herd to co
me forward.
In twos and threes, unicorns approached the council rise. Each bore a dried branch clenched in teeth. Carefully, they dipped their brands into the flame, then raised them burning aloft. The fire-bearers sprang away at a gallop, ploughing through snow, seeking their grottoes before the firebrands guttered. Each grotto, Jan knew, housed a similar tinder pile beside a cache of stores. Here borrowed flames would burn all season, warming the herd, that none need ever again suffer privation from hunger and cold. Guardians would tend the great bonfire on the council rise until the birth of spring.
Jan found his viewpoint pulling back from the kindling, buoyed like a gryphon on a rising wind. The images before him blurred, altering. He seemed to have traversed many miles in a single breath. Vague impressions of Pan Woods and Plain swept rapidly beneath him, then the rises and ripples of the Hallow Hills. He began to descend, rushing earthward. Below, he glimpsed the Mirror of the Moon, the unicorns’ sacred pool, hard by the expanse of broken limestone shelves housing entry to the wyverns’ dens.
The next heartbeat found him within. Long caverns twisted through the white limestone, all coated with a crystalline glaze. As the pale wyrms slithered, their tiny scales sloughed, volatile oils from their skin rubbing off, forming silvery trails. Over hundreds of years, the trails had thickened into layers which caught the lightwells’ gleam, diffusing it, to lend a dim glow to the dens even in their deepest parts. The translucent patina had a resinous odor. Jan knew it to be fiercely combustible. One spark could set the whole warren alight.
Jan found himself in the deepest recess of the vast network of interlocking tunnels. A great wyvern lay curled in his lair, unaware of the dark unicorn’s distant observation. This wyrm was the largest Jan had ever seen, larger even than the three-headed queen he had battled as a colt. Jan guessed that this creature must be very old, for wyverns grew throughout their lives. At the tip of his poison tail, seven barbs glinted. Two badger-broad forepaws, his only limbs, scratched absently at his vitreous belly, stretched taut by a recent meal. Old scars disfigured his breast.
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