“List, faster, Dagg,” the young mare instructed. Jan glimpsed her sidling for a better view. Dagg pivoted, grazing him. The sudden sting surprised him. Jan knocked his friend’s horn away.
“I know,” he breathed, throwing himself after Dagg. “But do seers’ dreams always come to pass?” Taking advantage of his friend’s misstep, Jan rained a volley of feints and thrusts. Dagg was too hard pressed to answer. “Tek?” panted Jan. “Does it?”
“Well enough, let be,” he heard the healer’s daughter laughing. “Enough hornplay for now. We’ve a day’s running ahead of us yet.”
Jan and Dagg fell apart, catching their breath. As Tek turned away, they followed her to the edge of the loose Ring of resting unicorns, away from the clash of other pilgrims, early risen, still learning battlecraft. The healer’s daughter turned to Jan.
“Until he come, little prince,” she said, “all we may know of the Firebringer is what Zod and other dreamers said of him: that he shall come on hooves so hard and sharp they will strike sparks upon the stone. That his blood shall be of burning, and his tongue a flit of flame. That he may not come until the Circle has been broken. And his birth shall mark both the beginning and the ending of an age.”
Jan shook his head, frowning at her words. Dawn wind was rising now. “I thought only Zod had foretold the Firebringer.”
The healer’s daughter shook her shoulders. “Others have seen him. Caroc foretold he would be born out of a wyvern’s belly, and Ellioc that he would not come from within the Ring at all, but outside it—a Renegade….”
“But Caroc and Ellioc were false prophetesses,” Dagg said impatiently. “Nothing either of them foretold has ever come to pass….”
“Yet,” murmured Tek. Dagg snorted.
“How could a unicorn be born out of a wyvern’s belly?” He swatted a blackfly from his haunch. “The only one who ever truly saw the Firebringer was Zod.”
Tek stood three-legged, cocking her head to scratch her cheek with one heel. “Oh, truly?” she murmured. “Then I suppose I have not seen him.”
Jan looked at her. “You saw…” he began.
“Where, when?”
The young mare straightened, shaking herself. “Not in flesh. In a dream.”
Dagg came forward. “Is that why you changed the ending of the lay, the one you sang at Moondance?”
Tek glanced at him, and let go a nickering laugh. “So far, you seem to be the only one to have remarked it.” She laughed again, half at herself. “Perhaps the others were all already asleep.”
“The Beard,” Jan heard Dagg breathe. “I told you she was a dreamer.”
The young mare sighed. “No dreamer. Only a little of a singer, and a warrior. I saw the Firebringer on the night all unicorns are dreamers: at my initiation, two years gone.”
Jan snorted. “What do you mean?”
Tek looked at him. “You have not heard? I thought all colts found out before the time, though they are not meant to.”
Jan studied her, and she was laughing at him with her green, green eyes—taunting him, daring him. But he refused to be baited. He only said, softly, “Will you tell us of it, of initiation?”
She nodded then, shrugging. “I suppose. You’ll find out soon enough in any case.” And she made her voice low, like a singer’s cant. Both colts had to lean closer to hear. “Those who have come far over Alma’s back, kept Ring and borne themselves bravely—those whom the Mother finds worthy—will at dawn behold a true vision of their destinies upon the Mirror of the Moon.”
Jan’s heart missed a step. “Their destinies,” he whispered, gazing at Tek. She sighed, her eyes fixed, unfocused now.
“Only a glimpse. A glimpse.”
“And you saw the Firebringer.”
She had turned a little away from him. “I saw the moon crack like a bird’s egg and fall out of the sky, and from the broken shell stepped forth a young unicorn, long limbed and lithe, a runner, a dancer, and black as the well of a weasel’s eye. He looked exactly as the old song says:
“But,” said Jan; he had to force himself to speak slowly, “if you saw him born….” Excitement flared in him. “Then that can only mean the Firebringer will come among us in your lifetime.”
Tek glanced at Jan, then Dagg. She laughed, casting a glance at Korr. “Perhaps. Or perhaps he is already among us, only waiting to be known.”
Jan turned to gaze after his father, who stood a little apart from the band, watching the fiery dish of the sun pull free of the horizon. Korr was a mighty prince, a fleet runner, a fine dancer. And he was black, black as a starless night. Did Tek think Korr might be the one—did others think it? Dagg had hinted as much at Moondance, days ago.
Jan felt a rush of longing then. Was there nothing he could do to win back his father’s esteem? And though the prince had not a mark of white or silver on him, odd spots, appearing suddenly, were not unknown among the unicorns. One never knew what lay beneath until spring shed.
Tek started away from him, murmuring, “We’ll be breaking camp soon.”
Jan let go his daydreaming and yawned, shaking himself. Dagg shouldered against him. The grass before them billowed and stirred. As Dagg lowered his head to nibble the tender green shoots, Jan turned to follow Tek. There had been something more he had wanted to ask her. The sun was up, the waning moon in the western sky well past its zenith. Tek was rousing those who were dozing still.
“Hist, Tek,” said Jan lowly. The healer’s daughter turned. “Where were you off to, night past?”
The young mare frowned and shook her head. “I stood sentry before dawn, if that’s what you mean.”
She turned and woke another pilgrim. Jan waited till they were out of others’ earshot again. “Earlier—before moonrise.”
Tek halted and studied him keenly. “Breaking the Ring is forbidden,” she told him. “ And straying away would be madness at night. There are grass pards on this Plain.”
Jan shook his head. “I saw you.”
Teki had sung them a lay after dusk, how Alma created her own being from a dance of light in the Great Darkness before time, and the world was but a droplet shaken from her as a young mare shakes bright water from her coat. Afterward, as the others around him had drifted into sleep, Jan had lain restless, gazing off into the dark.
The sentries, at last getting their turn to eat, had torn at the young grass too greedily to keep good watch. Then Jan had caught a hint of motion from the corner of his eye and turned to see a unicorn slipping away from camp, half hidden by the folds and rills of land, then striking out at a fast, silent lope in the direction whence they had come.
He stood gazing at Tek as she eyed him now in the light of broken day. “I have gone nowhere, young princeling,” she answered, suddenly formal, then turned to rouse another initiate. “You must have dreamed it.”
Jan watched her go. It had been no dream. Tek’s own mother, Jah-lila, had banished his dreams when he was small. Surely the pied mare could not have forgotten that. He had not been able to see the other’s color, night past, by the dim starlight, but the form and the gait had reminded him strongly of Tek.
She moved away from Jan, stepping among the Circle of pilgrims, murmuring for them to rise. Jan gazed after her, feeling oddly unsettled and at a loss. Sleepily, the last of the initiates rose and stretched. Korr’s whistle to the band a moment later cut across Jan’s thoughts, and they were off once more across the Plain.
Jan and Dagg ran with Tek, as had become their custom. Other initiates had singled out warriors to be their mentors as well. Jan said nothing more of having seen Tek slip away, and the morning drifted on. As the unicorns loped over the rolling grassland, the sun pulled higher. White clouds began to stray across the wide, blue sky.