Chapter 4          Chapter 6

 

Chapter 5

 

Flairé was strolling through a dry, grey, rocky valley on his way south when he heard someone calling. He turned, and five kalmaei, dressed in leather with their hair tied back, appeared on a nearby ridge and hurried towards him.

“Sir?” they asked. “Do you have a moment?”

“What’s the matter?” Flairé asked pleasantly.

“We’re miners, searching for iron in these mountains. But we’ve found something truly bizarre: a child, and we don’t know what to make of him. Will you advise us?”

Flairé nodded, his imagination alight.

They led Flairé to a rough hut, built as a temporary shelter against any weather that wasn’t winter.

Flairé entered slowly, stooping to avoid the low door frame (built that way to keep in warmth) and saw a small boy, less than two feet in height, sitting cross-legged on the floor, clad in dirty colourless rags. The boy stared back with defiant brown eyes glittering from under a thick unkempt mop of black hair.

“Who are you?” demanded the boy gravely.

“My name is Flairé,” the elf in question answered.

“No, who are you?” repeated the boy impatiently.

“Why don’t you watch your tongue, you rogue?” one of the other elves said irritably. “This is a prince you’re talking to.”

“What the pixie gas are you talking about?” the boy rejoined, equally irritably.

The miner sighed. “A prince is a great leader in training. This man is Flairé descended of Flar and Stialia, King and Queen of the Moonland, and Lady Zela. I don’t suppose you know who they are, but you must respect him. Tell him who you are, now.”

“Make me,” the boy snapped, crossing his arms.

Flairé sat down next to the boy, who watched him warily. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I’m a curious person, okay? I was just told that these people had found a boy far away from all settlements, and I thought, ‘that’s very interesting. I wonder who he is and where he came from’. Why don’t you tell me, for curiosity’s sake?”

The boy still glared at him, but it seemed cooled a little, now. “My name is Marteth and I was raised by pixies. I was too!” he added, as Flairé opened his mouth.

“I’m not doubting you,” Flairé said quickly.

“Yet,” the boy tacked on.

“Never,” Flairé answered. Pixies were secretive, tiny little fairy-like creatures, sentient but possessing a simple and other-worldly intelligence. They usually lived in swamps and played tricks on travellers. Flairé had never heard of them raising a kalmaeirin child, but here was one child, ragged, tough, wiry, not ill-fed, in the middle of nowhere. “You know, you remind me of people in my family.”

Marteth looked at him sideways. “How?”

“Well, you look a little like my mother, especially when you’re glaring at me like that.” Marteth scrunched up his eyes with an expression of disgust. Flairé chuckled a little, not unkindly, and went on. “And you sort of act like her, too, when she’s angry. She gets all cold and prickly like that.”

Marteth looked at him frostily. “Well, she has the right idea of how to deal with strange people, then.”

Flairé blinked, trying to connect the two thoughts. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Not really,” the boy answered. “I want to find my mother.”

“Your real mother, or the pixie who raised you?”

Marteth thought for a while. “Both. But preferably my pixie.”

“I see.” Flairé, too, thought, and then came to a decision. “May I help you find your mother?”

“What?” exclaimed one of the miner elves. “You can’t just let him go back into the wilderness. He’ll die!”

“He seems to have done all right so far,” Flairé answered drily. “If that’s what he wants, I’m not going to stop him. He’s his own master. And so young to be his own master…”

Marteth glowered. “Flairé-person is right. I’m not going to die. And I’m my own master. But my mother will only come back if I’m alone. I don’t need you big clumsy people scaring her away again.”

Flairé began to say that he wasn’t clumsy, and then guessed that he might seem so to a tiny, dragonfly-winged pixie.

“Is there anything else I can do to help you out?” the young prince asked, unwilling to stop the spirited boy and yet equally unwilling to not take responsibility for his welfare.

Marteth stood and pointed to the door. Flairé followed the boy outside and waved the miners back when they tried to follow. Marteth led him around to the back of the hut and a little way up the hill. He dug around in a pocket with a grimy hand and pulled something out. “Can you tell me what this is?”

Flairé took it, a small band of severely tarnished metal. “I think it’s a bracelet, a decoration for your wrist. A bit small, though.” He rubbed some of the encrusted dirt off and tried to find out what kind of metal it was under the tarnish; he thought it might be silver.

Then he saw what it was and his heart froze.

“What’s the matter?” Marteth demanded impatiently. “What’s that scared look for? It’s not going to bite you.” When Flairé didn’t answer, he went on. “I might, though, if you don’t tell me.” Later, Flairé would find out that that was a joke.

“This… engraving says… Hciristial,” Flairé whispered. “Do you know who that is?”

Marteth’s expression clearly said “Do I give a hoot?” but in the face of Flairé’s sudden seriousness, he simply said, “No.”

“That was my baby brother’s name,” Flairé said softly. “He was stolen from my mother and father when he was only a few days old.” He looked up suddenly. “How long have you lived with the pixies?”

“Ever since I can remember,” Marteth answered, equally serious. “Am… am I your brother?”

Flairé knelt and looked closely at him. Marteth looked searchingly back, something yearning in his eyes.

“Yes,” said Flairé, pulling his brother into a hug. “Yes, you are truly my brother, and Zela’s son.”

Marteth stood still, unsure of how to respond to the hug. Eventually, his arms crept around his brother, and his proud head lowered until it rested on his shoulder. “I… have… a kalmaeirin family.”

“Yes,” Flairé said again. “Will you at least come and meet the rest of them before you go back to the pixies?”

“I will,” Marteth said, looking his brother in the eye and giving a firm nod of his head.

“And one more thing: do you know of any more children raised by pixies?”

“No, why?”

“I had three more baby brothers, all vanished in the night…” Flairé smiled hopefully.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll go on hoping they’re alive, too, then. Now then! North-east we go! Mother’s in the Dragonland city.”

The miners watched them go, puzzled looks on their faces. Flairé waved cheerfully to them before the two newly reunited brothers climbed the long hill out of the valley.

 

“The frustrating thing is that we can’t keep you,” the elf-woman Youlastal said to Zela and the silver dragon, recovering groggily behind bars in a stone room with golden sunlight streaming through one window. “You’re far too recognizable, Aghazi, and you, Lady Zela.” She tilted her head to one side. “Of course, if you disappeared, it would only begin sooner. Perhaps that would not be a bad thing, but we’re not ready.”

“What would only begin sooner?” Zela asked sullenly. “What’s this all about?”

“You don’t know?”

“Of course I don’t. I’ve been here for months and heard nothing. Obviously you have been going to a great deal of trouble never to let any details slip.”

“I assumed you knew more than that,” Youlastal. “Else why would you come sniffing around here, the way you do, forest woman?”

“Something got out, at least,” Zela said defiantly, though she had to put her hand to her head to quell the pain. “The realms are filled with rumours of unrest. Now tell me what you’re doing!”

“Why don’t you ask Aghazi?” smiled the other, and left the room. “Gilzellen! Are you ready to go?”

“Where are they going?” Zela asked, looking up at the silver dragon’s iridescent blue eyes.

“Probably fleeing into exile in the east,” the silver said. “They will either take us with them, or deal with us here, though… I don’t think they will kill us.”

“I’m not afraid to die,” Zela said. “I’m only afraid of what it will do to Flaer.” She shook away that thought before tears could come to her eyes. “Is your name Aghazi?”

“That is my dragonname. You can continue to call me Silver. I know, I’m not the only silver dragon,” she said quickly, forestalling Zela’s confused question, “but the rest of my family, especially my clutch brothers, are all named things like Silverwing and Silvertail. My mother is named Quicksilver, and my father is Truesilver. In your tongue, of course.”

“Of course,” Zela said. “I’m glad to know. What is all this talk of treason?”

The silver sighed and shifted. Zela rubbed her aching head again – concussion, at the very least – and saw that deep red blood was trickling slowly from puncture marks in the dragon’s neck. She got up and took off the torn-off part of her dress, tearing it into strips and wiping away the blood from the wounds, trying to staunch them.

“Thank you,” said Silver. “It’s a strange tale, and shocking, but it’s true.”

“Go on,” Zela said, somewhat impatiently.

“Well, in a nutshell – we believe in the Lord God, don’t we?”

“Yes…”

“And in His angels, those who appeared to you and taught you, Lady Zela?”

“Yes…?”

“How many were there?”

Zela paused in her ministrations and thought. “I don’t actually remember. There were a number of them.”

“A hundred? Seven?”

“There were seven great angels, archangels, and some others. Not a hundred. Not more than twenty, I think.”

“What if I told you that there is only one angel?”

Zela jerked backwards in surprise, backing against the stone wall. “What!?”

“That is what some are saying now. I do not know why, but apparently they believe in this strongly enough that they wish to make everyone believe the same, and to remove those from power who believe in seven archangels by the hand of God.”

Zela shook her head in disbelief, and then stopped and held it in pain. “That’s unbelievable. That can’t be. That’s completely irrational.”

Silver’s head drooped. “I know. I don’t know how this idea got started, either. No one knows who first thought it, or else they’re protecting them. I was approached about a month ago, and I went along with them for a while to try and learn more, but when I learned that they are planning to remove King Kiirstril-“

“Truly?” Zela cried. “This – oh, this is awful!”

The silver nodded morosely. “Hopefully my outcries earlier helped, but I doubt it. Only the ones who were attacking us outright will be identified. The cancer will still be there. And we will not be…”

“That’s right,” said Youlastal. “You’re coming with us, into the east.”

“How far east?”

“As far east as we can get. Come on! Come quietly, or we’ll tie you up and carry you like grain.”

“Understood,” Zela responded, standing still. “But I am not like that.”

“You won’t come quietly?”

“No.”

“Well, then…” Youlastal reached behind her back and brought out a needle with clear liquid in a bag. She opened the cage, and the silver dragon roared. “Well, you’re an easier target, anyway.” The silver pulled her nose back and the elf chuckled. “Don’t want to go to sleep? It will make it much easier on everyone.”

“I stand with the Lady Zela,” snarled Silver. “She has fought and suffered for a complete stranger.”

“As would we, if there were others unknown whom we needed to protect,” answered Youlastal openly.

Zela blinked, surprised by the sudden earnestness, and nearly missed Youlastal’s next jab at Silver. She jumped forward and grabbed Youlastal’s arms, grappling with her.

“What?” gasped Silver suddenly. “Lady Zela, I hear someone.”

“So… do… I,” Zela responded, gritting her teeth as she fought against the elf.

“In my head.”

“What?”

“She says her name is Yoeath, and that I should keep talking to her inside my head. She says to keep the sleeping poison away from me as long as you can.”

“Yoeath!” Zela cried. “Thank the stars!”

“It will not be enough,” the elf she was wrestling with responded. “One unicorn will not be able to take you away. Gilzellan! I need the others.”

A dragonish grunt outside was the response, and the other two elves rushed into the room. Silver pulled the cage door shut before they could get there, and held it firmly.

The two elves looked at each other and took out sleeping poison of their own. Silver barked at them, coughing fire over her hand so they couldn’t stab it. But even a dragon needs to breathe to create fire, and they are incapable of circular breathing like the kalmaei, and when she did, one darted in and jabbed her with the needle, squeezing the bag until it emptied.

Silver immediately showed the effects, her hide eyelids half drooping over her blue eyes, and her paw dropping limply to the floor. She still breathed fire, but it was a purr now, a mere trickle that extinguished itself on the floor before her face. Within a minute she was asleep.

There was the sound of roaring outside, and one of the blue dragons stumbled back across the doorway. There was a bright flash of metal, then a bright flash of flame. A tenor shout.

“Marteth, stay back! Yo, keep him back!”

Youlastal’s eyes widened in panic, and she dropped the sleeping poison, wrenched herself away from Zela, and drew a small axe from her belt. Zela’s eyes widened, too, in surprise, and she flung herself back in a ready crouch.

“Tark, Zalmith, we need to go NOW!” shouted Youlastal, advancing on Zela in her corner.

Zela lashed out with a kick, and looked over helplessly as the other two elves rapidly tied ropes to Silver’s four paws and then to a dragon’s harness.

Youlastal swung sideways at Zela, catching her arm. Zela hissed and tried to ignore the pain, punching against the other’s armour with her good hand, and tried hooking her leg, but the other dodged it. Her opponent swung again, and there was no room to manoeuvre in the corner. This blow caught her across the stomach, tracing a long shallow gash.

Zela leaned against the wall, glaring, helpless. She hated being helpless. She hated it with as much passion as anything – except injustice. Her vision was tunnelling.

Youlastal raised her axe for another swing, and something sprang on her from behind, knocking her sideways and to the floor.

Youlastal rolled and came up in a crouch, and the person who had attacked her stomped on her axe before she could pick it up. The elf looked around and saw that her allies had gone in a panic, without taking Silver. She sprinted out of the room.

Zela collapsed, and the person who had saved her cried out and knelt down swiftly beside her, taking her into his arms gently. It was Flairé.

“My son?” Zela asked, uncertainly.

“Mother, oh, Mother, I’m sorry I’m so late. I only just got into the city, and then I found Yoeath galloping along the streets, and I found out you had vanished and I came straight away with her…” It seemed that Flairé had inherited his father’s tendency to babble, though when he was anxious, not embarrassed.

“Hush, son,” Zela said warmly. “I’ll live. Help me up. We need to help Silver, the dragon.”

Yoeath stood behind her, her horn faintly glowing, her eyes alight with worry. “Zela?”

“I’ll live,” Zela repeated, and then caught sight of the boy on Yoeath’s back. “Yoeath?”

“What is it?” asked Yoeath calmly.

“…Thank you for coming to find me,” Zela said. “I’ll never go anywhere without a sword again, though. Or maybe several. But who is that?”

Flairé’s face lit up with joy and pride. “This is my brother, your son, Mother.”

Zela’s face went absolutely blank. “…What?”

“Your son,” Flairé repeated. He went to Yoeath’s side and swung down the boy. “This is Marteth – I mean, Hciristial, who was stolen so long ago by pixies.”

“Pixies?” Zela said. Her mind seemed to be having trouble accepting news.

“Yes,” Flairé beamed. “He still has his bracelet.”

“Is this person really my mother?” Marteth asked coolly. “She’s hurt. You should fix her before it becomes infected.”

“Words of wisdom indeed,” Flairé responded, as Zela raised her eyebrows at her new son’s insolence.

“We need someone to help Silver,” Zela said. “Are the knights coming?”

“Yes,” said Yoeath. “Get on, Zela. I will carry you.”

First, Zela leaned down and studied Marteth. “Yes, I am your mother. I… can recognize my children. And your name is Marteth now?”

“Yes,” replied Marteth, somewhat impressed by his mother.

“Pride,” Zela mused. “It is not far off from the truth, I think. I may still call you Hciristial, and I can’t answer for your father.”

Knights and golden dragons rushed in, and one elf injected Silver with an antidote. She began to come around.

“Mother,” said Flairé, “he wants to return to his pixie mother.”

Zela hesitated, torn by conflict. “We can discuss that later.”

“Of course. I’m sorry, Mother,” Flairé said softly. “Let’s just go home and play music together.”

“No,” Zela replied shortly. “We need to fix the mess here first.”

“I can do that,” Silver said, crawling to her feet. “I thank you very much for your help, Lady Zela, and all your efforts on my behalf. You have probably saved my life, and certainly my freedom, nearly at the cost of your own. Now you should go and rest.”

“It was all I could do,” Zela said. “Thank you for telling me what is going on. They may call me a spy from the Moonland all they like but I am not. I only want to know so that we can sooth the unrest.”

 

They all went back to the Moonland, where Flaer wept with joy to find his son again, which surprisingly didn’t lose him any respect in Marteth’s eyes. Marteth himself needed instruction in almost everything, especially in proper dress, though he was very proud to have shimmering silk clothes. He talked back like anything, sending Flaria into fits of dismay, though she never lost her patience and adored her little brother dearly. Menad was nowhere to be found, and Zela found that he had left to explore the wild with a friend.

Flairé sent a message to Tam, saying “Taking care of Mother. How is your investigation? Come join us!”

Tam sent a message back after a month, saying “No can do. Can you come here instead? Very twisted business. Please come!”

So Flairé saddled his brown horse – his second horse; kalmaeirin horses lived as long as fifty years, and he had already seen one pass away – and prepared to leave for the North, leaving Marteth to the tender mercies of his mother and sister.

“So, be patient with Mother, please,” he asked Marteth before he left. “She’s not so strong in the patience department, and she’s a perfectionist… But she will teach you everything she knows willingly and with love, even if you don’t see it so.”

“I will try, Flairé,” Marteth answered seriously. “I was watching her sparring with Sir Gyoriing yesterday. I want to fight like they do.”

“You will be able to,” Flairé reassured him. “But it takes many years of hard practice. You understand?”

“Yes,” Marteth answered determinedly. “I will be a great warrior when you come back.”

Flairé almost pulled a face at his brother’s goal in life, and his naivety to practice, but didn’t. “I look forward to sparring with you. Goodbye!”

He arrived in the Moonland city a week later and went straight to Tam’s parents’ house.

Tam was waiting for him on the steps, lounging casually against the rail. He looked cool as a cucumber, but Flairé, looking at him, thought he looked different somehow. His eyes were more shadowed, as if he’d been sleepless for many nights more than he could stand.

“Hey there,” he said, as Flairé left his horse at the bottom of the stairs and sprang up two at a time to meet him. Flairé hugged him, grinning cheerfully. “I can see you’ve been well, at least.”

“Please, tell me what you’ve been up to!” Flairé said eagerly. “I just need to let my horse into your field.”

“Go ahead, and then come up to my room,” Tam said, smiling back same as ever.

 

Flairé took the outside route – climbing the wall – and slipped through Tam’s window and bounced on his bed. “All right. What’s this about twisted?”

“Oh, I want to hear what you’ve been up to first,” Tam said, leaning against the fireplace and running a hand through his hair. The blue dye in his bangs was fading back to brown again.

“Well, not too long after we parted ways, I found my long-lost younger brother-“

Tam leaned forward, eyes alight with interest. “Really? Which one?”

“The eldest. Hciristial. He calls himself Marteth now. It fits, too. He has such a stiff neck for a pre-adolescent, and he wants to be a warrior. Oh, he was raised by pixies. He has black hair and brown eyes, and glares at everyone unless they’re being particularly loving to him.”

Tam laughed heartily. “Well, go on.”

“And then I went to the Dragonland city, because I’d heard that Mother was there, and I wanted Marteth to at least meet the rest of his family before he went back to his pixie mother…”

“What, he’s not going to stay with you?”

Flairé mock-glared at his friend. “If you’d keep your mouth shut, I’ll tell you everything in order.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll shut up.”

“Anyway, so I went to the Moonland, and the first person I met was Yoeath, who’d gone with Mother, and she was galloping down the main road. I asked her what the matter was, and she said that some people had kidnapped Mother. So I followed her, and found Mother fighting three kalmaei and three dragons, and she was in a prison cell along with a silver dragon. So Yo and I managed to distract the dragons enough that they had to leave before the Dragon knights got there, and before they hurt Mother and the dragon too badly.”

Tam opened his mouth and then shut it again.

“Well, they’d been hurt when they were kidnapped, and when I got there, one of them was trying to kill Mother rather than have her escape and tell Kiirstril what was going on. So it wasn’t my fault,” Flairé growled mock-defensively. “Oh, so what was going on was that we have religious revolutionaries in the Dragonland.”

Tam leaned forward suddenly, intent. “Really? About seven archangels or one angel?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment.”

“All right. So the silver dragon went to tell Kiirstril everything, while Mother and Yo and Marteth and I returned to the Moonland. So we don’t know how long Marteth’s going to stay, either. So I didn’t get to finish exploring the mountains, but I think that’s all right considering the circumstances.”

“I hope you get a chance to go back soon,” Tam said. “It’s good to know the world from a personal point of view.”

“I know,” Flairé said, smiling. “You say that often enough, and Mother too.” His smile faded. “Now, tell me your story! You clearly know more than I do.”

“There is a Black Unicorn,” Tam said softly. “I’m certain of it. It’s out there, in the forest. It is insane, as those people we met were saying. And yet… it’s not completely lost all reason. I don’t know what it is. It’s certainly not natural. And I’m not insane!”

“Why didn’t you ask for Yoeath to come with me?” Flairé asked.

“My father has a unicorn friend. Yowiith, the White Wind. He told me about, well, how unicorns think and behave. If there is a Black Unicorn out there – I could be wrong, you know – it’s completely aberrant.”

Flairé nodded slowly. “So how did you find out about it?”

Tam frowned. “Well, the first thing I did when I got back was prowl around looking for more solid rumours. I know our people travel fast, but the physically closer to the source means more people might agree on what they say and I didn’t trust the mere word of those travellers.” He leaned back against the wall. “I soon found darker tales. People have disappeared from small villages, grown people, not babies abducted by pixies.” He smiled a little. “And there seems to be a miasma of fear in the west. Not oppressive, but noticeable if you’ve lived there for any length of time before now.”

“Then I got caught up in court intrigue for a while and had to leave that chase for a week. Princess Muila has been dropping hints about this ‘one angel’ theory, quietly, though even that seems unusually open for even her combative nature. Princess Layalin is very unhappy, because she loves her twin and believes in seven.”

“And Kylyra?” Flairé asked.

Tam smirked. “Oblivious, lover-boy.”

“Hey!” Flairé cried, hopping up and chasing Tam around the room. “I never said anything about me!”

“But it’s obvious,” Tam said, dodging around an armchair, laughing.

Flairé slowed down and stopped. “I don’t know about that, actually. Not anymore.”

“How so?” Tam asked, stopping and half turning towards him.

“I don’t think she’s the right person, somehow. I don’t think I’ve met the right girl yet.”

“Welcome to my world,” Tam beamed.

Flairé laughed and put a hand to his face. “So how does she feel about her sisters is what I meant?”

“She’s oblivious to them too. She just spends her time playing with her friends, same as ever. She’s growing into quite a beauty, though.”

Flairé waved that away with a roll of his eyes. “Go on.”

Tam grinned, opened his mouth as if to continue teasing, and then stopped, smiling ruefully. “Well, you know the girl who broke into my house when I first met you?”

“The one you never told me about? Yes?”

“Well, I finally found out who she was, though I always knew what she was looking for. She’s Princess Muila’s maid and friend. She was looking for evidence that I am a bad influence on society, probably to get me shut up out of the way.”

“Out of the way of what?”

“I don’t know, and that’s what scares me,” Tam said openly. “So I had to spend a few days tangoing with the political system to smooth things over; Erd is completely confused and distracted over his daughter right now and couldn’t help me out at all. And of course Marotheth hates my guts and would love to see me in prison.”

“Oh dear,” Flairé said sympathetically. “How did you deal with that?”

“Oh, same way I always do,” Tam said with a sigh. “You have to have been raised in the Unicorn-land to really understand, but I’ll tell you later, after I finish.”

“Right, go on.”

“Well, actually there’s not much more to say, really. This last week I’ve been trying to find out what happened to those missing people. I went pretty deep into the forest. I think it was probably too dangerous to do, now, but I’m pretty sure I got back all right. The last two days I’ve been here, waiting for you.”

“And here I am.”

“I want to head out west tomorrow with you and really get into the forest. I’d feel more confident if there were two of us working together, and there’s no one I trust more than you, Flairé m’lad.”

Flairé smiled gratefully. “And I you, Tatamkanai.”

Tam made a face as if he’d bitten a lemon. “Thanks.”

 

Chapter 4          Chapter 6