[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

unicorns might consent to relinquish Ishi’s sacred Vale and return to their own lands across the Plain, she pounced at the chance. Others were not so hungry for peace. They sought to seize the wingleader’s place.”
    The gryphon queen behind him shifted. It seemed to Tek that Malar’s eyes, still fixed upon Illishar, now shone with inestimable pride. He continued.
    “But with my aid and that of all her loyal flock, she has struck her rivals from the sky and pashed their eggs to shards. Mightiest of wingleaders, she soars, and the clans fly united behind her once more!”
    Seated upright behind their queen, pinions poised, the formels uttered shrill cries of assent. Tek saw the herd just below the rise tense in alarm, but just as suddenly, the formels fell silent. Malar demurely nibbled one shoulder, as if ignoring their praise.
    “Hear my song,” cried Illishar, his wings half-raised. “How Isha laid the clutch that hatched all the creatures of the world, and how we gryphons pleased her best of all.”
    Again fluting whistles from the formels, but more melodic, rising and falling in a complex harmony to the tercel’s words.
    “Great Isha created her consort Ishi from greenest grass and most golden seed. But he was lifeless, so she closed him in a silver egg, and he hatched out full grown. Half the mottled shell still turns in heaven. Now full, so we see it end-on, beholding only its outward curving edge. A week hence, when it has pivoted, we will see it in profile, the half moon. And in another week’s time, on the night of the new moon, we will discern no silver rim at all but instead gaze into the dark mystery of its inner hollow. Blessed be the goddess and her consort, Ishi!”
    Behind him, the formels raised their voices in intricate, effortless accompaniment, the ever-changing position of their wings seeming to accent his words: now lifted, now folded, now outstretched. Only Malar took no part, still as stone, a moonlit sphinx. Shivers feathered the pied mare’s limbs and sides. Tek found herself growing rapt as the herd around her. Jan, too, stood motionless, enthralled.
    Illishar sang of Isha’s gift of the winds to her consort Ishi, of her creation of the Vale for his sacred flocks, lovingly husbanded as first meat for the newly hatched. The tune pulsed and lilted. Tek’s heartbeat sped. Her people had no such sinuous music as these gryphons made, the tercel sometimes speaking or chanting while the formels behind him repeated and ornamented his words.
    By the time Illishar recounted how centuries past, unicorns had swarmed into Ishi’s Vale, forcing out the delectable sheep and deer, leaving only their own unsavory young as rank pickings for the formel’s new-pipped chicks, the pied mare was almost on her feet, ready to shout, No, no! Drive the intruders out— until she realized with a start that it was against her own kind she would have railed. Groggy, Tek shook herself, no winged gryphon, but a four-leggèd unicorn.
    The tercel had fallen silent. The formels, too. Dazed, the prince’s mate gazed out over the herd, beheld them coming to themselves, stirring slowly like beasts entranced. She had no doubt now how gryphons managed to bewitch their prey. Shaken and stiff, the pied mare rolled her shoulders, extended her neck. Moon hung low on the other side of a sky paling eastward into dawn.
    Below her, Lell reclined beside her mother, the only one of all the colts Tek could see who was not asleep. The amber filly gazed at Illishar, eyes following his every move, ears pricked to the rustle of his quills. Head bowed, the tercel fell back to flank his queen, still crouching beside the dying embers of the fire. Malar rose, stretched, fanning her great blue wings and arching her tawny back like a pard. Before her on the rise, Jan stirred, shifting his limbs. Had he stood the whole night? Tek watched him move forward, gait graceful and loose, unimpeded apparently by any fatigue.
    “So, Malar, wingleader