[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars by Meredith Ann Pierce

a little running this morn before we rest. Then I will show you how to eat grass.”
    The blue filly stopped suckling and looked up. “‘Rass?” she said, in a small voice, distinctly. It was the first word Jan had heard her utter. Her dam nodded, laughing.
    “Aye, grass. How well you speak! Goldenhair will be delighted. Come, let us tell him your new word.” She turned, and the filly trotted after her.
    Calydor exclaimed, “She will be weaned and hornsprung before you know.”
    Crimson laughed again, tossing over one shoulder, “Then bearded and grown, as was I!”
    “Fare safe, daughter,” the star-flecked stallion called after his niece.
    “And you, Calydor,” she cried. “Fare you well, Aljan Moonbrow. May you Valefolk regain your homeland soon and cease tramping our Plain in a wartroop each spring.”
    Her voice was light, no malice in it. Jan saw Crimson rejoin Goldenhair and the other two. They stood consulting while the filly suckled. Most of the others had already quit the dancing ground, cantering across the Plain. The sky’s rose blush had blanched to white, its stars unseen, but burning still. Sun broke horizon’s edge and floated up into the sky. Calydor rose and shook himself. Jan did the same, flexing the stiffness from his legs. He joined the other in tearing a few quick mouthfuls of grass.
    “Time to be off,” the star-patterned stallion said, “if we mean to catch the cool of the day.”
    Jan nodded. Pards prowled at dawn, he knew. The two of them kicked into a lope, heading north and east across the Plain.

9.

    Calydor

    At the start of all things, when time was young, Álm’harat fashioned the world and the stars and the dark between. Maker of everything, mother of all, Álm’harat walks among us in mortal shape. Sometimes she appears as a unicorn, a beautiful stallion or a fleet-footed mare, or assumes the guise of a pard in the grass, or wears the wings of a kite upon the air. Life and death she deals, each in its season, advancing her great Cycle that turns all the world and the stars.
    “Once she sojourned in these parts as a mare pale as moonlight, who ranged the broad Plain and allowed none to stay her. Such a traveler was she, bearing tales from far lands, that companions dubbed her the Mare of the World. This Mare of the World fell in love with the sun, whose golden mane is burning fire. Feeling that heat, she was smitten and called out to him, but far above, he galloped on. Sprinting the Plain below, she sought to draw his gaze, but still he paid her no heed. So planting herself on the tallest rise, she whistled his name—only to see him race past overhead, aloof and unanswering.
    “Undaunted, the Mare of the World asked her fellows, the birds, to fly to the sun and press her suit. They did so, but the sun stallion only flared with laughter, so hotly that some of her envoys’ feathers singed and fell fluttering to earth far, far below. The burning sun proclaimed himself too high and fair to return any meager mortal’s favor—never suspecting the one who proffered was Álm’harat disguised. He would return her love, he scoffed, only if she proved herself his match.
    “ ‘He means me to fail,’ the Mare of the World exclaimed when the birds flew back with their news. ‘But I do not concede defeat. Mortal I am—’
    “She had forgotten, of course, that she was Álm’harat, for when the goddess dons mortal flesh, she sets aside all remembrance of her true nature, that she may ken the world of her creations as they themselves do. Carefully, she gathered the fallen feathers of her friends.
    “ ‘Weave these into my hair,’ she bade. The birds complied. ‘Though but mortal born,’ she vowed, ‘a little of Alma lives in me.’ So much is true. The goddess burns within us all, even the kite and the pard. ‘Your feathers, my fellows, shall speed me like wings.’
    “She bade the birds take strands from her mane and tail and wait. Then she traveled east through