[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars (13 page)

“The one of whom the Scouts have spoken,” still another voice continued, “destined to lead them back to their Hallow Hills?”

“You have traveled far,” still others added. “You must be weary.”

“I am Aljan,” the dark unicorn answered, and indeed, he felt nearly mazed with weariness, unsure how many hours or days he had gone without water and food. “My folk call me Firebringer, and Moonbrow.” But not prince. He would not tell them the folk of the Vale called him prince. “It is they I mean to lead in retaking the Hallow Hills. As for the Scouts of Halla, I cannot say.”

“Tell us this tale,” the dragon voices responded.

“The tale of you.”

“The tale of your journey.”

“All season lies before us.”

“It must be a wondrous tale.”

Jan felt his knees growing weak. The dark room spun. He heard murmurs of concern from those in the shadows, saw Oro start toward him.

“But sip first,” the voices of dragons invited. The maroon stallion halted, hesitated. The dragons lilted on.

“Sip.”

“Sip of the queen’s pool beside you.”

Turning, Jan tried to focus on the natural basin of water in the huge white boulder’s crown. Oddly, though its surface lay perfectly still, it seemed to bend and shift somehow, as though currents beneath its surface created eddies. As he bent to drink, the depression’s shallow bottom appeared to recede from him. He caught glimpses of comets and suns, of unicorns hurtling across a field of stars—or was it a starlit Plain?

Jan shook his head. He closed his eyes, sure that fatigue was causing him to dream. His mouth touched the water, and he was surprised to find it warm, not cool. As the water filled his mouth, the fantastic notion came to him that he was drinking stars. He swallowed once. The pleasantly tepid fluid seemed slightly thicker than water, its taste mildly acerbic, yet at the same time like balm. He had prepared to draw in long drafts, but strangely, after the first sip, he felt entirely satisfied.

He had been speaking, he knew, for a very long time. Jan felt wholly detached, free of hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Time seemed suspended. The sea of figures before him shifted and changed, Oro’s the only one he was able to distinguish with certainty. His own voice, filling the vast, dimly lit chamber, sounded unlike himself, like the voice of another, a singer’s cant from the one with whom he had traveled upon the Plain, the one with the star-flung coat. What had been his name?
Summer Stars.

The dark unicorn had no idea how long he had spoken, telling the unseen dragons and the shadowy Scouts before him everything about his people’s history, how lying wyrms had defeated Halla four hundred summers gone, driven her and her small surviving band from the Hallow Hills. How they had come upon the Vale after long wanderings and taken refuge, there to grow strong and numerous again, in preparation for recapturing the Hallow Hills.

He spoke of his own life, how he had been reared by the king of the unicorns and, in his youth, faced a wyvern queen in her den. His hooves now struck sparks, his horn, hardened by wyvern sorcery, grown keen and hard enough to pierce even the toughest wyvern bone. He had dwelt half a year with two-footed firekeepers, learning the secret of their flame. His folk all hailed him Firebringer. Forging alliances with gryphons and pans, he had made his herd proof against wyvern stings. This coming spring, they would leave the Vale and march into wyvern-held Hallow Hills to retake them in Alma’s name.

He spoke of the king of the Vale run mad and of pursuing him across the Plain. He spoke of his mate, pied Tek the warrior mare, a singer, wondrously fair, firstborn child to the late king who, serpent-stung to death upon the Waste, left the Vale in his daughter’s charge. Queen of the unicorns she reigned, though she did not yet know it. Mother to twin heirs, a filly and foal. The only thing he did not reveal was his own parentage, never naming himself Son-of-Korr or prince. Despite his oddly calm, loosened-tongued state, he could not bring himself even now to face the horror spat at him by dying Korr, that he and his mate shared a single sire.

The voices of dragons spoke no more. The Scouts of Halla listened rapt. When he spoke of Tek, they cheered. Jan had no awareness of the passage of time, speaking on as in a dream. Neither night nor day penetrated the depths of Queen Mélintélinas’s Hall. Figures among the crowd came and went as he spoke. He felt no need for food or drink or sleep. At times, he realized, he had ceased to speak, and the Scouts of Halla spoke, or sang, or chanted their own history: the journey of their four ancestors over the Plain, across the Salt Waste to the Smoking Hills.

Here, from Queen Mélintélinas, they had learned the wyverns’ secret past: that wyrms had stolen dragonsfire, seeking to seize these dark steeps for their own, only to be driven off at last by the red firedrakes who once had sheltered them. The wyrms had wandered then, surviving the Salt Waste and the wide grass Plain until they slithered into the Hallow Hills and lied their way into a truce with the unicorns who dwelt there—all the while planning to betray them and seize their lands as once they had striven to seize the red dragons’.

The voices of Oro and his fellows sounded through the cavern in long, resonant notes. While one singer chanted a melody, four or six others droned a background chord which changed as the song progressed. These airs—some solemn, but many lively—filled the chamber’s vast expanse. Jan marveled how the great hall enhanced sound and channeled it, so it seemed, to all the depth and breadth of the Smoking Hills. He imagined his words and those of the singers reaching out along all the netherpaths to wash against the ears of dragons slumbering, or perhaps listening, far underground.

At last he became aware that all voices had ceased, his own and those of Oro and the rest. A silence pervaded the dusky chamber that was neither cold nor ominous. Jan felt suspended still, untouched by thirst, hunger, or fatigue. Once more Oro stood beside him near the great crystalline boulder. The shaggy throng of mountain unicorns that once had kept their distance had moved closer now. A new voice spoke, one the dark Unicorn had not heard before: a dragon’s voice.

“Well sung,” she sighed, and the echoes whispered, “Sung. Sung…”

A murmur passed through the crowd. Jan heard gasps of “The queen! The queen!”

“Aye,” she answered. “You have wakened me, and the song your words have woven has entered my dreams.”

The dark unicorn heard Oro’s delighted, breathless laughter, saw playful nips and gleeful chivvying exchanged among many around him, though all seemed mindful of decorum, at pains to maintain a respectful hush.

“Of one singer I would hear more,” said the dragon queen, her strange voice penetrating yet mellifluous, “the outlander who calls himself Aljan. Oro, who escorted him on the netherpath, guide him, I pray you, to my chamber below.”

Jan sensed a sudden change in the hall. The unicorns around him froze, caught in their breath with expressions of uncertainty, even alarm. He himself felt nothing, neither terror nor joy. Beside him, Oro tensed.

“Great queen,” he began, as if straining for calm.

“Peace,” she bade him, almost gently. “Has he not drunk the dragonsup? Would I send for him if to do so would bring him harm?”

Her words seemed to calm the Scouts, though glances still darted among the company. The young maroon swallowed.

“And I, great queen?” he asked, nearly choking as he glanced at the shallow, fluid-filled depression in the dome of the huge crystalline boulder beside which he and the dark prince stood. “Am I, too, to sup?”

“Not yet,” she answered. Jan sensed amusement just beneath her tone, saw Oro heave a soundless sigh of relief. “Do but lead him as far as safely you may, then instruct him the way to journey’s end.”

The words rang briefly in the still chamber. A moment of silence followed. Then quickly, quietly, the crowd began to disperse. The scores, perhaps even hundreds of small, shaggy unicorns moved near silently, melting back into the shadows to exit the great hall, through what egress the dark unicorn could not see. Soon he discerned from an almost indistinguishable change in the soft echoes in the chamber that he and Oro now stood alone.

“We must depart,” the maroon beside him breathed. “First we must climb a little, and then descend a very long way for you to reach the queen.”

The roan stallion led Jan to the far side of the immense chamber. The dark prince spied an inclined path leading up the wall toward a tunnel above. Oro started up. Jan followed, pausing in the tunnel’s entry to gaze back down at the vast chamber below. The scattering of huge jewels, the pale, pillar-like shapes all lying fallen, the great, reddish scales, and the enormous oblong, irregular boulder with the fluid-filled depression in its crown all altered suddenly in the dark unicorn’s view.

They no longer appeared to lie in random, orderless scatter. They were, he realized, the scales and bones of some great animal, its flesh long gone, its spine forming a winding trail across the floor. Bones of four great limbs splayed to either side. Toppled ribs lay in between, among the jewels and scales which must have adorned the creature’s hide. Its skull, Jan perceived with a start, was the oblong boulder, resting jaw downward, empty eye sockets the symmetrical, gaping hollows. The little pool gleamed darkly in the—apparently natural—depression upon its brow. Jan could not guess the source of the liquid forming there. Gasping, he gazed at the huge reptilian skeleton below.

“What is that?” he managed. “Whose bones?”

His guide glanced at him quizzically. “The bones of Mélintélinas, late queen of the red dragons. Did I not tell you this be her lair?”

“Late…?” Jan shook his head, trying to clear it. He felt stunned, stupid still. “But is not Mélintélinas the queen who has summoned me?”

Oro shook his head, turning to travel on. “Nay. That be her daughter, the new queen, Wyzásukitán.”

The Hall of Whispers served as the old queen’s audience hall,” Oro panted, champing to moisten his mouth in the hot, dry air. “It be sacred to the dragons, but we have always stood welcome there. Our hosts tell us our Congeries honors the memory of the queen they mourn still.”

“Mélintélinas,” Jan murmured. “To whom Halla sent envoys four hundred autumns past?”

The other nodded. “The same.”

“When did she die?” the dark unicorn asked. “I thought firedrakes lived centuries.”

0ro nodded. “Queen Mélintélinas reigned twelve hundred year and passed into eternity scarcely a hundred winter past. Her successor, Wyzásukitán, be young—as yet unpaired—but very skilled in dragonlore…”

The walls of the tunnels through which they descended grew warmer, their dull golden glow becoming brighter. Wafts of steam curled by, passing in gentle gusts. Jan was aware of the heat, but it did not truly reach him. He felt no flush beneath the skin, no prick of sweat. His heart did not pound, nor his breath labor. It seemed to him he could embody the very heat of the sun and suffer no ill.

Beside him, Oro’s thick roan coat ran with sweat. His ribs heaved. His speech came short. Sometimes he stumbled. At last he halted, staring ahead down the sloping path. Jan halted beside him. The fog had dissipated. Below them lay a lake of fire. Air shimmered above it. Beneath, liquid spurts of yellowish white mingled with sluggish swirls of sunset orange and molten red. A series of small, black islands, very closely spaced, formed a kind of path across—if one were very sure of foot.

“I can fare no farther,” Oro gasped. “Heat fells me. You, though, be shielded by the dragonsup. Forge on across the cinder isles. The hold of Wyzásukitán lies beyond the brimstone sea.”

Jan bowed to his host, seeking words of thanks, but found himself unexpectedly tongue-tied.

“Farewell for the present, Scout,” he heard himself say at last. “I trust to rejoin you shortly.”

Oro also bowed, very low. “Fare you well, Firebrand,” he answered gravely. “I and my folk await your return.”

Abruptly, he swung and stumbled back up the trail. Jan watched the dark roan stagger, reeling almost, then rally and press on. Jan watched him disappear as the trail rose, curving away and passing into other, higher chambers. Oro’s halting hoofbeats gradually receded. Motionless, Jan listened until they faded at last. Then he turned and headed down to the lake of fire.

The air about it shuddered with heat, the burning fluid Oro had once called dragonsflood, fiercely incandescent. The feather in his hair smoked slightly, fragrantly. Yet, he felt no fiery blast as he crossed the black and cindery shore. Near its edge, the glowing brimstone had darkened and solidified into a fragile crust. A great gust of heat shook the ground, rumbling like the breath of some immense creature beyond the subterranean lake of fire. Its sun-bright surface wrinkled, rippling.

When the tremor had passed, Jan stepped out onto the first of the minuscule islands. Its pitted surface grated and clanged beneath his heels. Little showers of sparks fell into the radiant substance of the lake and disappeared. The dark unicorn moved cautiously, sometimes retracing his steps. The lake stretched on, its low, dark ceiling lost in shadow. Such must be the birthplace of the sun, he mused, whence mares of smoke and stallions of fire blazed forth to charge heaven.

He saw lake’s edge ahead. At first it seemed but a far distant darkness upon the gleaming surface, but as he approached, Jan realized it was neither a cluster of islands nor floating slag, but the limit of the brimstone sea. He stepped from the last island onto the cinder shore, which rose gently toward a cavernous opening in the wall of rock ahead. The ceiling soared higher here, the gigantic cavern mouth smoothly oval in shape.

Another glow lit the chamber beyond, steady and reddish. Jan walked toward it, up the beach. Pale smoke trailed through the crest of the entryway in a steady, tendriled stream. Another great sighing, accompanied by rumbling and shaking. The smoky mist redoubled. The dark unicorn halted till the quake subsided, then moved forward again. The black, pitted pebbles crunched and shifted beneath his cloven heels. He reached the great entryway.

“Welcome, Firebrand,” the creature before him sighed. “For you I gladly suspend my contemplation. Enter and be welcome. I have awaited your coming four hundred years.”

The dragon queen sprawled, inestimably vast, filling the great chamber before Jan. She was long and sinuous and covered with jewels. With a start, the dark unicorn noticed huge leathery wings, red as the rest of her, draping her back. Puzzlement made him frown. Living as they did, so far underground, he would never have imagined the red dragons to be wingèd. The old lays mentioned no powers of flight, and the remains of the old queen, Mélintélinas, had borne no wings.

Wyzásukitán looked at him. Her head was wedge-shaped, the muzzle long and slim, with flaring nostrils through which her hazy breath steamed. Two long mustachios, like those catfishes bear, sprouted below each nostril. They floated fluidly on the air as the dragon moved and turned her head. Her ears were slim, like gryphons’ ears. A row of spiky ridges ran from the top of her head down the back of her neck, along the spine and tail to the tip, which ended in a flattened wedge.

Her body was covered by a myriad of ovate, interlocking scales which shimmered, reflecting the light of the lake of fire. Innumerable round and faceted stones encrusted her scaly skin. Of every color, though red predominated, they caught and held the light, burning like distant fires. Her massive hind limbs bore immense, pardlike claws. Her forelimbs, smaller and more delicately made, sported taloned toes of a size to crush a unicorn in a single snatch. Her breath moving through her lungs and throat did so with a hollow rushing like surf.

Upon her forehead, above the great ruby eyes, a circular depression lay, like a shallow bowl. In size and shape, it exactly resembled the slight hollow in the enormous skull of the late queen, from which he had recently sipped. The natural dish in Wyzásukitán brow gleamed, a dark, clear liquid pooling there. The firedrake kept her head perfectly level, he noted, as if on guard against spilling the precious contents. Jan bowed to her.

“Hail, Wyzásukitán, queen of red dragons,” he said.

“Hail, Aljan Firebringer,” Wyzásukitán replied. Despite the harsh susurration, her voice was surprisingly melodious. Her steaming breath smelled of resin and spice. “Before her end, my mother spoke of your coming.”

“What word did Queen Mélintélinas say of me?” Jan asked, surprised. Oddly, he felt no fear.

Wyzásukitán exhaled another cloud of fragrant breath and lowered her head, turning it slightly, only very slightly, to one side.” She told me one of your kind would come from beyond, bearing news of my great enemy, Lynex.”

The dark prince nodded. “Lynex the wyvern king was driven from the Smoking Hills by your mother, Queen Mélintélinas, four hundred winters gone.” Jan recited what he knew. “He and his folk wandered the Plain until they reached the Hallow Hills, at that time homeland to my folk. Lynex inveigled his way into the good graces of my people’s then-king, despite protests by his daughter, the princess Halla. When the wyverns slithered into limestone caves hard by my people’s sacred mere, the Mirror of the Moon, Halla, her suspicions roused, sent scouts to find the Smoking Hills whence these white wyrms had originally come. Her scouts parleyed with your mother the winter’s length. She kept two here and sent the third back with warning of the wyverns’ treacherous ways… But surely Halla’s scouts informed your people of all these things,” Jan broke in on himself, “when first they arrived four hundred years ago.”

The huge dragon nodded, her breath swirling about her. It rose toward the chamber’s distant ceiling. Jan guessed it eventually reached the surface of the hills to drift in the dense fog that gave the region its name.

“Yea,” Wyzásukitán answered. “So they did. And the two who remained here at my mother’s behest became founders of the line that dwells here yet. Their chanting fills our meditations with beautiful song. We have lain very still these last four hundred years, harkening it.” One shoulder moved: perhaps a shrug. “In that regard,” she breathed, “your Scouts do for us much as the wyrms once did.”

“The wyverns were singers?” Jan exclaimed.

Again the red dragon nodded. “They patrolled our dens, kept them free of vermin. They ate our dead. But we prized them for their songs and the stories that they told, which nourished our dreams.”

“They call themselves your cousins,” the dark prince told her.

Wyzásukitán snorted. Her breath swirled. “They are no cousins of ours.”

“What do the red dragons dream?” Jan asked.

The dragon queen sighed. “Much in the heavens and under the earth. We live a long time, by your counting, and have no need to hurry about our affairs. Much time we spend in contemplation, envisioning what will come and what is and what has already passed—but I stray. I was asking of Lynex. We have heard no news of him since your late princess’s scouts arrived. Tell me what befell after the one who departed returned to the Hallow Hills.”

Jan nodded. “He warned Halla of wyvern treachery. But too late. The wyrms had already bred. Come spring, they attacked, killing most of the herd before driving Halla’s small band of survivors away. These wandered until they found the Vale, which has sheltered us for forty generations. But our time there is almost out. My folk mean to return to the Hallow Hills within the year, to wrest them back from Lynex and his crew. We are told he lives and rules the wyverns still. In the way of his kind, he has grown more heads than the single one with which he started. We hear he is seven-headed now.”

“And seven times more treacherous, to be sure,” mused Wyzásukitán.

“Why do the red dragons hate the white wyrms so?” Jan ventured. “You lived in harmony so long. What trespass caused you to cast them out?”

“Harmony would be too strong a term,” the dragon queen replied, voice darkening. “Suffice to say we dwelled without enmity until the advent of Lynex. Lynex was different from other wyrms. His tail bore a poison sting, unlike the blunt tips of his fellows. He used this barb to hunt live prey, including his own kind. He ventured aboveground to stalk the shag-haired goats and bred with others of his kind to produce more sting-tailed wyverns, killing those of his broods that bore no stings.”

Wyzásukitán turned her head, remembering. “He and his folk conspired many seasons, while we slept unaware of the plots fomenting around us. Lynex led his sting-tailed wyrms to kill or drive away all other wyverns. But we suspected naught until Lynex and his followers began to prey upon my people’s pups, carrying off eggs from the nest and stinging to death the newly hatched, then dragging away their bones.”

The firedrake’s eyes smoldered, her beautiful voice growing tighter, more harsh.

“Lynex declared himself king of wyrms and cousin to dragons. Master of fire he styled himself, porting coals about in a golden bowl. My mother awoke at last and roused her kith to drive the wyrms away. Lynex fled, and all his poisonous tribe. We trusted winter’s cold aboveground to kill them—but they huddled about their king’s firebowl and escaped to trouble your tribe as once they had troubled my own. My dam held herself responsible for this wrong. It weighed upon her, and upon my people. Four hundred years have we lain in contemplation since, considering how best to fashion a remedy.”

“Remedy?” Jan asked. “Have you discovered one?”

The dragon queen turned. “To understand that, Firebrand,” she answered, “you must understand my kind.” Again she shrugged, at once both languid and restless. “Behold my wings. My mother was already well into her prime, as we dragons count time, her wings long shed, when your late princess’s scouts arrived.”

The dark prince listened as Wyzásukitán’s folded wings rustled softly, shifting.

“She had flown her mating flight a hundred years previous and would lay eggs from that tryst to the end of her days. She had no wings anymore, nor had any other of her kith, for as you may know, among my kind, only the queen and her consort ever breed. My mother’s consort had long since flown. They always do, after the nuptial flight. Where a queen’s consort flies, we do not know, for none ever return. We are a female race. A male is born among us only once in a thousand years.”