[Firebringer 02] - Dark Moon (6 page)

Before him on the beach, the
daïcha
carefully handed the little figurine up to two of her companions on the caveshell, then boarded herself, assisted by the grizzled male. Tai-shan blinked suddenly, realizing. Though the fire in the cinder pit was clearly doomed, that within the smoking figurine, now being carried away in the reverent grasp of the
daïcha’s
companions, still burned. This fire was to be kept sheltered in the caveshell, safe from the killing damp. It was this fire he must follow, then.

The dark unicorn loped to the foot of the dune. The males gave ground as he crossed the beach to stand before the caveshell. The
daïcha
called down to him, beckoning with her forelimbs. Tai-shan hesitated, gauging the distance between them. The wind whipped harder, rain beginning to fall in earnest now. The
daïcha
called again. The young stallion sidled, measuring his strength. At last, bunching his hindquarters, he sprang onto the flat, tilted back of the caveshell.

The slick wooden surface boomed beneath his hooves. For a moment, the caveshell rocked precariously. He had to scramble for his footing until it steadied. The remaining two of the
daïcha’s
female companions screamed and scattered while the males on the shore cried out in consternation. But the
daïcha
laughed in delight, stroking the dark unicorn’s neck and leading him toward the rear of the caveshell. A low barrier edged the shell’s perimeter. Tai-shan had little fear of sliding off. Still, the cant of the wooden surface disconcerted him. He moved unsteadily, unused to the feel of slanted deck underhoof.

At the caveshell’s tail end, the
daïcha
disappeared through a narrow ingress. Following, Tai-shan found himself in a small wooden chamber. Scattered about the floor lay soft falseskin pads stuffed with rushes, upon which the other females huddled. The chamber was warm, the air heavy with the savor of spicewood and smoke. Before the opposite wall, the black figurine stood, breathing fire. Bowing before it, the
daïcha
murmured, “Dai’chon.”

Tai-shan lay down against the near wall. The
daïcha
knelt beside him, chafing him with a soft, dry falseskin, smoothing the damp from his coat like a mare licking her foal. The sensation was delightful. Sighing, he closed his eyes. Presently he heard her companions moving cautiously about the chamber. He scarcely marked their activity, any more than he heeded the grunting and shouting of the males on the beach beyond.

Sleep had nearly claimed him. His surroundings seemed vague and distant now. Stormwind gusted. Rain drummed against the chamber’s walls. Beneath him, the floor shuddered. Much splashing and clambering and shouting from without. He heard a low grating like distant thunder. None of the two-foots in the room gave any sign of concern. Only half-waking, he ignored it all.

The tilted floor seemed to right itself momentarily, becoming more level. Then it began rocking gently, very gently, smoothly tossing and rolling like treetops in a summer breeze. Such an odd dream to be having, the dark unicorn mused. It felt like drifting in the sea. He let his thoughts dissolve into the hypnotic swaying of wooden planking beneath him, the soothing rush of wind outside, the plash of nearby sea, and the gentle creaking of rain-soaked wood. He slept.

Tai-shan awoke with a start. The deck beneath him was swaying in earnest: pitching and tipping. It was no dream. Alarmed, he lifted his head. The
daïcha
was not within the wooden chamber. Two of her companions dozed on falseskin pads across the narrow space from him. The dark unicorn struggled to gather his legs under him as the caveshell’s floor shifted and tilted. He no longer detected the quiet patter of rain. Time to return to the beach, he realized.

Maintaining his balance with difficulty on the slowly tossing, gently rolling surface he passed through the chamber’s egress and emerged onto the open expanse of the caveshell’s back. The sky had indeed cleared. Only stray puffs of cloud now flocked the heavens. It was midafternoon. To his astonishment, he beheld a great tree growing from the caveshell’s back, webbed with vines. Male two-foots swarmed the webbing. Others standing below hauled on the dangling ends.

Tai-shan stared, fascinated. The caveshell lurched and heaved. He spotted the
daïcha
on the far side of the tree, conferring with the eldest male. Cautiously, the dark unicorn started toward her, then pitched to a halt with a horrified cry. The beach had vanished. The caveshell was bobbing in the middle of the sea!

Whinnying, he reared. Male two-foots dropped their vines and scattered, shouting. The wooden surface beneath the dark unicorn’s hooves bucked violently. He nearly fell. Panicked, he sprang to one edge of the caveshell’s back. Open sea lay beyond, deep and blue-grey. The caveshell pitched the other way, sending him skidding toward the opposite side—sea there as well. Nothing but grey waves moved all around, empty and calm.

With a scream of consternation, Tai-shan wheeled. The caveshell tilted precipitously, hurling him against the near rail. He kicked at it. One hind leg tangled in a tarry coil of vine. Frantically, the dark unicorn pivoted, twisting and plunging. He lost his footing and went down. He heard the eldest male barking orders, but his ears were too full of his own terrified whinnies to heed.

“Tai-shan! Tai-shan!”

The
daïcha’s
frantic cries penetrated his frenzy only dimly.

Twisting and bucking, the dark unicorn glimpsed her struggling toward him. The eldest male had hold of her forelimb, seeking to keep her back, but she shook him off angrily and came toward Tai-shan slowly, speaking gently now in her lilting, unintelligible language.

“Tash, ‘omat. Bikthitet nau. Apnor, ‘pnor….”

None of the other two-foots moved. Panting, heart racing still, the dark unicorn stood shuddering. The
daïcha
leaned against him, stroking his neck and chest. Her touch trailed lightly along his flank, then down his haunch. He tensed as he felt her grasp the vine that so painfully encircled his pastern. Then he realized she was worrying it, using her nimble, long-fingered paw much as a unicorn might use her teeth to loosen the vine and pull it free.

“Tai-shan,” the two-foot lady crooned. “Tai-shan.”

Still stroking him, she gestured beyond the rail, beyond even the blue-grey curve of sea. With a shock of wild relief, the dark unicorn spotted what he had missed before: land—just at horizon’s edge, a narrow ribbon of shoreline stretched. He felt the jaws biting down upon his heart ease. The caveshell was not simply adrift, hopelessly lost. The shore remained—barely—in sight.

Tai-shan’s balance swayed. Fever burned in him still. Wearily, he sank down. Later perhaps, when his strength returned, he could spring over the rail and swim for the strand. Doubt chilled him suddenly. Did he dare desert the caveshell—leaving the fire behind? Exhausted, his mind fogged, he shook his head. Time enough to ponder that later. For now, resting his chin along the top of the low rail, he lay quiet. The sun felt warm along his back. The
daïcha
called to her companions, who approached with food. She sat beside him as he ate.

It occurred to him then for the first time that her people did not seem the least disconcerted at their caveshell’s now resting in the sea. Strange. Baffling. Perhaps they
wanted
it to be in the sea—but why? Presently, at the eldest male’s direction, his twofoot minions unfurled a great falseskin from the tree. It belled out like the huge, round belly of a pregnant mare.

The image emblazoning it resembled the strange, fire-breathing figure before which the
daïcha
and the other two-foots had bowed: dark-limbed, its body like a two-foot’s, a crescent moon upon the breast, a skewer in one forepaw and in the other, a trailing vine, yet its head that of a hornless, beardless unicorn with blood-rimmed nostrils and glaring eyes.

By late afternoon, Tai-shan had come to realize that the caveshell was moving, the distant shoreline changing. The great falseskin caught the sea breeze like a gryphon’s wing and pulled the caveshell along parallel to the strand. Gradually it dawned on him that his hosts and their entire shelter were sliding westward without themselves taking a step. The dark unicorn lay amazed.

Later, the wind fell. The grizzled male gave orders, and most of the younger males descended into the caveshell’s belly. Moments later, Tai-shan spied long, slender limbs emerging from the vessel’s side. A hollow booming began, like the beating of a mighty heart. The slim, straight limbs dipped, shoved backward, rose, and dipped into the sea again. The caveshell was using its many legs to crawl like a centipede across the waves.

At dusk, the wind returned, and the caveshell’s limbs withdrew. The steady booming ceased, and the males emerged from below to unfurl their windwing again. As the air darkened and chilled, the
daïcha
rose. Tai-shan followed her carefully back to her wooden chamber.

Inside, basking in its fire-warmed air, he listened to the great tree creaking and straining outside, its taut vines rubbing against each other as the windwing heaved and burgeoned. The gentle lifting and falling of the caveshell seemed almost restful now, much as he imagined the rocking motion of a mother’s walk must feel to her unborn foal. No panic troubled him, now that he realized the firekeepers were traveling, taking him with them. He wondered what their destination might be.

Tek had always known fall as a time of feasting in the Vale: a season for fattening on sweet berries, ripening grain, tallowy seeds and nuts. This year, however, the healer’s daughter felt no joy. The air’s pervasive chill cut her to the bone. Much vegetation had been nipped by early frost, and storms blew in every other day, roaring across the Pan Woods to rot what little provender remained and force the unicorns to spend full as much time huddling underhill as they did foraging for food.

The pied mare shivered, watching the swirl of grey clouds overhead. All the herd seemed to share her gloom. Somehow, many muttered, the children-of-the-moon had displeased Alma. Now the Mother-of-all was making her displeasure known. Tek snorted at so much witless talk. Yet as regent, Korr did nothing. Still wrapped in grief, the king barely uttered a word even to Ses. Jan’s young sister Lell, the new princess, was a mere nursling: many seasons must pass before she might lead the herd in anything but name.

The pied mare sighed, keenly aware of the loss of her mate. Jan would never have tolerated his people’s superstitious champing. Instead, he would have set them all to gleaning every scrap of available forage before first snow. Angrily, Tek shook her head. Her breath steamed like a firedrake’s in the wet, chilly air. Another storm approached.

Korr’s silence and Lell’s youth left the late king’s widow, Sa, as the sole voice of authority among the unicorns. Tirelessly, the grey mare ventured abroad, recounting what had been done in seasons past when winter came early and hard, what foodstuff helped best to deepen the pelt, thicken the blood, and form a rich layer of fat. She urged her fellows to be out and about early each morn, despite the cold, to forage all they might on whatever they might, and spent long hours combing the hillsides of the Vale for browse.

Standing in the entry to the grey mare’s cave, Tek cavaled, lifting and setting down her heels in the same spot to get the stiffness out of her legs. It was such a foraging expedition that the late king’s widow headed now, reconnoitering the Vale’s far slopes with a band of young warriors not half her age, searching for berry thickets and honey trees. The healer’s daughter hoped to see them safely back before the storm broke.

Hoofbeats above drew her half out of the grotto, craning upward, expecting Sa—but it was Dagg. The dappled half-grown slid down the last of the steep slope and crowded past into the dim grotto’s shelter. Dagg shivered, shouldering against her and stamping for warmth.

“So,” she asked, “how was graze on the high south slopes?” She knew that Dagg had, at the grey mare’s urging, set out early that morning to scout that particular ridge. She herself had roved the lower south slopes with a third band the afternoon before.

“Lean,” Dagg answered dejectedly. “We found little but bramble.”

The pied mare murmured in sympathy. Dagg twitched, lashing his tail.

“We’ve got to find more forage!” he burst out. “We’ve enough to feed the herd for now, just barely. But none among us is putting on any flesh—none, that is, but you.”

He glanced at her with open envy. The healer’s daughter shifted, unsettled by his gaze. Her belly had indeed begun to swell ever so slightly—but it was not fat, as would surely grow plain to see as soon as the weather grew colder, forage scarcer, and her ribs began to show. She wondered anxiously if it could be gut worms or colic—but she did not feel ill. And though none of what slender fodder she found seemed to be going to fat, still her girth, day by day, infinitesimally increased.

She had not wanted to trouble her father, Teki, as yet. The usual round of minor complaints among the herd consumed his time: bites and scrapes, strained tendons, thorns. Soon enough, she speculated with a shudder, more major ills would claim his attention, brought on by cold and lack of feed. Moreover, the healer had his teeth full simply gathering the many herbs required for the coming winter, most of which were proving even scarcer than the forage this year. Some days, she knew, he searched from daybreak to dusk, and still returned with only a few poor sprigs.

Shouldering against Dagg, the pied mare sighed. She wished her mother, Jah-lila, were here to advise her. The Red Mare was a loner, a midwife and magicker who lived apart from the herd. Some called her the child of renegades, yet she herself was no renegade—despite Korr’s wild charge—for since coming among the herd before Tek’s birth, Jah-lila had never been banished. Rather, the Red Mare now lived in the southeastern hills beyond the Vales by her own unfathomable choice.

Calling Teki her mate, she had left her weanling daughter in his care years ago, that Tek might be raised within the Vale. At long intervals, Jah-lila still ghosted through, never announced, as often as not to consult with the pied healer but briefly and be gone within the hour. Sometimes the young Tek had not even glimpsed her, merely caught scent of her dam in Teki’s grotto upon returning home at day’s end. The pied mare shook herself. No use wishing.

“It’s only that I don’t run myself ragged, as you do,” she told Dagg, dragging her mind back with an effort to the dappled warrior beside her.

Her words were true enough. She could not seem to run as nimbly as she had before: her burgeoning belly got in the way. Again Tek shook herself—and dismissed her own mysterious condition with a shrug.

“With luck, Sa and her band will have found something in the Pan Woods,” she added, hoping. She worried less for herself and Dagg than for the herd’s fillies and foals. It was they who would suffer heaviest from the coming winter’s lack. And after the young, it would be the elder ones, the mares and stallions Sa’s age.

Dagg nodded vigorously, facing about now in the limestone grotto, the cave the old king’s mare had long inhabited with her mate. Since the death of Korr’s father, the grey mare had had no one to help her warm the empty space until now. Since returning from the Sea, the healer’s daughter had sheltered with Sa. During Tek’s absence, Teki had accepted a number of acolytes: young fillies and foals not yet initiated. The pied stallion was busily teaching them his craft—and though she felt more than welcome, the prince’s mate sensed ruefully that lodging in her sire’s now-crowded grotto would only have put her under heel.

“When do you expect Sa to return?” Dagg asked her, coming to stand beside her at the cave’s narrow entryway.

A flutter of white feathers drifted from the sky. The pied mare snorted, her breath curling and smoking like cloud. “Soon, I hope.”

“First snowfall,” Dagg muttered. “Birds’ down.”

More lacy flakes gusted past, whirling and dancing. Tek watched the rapidly thickening flurries with dread, thinking of the cover it would provide, concealing what remained of the Vale’s dwindling supply of foodstuffs, making the unicorns’ foraging even harder than before. Would Korr respond? she wondered. Would the advent of winter at last bestir the king?

Hoofbeats roused her, a dozen sets, coming not from the hillside above this time, but from across the flat below. Dagg whickered, and Tek peered ahead through the ashen turbulence. Dying day grew greyer by the moment. In another few heartbeats, she spotted Sa, the rest of the band scattering, each to his or her respective grotto. The grey mare trotting up the brief, steep slope toward Tek and Dagg whinnied in greeting. Healer’s daughter and dappled warrior fell back from the cave’s entrance to allow her passage. Once within, the grey mare stamped, shaking the snow from her back and mane.

“What news, kingmother?” Dagg asked. “Did you discover forage?”

The grey mare chuckled.

“Did we indeed! A thicket of tuckfruit ripe as you please—neither birds nor pans have found it yet. We ate till I thought we would burst! Tomorrow I’ll lead the rest of you to it.”

Tek whooped, half shying as Sa reached playfully to nip her neck. The grey mare frisked like a filly, and the healer’s daughter whickered, amazed how suddenly her mood lifted at the prospect of a full belly of sweet, greenish tuckfruit. Come the morrow, they would feast for the first time in days! She ramped, scarcely able to restrain her exuberance. Dagg chafed and chivvied her, laughing himself now. With the certainty of at least a day’s ample forage ahead, all thought of both the herd’s troubles and her own slipped unmissed from her thoughts.