[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars Read Free

unicorns bent to caress her. “Nay, little one,” he murmured, “but you mustn’t keep such things from me.”
    Clearly relieved, white Dhattar nipped him. “We’ll not,” he said. “You’ll believe us now.”
    Jan gathered his offspring to him and chivvied them gently. “Come. Let’s find your dam.”
    The twins fell in alongside, frisking and shrugging as he picked their way down the steep, rocky slope. The thought did not occur to him till they were nearly to the trees.
    “I wonder,” he murmured, as they entered the thicket. “Since I am proof against serpents—you two as well—does a way exist that others also might be made proof?”
    The trees thickened, blotting out the sky. The prince of the unicorns shook his head.
    “Perhaps if I could somehow sting our fellows, as I have been stung…”
    Aiony scrubbed her cheek against his flank. “Scratch them with your blood,” she told him.
    “We could do it, too,” the white foal added, “if we weren’t so young.”
    Aiony sighed. “If we had horns.”
    Ahead of them the trees were thinning. Grassy slope lay beyond. Jan just barely glimpsed it.
    “If the herd could be made proof against poison,” he mused, “we’d no longer need fear wyverns’ barbs—” The prince of the unicorns stopped in his tracks. “We could win back the Hallow Hills!”
    Just paces from the wood’s edge, Jan stared at nothing. Win back the Hills? The possibility rocked him. He had been waiting years for a sign from Alma that the time at last grew ripe to reclaim his people’s homeland. Now the goddess had spoken with the mouth of a serpent, slithering out of his children’s dreams to leave a bloodmark on his shank. The black prince of the unicorns shook himself, pressed on downslope. He must speak of this with Tek at once. The moment the thought formed in his mind, Dhattar glanced at him.
    “Not our dam,” he exclaimed. Beside him, Aiony added eagerly, “Lell’s the one you must go to now.”
    Jan turned at the mention of his younger sibling, barely four, a filly still herself. “Why is that?” he asked, baffled. “Where is Lell?”
    “With the great green eagle-thing,” the white foal answered.
    “The… the…” He frowned, searched for the word. “Catbird?”
    “Wingcat,” Aiony corrected, then turned to nip at her father’s beard. “Lell’s below us, just beyond the trees—at parley with a gryphon.”

2.

    Parley

    Then Isha, mistress of the sky, turned to Ishi, lord of winds. ‘These gryphons, fiercest of all my chicks, shall know a token of my favor.’ With one mighty talon, she scratched the earth, creating a valley. With the touch of one wingtip, she brought it life: wooded slopes and grassy meadow. Here the wind god pastured his goats and deer. Here the blue-fletched formels sped each spring to capture first meat for their newly hatched young—until, four hundred winters past, your kind displaced Ishi’s sacred flocks. Now the formels find nothing to nourish their squabs but your bitter flesh. That is why, little unicorn, this vale belongs to my folk, not yours, no matter how many generations your forebears have trespassed here.”
    Green-feathered with a golden pelt, the gryphon poised on a jut of rock above the amber filly’s head. His coloring clearly marked him a tercel—a male—but so large a one that the young unicorn stood amazed: nearly the size of a blue-winged formel this grass-green raptor crouched. Lell stood motionless, half mesmerized by the tercel’s soft, guttural tone midway between a purr and a growl. The prince’s sister started suddenly. Not yet half-grown, her slim, straight horn still unkeened, Lell tossed her head, snorted and stamped. Her dam had warned her of wingcats’ charming their prey before they sprang.
    “A pretty song!” she cried. “But you must trill a sweeter one to capture me.” She shook her dark chestnut coat, shaggy from winter yet, unshed. Her pale mane splashed like milk. “Forty