Durwin watched with weary amusement as he dangled his sore feet in the cool water of the grotto's pool. The early autumn air was muggy: the lightning of the night before had caught the distant forest ablaze, the breeze off the sea carrying the smoke inland to the Abbey. It had brought early rain with it, but not enough to noticeably swell the trickle of creek that fed the pool in this little patch of greenery between the yellow hills. Cottonwoods shaded them, their leaves just starting to turn amber and flickering whenever the still air bothered to bestir itself. Sibbe preferred it there to anywhere else the unicorns of the Abbey roamed and lingered with Durwin there even after the others had gone on to browse the wildflowers on the hillside. Mostly, he watched her daintily pick her way around the rocky bottom but sometimes his heart thrilled when he caught her attention. She would then come over to him and he would feed her the bouquet of wildflowers he had brought for her from her and and she would allow him to run his hand along her silken side. Today was a day on which he was graced with her affections. He blushed, sensitive and a little shy, as she nosed at the junction of his shoulder as she lay beside him by the water and curled her leonine tail around him, possessive and affectionate both. Of course, she tolerated no such feeling of binding from him, then or ever and he learned to hold himself still and open in those moments instead. She stole the last of the blackberries he had foraged from him hand.
Durwin was tired from the hard work of autumn; the binding up sheaves of dried goldenrod and chamomile, harvesting the petals of marigolds and asters and wild roses, the harvesting of grapes and the making of wine, and the preparation of the winter fields after the long, dry summer. This was in addition to the work of the initiate, keeping his Elder Brothers' armor bright and the links oiled, and the regular rotation of household chores, his training in arms and riding, and of course the never ending cycle of prayer that under-girt the life of everything in that remote sanctuary. Sibbe was still too young for serious training, her body having lost some of the heavenly invigoration of birth and not yet mature enough to bear the weight of a young man and his arms and armor. Instead, Durwin trained bareback on one of the Abbey horses, who, though intelligent and strong as horses went, was still merely and animal and not part of his own soul given shape. He remembered being a few years younger when Brother Arnaut had come back from seeking his unicorn, Bright, far in the forests of the eastern range. She had been similarly delicate then, though smelling of resinous sap and glowing like fire. She was strong now, and bore Arnaut into battle as his counterpoint and protector as well as steed. The reputation of the Riders for ferocity and swiftness was was well earned, after all. Durwin knew the time would pass and that Sibbe would likewise grow strong, but he was young himself and even a single day felt long to him.
The days did indeed pass, many of them gentle in each others company like that day beside the grotto's pool. Late in autumn, Sibbe had grown strong enough to bear him by himself as she raced along the crest of one of the blooming hills. He returned late as lavender shadows stretched over the abbey courtyard, breathless and happy as he had ever been and found the Elder Brothers he had been assigned to serve and learn from there waiting for him. Caspar, the elder and more serious of the two was always difficult to read, so at his gruff command to "go pack for travel," Durwin searched the face of the younger, Arnaut. There was easy excitement there, and it put the younger man at ease.
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"The Abbot got a message from one of the priests of the God out west. Some kind of curse on the ground. Don't get too excited - it probably is entirely uninteresting. Most of these requests are. But the oracle singled us out and you to come with."
If Arnaut was happy to be going, Durwin was nearly climbing out of his own skin with anticipation. After the solitary journey into the wilderness to find Sibbe, returning to spend another year training and doing petty chores had left him antsy and a bit dissatisfied. They were on the road within hours, Caspar atop his unicorn, Vine, black all over and with so little sheen to her coat that she seemed more like a shadow than a living thing. Arnaut rode Bright, in many ways her opposite with coat a warm gold and luminous in the sunlight. They were strong as much as they looked delicate and easily carried the Elder Brothers dressed in their armor of finely engraved sheets of jade linked together with rings of bronze and carrying bronze tipped spears. There was no iron in the Abbey, for the unicorns, like all creatures from beyond the veil, could not abide it, to go about in bronze and stone, eschewing the great help of man, was a sign of their service and set them apart from any other cavalry whenever they were called to fight on the battlefield.
Sibbe, though, was still too young to bear Durwin without injury for long distances and so he walked beside her more lightly defended the long road to Quail's Bend feeling a little undignified. It was a mining and trading town set into the foothills of the western range on the other side of the wide agricultural valley from the Abbey's hills. Those mountains were far grander than the eastern mountains between the Abbey and the sea, and Durwin marveled to see them for the first time as anything other than a lavender smudge on the horizon. It was cold there already and patches of snow lingered in the shadows of trees and houses though it had been melted away on open ground. Flurries skittered intermittently in the air, which smelled of pine and also something else.
Caspar left them to settle in at the local chapel, hosted by an somewhat awestruck old eunuch priest. Arnaut asked him about the "blight" he had mentioned in his letter, but he had no real answers as to what it was or what it was doing, only gestured toward the sweeping strand of blackened trees that stood like a scar extending down over the mountains and said "at nightfall, up the mountain, you will see."
Caspar's interrogations had yielded much the same, but it was clear that, whatever it was had dried up all of the late season traffic through the pass. No one was willing to go near the forest blight, nor would they even stand to look at its direction long. The townsfolk adverted their eyes, preferring to stare at the dust of the ground. Night came early, as it always did at the close of the year, but instead of a clear and starry alpine night, a heavy came down from the slope to settle, oily and foul, over the land. They all three offered private prayers, but the offerings were smothered in their offering bowls.
