“Let them go! Let them go,” the pied mare shouted as the white wyrms slithered like stormwater toward the Plain. “Let the dogs and grass pards finish them!”
Her own folk milled, but held their ground. The shelves trembled and jarred. Pain in her side bit deep.
“That was Jan!” she heard Dagg beside her exclaim. “Jan, in the hand of the dragon queen.”
“The holy Firebrand,” Oro beside him whispered.
The dappled warrior turned to the shaggy stranger. “He’s gone down into the wyrms’ dens and set them alight.”
Dazed, Dagg took a step in that direction, as though he half meant to go after his friend. The red mare Jah-lila called, “Hold. We cannot follow.”
A dark grey ash began to fall. Tek realized for the first time that the mysterious black cloud was descending, enveloping them. It was made of cinders, tiny particles of soot. The stuff felt warm and gritty, feathery at first; then heavier and heavier it fell. It caked her ears and mane and the lashes of her eyes, coated her pelt and the pelts of her fellows. It covered the earth upon which they stood. Beside her she heard Teki the healer breathe,
“Álm’harat spare us. It is the end of the world.”
25.
The Son of Summer Stars
Jan’s hooves sparked against the flammable crystal lining the wyverns’ dens. As he galloped deeper through the twisting warrens, everywhere his heels touched was set alight. The fire ran after him through the caves, casting a blinding glare and billowing heat which did not trouble him, any more than had the airless cold above the ashcloud or the fever of the molten firelake. A tireless velocity carried him through all the length and breadth of the wyverns’ dens, always faster than the fires he danced. Its flaring brilliance illumined his course.
He galloped through caverns and chambers, needing no guide. Alma showed him ever and always the way. All the dens through which he passed stood empty. He became aware presently that they were collapsing behind him, the superheated tunnels cracking and shattering, giving way in a series of terrible concussions. This would go on for a long time, he knew. Even after he departed these grottoes, they would burn for days.
The glory of Alma sang in his blood. Fire like the sun gusted beneath his heels. The moon upon his brow gleamed. He felt unbounded by physical body, unencumbered by space and time, keenly aware that before the new could be born, the old must be scoured away. He felt the agent of both that imminent demise and the coming rebirth, at one with all things, with Alma. It seemed the fire he danced was the great Fire, the One Dance that circled the world and the stars, the Cycle of All Things.
When at last his exultation waned, he understood that the dragonsup was ebbing, his divinity passing. Mortality returned. Time to make his way aboveground. He veered upward. As he emerged from the burning maze, air’s coolness washed like a long drink of water against his skin. In the darkness of falling ash, he could not tell if it were day or night.
A dim, round orb that might have been either moon or sun gleamed wanly overhead. Canted off to one side, it threw only the slenderest of light. Ash lay thick upon everything, changing the look of the land, painting it grey ghostly as the realm of haunts. He found he was not lost, knew himself to be at the southernmost edge of the wyvern shelves, where they intercepted the Plain.
The Mare’s Back, too, lay deep in cindersnow. He shook himself, dislodging a soft cloud of the fine, feathery ash from his pelt. Moments later, it began to coat him again. He turned northward, toward the Hallow Hills and the cliff beneath the milkwood groves where the heart of the battle had raged, certain that soon or late, if he followed this course, he would rejoin Tek.
Barely awake, Lell lay listening to the soft lap of the water supporting her. The world around her stood dark and very still. Ash was falling onto her half-closed eye. It piled in a downy heap on her eyelashes. She blinked, stirring. The water felt deliciously cool after the terrible sensation of burning that had troubled her dreams. She rolled, floundering, and found herself in shallows. Her folded limbs touched bottom, her knees and hocks in contact with coarse, shifting sand.
“Get up,” she heard Aiony saying faintly, but quite distinctly, from somewhere nearby.
Dully, the amber filly struggled to untangle her disobedient limbs. A moment later, she was able to stand. The scent of milkwood blooms wafted all around her, their aroma heavy and all-pervading. She felt the tingle of the milkwood buds she had eaten, and the resinous smoke she had inhaled, suffusing her blood.
“Pull Illishar out of the water,” Dhattar’s soft voice chimed. “The moon’s mere has seen to his burns, just as it did yours—but he’s not awake yet, and it’s time he came out.”
Lell stood trembling, feeling the soft weight of ashfall. It clung damply to her pelt. There was no shaking it off. So thick were the cinders sifting out of the sky that the world seemed dark as twilight. Was that the moon shining above her, or the sun? She saw Dhattar and Aiony standing at the edge of the circular mere. The pure pallor of the white foal’s pelt and the silver of Aiony’s pied coloring seemed subtly, inexplicably, to glow.
“Where am I?” Lell muttered thickly, snorting to get the ash-mud from her nostrils.
“The Mirror of the Moon,” Aiony replied, her voice strangely far-sounding, “where Illishar bore you to douse the flames. He knows naught of its healing powers, but he knew it was water, the closest to be found.”
“Illishar!” Lell gasped, fully awake now, her heart giving a sharp, silent thump. “Where…?”
“Behind you,” Dhattar replied.
Lell wheeled unsteadily, spied the gryphon tercel floating half submerged in the clear surface of the mere, which was littered with milkwood flowers, she saw. The ashfall did not seem to affect the pool’s clarity. Instead, inexplicably, the cinders appeared to vanish upon contact with the waters, which remained crystal clear, the mere’s sandy bottom still snowy white, unsmirched. Its whiteness glowed almost as distinctly as Dhattar and Aiony.
“Pull him out,” Dhattar was telling her.
Lell waded to the unconscious wingcat, bent to grasp one splayed, waterlogged wing in her teeth. She backed toward shore. He drifted amazingly easily, supported by the mere. She managed to drag his head, neck, and most of his shoulders onto the shore. He twitched, sputtered, but did not wake. A bright silvery substance spattered his throat and chest. It coated most of his pelt and much of one wing. Curious, Lell bent to sniff. The fur and feathers there smelled odorless and new.
“What is it?” she stammered.
“The bright spots?” Aiony asked.
“Where the fire burned him and the mere healed him,” Dhattar replied.
“Healed you as well,” Aiony continued.
Lell glanced down at herself. She, too, was covered with patches of pale new hair. She stared at it.
“Burned?” she murmured, mystified. It had been a dream.
“The mere saved you both,” Aiony replied, earnestly, distantly.
“Illishar’s scorched pinions and pelt have come back silver. Your own burnt hair has sprouted gold.”
Lell turned to stare at the twin filly and foal. They stood quietly, only a few paces distant, still glowing softly, oddly in the dim ashfall. Lell shook herself, felt the ash upon her pelt dislodge. None, she realized suddenly, was settling on either Dhattar or Aiony. It was falling through them.
“The ash…,” she exclaimed.
They glanced at one another. “It hasn’t reached us yet,” Aiony said.
“How are you come here?” Lell whispered, too stunned to think clearly.