11.

King’s Mate

Wind howled. The salt grit stung. He could move no direction other than toward the sandstorm’s lee. A weight like that of the world crushed him. How many leagues had he already traveled, one torturous step at a time? Thirst tormented him. He could hardly breathe. His empty belly ached. He tried to halt, to rest, but the gale harried him. Whenever he lay down, dust drifts overtook him within moments, threatening to bury him. He rose and stumbled on.

Time proved impossible to gauge. He had no notion of night or day. The way seemed to be rising, becoming more solid. Fatigue stupefied him. He dared not stop. The ground grew firmer, its shifting granules coarser underfoot. Cold wind cut through his numbness. He felt as though his pelt had been scoured from his hide.

What woke him to himself at last was the sound of his own footfalls. He was walking, slowly, step by step, must have been doing so in a daze for he knew not how long. Numb still from the hours or days that it had flailed him, he realized the wind had ceased. He felt indescribably light. His mouth still tasted of salt. He dared not even try to swallow. But he could breathe. Pitch dark surrounded him. Night, he reasoned: moonless night.

No sound met his ears other than that of his own hooves, scrunching loudly. Each step sank into something loose and rough and pebble-sized, but irregular in shape, and much lighter than riverstones. He felt as though he were treading great piles of cracked acorn shells. He felt muffled, dusty, caked with grit.

Jan halted and shook himself. Sand flew from his coat and mane. He twitched his ears furiously to clear them. The smell of dust rose. He felt light enough to be treading sky, not earth. He became aware of stars, not sure whether they had emerged suddenly or slowly, or whether, perhaps, he had been walking with his eyes shut.

He gazed up, lost in their brightness, trying to recognize a pattern there. They dazzled him, many more than he had ever seen. Too stunned by hunger, thirst, and fatigue, he could find no familiar constellation. He gave up. The scrunch under his hooves gave way to solid stone, rippled and hard. His hoofbeats scuffed, rang, at times struck sparks. Moonless night lasted forever.

After a while, he perceived an utter darkness to one side of him, dividing the night. A faint echo rang from that quarter. To his other side, stars blazed, filling that half of the sky as far above him as he could crane, and as far below as he could peer. The air from that direction felt empty and unimpeded. No echoes rang. A hint of breeze wafted thence, lifting his mane.

Suddenly the starless darkness fell away. He heard a quiet, continuous rushing sound, very familiar to him, but in his daze, he could not think what it was. The susurrous murmur soothed him. He had heard it many times before, he knew, though not for a very long while. A slight pressure lapped against his hooves, a cool ripple, a gentle rill.

Stars burned all around now, above and below. Those beneath him were in motion, winking and wavering, moving past him to a point seemingly only a few paces distant where, converging slightly, they simply vanished. Other stars continuously replaced them, gliding forward from behind, their fixed companions above burning steadily.

Walking among the stars, Jan reached the place where those in motion vanished, and stepped beyond it. Every heavenly light before him hung motionless. The plashing whisper continued behind, quiet, lulling. The coolness streaming against his hooves had ceased. He could not go another step. His eyes slid closed. He realized that he had just lain down. A vast, illumined void surrounded him. He had no idea where he lay. A breath of starwind sighed across him, thin and slight and very cold. He slept.

Jah-lila stood looking down at the dark pool. Though it was daylight outside the cave, here at the grotto’s innermost chamber, no sunlight reached. The phosphorescent lichens from the larger, outward chamber cast little light. Few grew on the smooth ceiling above the spring. The little chamber was dim. Jah-lila gazed into the spring’s dark pool. Its surface stirred, but did not break.

She saw the Salt Waste, two dark figures, widely separated and very small, converging. As though she were a kite, she watched, suspended high above. The tiny figures reflected in the pool met. She moved closer, saw the maze of low canyons, a white serpent coiled to strike. She saw the haggard king fly at it, the young prince desperate to save him. The serpent struck. The prince dispatched it. The king stood staring at his shank.

The red mare felt her breast tighten. It was the moment she had feared all the years since she had first sipped of the Hallow Hills’ magical mere and become a unicorn. It was the fate she had fought so hard to stay—that the first and only love she had ever known should die of a serpent’s sting. She wished then that she might halt, withdraw, end the vision here, but she forced herself on.

Jah-lila gazed deeper into the pool. The image rippled. She heard the words Korr and the one he called second-born exchanged, heard the younger stallion’s cries of horror and disbelief. She saw the king collapse, saw the one he had raised from colthood standing stunned. In the dark pool before her, a colorless cave fish slipped through the lifeless form of the king. Korr’s image wavered, broke, re-formed. The red mare saw the young prince trying to draw a circle in the dust.

She bent her own horn to the dark pool’s bank and traced the semblance of the fallen king into the sand. Completing a circle around it, she scraped dirt onto the likeness with one round, uncloven heel, obliterating it. In the pool before her, wind lifted. Sand began to fly. The burial song rose in her throat. Jah-lila breathed upon the water. She watched the dark prince stagger away.

Softly, painfully, she hummed the endingsong through, then closed her eyes and bent to where the form of fallen Korr reflected. The water felt cool upon her tongue, quenching the song, soothing the parched ache in her throat. She drank a long time, deep, then raised her head. No image lay upon the water. Something brushed her side. Jah-lila turned. Painted Aiony stood nearby, Dhattar peering into the chamber. He came to join them.

“What saw you, Granddam?” Aiony asked her. Dha echoed her. “What did you see?”

“Your father, little ones,” she answered.

“He was well?” asked Dhattar.

Jah-lila nodded. “Aye.”

The filly spoke. “We’ve not seen him since he left the Plain.”

“He’s very far now,” the white foal added.

Jah-lila said nothing, lost in thought.

Aiony asked her, “Is our father in the Salt Waste still?”

The red mare shook her head.

Dha’s voice was hopeful. “When will we see him?”

Their granddam bent to nuzzle first him, then his sister. “You know well enough,” she answered. “Hist now, or your dam will come looking.”

She herded them away from the spring, into the outer chamber. Her daughter, Tek, was just coming in the entryway. “There you are,” the pied mare exclaimed. “I sought you everywhere. Off, now. Outside. Your granddam has work, and Lell wants to show you the rueberries she found.”

She chivvied each gently and scooted them toward the grotto’s egress. Beyond it, the daylight shone. Whickering and giggling, they went. The red mare watched them disappear, heard Lell’s whistle of greeting, the twins’ answering calls. Tek turned to her dam.

“You found him,” she said, voice low, urgent with certainty. Jah-lila nodded. The pied mare closed her eyes, gave an out-breath of relief.

“At last,” she murmured. “Safe?”

“Aye.”

Her daughter studied her by flickering lichenlight. “Korr,” she said softly. “You found him as well.”

Again the red mare nodded. She heard the wariness in her offspring’s voice, the loathing and dread.

“So Jan has found his sire,” she breathed.

“Found and lost him,” Jah-lila replied, heart heavy as stone. The lichenlight was far too bright.

Tek stepped directly into her path. “And?”

“And Korr has spoken.”

“Then Korr’s madness is healed?” The pied mare’s words held sudden hope.

“His madness is over,” the red mare replied wearily.

“Then Jan will be returning—” Tek cried, full of gladness now. Jah-lila cut her off.

“Nay. Not at once.”

Tek stared at her, outraged. “Why not?” she demanded. “What can Korr do to keep him from us still?”

The red mare drew a great breath, spent to the bone. She felt fragile as a bird’s egg.

“Daughter,” she said. “Jan will return to you; I have promised. In time. I beg you now, let it rest. Farseeing drains me. Let us go outside.”

Her daughter pressed against her, instantly contrite. “Forgive my impatience,” she murmured. “I miss him so.”

The red mare leaned into her daughter’s warmth, then nipped her gently and nosed her out the grotto’s egress ahead of her. Jah-lila waited until her daughter’s shadow passed, muffled hooffalls ringing out on the slope below, heading down. The light of midday stabbed the red mare’s eyes as she rounded the bend to stand in the cave’s entryway. Lell and the twins’ whistles and whickering drifting from far up slope as Lell shouted, “This way!” and the twins insisted, “Hey up!”

Much nearer, on the hillside below, Jah-lila spotted her daughter trotting toward Ryhenna and Dagg. The coppery mare was, like the red mare herself, a runaway from the city of two-footed firekeepers. With Jan’s help, she had come to live within the Vale. Drinking of the moon’s sacred pool in the Hallow Hills, as the red mare once had done, had given Ryhenna her spiral horn. The pied warrior Dagg, Jan’s shoulder-friend, had pledged with her little over two years gone, and their tiny foal, Culu, suckled at her flank.

Idly, Jah-lila watched her daughter converge on the trio downslope as she blinked the sunlight from her eyes. Another unicorn stood by, coat palest cream in the noonday sun, her mane like burning poppies. Jah-lila turned and the chestnut eyes of Ses, Korr’s mate and the prince’s dam, found her own black-green ones. She whispered, “Jan?”

The red mare murmured, “Alive.”

A long pause. Very long. “And Korr?”

Jah-lila gazed at her. “A serpent.”

The pale mare started. Her eyes winced shut, her whole frame rigid. She stood racked with a recurrent trembling that might have been suppressed sobs. When she spoke, the red mare scarcely heard. “I feared it.”

Silence. The sun beat down.

“I should have told him,” Ses gasped suddenly, her voice strangled. “He never knew I knew. So many times I longed to tell Korr all. If I had…”

Jah-lila cut her off quickly, firmly. “No word of yours, however well meant, could have spared him.”

The pale mare choked back tears. “I am to blame…,” she started.

Jah-lila touched her withers. “Never! Do not shoulder a burden that is Korr’s alone. It has lain within his power all these years to speak out, free himself—but always he refused, afraid to confront his past. Till now, at the very end, too late.”

At last, the pale mare spoke: “He confided to Jan? Told him of Tek?”

Jah-lila nodded. “Everything. All that he knew.”

The pale mare gathered herself, fighting for breath.

“Do not fear,” the red mare bade her, “for he will weather it.”

Ses set her teeth. “Should we tell the others?”

“Not until your son returns.”

The prince’s dam opened her eyes. “Should we announce Korr’s death?”

Again, the red wych shook her head. “The elders would only declare Jan king. Let us wait. When he returns, he will bring that news with all the rest.”

Ses blinked hard. “It will tear the herd apart.”

“The herd is stronger than you think,” Jah-lila answered, “and primed for change. Your son has seen to that. It was why he had to be their prince, though he can never now become their king.”

The pale mare snorted. “Jan’s never wanted to be king.” Her gaze wandered. “And Lell growing up so reckless wild… All this time you and I have kept our peace. Both held our tongues, praying for Korr to speak, save himself, be healed.”

“Can you doubt that had you opened your heart, spoken freely to him, he would have cast you out, and Jan, and your youngest never have been born?”

Ses shook her head and whispered bitterly, “No doubt. But forebearing has been hard. So very hard.”

Gently, Jah-lila shouldered against her, as much for her own comfort as to lend the other strength. “Never forget that Tek, Jan, and Lell all have their part to play in winning the Hallow Hills.”

The red mare stood silent. Above, Lell and the twins were almost out of sight. Below, Tek had reached the other three. The pale mare’s sigh was painful, deep.

“He was not so cruel in his youth,” she said. “He was magnificent, magnanimous. It was only later, when bitterness consumed him that I could bear him no more. When he grew so cold toward Jan, so heartless of Lell. Before that, for many years, I loved him well.”

Jah-lila nodded. “As did I. It is all lost now. Undone by a serpent’s sting.” Her heart ached. Resolutely, she turned her thoughts ahead. “Let us mourn and ready ourselves,” she murmured to Ses. “The end of all is soon to be, and your young Jan-with-the-Moon-upon-his-Brow must lead us there.”