[Firebringer 02] - Dark Moon Read Free

Firebringer would one day lead them to reclaim their ancestral lands.
    Listening, Jan found his thoughts straying to the fierce, furtive pans, whose territory he and his band must on the morrow begin to cross in order to reach the Summer Sea. Bafflement and frustration over the worsening gryphon raids crowded his mind as well, mingled with thoughts of the distant wyverns and this fitful, generations-long impasse his people termed a war.
    Heavily, Jan shook his head. The moon upon his forehead burned. Somehow, he must find a way to conquer all these enemies and return his people to the Hallow Hills. Legend promised that he could do so only with fire. Yet he possessed no fire and no knowledge of fire, no notion of where the magical, mystical stuff could be found—not even the goddess’s word on where to begin.
    Alma, speak to me! he cried inwardly.
    But the divine voice that had once guided him so clearly held silent still. Despair champed at him. Teki quit the rise, his lay ended. Jan sighed wearily and stretched himself upon the springy turf. Dagg sprawled alongside him, head down, eyes already closed. Before him, Jan saw Tek, too, lay down her head. The moon, directly above, gazed earthward in white radiance. Jan shut his eyes. Others all around, he knew, already slumbered.
    He felt himself drift, verge into dreams. Tangled thoughts of his people’s adversaries and his own impossible destiny washed away from him. Even memory of Korr’s harsh, disapproving stare faded. In dreams, the young prince moved through mysterious dances along a golden-shored green sea. Before him galloped a proud, fearless mare, her name unknown to his dreaming self, though she reminded him of none so strongly as the legendary princess Halla—save that this nameless, living mare had a coat not red, but parti-colored jet and rose, and green, green gryphon’s eyes.

2.

    Summer

    Tek tossed her mane, wild with the running. Wet golden sand scrunched between the two great toes of each cloven hoof. Alongside her, companions frisked through cool green waves. Summer sea breeze sighed warm and salt in her nostrils, mingling with the distant scent of pines. Ahead of her, the prince loped easily along the strand, his long-shanked, lean frame well-muscled as a stag’s. She loved the look of him, all energy and grace. What a stallion he would make when he was grown! Tek laughed for sheer delight.
    High grassy downs bordered the shore. Jan led the band toward the maze of tidal canyons known as the Singing Cliffs. Wind fluted through their honeycombs like panpipes, a plaintive, sobbing, strangely beautiful sound. Above their soughing rose the shrieks and ranting of the seabirds which nested there.
    Far overhead one speck among the myriad began spiraling earthward. Head up, the pied mare halted alongside Dagg as the prince whistled his band to a standstill. Other specks glided effortlessly down, blue as the sky in which they sailed. Soon they dropped low enough for Tek to distinguish long wings and slender necks, sharp, bent bills and lanky, web-footed legs.
    In another moment, they began alighting on the sand. One heron, taller than the rest, her eye roughly level with Jan’s shoulder, fanned her feathery head-crest to reveal deep coral coloring under the dusty blue.
    “Greetings, Tlat, far-roving windrider,” Jan hailed her. “Peace to you and to your flock.”
    The leader of the herons clapped her bill and studied Jan with one coral-colored eye. Behind and around her, her people bobbled, folding their elongated wings with difficulty.
    “So. Jan,” she called in her high, raucous voice. “The prince of unicorns returns.”
    “Yes, I am returned,” the dark stallion answered. “Last year found me no mate, so this year I must try again.”
    “Ah!” the seaheron cried. Bobbing and clattering, her people echoed her.
    “How fared your own courting this past spring?” Jan inquired as the herons subsided.
    Obviously pleased, Tlat groomed her breast.