“Aye, of course!” the dark unicorn cried, stamping. Sparks flew. The answer seemed so clear to him. He could not believe he had wandered in such confusion until now. He must return to Tek, rejoin the herd and accept whatever destiny Alma had prepared. The dragon queen looked at him.
“And will you tell your mate Korr’s secret?”
Jan nodded. The answer did not come happily, but come it did and without hesitation.
“And your folk?” Wyzásukitán pressed gently. “You will tell them as well?”
“Of course,” the dark unicorn answered. “I’ll not live a lie, asking Tek to surrender her birthright that I might keep power not mine to hold.”
“You will renounce your kingship?” the dragon queen sighed, white breath curling among her floating whiskers.
Jan nodded. “Aye, for love of her. And for Alma, who is what is: all truth, the Truth of everything that exists. Tek’s parentage is what it is. So, too, my love for her. I must be true to both, and to myself.”
The queen gazed down at him, her thousand thousand jewels glinting in the golden light of the molten lake that seethed beyond chamber’s egress to the rear of Jan. He moved toward her, deeper into the chamber, his heart grown calm, at peace within himself.
“Why do you not ask that I lower my brow?” the dragon queen inquired. “Do you not wish to resume your gaze?”
Jan shook his head. “Nay. I wish only to return to my folk. I must winter with them their last season in the Vale, cross the Plain with them and join them as they fall upon the wyverns. It matters not that I may no longer serve as battleprince. Tek, as queen, must rightfully lead and rule them. Gladly will I march at her side, free of the silence and secrets Korr used to deceive us all.”
“You would return, then?” the dragon queen asked.
He nodded. “Tell me what path I must take to depart these steeps and return to the Vale. All fall and winter lie before me. I must use that season to best advantage in broaching this terrible news to Tek and the herd by the time spring breaks and we cross the Plain to the Hallow Hills.”
Wyzásukitán shrugged, flexing vast shoulder blades. Her huge, batlike wings lifted a trace, rustling, their crusted jewels dragging the golden ground.
“Aljan Firebrand,” the dragon queen replied, “no pass leads from Dragonsholm to return you to your Vale.”
Jan frowned. “Somehow I found my way here from the Salt Waste. A way leads out again. It must.”
Slowly, carefully, the dragon queen shook her head. The dark water of her brow never spilled. “None you could ever tread again.”
The furrow in the dark unicorn’s brow deepened. “Given time, I could find it,” he answered, moving closer. “With your aid, I could find it more quickly.”
The dragon pulled back, turning her head to eye him. “The path by which you came exists no more,” she answered simply. “The rills of Dragonsholm continuously shift as my kind turn over in their dreams. On rare occasions, one of us changes her den. Then the earth shudders for many leagues. Peaks fall; valleys open and fill; new ridges heave up. These Smoking Hills are in constant flux. The way you found endured but briefly. It is no more.”
Jan felt cold. “How long before a new way opens?”
Again the dragon shrugged. “Impossible to tell.”
“But I must return to the Vale,” the dark unicorn protested, “while autumn’s yet new. I would be with Tek before the snows and use the coming winter to accustom the herd to the news I bear.”
Wyzásukitán lifted her great, lithe form higher from the ground. First she tensed, then relaxed her huge forelimbs, her hind limbs. Her long tail stirred. “Fall is flown, Aljan. Winter, too. And so as well the spring. This day marks the first of summer, Firebrand.”
Jan stared at her, badly confused. “You jest,” he cried. “No more than a few hours have passed since I came to you…”
“Indeed?” she asked. “I never jest. And I tell you now, you have stood with me all winter and all spring, and with Oro in the Hall of Whispers all fall before.”
The dark unicorn shook his head. “Nay,” he insisted. “It is but hours. I have not hungered or slept…”
“You drank the dragonsup from my late mother’s brow: all that remains of her waking dreams. It eased your hunger and fatigue, your thirst, your vulnerability to heat and cold. How else did you think, Firebrand, to stand before me in my den beside a lake of molten stone?”
Jan gazed up at the red dragon queen, speechless. She drew breath and sighed white clouds before continuing.
“I bade Oro and his warriors also sip before I sent them off, that they might gallop the whole way to your far Hallows, without pausing to eat or drink or rest. The hour grows short. Your people stand in urgent need, and time betides you to return.”
“Time, time…,” Jan murmured. “How long have I stood dreaming here?”
“As long as it took the events which you witnessed to unfold,” the dragon queen replied.
“Then what I saw, all that I saw…,” he groped.
“Was occurring as you watched,” Wyzásukitán replied. “Your sense of time has been suspended by the water of my mother’s dreams. You experienced these months as we dragons do, in a long, fluid reverie devoid of time.”
“What I saw,” Jan tried again, “the battle…”
“Is no prediction,” the firedrake answered, “rages even now, this moment, as we speak. “
The dark unicorn felt his skin prickle. He demanded, “Tek’s peril?”
“Is real. Is happening now.”
A jolt like lightning coursed his blood. “Then I must go to her!” he shouted. “At once—”
He wheeled as though to dash from the dragon’s den, recross the lake of fire, find his way to the surface again. The red dragon called to him.
“Hold, Aljan. What you saw in my brow was unfolding even as you beheld it. How long, do you think, to reach her, even if you ran day and night, never resting?”
He pitched to a stop, heart dropping with a sickening plunge. “Too late?” he demanded. “Do you say I have come to myself too late? That the children-of-the-moon will perish or triumph without me, locked underground, leagues parted from them, my destiny failed, unable to save or even join them in their hour of gravest need?”
His last words were a cry of agony as he realized: he had tarried too long, lost in his own chaos. His mate would succeed or die without him, his people win back the Hills or lose them in his absence. He was destined to participate in nothing, contribute nothing to this pivotal juncture in his people’s history. Even if he eventually escaped the Smoking Hills, how would he dare rejoin his folk? His colts perhaps half-grown by then, his sister already a wedded mare, his memory in the mind of his own mate dimmed, his people’s recollection of him faded, his destiny forgotten, unfulfilled. He would be recalled only as the one who had failed Alma’s sacred plan, her would-be Firebringer who had never managed to accomplish her end. The dragon queen above him was laughing gently.
“Too late?” she chuckled. “High time, more like. Time your charming Scouts trotted back to their Hallows. They are a sweet-voiced tribe in sooth. Their songs have raptured my fellows these many years. But we have lain too still for far too long listening, entranced, holding steady these precarious steeps.”
Jewels flashing, no malice in her, she smiled at Jan. He understood then that she was laughing at herself.
“My sisters have all outgrown their dens. Even my mate-to-be. He is young yet, still wingless, not ready to fly—though my own wings ache. Time I ventured a practice flight. Exercise, so they say, strengthens the sinews.”
Her great eyes blinked. She paused considering.
“I shall find my betrothed a plaything,” she murmured. “Some pale exotic wyrm fetched from far lands, one that will live long and sing for his delight.”