“Where is their fire?” Jan heard Tek crying to Dagg. “Why do they not use it against us?”
“And where is their leader, the wyrmking Lynex?” the dappled stallion whistled back. “Is he too craven to show his seven faces? Would he but show himself, and this whole struggle could be settled here and now!”
“Lynex, you coward!” Jan heard Tek shout down into the largest entryway. “I’d battle you myself, wyrmking. You stole these lands from the late princess Halla centuries ago. You have lived so long only that we unicorns might grow strong enough to take our homeland back again. Show yourself! Come out and face me if you dare!”
As if in answer, a low rumble sounded from the wyverns’ dens. The hollow, deep-throated sound rose from the depths like the howl of stormwind. Thrumming followed, as of mighty limbs pounding the earth. The soft swish of slithering bellies whispered under the concatenation of noise. Startled, the unicorns fell back. The next instant, two dozen of the largest, most powerful wyverns Jan had ever seen rushed from the entryway, fanning out in a great semicircle and beating their paws upon the ground.
The earth shook with their thunderous drumming. Barbed tails thrashed like willow withies whipped by storm. In unison, the white wyrms roared. Each was nearly the size of the huge, three-headed queen Jan had slain years ago in his youth. Not a one of them did not have double heads, and two had third heads sprouting at the base of their necks. All around them, from other egresses, a flood of wyverns poured, all enormous, unwounded and unspent.
Late afternoon sun hung westering. Panting, their coats foaming with sweat, Tek’s warriors stared at the advancing wyrms. Lines of blood streaked some of the unicorns, where wyvern teeth or claws had found their mark. The legs of some trembled, whether from tension or fatigue Jan could not tell. He knew none shook from fear. They had fought full tilt for hours, since before noon. Now, though they gave ground slowly before the howling, stamping wyrms, not a one of them fled.
Suddenly from the entryway, into the half-ring created by his score of gigantic bodyguards, another wyvern emerged, larger even than they. His seven heads arrayed, all their gill ruffs fanned, teeth bared like seven nests of thorny splinters. His long, seven-stinged tail lashed, doubling back upon itself. Massive paws, their nails like swords, impaled the air.
Lynex loomed above his own bodyguards. Gazing at the immense wyrmking, Tek gasped, appalled. Pale skin blazing opalescent in the afternoon sun, the scarred and ancient wyvern was easily twice the size his three-headed queen had been. Turning his baleful, seven-faced gaze toward Tek, the wyvern leader snarled. “Coward?” the largest among his seven pates rumbled. “Little unicorn, you misjudge.”
The visages wove and intertwined, bobbing and slithering one against another as they spoke.
“Do you imagine me a doddard, an old spent thing?” the second-largest face demanded. Its companion, nearly as large, spat, “Think again!”
“Behold my personal bodyguards,” the fourth-largest commanded. Beside it, another, only slightly smaller, added, “We have not yet even begun our battle.”
“What matter our stings no longer fell you,” the second-smallest countenance inquired, “or that our fire burnt out?”
The tiniest maw hissed and slavered, snapping frantically at nothing. “Coward. Doddard. Bodyguards,” it gurgled. “Battle! Stings and fire!”
“I am old beyond counting, hungry and powerful,” the monstrous central head roared. “I have waited a long time for you. Prepare to die, puny, brazen upstarts. killers of my queen. We seized these hills from your ancestors centuries past—and we do not mean to give them up!”
With a shout like rolling thunder, the colossal wyrmking, his bodyguards and all his followers surged forward. Tek stood stock-still, as though riveted by indecision or fear. Steep, precarious shelfland rose before her, the cliffs of the moon’s mere behind. With a jolt, Jan realized what it was his mate surely already saw: if the wyverns succeeded in driving the unicorns back against those cliffs, the wyrms could crush them there and devour them all before the sun had set.
21.
Flight
Rally!” Jan shouted, voice echoing hollowly in the vast chamber of the dragon queen. “Tek, rally them—form the crescent and the wedge. Don’t let the wyrms drive you against the cliffs!”
The image before him wavered and rippled apart. Jan’s awareness wrenched back to his surroundings: the dragon’s den, the impossible heat and wavering glow of molten fire. The dark unicorn blinked as Wyzásukitán abruptly moved, lifting her brow high above the young prince’s vision. He stared at her, startled and angry that she should snatch his view of Tek and her peril away. Ramping, he opened his mouth to speak, but Wyzásukitán spoke first.
“Tell me what you have seen, dark prince,” she bade. White smoke of her breath wreathed her whiskered muzzle.
“I see my mate and her band in jeopardy,” Jan answered shortly. “I charge you, lower your brow once more…”
The dragon queen eyed him, brow held regally above, not inclining her head the least measure. She studied him intently, gaze neutral, without malice, but no longer leisurely languid and amused. “Tell me your feelings, dark prince. What at this moment do you feel for your mate?”
“Love, longing, concern,” Jan said without a moment’s thought. “I see danger and would be there to defend her.”
“So you would return to your mate?” Wyzásukitán asked. “And to your folk, whatever the consequence?”
“Aye, of course!” the dark unicorn cried, stamping. Sparks flew. The answer seemed so clear to him. He could not believe he had wandered in such confusion until now. He must return to Tek, rejoin the herd and accept whatever destiny Alma had prepared. The dragon queen looked at him.
“And will you tell your mate Korr’s secret?”
Jan nodded. The answer did not come happily, but come it did and without hesitation.
“And your folk?” Wyzásukitán pressed gently. “You will tell them as well?”
“Of course,” the dark unicorn answered. “I’ll not live a lie, asking Tek to surrender her birthright that I might keep power not mine to hold.”
“You will renounce your kingship?” the dragon queen sighed, white breath curling among her floating whiskers.
Jan nodded. “Aye, for love of her. And for Alma, who is what is: all truth, the Truth of everything that exists. Tek’s parentage is what it is. So, too, my love for her. I must be true to both, and to myself.”
The queen gazed down at him, her thousand thousand jewels glinting in the golden light of the molten lake that seethed beyond chamber’s egress to the rear of Jan. He moved toward her, deeper into the chamber, his heart grown calm, at peace within himself.
“Why do you not ask that I lower my brow?” the dragon queen inquired. “Do you not wish to resume your gaze?”
Jan shook his head. “Nay. I wish only to return to my folk. I must winter with them their last season in the Vale, cross the Plain with them and join them as they fall upon the wyverns. It matters not that I may no longer serve as battleprince. Tek, as queen, must rightfully lead and rule them. Gladly will I march at her side, free of the silence and secrets Korr used to deceive us all.”
“You would return, then?” the dragon queen asked.
He nodded. “Tell me what path I must take to depart these steeps and return to the Vale. All fall and winter lie before me. I must use that season to best advantage in broaching this terrible news to Tek and the herd by the time spring breaks and we cross the Plain to the Hallow Hills.”
Wyzásukitán shrugged, flexing vast shoulder blades. Her huge, batlike wings lifted a trace, rustling, their crusted jewels dragging the golden ground.
“Aljan Firebrand,” the dragon queen replied, “no pass leads from Dragonsholm to return you to your Vale.”
Jan frowned. “Somehow I found my way here from the Salt Waste. A way leads out again. It must.”
Slowly, carefully, the dragon queen shook her head. The dark wate
r of her brow never spilled. “None you could ever tread again.”
The furrow in the dark unicorn’s brow deepened. “Given time, I could find it,” he answered, moving closer. “With your aid, I could find it more quickly.”
The dragon pulled back, turning her head to eye him. “The path by which you came exists no more,” she answered simply. “The rills of Dragonsholm continuously shift as my kind turn over in their dreams. On rare occasions, one of us changes her den. Then the earth shudders for many leagues. Peaks fall; valleys open and fill; new ridges heave up. These Smoking Hills are in constant flux. The way you found endured but briefly. It is no more.”
Jan felt cold. “How long before a new way opens?”
Again the dragon shrugged. “Impossible to tell.”
“But I must return to the Vale,” the dark unicorn protested, “while autumn’s yet new. I would be with Tek before the snows and use the coming winter to accustom the herd to the news I bear.”
Wyzásukitán lifted her great, lithe form higher from the ground. First she tensed, then relaxed her huge forelimbs, her hind limbs. Her long tail stirred. “Fall is flown, Aljan. Winter, too. And so as well the spring. This day marks the first of summer, Firebrand.”
Jan stared at her, badly confused. “You jest,” he cried. “No more than a few hours have passed since I came to you…”
“Indeed?” she asked. “I never jest. And I tell you now, you have stood with me all winter and all spring, and with Oro in the Hall of Whispers all fall before.”
The dark unicorn shook his head. “Nay,” he insisted. “It is but hours. I have not hungered or slept…”
“You drank the dragonsup from my late mother’s brow: all that remains of her waking dreams. It eased your hunger and fatigue, your thirst, your vulnerability to heat and cold. How else did you think, Firebrand, to stand before me in my den beside a lake of molten stone?”
Jan gazed up at the red dragon queen, speechless. She drew breath and sighed white clouds before continuing.
“I bade Oro and his warriors also sip before I sent them off, that they might gallop the whole way to your far Hallows, without pausing to eat or drink or rest. The hour grows short. Your people stand in urgent need, and time betides you to return.”
“Time, time…,” Jan murmured. “How long have I stood dreaming here?”
“As long as it took the events which you witnessed to unfold,” the dragon queen replied.
“Then what I saw, all that I saw…,” he groped.
“Was occurring as you watched,” Wyzásukitán replied. “Your sense of time has been suspended by the water of my mother’s dreams. You experienced these months as we dragons do, in a long, fluid reverie devoid of time.”
“What I saw,” Jan tried again, “the battle…”
“Is no prediction,” the firedrake answered, “rages even now, this moment, as we speak. “
The dark unicorn felt his skin prickle. He demanded, “Tek’s peril?”
“Is real. Is happening now.”
A jolt like lightning coursed his blood. “Then I must go to her!” he shouted. “At once—”
He wheeled as though to dash from the dragon’s den, recross the lake of fire, find his way to the surface again. The red dragon called to him.
“Hold, Aljan. What you saw in my brow was unfolding even as you beheld it. How long, do you think, to reach her, even if you ran day and night, never resting?”
He pitched to a stop, heart dropping with a sickening plunge. “Too late?” he demanded. “Do you say I have come to myself too late? That the children-of-the-moon will perish or triumph without me, locked underground, leagues parted from them, my destiny failed, unable to save or even join them in their hour of gravest need?”
His last words were a cry of agony as he realized: he had tarried too long, lost in his own chaos. His mate would succeed or die without him, his people win back the Hills or lose them in his absence. He was destined to participate in nothing, contribute nothing to this pivotal juncture in his people’s history. Even if he eventually escaped the Smoking Hills, how would he dare rejoin his folk? His colts perhaps half-grown by then, his sister already a wedded mare, his memory in the mind of his own mate dimmed, his people’s recollection of him faded, his destiny forgotten, unfulfilled. He would be recalled only as the one who had failed Alma’s sacred plan, her would-be Firebringer who had never managed to accomplish her end. The dragon queen above him was laughing gently.
“Too late?” she chuckled. “High time, more like. Time your charming Scouts trotted back to their Hallows. They are a sweet-voiced tribe in sooth. Their songs have raptured my fellows these many years. But we have lain too still for far too long listening, entranced, holding steady these precarious steeps.”
Jewels flashing, no malice in her, she smiled at Jan. He understood then that she was laughing at herself.
“My sisters have all outgrown their dens. Even my mate-to-be. He is young yet, still wingless, not ready to fly—though my own wings ache. Time I ventured a practice flight. Exercise, so they say, strengthens the sinews.”
Her great eyes blinked. She paused considering.
“I shall find my betrothed a plaything,” she murmured. “Some pale exotic wyrm fetched from far lands, one that will live long and sing for his delight.”
She glanced at Jan.
“We dragons, as you know, do not eat flesh.”
Wyzásukitán rose to her fullest height. The curve of her spine brushed the chamber’s ceiling.
“Too late, Firebrand?” she asked. “Too late to fill your destiny? Never, Dark Moon of the unicorns—not while I have wings.”
Her great leathery pinions unfolded, spreading across the cavernous roof. The innumerable jewels of her dark reddish hide gleamed, brilliant as night sky crowded with summer stars. One huge forelimb reached toward him, her claws spread wide. Jan had not even a moment to flinch before her gigantic talons closed about him, impossibly strong. They could have crushed him in an instant, he realized, yet he felt no fear as they curled snugly about him and lifted him easily from the cavern floor. He sensed the last remnants of the green feather in his hair vanish in a blazing flash.
Wyzásukitán’s huge hind limbs flexed. Her shoulders, braced against the chamber’s ceiling of curving stone, shoved upward with a mighty heave. The cavern broke apart in a shuddering roar as the dragon queen leapt free of earth. Rocks and boulders showered around them as the dragon shot upward. Jan found himself cradled against her jeweled breast, sheltered from falling debris. The hot ichor that beat beneath her scales pulsed slow and steady as the heartbeat of the world.
As the mountain fell away around them, Jan felt the outer air. Below, the lake of fire fountained skyward, no longer contained by rock. Molten stone rained all about them like liquid stars. The dragon’s vast wings stroked and oared the wind, rising with effortless power into the darkening sky. Jan saw the Smoking Hills far below, jagged and black and wreathed in white mist. Rivers of fire flooded the ridges as far as he could see. The mountain from which Wyzásukitán had just burst was only one such peak which spouted fire.
Sun had already set upon the Smoking Hills, plunging them into darkness save for the ember-bright glow of dragonsflood. Wyzásukitán veered in a hurtling rush toward the west, where dying sunset flamed scarlet still, a distant, unseen conflagration. Smoking cinders and flaming chunks of rock arced around them as they flew. Jan realized they were climbing higher, and higher yet, rising above the burning dust and ash.
The farther they rose, the more frigid the wind became. Though he felt its bite, Jan did not mind the cold, or the airlessness of atmosphere attenuated almost too thin to breathe. The dragon queen’s heart hammered. Her great lungs labored even as her stroking wings maintained their powerful, even rhythm. She was soaring aloft, coursing westward, chasing the sun. The Smoking Hills raced far, far below. Tiny peaks burst and spattered fire. Crimson rivulets threaded the black landscape.
The Salt Waste
rushed beneath them, racing along at impossible speed. The upper ether through which they lanced had grown so thin there scarcely seemed to exist any wind. The rising cloud of ash and dust fell away behind them as they flew. The world shrank. Above, the sky darkened, air thinning into nothing, stars beginning to prick through the crimson blaze that colored the sky. Slowly, it grew more tawny. They left the crimson behind. The Salt Waste receded and the Plain rolled underneath.
They were drawing nearer the western horizon, closer to the Hallow Hills. The vanished sun appeared, unsetting, rising above the western horizon as though it were the breaking dawn. Sun light streamed across the Plain, turning the sky not scarlet, but gold. Time seemed to reverse as they sped westward from first evening into dusk into very late afternoon.
From high, high above in icy space near the limit of the air, Jan looked down to see a host of unicorns galloping far in the distance ahead, much closer to the edge of the Hallow Hills than he and Wyzásukitán. Members of the host were all dark in color: ink blues and reddish roans, charcoal dapples and deep-golden duns. A roan maroon led them.
They raced with the energy of warriors still fresh, newly embarked, yet Jan knew they had been traveling for—how long: hours? Days? He knew only that sipping from the late dragon queen’s dreams had fortified them in the same manner it had fortified him. He wondered if they had any notion of passing time. Or did they journey in reverie, a blur, as he himself had journeyed through three-quarters of a year deep in the darkness of the dragons’ halls?
He watched the late, late afternoon sun floating infinitesimally upward, growing gradually younger and brighter with each passing moment. Its strong yellow light illumined the distant Hallow Hills. He felt the rhythm of Wyzásukitán’s wings change, descending now. The warband of unicorns far ahead and below had just left the rolling Plain. The Scouts of Halla were streaming into the rills of their ancestral land.
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