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

whinnied and reared, thrusting her young horn toward the empty sky.
    “Jan! Jan! Did you see him?” she cried. “My gryphon! He says his wingleader will come parley with us—at summer solstice, Moondance.”

The solstice night fell still and clear, with sky above transforming to the dark, even blue of deep water. The round moon, burning silver as it climbed, paled a heaven pricked with summer stars. Pied Tek, the prince’s mate, danced in the great ring of unicorns cantering under the moon. White Dhattar and painted Aiony frisked beside her, pummeling one another with their soft weanlings’ hooves. The dancers trampled the thick, fragrant grass, kicking and scattering turf. Night breathed warm with coming summer and the panting and sweating of unicorns.
    All around her, Tek watched her fellows bowing and turning their heads to scratch their flanks with keen horntips, then reaching to prick the flanks of their fellows. Each full moon since equinox, they had done the same, ever since her mate had spoken of his battle with Alma’s serpent and of the magic in his blood. He had vowed to bestow it upon the entire herd. She herself had been the first. Each Moondance since, those already scratched had mingled their blood with the blood of others until after this night, all—from youngest newborn to most venerable elder—would by Alma’s grace stand forever proof against serpents and their stings.
    The pied mare shook herself for sheer exuberance and danced. She gazed at her weanling filly and foal traipsing ahead amid the swirling rush to butt at Lell with their blunt, barely sprouted horn-nubs. Laughing, the older filly chivvied and nipped at them. They sought refuge behind their granddam Ses. Pale cream with a mane and tail of flame, the mother of Jan and Lell never faltered in her step while the three colts cavorted, playing peekover and tag. Tek whistled Aiony and Dha back to her side.
    She spotted Jan ahead of them, emerging from the dancers. He ascended the council rise, a low mass of stone thrusting up from the valley floor. Around it the great moondance circled. Reaching the top of the rock, the young prince halted, his lean stallion’s form just entering its prime etched in shadow against the moon-washed hills. What a wonder I pledged as my mate, Tek smiled to herself, scant three years gone, by the Summer Sea. She admired the crest of his neck, length of his horn, his fine runner’s limbs.
    Around her, the dance began to subside, moon halfway along its journey to surmount the sky. She halted, gazed about as one by one, unicorns circling her and her offspring strayed to a stop, stood cropping grass or lay down on soft, cushioned earth. Tek, too, lay down with Dha and Ai, not far from Ses and Lell. She sensed the others’ expectancy from their skittish prancing, their restive whinnies and snorts. Her own mingled anticipation and trepidation made the pied mare’s skin twitch.
    On the rise above, her mate tensed suddenly. A ripple passed through the herd. Heads lifted. Necks craned. Gazing into the seamless silver sky, she, too, caught sight: gryphons, a dozen of them in a hollow wedge sailing the moonlit air, dark as cinders, silent as haunts or dreams. Tek’s herdmates shifted, jostled, murmured uneasily as the vee descended. A huge wingcat formel occupied the point, the intense blue of her plumage discernible even by moonlight. All were formels, the pied mare realized, save for one flanking the leader’s wing, the tips of his green tercel’s feathers nearly brushing hers. Scarcely smaller than his fellows, the lone male glided.
    Closer they drifted, and closer yet. Their shadows swept the silent herd. Tek felt the hairs of her pelt stiffen and lift. The thud of paws on rippled rock sounded in the stillness as the gryphons alighted on the council rise, first the wingleader, then the tercel beside her, then all the other blue-and-tawny formels of the vee. Tek felt her fellows tense, recoil ever so slightly.