[Firebringer 02] - Dark Moon Read Free Page B

of summer gradually receded toward the southern horizon. Now it shone nearly directly overhead at noon. Nights lengthened: soon they would overtake the days in span. Equinox, marking the summer’s end, crept up on the young prince unawares.
    He and Tek chased across the high downs above the shore, wind whipping their manes and beards. Overhead, herons soared, diving like dropped stones into the shallows of the Sea, fishing for squid. Tek laughed, plunging to a halt at cliff’s edge. Frothed with foam, the surging green waters below shaded into ultramarine at the far horizon. Shouldering beside her, Jan was surprised to find himself now taller than she. Had he truly grown so in these last swift months?
    Tek tossed her head. The rose and black strands of her mane stung against his neck. The Gryphon Mountains stood barely within sight across the vast bay, but Jan spared them scarcely a thought. Never had unicorns summering upon the Sea been troubled by raiders. Wingcats attacked unicorns only within the Vale, and only at first spring. Spotting his shoulder-friend on the smooth beach below, in the thick of a group of sparring warriors, Jan felt a sudden chill.
    “We should go back,” he said. “We’ve left Dagg.”
    The healer’s daughter shrugged. “He is with companions”—she eyed him coolly—“and seems content.”
    Jan snorted, champing. “We leave him much alone these days.” Even so high above the shore, he still caught the faint click of parrying horns. Wind gusted and sighed. Farther down the strand, another knot of young half-growns frisked, fishing fibrous kelp from the waves and playing tussle-tug. Salt seethed heavy in the wind. Abruptly, Jan turned to Tek.
    “You are ever luring me off these days, even from our shoulder-friend. Will not Dagg’s company do as well as mine to keep your admirers at bay?”
    Tek laughed. “Dagg may be my shoulder-friend as well,” she answered, watching him aslant. “But he is not the one I am courting, prince.”
    Jan felt surprise slip through him like a thorn. He stared at her. She could not have knocked the wind from him more thoroughly if she had kicked him.
    “What, what do you mean?” he demanded. “I’m far too callow—”
    “Are you?” the healer’s daughter asked. “So speaks your sire! But what say you?” She sidled, teasing, nipping at him with her words. “Three times before have I come to the courting shore—each time only to depart unpaired. The first two summers, I was newly initiated, just barely half-grown. Last year, it was the one on whom I’d set my eye who was just freshly bearded, unready yet to eye the mares. This year, though, while young yet, he has wit enough to know his own heart—and I count him well grown.”
    She shouldered him. Jan looked at her, unable to utter a word. A sudden fire consumed him at her touch.
    “Hear me, prince,” the pied mare said, “for I begin to chafe. Long have I waited for you to catch me up.” She shied from him, circling, leading him. The dark unicorn followed as by a gryphon mesmerized. “Surely you do not mean to make me wait forever?”
    Trailing after Tek, Jan felt himself growing lost. Her eyes drew him in like the surging Sea. In their jewel-green depths, he saw of a sudden possibilities he had never before dared contemplate: Tek dancing the courting dance with him under the equinox moon, the two of them running the rest of their days side to side, unparted by any other—and in a year or two years’ time, fillies, foals….
    “I—I must think on this,” he stammered, stumbling to a stop, and cursed himself inwardly for sounding like a witless foal. Tek only smiled.
    “Think quickly, prince. Equinox falls in only six days’ time. Five nights hence, we dance the dance.” She snorted, shaking her mane. The scent of her was like rosehips and seafoam. “Remember my words,” she said saucily, “come equinox.”
    She sidled against him, nuzzled him, her teeth light as a moth’s