[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars (24 page)

Illishar, too, was screaming now, his burning wings battering the air, straining against a weight that nearly dragged him down. With furious strokes, he bore her up. Ses felt the wind of his wings, heated by flame, fanning the ring of fire. Wailing and squirming, the blinded wyvern tossed below. The burning filly writhed in the tercel’s grip. He dragged her through the air, barely clearing the curtain of fire. Shrilling, keening, he fought his way upward, higher into the darkening sky. Flames licked across his belly and green-fletched throat.

The white wall of the limestone cliff loomed. He strove for altitude. Lell’s screeches tore the night. She seemed to gallop through sunless sky. Fire ran all along their limbs. Illishar cleared the cliff, cleared the trees. He staggered low across the canopy of the milkwood grove, an erratic series of plummets and heaves. Far below, Ses lost sight of them. The light of their burning flickered, played eerily through the trees, lighting the air above. All at once, it vanished utterly, plunging the grove into darkness again as though the pair of them had, surrendering at last, fallen from the sky.

From the blackness above came a mighty rushing, as of wind. Tek felt a stirring reft of coolness, a waft as hot as sun-burned rock. Another noise now, louder than the ceaseless rush. This second sound belled like a mighty trump, calling, calling in long, clear notes that shook the earth. The notes drew nearer, nearer at incredible speed, as did the rush. The hot wind increased. All came from above, from the strange black cloud that had swept all day from the Smoking Hills and at last devoured the sky.

A blast of fire shot through the darkness overhead. The immense tongue of flame flared, subsided, was replaced by another, and another yet, each gout nearer. The unicorns, still motionless upon the battlefield, gaped. Their enemies, who also poised, craned upward. The darkness parted, and out of it, a dragon swooped. She was vast, vaster than any creature Tek had ever beheld, red in color, and embedded with thousands of flashing jewels which scintillated in the light of her fiery breath.

The dragon descended, impossibly huge, the size of a mountain. Each note she trumped was followed by a roaring spurt of flame. Without being aware, Tek found that she had recoiled, fallen back, as had every living creature around her, whether unicorn or Wyvern. Only the wyrmking remained where he lay, rolling and moaning insensibly within the ring of fire. The rush of the dragon’s wings as she approached scoured everything in her path. Tek slitted her eyes, tightened her nostrils, folded her ears against the hard, gritty gusts.

The mighty firedrake came to rest with a concussion that shook the hills. The heat of her drove both unicorns and wyverns back. Her jewels flashed and winked like innumerable stars or eyes. Her scales seemed to glow of their own accord. Her huge, membranous wings remained raised above her back, only half folded. One great foreclaw tightened upon the earth, tearing great troughs in the soft limestone. The other remained clutched loosely, cradling to her breast something Tek could not quite see.

Most of her immense form was lost from Tek’s view by darkness and the rolling slope of the land. Forelimbs on the wyvern shelves, tail resting upon the Plain, she settled before the burning ring encircling Lynex. The dragon peered at the wounded wyrmking. Her magnificently finned and whiskered head was larger than his entire body.

“Lynex,” she sighed, expelling a billow of burning breath. “Lynex, do you know me?”

Her finished air swirled whiter than cloud, her words surprisingly melodious, despite the harsh susurration. Slowly, painfully, the wyrmking recoiled. Of his seven heads, only the central, largest pate still moved, eyes sightless and shattered. The other six dandled.

“Mélintélinas,” he croaked. “Red dragon queen! I feel your heat.”

The dragon shook her head. “Mélintélinas is dead,” she whispered. “She did not live to see your end. It is I, her daughter, Wyzásukitán. Your queen.”

“Wyzásukitán,” hissed Lynex, dragging himself upright, sightless eyes questing fruitlessly to perceive her.

The great dragon’s head nodded. “Aye. I am she who, four hundred winters gone, nearly fell victim to your jaws when, steeped in treachery, you decided dragon pups were fit food for your kind, that eating a living dragon’s flesh could make you, like us, mistresses of fire.”

She shifted, moving closer.

“Full-grown firedrakes, of course, you feared to molest. But new-hatched pups, these you stole and devoured while their nurses dreamed. Not even the royal nest was safe from your predations, for only the flesh of a queen’s heir, so you determined, suited your own nobility.”

The dragon’s voice was hypnotic, her face impassive.

“So you sought to roll from the nursery that egg which housed my mother’s heir. But the queen’s sleep was not so deep as other dragons’. She woke. I hatched to find not nurturing attendants but a predator. I struck, defending my own life until my dam could save me. It was my tiny eggteeth and infant claws which scarred your icy breast.”

The red dragon’s enormous talons upon the ground tightened, crushing the powdery stone.

“You slipped my mother’s traps and escaped the Smoking Hills. She ordered all your kind driven forth, expecting the lot of you to perish in the arid cold aboveground. But you had stolen fire and borne it with you. Thus were your kind able to survive and flee the Smoking Hills.”

She turned. Ruby eyes studied him.

“Thus were you able to make your way across the Salt Waste and the Plain. You came here to trouble these unicorns, to steal their lands from them.”

The firedrake’s jeweled wings tensed, spread, stretching to their full extent.

“My mother, having flown her nuptial flight, had lost her wings and could not follow you. Nor could her earthbound sisters, since among my kind only unwed queens and their mates have wings.”

Wyzásukitán hissed, her breath steaming.

“But I have always known what task I must perform before relinquishing my maidenhead. I have been a long, long time growing my wings, Lynex. Four hundred years have I contemplated this tryst.”

The white wyrm rolled, sprawling, seeking to crawl away from her, toward the far edge of the burning ring.

“No,” he groaned, then half shrieked. “Mercy!…”

“What mercy had you for a new-hatched dragon pup?” the queen of the red dragons inquired, her enormous presence glittering above him in the hot light of the fire. “What mercy did you show these unicorns, and their ancestors? What mercy did you grant any of your own kind who spoke out against your ruthless ways?”

She reached for him.

“Ah!” cried Lynex, shrinking and writhing as her great forepaw entered the ring of fire. “Let me go! Let me go!”

The queen of the red dragons shook her vast head. “Never,” she answered. “My mother made that mistake. I shall not repeat it.”

“What do you intend to do with me?” the white wyrmking shrieked, struggling uselessly against the dragon’s grasp.

Wyzásukitán eyed him, and with a snuff of her strange white breath, doused the fire surrounding him. Flame jetted from her nostrils then, in steady, controlled spurts, illuminating the night.

“My mate-to-be is young yet,” replied the dragon queen. “It will be hundreds of years before he is ready to fly. Till then, he needs a plaything. Something long-lived to amuse him as he grows.” Lifting her head, she shot a great gout of fire across the sky, then bent to examine her prize. “Lynex,” she inquired, “can you sing?”

“No!’ the wyvern screamed. “No! No!”

His howls grew softer as she lifted him high into the air and, turned her attention from him to her other forepaw, the one she cradled to her breast. Carefully, she lowered it to the ground. The enormous talons opened. A unicorn stepped free. Tek felt her own heart kick against her side. Jan! Her mate stood upon the limestone shelves, whole and unscathed. Scanning the battlefield, his eyes found her. Their gazes locked. Bending before him, the dragon laid her head upon the stone.

“Sip again, Firebrand,” she urged. “One last dragonsup to protect you from your own fire.”

Tek’s mate bent his muzzle to the dragon’s brow. The pied mare noticed for the first time the shallow depression, perfectly round, like a little Mirror of the Moon. Dark waters swirled there. She saw Jan drink.

“My thanks to you, Dark Moon,” said Wyzásukitán, her white breath smoking, “for rousing me from my long sleep and guiding me here. Dance fire now through all the stinging wyverns’ dens, that none may ever return to trouble you. Fare well.”

Lifting her whiskered head, she scanned the unicorns. Around her, Tek saw her new-met, shaggy allies all stood with heads bowed. The dragon queen smiled.

“And fare well to you, proud Scouts of Halla, who lately dwelt among my kind. My sisters and I will miss your beautiful singing. We must find us other songs to haunt our dreams.”

Her ruby eyes found Jan again.

“Firebrand, I take my leave. May the light of Her of the Thousand Jeweled Eyes illumine you.”

Pulling herself upright into a crouch, the vast dragon sprang skyward. Her breath flared out in mighty bursts of flame, coruscating in the air, which hung thick and dark, full of particles. She coursed upward, as though to overleap the strange black cloud. Lynex’s wails and cries receded. The darkness swallowed them. The great belling notes of the dragon’s voice shot away to the northeast, back toward the Smoking Hills.

Tek stirred, saw Jan ramping, striking his heels and his horn to the ground. Sparks flew up, showering, setting the bone-dry wisps of grass ablaze. He dashed for the largest entrance to the wyverns’ dens, the one through which Lynex and his bodyguards had emerged. A swarm of burning stars swirled in the wake of Alma’s Firebringer as he disappeared into the cave.

Tek heard a roar, as of some resinous substance kindling all in a flash. Fire spouted from the mouth of the wyverns’ dens, accompanied by roiling smoke. Tek saw smoke and flame begin to pour from other openings. Within moments, every lightwell in the porous limestone blazed with preternatural light. Crashes and rumbles, as of tunnels collapsing or bursting. The battlefield rocked. Tek heard those wyverns who yet remained screaming in fear.

“Let them go! Let them go,” the pied mare shouted as the white wyrms slithered like stormwater toward the Plain. “Let the dogs and grass pards finish them!”

Her own folk milled, but held their ground. The shelves trembled and jarred. Pain in her side bit deep.

“That was Jan!” she heard Dagg beside her exclaim. “Jan, in the hand of the dragon queen.”

“The holy Firebrand,” Oro beside him whispered.

The dappled warrior turned to the shaggy stranger. “He’s gone down into the wyrms’ dens and set them alight.”

Dazed, Dagg took a step in that direction, as though he half meant to go after his friend. The red mare Jah-lila called, “Hold. We cannot follow.”

A dark grey ash began to fall. Tek realized for the first time that the mysterious black cloud was descending, enveloping them. It was made of cinders, tiny particles of soot. The stuff felt warm and gritty, feathery at first; then heavier and heavier it fell. It caked her ears and mane and the lashes of her eyes, coated her pelt and the pelts of her fellows. It covered the earth upon which they stood. Beside her she heard Teki the healer breathe,

“Álm’harat spare us. It is the end of the world.”

He galloped through caverns and chambers, needing no guide. Alma showed him ever and always the way. All the dens through which he passed stood empty. He became aware presently that they were collapsing behind him, the superheated tunnels cracking and shattering, giving way in a series of terrible concussions. This would go on for a long time, he knew. Even after he departed these grottoes, they would burn for days.

The glory of Alma sang in his blood. Fire like the sun gusted beneath his heels. The moon upon his brow gleamed. He felt unbounded by physical body, unencumbered by space and time, keenly aware that before the new could be born, the old must be scoured away. He felt the agent of both that imminent demise and the coming rebirth, at one with all things, with Alma. It seemed the fire he danced was the great Fire, the One Dance that circled the world and the stars, the Cycle of All Things.

When at last his exultation waned, he understood that the dragonsup was ebbing, his divinity passing. Mortality returned. Time to make his way aboveground. He veered upward. As he emerged from the burning maze, air’s coolness washed like a long drink of water against his skin. In the darkness of falling ash, he could not tell if it were day or night.

A dim, round orb that might have been either moon or sun gleamed wanly overhead. Canted off to one side, it threw only the slenderest of light. Ash lay thick upon everything, changing the look of the land, painting it grey ghostly as the realm of haunts. He found he was not lost, knew himself to be at the southernmost edge of the wyvern shelves, where they intercepted the Plain.

The Mare’s Back, too, lay deep in cindersnow. He shook himself, dislodging a soft cloud of the fine, feathery ash from his pelt. Moments later, it began to coat him again. He turned northward, toward the Hallow Hills and the cliff beneath the milkwood groves where the heart of the battle had raged, certain that soon or late, if he followed this course, he would rejoin Tek.

“Get up,” she heard Aiony saying faintly, but quite distinctly, from somewhere nearby.

Dully, the amber filly struggled to untangle her disobedient limbs. A moment later, she was able to stand. The scent of milkwood blooms wafted all around her, their aroma heavy and all-pervading. She felt the tingle of the milkwood buds she had eaten, and the resinous smoke she had inhaled, suffusing her blood.

“Pull Illishar out of the water,” Dhattar’s soft voice chimed. “The moon’s mere has seen to his burns, just as it did yours—but he’s not awake yet, and it’s time he came out.”

Lell stood trembling, feeling the soft weight of ashfall. It clung damply to her pelt. There was no shaking it off. So thick were the cinders sifting out of the sky that the world seemed dark as twilight. Was that the moon shining above her, or the sun? She saw Dhattar and Aiony standing at the edge of the circular mere. The pure pallor of the white foal’s pelt and the silver of Aiony’s pied coloring seemed subtly, inexplicably, to glow.

“Where am I?” Lell muttered thickly, snorting to get the ash-mud from her nostrils.

“The Mirror of the Moon,” Aiony replied, her voice strangely far-sounding, “where Illishar bore you to douse the flames. He knows naught of its healing powers, but he knew it was water, the closest to be found.”

“Illishar!” Lell gasped, fully awake now, her heart giving a sharp, silent thump. “Where…?”

“Behind you,” Dhattar replied.

Lell wheeled unsteadily, spied the gryphon tercel floating half submerged in the clear surface of the mere, which was littered with milkwood flowers, she saw. The ashfall did not seem to affect the pool’s clarity. Instead, inexplicably, the cinders appeared to vanish upon contact with the waters, which remained crystal clear, the mere’s sandy bottom still snowy white, unsmirched. Its whiteness glowed almost as distinctly as Dhattar and Aiony.

“Pull him out,” Dhattar was telling her.

Lell waded to the unconscious wingcat, bent to grasp one splayed, waterlogged wing in her teeth. She backed toward shore. He drifted amazingly easily, supported by the mere. She managed to drag his head, neck, and most of his shoulders onto the shore. He twitched, sputtered, but did not wake. A bright silvery substance spattered his throat and chest. It coated most of his pelt and much of one wing. Curious, Lell bent to sniff. The fur and feathers there smelled odorless and new.

“What is it?” she stammered.

“The bright spots?” Aiony asked.

“Where the fire burned him and the mere healed him,” Dhattar replied.

“Healed you as well,” Aiony continued.

Lell glanced down at herself. She, too, was covered with patches of pale new hair. She stared at it.

“Burned?” she murmured, mystified. It had been a dream.

“The mere saved you both,” Aiony replied, earnestly, distantly.

“Illishar’s scorched pinions and pelt have come back silver. Your own burnt hair has sprouted gold.”

Lell turned to stare at the twin filly and foal. They stood quietly, only a few paces distant, still glowing softly, oddly in the dim ashfall. Lell shook herself, felt the ash upon her pelt dislodge. None, she realized suddenly, was settling on either Dhattar or Aiony. It was falling through them.

“The ash…,” she exclaimed.

They glanced at one another. “It hasn’t reached us yet,” Aiony said.

“How are you come here?” Lell whispered, too stunned to think clearly.

“We’re on the Plain,” Dhattar replied, “with the Plainsdwellers and the rest. We’re three days’ journey from you still. The ash won’t reach us for hours yet.”

Lell could not take her eyes from them. Their translucent brightness fascinated her. “But where—how…?”

Aiony shrugged. “We stand by an oasis pool, gazing into it.

We see you and Illishar, the Mirror of the Moon.”

“We watched the battle thus, earlier,” Dhattar went on. “We only called you now to wake you, urge you to come out. It was time, and you were very deep asleep.”

“The battle,” Lell gasped, casting about her suddenly. “How goes the battle?”

“Peace,” Dhattar answered. “It’s won. Wyverns routed and Lynex borne away. Jan is returned. All’s well.”

Her mind a tangle, Lell half turned, but Aiony called, “List. You need not go down to them so soon. Rest. Illishar will want you by him when he wakes. Ample time betides. The Hills are won, the old age slain, a new age about to be born. Sleep. Regain your strength.”

Her voice faded, retreating further and further as she spoke. Her image and that of Dhattar grew thin, finally vanishing altogether. Only ashfall drifted where the pair had stood. The amber filly felt her trembling limbs give way. How foolish to think she could have taken another step. Of course she must stay with Illishar, must tell him everything when he woke.

“Illishar,” she murmured, bending over him. The slumbering gryphon stirred. Soft growling or purring sounded deep in his throat, but his eyes remained shut, limbs loose, his breathing steady. Her own eyes slid closed. She sank into sleep with one cheek pressed against his feathery breast.

Jan found his mate, and told her all—in confidence, away from others’ ears. Still ignorant, his kith and folk and shoulder-friends embraced him, full of marvel and delight. He promised to give them the tale of his year’s adventure as soon as the herd could be reunited and cinderfall had ceased. Meanwhile, the gloomy grit sifted down and down, drabbing all hues, making ghostly the world. Most of the slain lay beneath the milkwood cliffs, heaped upon the wyvern shelves where fighting had been fiercest. Those limestone hollows collapsed in a grinding roar of smothering fire at close of the second day, consuming their dead. Other wyrmsmeat Jan and Tek ordered brought to the same spot to be burned. The unicorn dead they carried to the ancient burial cliffs and laid out beneath the sky.

By afternoon of the third day, the ashfall began to thin. As evening neared, the red mare Jah-lila stood upon a rise overlooking the Plain and called in a storm. All night fell the warm, hard rain. Sun rose undimmed on the following morning, the first real dawn since the ending of the world. The Scouts of Halla gazed upon their new homeland, admiring its splendor at the break of day. Then they departed, pledging to return ere summer’s end with their elders and young, whom the red dragons had secreted safe away during the late upheaval in the Smoking Hills. Oro bowed low to both Tek and Jan, then turned and chanted to his band, singing them into single file across the green and rolling Plain.

The Mare’s Back, too, had been washed clean by recent rain, free of the haunt-grey dust which had shrouded it. Calydor also took his leave, along with Tek’s runners, bearing news of the warhost’s victory and summoning those of the herd awaiting at oasis. On the twelfth day after the battle which had marked the close of the Era of Exile and begun the Age of the Firebringer, the herd’s colts and fillies, suckling mares and their foals, ancient elders and the halt of limb entered at last into the Hallow Hills, lush with verdant foliage and summer grass.

Jan and Tek greeted their twins, and Ryhenna and Dagg their tiny son with relief and joy. The Plainsdwellers, to no one’s surprise, evidenced little interest in the herd’s newly won lands. Jan suspected they now regarded the Hallow Hills as both battlesite and gravelands, sacred and terrible, and not to be trespassed lightly. Those who ventured the Hills escorting new arrivals took their leave hastily, almost precipitously. Tek and Jan spoke their thanks and let them go. Calydor had not been among them. His absence puzzled and saddened Jan. But he had long since learned how strange were the ways of the Free People. They came and went capriciously, often as not without farewells.