Birth of the Firebringer ft-1

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  Jan could not recover from staring at her. He felt his jaw might brush the ground if he gaped any more. The healer’s daughter turned to face him more squarely.

  “Little prince,” she told him, “I became a warrior as young as I could so that I might be out from under my elders’ eyes and run where I willed and do as I pleased. But even before that, whenever my father caught me stepping outside the Ring, he never scolded, but only told me, ‘You’ll make a warrior soon enough, filly, if you stay at this clip.’ “

  And she laughed then suddenly, almost lightheartedly. It sounded strange in the stillness to Jan’s ears. And she was laughing at him a little, it seemed, baiting him, daring him with her green, green eyes. His limbs felt weak. Abruptly, Jan felt his bravado vanishing.

  “Pledge me you won’t tell Korr,” he whispered, for all at once hope sparked in him again. Perhaps he was not lost, after all. Perhaps in time he could win back his father’s grace, if only the prince never learned of this.

  The healer’s daughter laughed again, more gently. “No fear. I hadn’t planned to.”

  Jan studied her dubiously. She looked at him. “Will you have my word on it? Here: I, Telkélla, swear.”

  Jan felt a sudden rush of gratitude then, and just a trace of shame. Among the unicorns of the Vale, one’s truename was a secret, given at birth and known only to oneself and one’s dam. Not even Korr knew Jan’s truename. Yet Tek had trusted him with hers as readily as the Renegades had spoken the name of the Mother. He felt he must repay her somehow.

  But Tek was already speaking. “Unless you speak of it, no one will ever know. But by the Beard, little prince, you were in such a froth during the storm, I thought you might babble the whole thing afterward.”

  She snorted, picking at the soft chalk underfoot with one hoof. Jan felt his ears burning, abashed, not quite sure whether Tek was right in thinking he had almost confessed, or because she had mistaken his desperation for terror. She gave another snort, half a laugh.

  “You’ve been keeping yourself so docile of late—save getting yourself lost in the Pan Woods—until you spoke your father back upon the Plain, I was half afraid you’d lost your fire.”

  And two emotions roiled up in Jan suddenly, like wellsprings rising, overwhelming and obliterating the tranquility that had filled him since he had entered the grove. The first was fury, fury at Korr for all the helpless frustration he, Jan, had felt during the storm—and before that, beside the fallen Renegade when his father had simply loped away, ignoring him, as though he were nothing.

  And the second emotion, which was for Tek, he could not even name.

  “Aljan,” he told her. “My truename’s Aljan.”

  “Dark moon?” the healer’s daughter said. “It suits.”

  He found himself gazing at her—he had been gazing at her for some time now, he realized, and could not stop—caught unexpectedly by the way the patches of black and rose in her coat mingled and interlocked. Not odd, beautiful. The suddenness of his seeing it surprised him. Why had he never noticed it before?

  The color of the sky above had grown warmer, redder, and the cast of the wyvern shelves below almost coppery. Tek stood eyeing him with her green, green eyes that caught the light like gryphons’ eyes, and all at once Jan felt himself flushing scarlet beneath the skin.

  She tossed her head, shaking herself. “Come,” the healer’s daughter said. “We should go back. It’s dusk.”

  Vigil

  Jan followed Tek back through the milkwood grove. The shadows of the trees slanted long around them, and their shadows trailed dark over the fallen leaves. Then the soil changed from grayish brown at the wood’s edge to the white lime sand surrounding the pool. Dagg, already standing before the water, was glancing about anxiously. They slipped up beside him.

  Jan saw other pilgrims stepping into the place about the Mere, all facing inward, ringing it round—no outward-facing sentries this night. Alma must keep them while they kept their vigil (might the wyverns not wake). The sky above, fire-streaked with gold, was mirrored in the pool.

  Across the water, Korr began to speak. He told of Halla, how she had formed the Circle of Warriors in the first years after the unicorns’ defeat at the teeth of the wyverns. She had made the Ring that the herd might not scatter, each running his or her own way across the Plain. It was Halla’s wish that the unicorns remain a single people, whole and strong, so that one day—at the coming of the Firebringer—they might return and cast the wyverns from these hills.

  But Jan found he could hardly listen. His thoughts wandered along their own path. Tek’s words in the grove troubled him. Was she not, as a warrior of the Ring, bound to report him? Yet she had pledged not to. Was her breach then not as great as his?

  Only the worthy, the prince was saying, only those who had kept themselves true, did Alma permit to join the Ring. As for the rest, the Ring-breakers, they were lost. As Renegades, they perished on the Plain. Am I worthy? Jan asked himself. I have not been true. Once he became a warrior, he would no longer have a colt’s excuse.

  He watched the sunset in the water, the gold in the sky turning to amber, then deepening to red. Streaks of shadow shaded from mauve into purple, then dusky taupe. The dusk wind lifted, stirring the grove, then soughing, died. Jan began to be able to see stars though the dim glow of sky reflected in the pool.

  Teki chanted them the lay of Wenfedh, a young warrior newly returned from Pilgrimage, who had died at the talons of gryphon captors rather than forswear the Ring and betray the unicorns. The twilight turned into evening, the sky becoming deep blue and then at last true black between the stars. Silence settled; the unicorns grew still. Strange constellations lay like bright dust upon the surface of the Mere, and Jan watched them.

  No moon arose. It was the night of the nothing-moon, when the moon ran mated with the sun under and around the other side of the world. On the morrow’s eve, a new moon would arise, newborn, a thin crescent slip. Jan gazed intently at the still, dark water, and his tangled thoughts quieted. The night rolled by, the sky overhead wheeling slowly, ever so slowly, like a lazily circling kite.

  The hour swung past midnight. Jan felt no uneasiness, no urge to sleep. His legs held firm, without stiffness, and he measured the dark, surrounding space by the little noises: a restless murmur, the scuff of hooves as someone shifted, a soft snort, a swishing of tail. Each sound fanned out, thinning, filling the night until it rebounded on the dark.

  Night waned. The young hours after midnight loomed and passed. Jan found his gaze on the pool had grown deeper. Perfectly steady, he no longer needed to glance away to keep his balance or his bearings. His hooves seemed rooted to the soil, growing downward like the boles of the milkwood trees. Their savor hung on him, pervading the air.

  His gaze was fixed upon the Mere, moving steadily farther into that clear deepness. He felt the woods, the others around him all falling away, and knew that he had been searching for a thing that lay hidden just beyond his gaze for a very long time. He came aware of a light, a dim glow slowly brightening that dark infinity of night. And he had existed for an age, an endless universe of time, in darkness, with only the glimmer of stars for a guide.

  But now the light was coming. He felt his heart lifting, his breath quickening. The others around him—he could neither see nor hear them anymore, but he felt their kindred anticipation, scented it, tasted it almost, like the dying of the dark. The stars faded. Dawn sky blended from black to indigo, from wine to rose and apricot, then gold.

  He saw something, a dark figure, but could not quite make it out. The grove around him still lay in smoky shadow, the reflected sky casting only the subtlest of light. He moved forward without thinking, nearer the water—and the vision moved. He hung over it, staring at it, holding his breath as the dawn grew gradually brighter. Then in the next moment, the vision crystallized, clarified, became—only himself, his own image reflected back at him from the surface of the Mere.

  No foreseeings. No destiny. Jan
felt his chest tightening until he thought his ribs would fold. His eyelids were stinging, but he refused to blink. His breath had grown ragged. He understood. He had broken from the Ring in the Pan Woods, on the first day of their journey. He had almost forgotten that. Alma had not.

  He had consorted with Renegades, buried a Renegade. The Serpent-cloud had been a warning. He should have heeded it, confessed to Korr. If only Tek—but it was too late now. He was unworthy, not fit to be the prince’s son, no better than a Renegade himself. The Mother-of-all had cursed him, showed him no fate upon the pool because no destiny could lie before him among the children-of-the-moon.

  All around him he heard the pilgrims’ voices: gasps of wonder from the initiates, sighs and murmurs as their mentors once again beheld their fates. Jan’s nostrils flared. He had been holding his breath. Swiftly and without a word, he broke from the Circle and fled silently away into the trees.

  Not then, but only much later—after the pilgrims had finished their beholdings and spoken their oath of fealty to the prince, heard more of Teki’s lays, sharpened their hooves and horns and dipped them in the Mere, then chanted and danced to declare themselves half-grown, warriors—only then, about midmorning, did the unicorns discover one of their band was not among them.

  The heady scent of the milkwood, which they had been breathing all night, had lulled them, and the languor which always follows visioning had made them slow. Dagg and Tek stared at one another and shook their heads like beasts amazed that they had not noticed him gone before. No one had seen him slip away, nor could tracks be found, for the sand of the bank was all tossed and trampled from the dance.

  Korr ordered the clifftop combed, but leaves had already fallen to cover Jan’s tracks. They searched and called the long hours before noon, but found no trace. Then, as they met back at the pool at midday, the whole band, Teki took the prince aside and argued with him.

  The healer said, hark to the hour. By custom the band should have been back on the Plain by now. Nor might they tarry, for the pilgrims must be returned to the Vale by full moon’s time, as was the Law.

  And Korr, half wild, said trample the custom and the Law.

  And the healer said, was the prince gone mad? Could he not feel the sun, hot as a gryphon’s eye overhead? Spring came in apace this year, the grove was nearly in bloom; and it had always been held, for generations on end, that the wyverns awoke when the milkwood flowers. Who knew whether all this stirring and calling had not already wakened them?

  And Korr, in a passion, answered him, let the wyverns all perish.

  Then Teki said no word, but only nodded over one shoulder toward the initiates, so that Korr might take note of how huddled they stood, scanning the wood, how their skin twitched and their eyes rolled, and they started at nothing. It was the age-old terror of the wyverns, kept alive by the singers for four hundred years, that set them quailing so. Even the prince, despite his thunder, felt it.

  Then the healer said, they are frightened, my prince. They fear your son has been stolen by the wyrms and that if we linger, we too shall meet the same. I fear it. Jan is a clever colt, and if he has but wandered off, lost in dreams, then surely he will find his way back to the Plain. But if he has been taken, then he is already lost, and our remaining cannot save him.

  And at that, Korr bit down his anger and his fear, and bowed his head. Then he whistled the band into line once more, and they began to depart. But it was a semblance only, this seeming surrender by the prince. He meant but to see them safely to the Plain and then return, for he had vowed to himself, secretly, that he would not leave the Hallow Hills without his son.

  But what no one had noticed—not he, not Teki, nor any other of the band—as they began their slow descent down the precarious cliff face, then filed at last out of sight beyond the canyon’s bend, was that two of their number still searched among the milkwood trees, never having returned to the Mirror of the Moon.

  No one guessed that Tek and Dagg had glanced into each others’ eyes, each swearing silently to the other to find their friend despite the hour, despite the prince, despite the fear of wyverns that crawled in their breasts. Wise fear. Rash fools, they had no inkling of the prince’s plan, nor had he any notion that a half-grown colt and so young a mare would dare anything so heedless or so brave.

  Jan wandered through the milkwood trees. The scent of honey thickened the air. The buds upon the boughs had swelled. More leaves had fallen. He noted it all without interest. He had only a vague plan, to remain hidden in the grove till afternoon when the others would be long gone. At nightfall he would make his way back to the Plain.

  He told himself he would become a Renegade. There was grass in plenty upon the Plain, and safety in his long legs if he kept his ears pricked for pards. In winter he could rove southward to the warm Summer Sea, in summer strive eastward or west to places and parts no unicorn had ever seen.

  But such thoughts were no comfort to him, for he would be alone, with not even Dagg to share in the game. Always before when he had stepped outside the Ring, it had been but for a moment, an hour. And each time he had been able to return, either nipped and jaded if he had been caught, or flushed with secret triumph if the game had worked. But there would be no returning this time, for Alma had not made him like other unicorns. He saw that now.

  Time passed. The sky overhead lightened past dawn into daybreak. He hurried deeper into the trees, fearing lest someone should follow him, try to force him to return. And then he came aware, presently, of another scent edging in among the honey of bursting buds and the subtle resin of bark and leaves. It was faint but pungent, like fir cones, like bitter herbs. He sniffed, trying to locate it, but the odor vanished.

  Jan halted, frowning. It seemed he had smelled such a scent somewhere before—not quite the same, but similar. Somewhere. He raised his muzzle and wandered through the trees, until after a time he caught a whiff of it again. This time it held, and he followed it.

  The stretch of the grove was greater than he had imagined, tending to downslope, with odd cracks here and there in the earth and little caves tunneling down. There were more of them the farther he went, and the pungent scent had grown stronger now. From several of the crannies, he noticed mist rising. It hung in the boughs of the milkwood trees.

  And then he remembered the breath of fire. He and Dagg had seen it, scented it rising into the night sky in the Pan Woods, while the blue-bodied goatlings piped and danced. He halted before a crevice and leaned over, but he could see nothing past the first length of shaft. Bits of gray soil clung to the pitted stone.

  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 bre
eze 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.