Sylvara Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The gate was shut. Diaran stood inside Sylvara's glade now, the dead merchant's journal under his arm. He meant to walk toward the sleeping elder. Sylvara stopped him with a look. The herd mattered more than his book. Before she gave him the elder, she had to know her unicorns would tolerate him. "Stand there," she said. "Let them come to you." The rainbow herd always came to new faces. A green mane, a blue, a rose. They were calm with children, with birds, with anyone. But as Diaran stepped forward, they moved back. A gray stallion snorted and turned his tail. The rose mare pinned her ears. The whole herd drifted to the far stones and would not settle. Sylvara's hands went cold. Her unicorns feared nothing. Yet they feared this man. "They don't like me," Diaran said. His smile was thin. "Most things don't, first try." "They like everyone." She watched him close. "What are you that they won't come near?" He said nothing. The flat look dropped over his face, the same door shutting she had seen before. Sylvara pulled a strand from her own crown. It was unicorn hair, rainbow-bright, with a soft glow like trapped moonlight. The woven hair held an old enchantment. It warmed near love and went dull near a cold heart. She had never shown it to an outsider. Now she needed the truth his mouth would not give. "Hold out your hand," she said. He did. She laid the shining strand across his palm. If he came to harm her herd, the hair would darken and die. It did not darken. It burned brighter. The glow climbed his wrist and spilled gold into the dim air. The herd lifted their heads. One by one they turned back. Sylvara stared. "It shines for you." "I don't know what that means," Diaran said. But his voice had gone rough. He closed his fingers around the strand like it hurt to look at. "It means your heart is not cold." She took the hair back slowly. "Then why do they shy from you?" He was quiet a long moment. "The last thing I woke," he said. "It left a mark. Animals feel it. They don't forgive it." He met her eyes. "The hair reads what I want. The herd reads what I've done." It was the most he had ever said. Sylvara heard no lie in it. She looked at her unicorns, now calm again, and at the glowing strand in her fist. The herd distrusted his past. The hair trusted his heart. Both were true. She could not wait for the herd to forget. Her forest could not wait. "The elder is yours to study," she said. "Tonight. I'll stand beside you the whole time." Diaran nodded. Then he glanced at the shining hair and frowned. "That thing," he said. "If it read me so easy, it'll read the ritual too. We may need it."