“Do not say it!” Ses hissed. “Not while my youngest remains a child. Calydor, do not tempt me.”
“Your herd poises on the brink of war,” the farseer replied. “Of course I will tempt you. I will tempt all your folk. Do not go! Do not hazard your life. Remain with me upon the Plain and what need then for your hallowed Hills? Let the “wyverns have them.”
The pale mare’s countenance hardened. “You forget the wrong done my people so many years ago.”
“Centuries. To unicorns who are all long dead.”
“Lynex of the white wyrms is not dead,” she answered. “He holds the Hills in triumph still. For the righting of that ancient wrong my son was born.”
“Had you but left your folk and come with me,” Calydor besought her, “then he had been our son.”
Ses started, turning. “Ours?” she whispered, barely audible. “Do you not…?”
But the other ran over her words. “A dozen nights and days Jan and I spent in one another’s company, trading our peoples’ tales. All I learned of him I have sung across the Plain. What good-will you find among us now is due largely to news of his peacemaking. Sooth to look at him, save for his color, one would never guess him to be scion to that warmongering sire. Would he were my son!” Calydor exclaimed. “Would ever I had sired a son so fine.”
The pale mare stared at him for a long, long while. Her chestnut eyes revealed nothing. At last she spoke:
“Rest sure that once this war is done and Lell is grown, I will turn my thoughts to the Plain and to you. I promise no more. Until then, I beg you, keep clear.”
The blue-and-silver’s reply was quiet and full of pain. “Here we stand on the verge of summer, just three days’ journey from the Hills. On the morrow, Tek and her warriors press on, leaving behind colts and fillies too young to fight, elders too frail, nursing mares and the halt and infirm to shelter with us at oasis till your messengers return. This much my folk have promised yours. And if a few hotheads have joined your lackwit crusade, as many among your own ranks mean to desert: those who have lost their stomach for this war or who, like us, cannot comprehend its end. You could be one of those, my love. The pair of us could be away before your sentries were aware.”
Firmly, the pale mare shook her head. “Not while my son lives. Not while Korr’s fate remains unknown. Not while my daughter is too young to fend for herself.”
Calydor smiled. “That last will not be long,” he mused. “A precocious one that.”
“Like her brother.”
“She reminds me of the bold young filly in the lay of the mare and the pard.”
Ses’s head snapped up. “Mare and pard?” she inquired testily. “What mean you by that?”
The farseer only smiled, reciting offhand. “ ‘She who saw her enemy couched in the grass, and loved him for his beauty and his grace, and charmed him there, despite himself, and lived to tell the tale.’ You might do well to keep one eye upon your fearless daughter, love,” he said. “Young as she is, I think her heart already stolen, and the thief yet unawares.”
A little silence grew up between them. Moon moved across heaven and the waters ever so slightly. The sky rolled a hair’s breadth, tilting the stars.
“How can you go?” he asked. “How can you fly to war with your son not even here to lead the fray?”
“Have you seen him?” she queried. “Have you seen Jan in your dreams? If Jah-lila sees, she will not say. The twins see him, but all they can say is that he speaks with one all covered with jewels, deep within the earth or sky. I know not what they mean. Do you?”
Calydor shook his head. “I have not seen him.”
Ses snorted. “Fine seer you.”
The star-strewn stallion tossed his head. “I foresaw the dark destroyer, and the peacemaker who followed. I foresaw you, so many years ago. And I have seen much of weather and pards that have threatened my people over the years.” He shrugged. “I know not why I cannot see your son. One viewer cannot behold everything. I am but one among Álm’harat’s many thousand eyes.”
Ses gazed at the camp, dimly visible through the dark line of trees bordering the pool. “I must return,” she sighed. “Three days’ hard travel lies ahead, and beyond that, battle. The twins vow Jan will return at need. I trust soon to see my son again.” Already she was moving toward the trees. “Go hale and safe, Calydor, that we may meet again after this war.”
“Swear you will come away with me then,” he whispered, “so I may bear the wait.”
But she said nothing. Only wind murmured. She vanished into the dark of the trees. Calydor discerned no trace. As though a haunt, she had turned once more to mist. The Plain lay utterly silent save for the faintest breath breeze. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a pard cough. Above him, the moon, silvery gibbous, blazed like the greatest of Alma’s eyes among the summer stars.
19.
The Scouts of Halla
Gazing into the depths before him, Jan realized it was not near-summer sky he saw, but the darkness of the waters on the dragon queen’s brow. Glimmers there were not stars but gleams reflected from the lake of fire. All view of future events faded. He knew himself to be in the den of Wyzásukitán. How long—an hour, an evening? He had no sense of time. Still he felt neither hunger nor fatigue, thirst nor intensity of heat. He had not been with the dragon long, surely. No more than a few hours at most.
The clear fluid of the pool before him trembled, sudden ripples traversing its surface, shaking apart the stars. Dragon’s breath swirled about him like fog as Wyzásukitán sighed, lifting her head. The dark unicorn fell back a pace as the massive, reptilian queen now gazed down upon him from a great height. The long muscles beneath her taut, jeweled skin flexed. Her wings and limbs and tail arched, rid themselves of stiffness. Again she sighed, and her white breath shot out like jets of cloud.
“What troubles you, prince of unicorns? I sense your disquiet.” Jan gazed up at her steadily, refusing to let her vastness overwhelm him.
“I am grateful for this foreseeing which you have granted, great queen,” he answered, “but uncertainty chivvies me. Is what I see before me only that which can be—or that which will be, which must be?”
“I grant nothing,” Wyzásukitán murmured in her measured, guarded way. She sounded quietly amused. “You behold only what you yourself are capable of beholding.”
Abruptly, she fell silent. Jan waited a long moment. When she did not continue, he made bold to say, “You have not answered my question, great queen.”
The red dragon betrayed not the slightest affront. She seemed only interested, perhaps approving. “You must answer it yourself, dark prince. What is it you see?”
The dark unicorn hesitated. “What I see has the feel of truth…” The words trailed off. The dragon waited. “Yet if what I see has not yet come to pass, then it can be neither true nor false.”
Wyzásukitán’s mouth quirked, suppressing a smile.
“Oh?” she asked, so softly he almost did not hear. “Is it the future that you see?”
“Aye,” he answered tentatively, then with conviction. “Aye. It is the future—no mere dream.”
“Ah,” the red dragon queen sighed. The steam of her breath rose toward the ceiling in roiling columns as she drew the long syllable out. “What troubles you, then?”
Jan felt a sudden crick of frustration. Was she toying with him? Suddenly he wondered, then shook himself. Nay, truth, he was sure she was not. He suspected her of being deliberately obtuse, while at the same time certain there was no malice in her. She was not questioning him merely to amuse herself, though he sensed his answers somehow amused her. Quashing a sudden urge to reply in kind, he drew breath and tried again.
“I wish to know if what I see is possibility or certainty. Do I see but one of many paths the future may take, or do I see the surety of what will without question come to pass?”
The dragon’s jewel-encrusted browridge lifted. Her nostrils flared. “Consider. If what you saw w
ere mere possibility, why should that trouble you?”
Jan thought a moment before replying. “If mere possibility, why bother to observe it?”
Wyzásukitán’s great shoulder shrugged ever so slightly. “To spy a goal toward which to strive—or a warning of perils to avoid?”
The dark unicorn frowned. “Perhaps.”
“Now consider this,” the red queen continued: “if what you saw were indeed predestined, unalterable?”
Jan shifted uneasily. “Then I am most troubled.”
She watched him. “Why?”
“Because I do not see myself in these scenes-to-come. Where shall I be? Am I not my people’s Firebringer? Must I not journey among them to the Hallow Hills and lead their preparations to battle the white wyrms?”
“Must you?” the dragon replied. “Is that indeed foreordained? Are you privy to the last step of every dance set in motion by Her of the Thousand Jeweled Eyes?”
Her look grew suddenly less detached. Inquisitive. Penetrating, even. Jan felt his discomfiture grow. “Nay,” he answered. “Alma reveals little of her plans. What I learn I invariably glean in snatches, glimpses.”
“Yet always she has guided you?”
He nodded. “Even when I myself remained unaware.”
“Then what uneases you?”
Jan frowned, trying hard to frame the words. “I sense somehow, gazing into your brow, that time slips away. That I should hasten back to my folk before their hour of need.”
“You believe that the hour does not yet betide,” answered Wyzásukitán. Doubtfully, Jan considered. Nay, of course not. Why caval so? None of what he had foreseen had yet come to pass. All lay in the offing. Ample time remained to rejoin the herd. Ample time. Did it not? The dragon queen shrugged. “Perhaps you do not see yourself among your folk because you do not wish to be among them.”
The dark unicorn gazed up at her, baffled. The dragon gazed down.
“Might your absence have less to do with inability to rejoin them than with your refusal to do so?”
“Refusal?” Jan exclaimed, astonished. Outrage pricked at him. “Refusal to rejoin my folk—to accept the destiny toward which I have striven all my life?”
Wyzásukitán evidenced no surprise. Gently, she said, “Another thing troubles you, Firebrand. A duty unbearable holds you back from your folk.”
Jan stared at her, her great gleaming form vast and beautiful above him, the light of the lake of fire winking and glancing off her jeweled skin like a thousand summer stars. He felt his unease collapse into terror.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered. She looked at him. “Indeed?” she asked. “You do.”
“Nay, I…,” he started.
“Say me no nays,” she answered curtly. “It is your mate, is it not? Tek, the rose-and-black mare who leads your herd. You love her. You long for her. Yet you fear reunion. Admit why that should be, Aljan of the Dark Moon. Tell me why you refuse to rejoin your mate.”
Jan’s head whirled. The cavern seemed to tilt. He felt himself falling helplessly through infinite space.
“It is not…not Tek,” he managed, lock-kneed, swaying. The careening chamber steadied, stilled. He breathed deep. “Not Tek I fear, but what I must do when next we meet. What I must tell her…”
The dragon inclined her head. “That is?”
Words choked him. “That she is Korr’s heir before me, my own sister by half, sired by my sire, the king’s secret firstborn daughter, queen of the unicorns.”
He scarcely believed he had gotten it all out. He stood panting, unable to look at Wyzásukitán. He stared off across the huge chamber toward the lake of fire. It rippled, shimmered, not silent, but making low roarings from time to time, its thick, molten flux moving at crosscurrents. Hissing sounded, fiery vapors venting, and the thick fizzing of spattered drops. Blaze and shadows played against the chamber’s walls. He felt his whole being in a state of tumult like the lake.
“Trust what you feel,” the firedrake told him. “What rises in you at this news?”
Anguish. Fury. Nausea. He could admit to none of them. “I don’t know.”
Above him, Wyzásukitán turned her head to one side and eyed him askance. “Do you mean to renounce your kingship to Tek? To renounce her as your mate?”
“I don’t know!”
He had no inkling what he intended to do. He had lived all his life believing himself to be prince, only to discover the office belonged to Tek. He had no right to rule. Tek deserved the truth. Deserved her birthright. The love he bore her was so great he felt his heart might burst. Yet how was Alma’s prophecy ever to be fulfilled if he renounced his leadership?
But deep within his inmost soul, he knew that none of those considerations really mattered. What appalled him most was that in revealing Tek’s parentage, he must lose her. Despite vows sworn by the Summer Sea, no matter how unbreakable in Alma’s eyes, regardless the fruit of that innocent pledge, how could such a union be allowed to stand? What joy to rejoin the herd if nevermore might he claim Tek as his mate? That their bond, meant to last a lifetime, must now end was what he truly could not face.
“I don’t know,” he told Wyzásukitán, his voice a ghost. The great dragon was bending down again. Her huge head came to rest on the chamber floor before him.
“Then gaze once more into my brow,” she replied, “and find your answer there.”
The dark water drew him, shot through with images. He moved toward it, unable to resist. Below, he saw the dark, rilled expanse of the Smoking Hills, their cinder-black tors thrust up like antler tines. Snow dusted the peaks and the deep crags which never saw the sun. Slopes sheered away into dragon’s breath. Valleys opened below. Jan could not understand how he himself had breached these barrier cliffs. No egress seemed possible for any wight devoid of wings.
He heard their chant before he saw them, strung out single file like an endless line of roan-colored ants. They moved in unison, hooves all falling at the same time, till the black stone rang with the beat of their song:
“So soon the Scouts of Halla, we
Fare forth to fill our destiny:
On hardy wyrms to hone our horns,
Unite in arms with unicorns
Who march the Mare’s Back; thus we must
Endure the deadly Saltland dust
As firedrake allies open the way,
Behold our Firebrand’s battle day…”
The chant rolled on and on, each step bringing the winding train of unicorns closer to the impassable ridges. Jan distinguished Oro at the head of the lengthy queue, which seemed to consist solely of brawny half-growns and warriors in their prime. The dark prince of the Vale recognized them instantly as a warhost. But where did they intend to go? Surely they could not mean to join Tek’s host trekking across the Plain, for how could they hope to escape the Smoking Hills?
Yet as he watched, something caught his eye. Oro and the others moved almost as in trance, impervious to cold. Though their movements were measured, their expressions remained alert. No somnolent marchers, these. Was it only their singleness of purpose which made them appear invulnerable? Higher they climbed and higher, more shaggy goats than unicorns. Steadily, unhesitatingly, they scaled nearly vertical steeps and descended precipitous slopes. Jan marveled at their tirelessness, traversing the sheer paths in their snaking file hundreds of unicorns long.
Even so, he surmised, they were approaching a spot where they could proceed no farther. Oro and the front of the line had already reached it: a flat plateau falling away into a deep canyon, overlooked by a tall pinnacle. For the unicorns now assembling on the plateau, no means existed to move forward. The drop into the adjacent vale was sheer. No way to skirt the rift, for it was hemmed by unscalable scarps, the tallest a conical peak poised at one end of the canyon. Its sharp yet massive point rose above the others like a thick, curved horn.
How did the Scouts mean to cross, Jan wondered? When all had assembled, Oro stood near plateau’s edge, hi
s back to the steep, unbridgeable valley. Jan could not make out his words, though the others all listened attentively. They stood in perfect stillness, so utter as to seem preternatural. Not one so much as stamped a hoof for warmth. Oro turned to gaze at the rift before them, then at the pointed peak rising to one side. Jan noted the cone’s asymmetry, the side facing the valley undercut, so that the pinnacle seemed to hang above it, tons upon tons of incredibly hard, black rock.
A faint tremor shook the ground. Jan felt its thrum even in the air. The mountains seemed to mutter almost imperceptibly, then subside. Oro and the others drew back from the plateau’s edge. Another tremor, more forceful this time. Echoes and sharp reports as of a great cracking and straining rebounded from the far side of the valley. Oro’s band crowded tightly together in the center of the plateau. Again, the tremor stilled. Silence then, save for the cracks and groans, as though the fabric of some immeasurably vast tree, twisted by wind, were slowly, ever so slowly, breaking apart.
None of the warriors upon the plateau whinnied in fear. None cavaled. They all watched, Jan realized, eyes fixed on the tall peak leaning above the valley. Jan stared at the peak. It was vibrating. Slightly at first, then more and more insistently, it created a shudder in the air. The shudder grew, like a wind slowly building, until it buffeted but made no sound. The groaning started again, so low it was nearly below Jan’s range, a deep, thunderous keening like nothing he had heard before.
The next tremor, when it came, was so sudden, so violent, even Jan, floating bodiless above, flinched. The black, snow-covered cone tore from its base, plunging down into the deep crevasse with a concussion that seemed to rock the world. A gout of smoke or steam shot up from the base of the shattered peak, which appeared to be hollow. A hail of cinders and dust rained from the sky.
The valley swallowed the peak and ceased to be as the fallen mountain filled the rift from edge to edge. Thundering rubble continued to quake there, shifting and seething. The broken peak’s conical base, which had not fallen, now rumbled and broke apart. Explosive blasts of earth and smoke. Jan glimpsed something moving in the heart of the disintegrating base, a huge shining thing, reddish in color, crawling or flowing along like a slow river, or the side of some immensely vast creature in motion under the earth, a creature that had lain dormant so long it had grown larger than its original tunnel, a creature shifting in sleep, or walking and stretching sleepily before moving off in search of more spacious dens.
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