“So Halla, hearing the dreamer’s words, ate at last the bitter root of defeat, bowing to the wisdom of the moon, which says that all things wax and wane, even the greatness of the unicorns. She bade her warriors escape and save themselves, flee away into the dusk while the wyverns in the foothills sat howling their glee.

“But glancing back, Halla—the very last to leave the field—saw Lynex holding aloft in his teeth the bough of a tree all ablaze with amber flowers. Beside him upon the ground rested a golden bowl of glowing stones.

“ ‘What, fly, will you?’ cried the wyrm king through his teeth. ‘Then let this pursue you in our stead. Never think to trouble us again, vile unicorns!’

“Then he cast the scarlet brand upon the Plain, and where it came to earth, suddenly the stubgrass bloomed as well with wisps of light that danced and ran before the wind. Clouds of choking dust arose beneath the fury of their passing, and they left the grass behind them blackened in curling crisps.

“Those whom the hot, darting dancers touched screamed wild in pain. Not horn nor hoof availed against them, and any who fled slow or wounded, the flames ran down like pards upon the Plain. The unicorns fled rampant then, terrified, for two whole nights and a day, till spring storms trampled out the deadly flares, and the children-of-the-moon dropped where they stood, to sleep like dead things in the rain.”

The healer’s daughter fell silent then, and her echo fell instantly silent as well. Very like her own voice it was, only a little deeper. Jan sighed heavily, studying the ground. The story always ended the same, with the rout of the unicorns. If only…. He screwed his knees tighter into the turf. If only, if only—he knew not what. Tek made an ending to the tale:

“I have sung you the Lay of the Unicorns, how we were cast from our lands by wyverns and wandered many seasons, south over the Plain, till at last we came upon a Vale. And here, by Alma’s grace, we have begun to grow strong again.

“But we have never forgotten that these are not our own true lands. One day we shall regain the Hallow Hills. Each year some of us must return: quiet, careful, on dangerous Pilgrimage, to drink that drink which makes us what we are, unicorns, warriors, children-of-the-moon.

“The sacred well, the Hallow Hills, are not yet ours again. The Firebringer is not among us yet, but he is coming. He is coming—soon.”

Tek stood a moment on the ledge and then descended. Those in the Circle began to stir. Dagg in the moonlit dark beside Jan whispered, “She changed that last.”

Jan was still gazing after Tek as she lay down beside her father now.

“She didn’t just say the Firebringer was coming. She said he was coming soon.”

Jan nodded absently, thinking of something else. “I wonder,” he murmured. “Did this valley belong to anyone before we came here?”

Dagg eyed him with a frown. “It was empty. Everyone knows that.”

“I wonder,” murmured Jan. “Someone told me once…it seems….”

This valley was ours before you stole it. Ever since the day of the gryphons, those words had been in his mind. Who was it that had told him that? Every time he strove to picture the speaker, the image slipped from him. It was like a dream he had awakened from and now could not recall.

Khraa upon the ledge had begun to speak, but Jan hardly listened, still trying to puzzle out those strange, half-remembered words: This valley was ours….

Dagg was nudging him. “Do you think she’s a dreamer? Tek, I mean. Maybe she’s foreseen the Firebringer.”

Jan felt his skin prickle. For a moment the thought quickened his blood: that the Firebringer might be more than just an old legend, that the prophecy might one day come to pass.

“But do you think,” whispered Dagg, bending closer, “she could have meant Korr?”

Jan started and stared at his friend. The feeling of exhilaration passed. The prince’s son snorted and shook his head. “Zod foretold ‘a seer of dreams.’ ”

“Yes, but the dreaming sight doesn’t always come early,” said Dagg. “And your father’s coat is color-of-night.”

Jan looked away. Could that be—his sire, the Firebringer? The idea unsettled him somehow. True, Korr was black and a great warrior, the first black prince in all the history of the unicorns. But his father had no use for dreamers and their dreams. He would have no truck with them at all—except that once with Jah-lila, the healer’s mate, who lived outside the Vale.

Jan snorted again. No, it could never be Korr. Impossible! He rolled onto his back and scrubbed himself against the soft, grass-grown dirt. His winter coat was still long and shaggy from the cold months, and he wished it would shed. Spring was early this year, and it itched.

He shook himself then, and settled himself. Dagg beside him had closed his eyes. The gray king had quit the ledge, and all around, Jan heard other unicorns preparing for sleep. He let his breath out slowly; his eyelids drooped.

Above him the moon, mottled and bright, fissured down its middle like a ripe eggshell. Out of it crawled a winged serpent that hung above him in the starry sky, breathing a sour breath upon him and speaking words he could not understand.

Jan’s limbs twitched in his sleep; his nostrils flared. Breath caught and shuddered in his throat. Dagg jostled beside him in the dark. Jan rolled onto his other side and breathed more deeply then. His eyelids ceased to flutter. The snake in the heavens flew away.

It was very late. He realized he must have slept, but he could not remember having closed his eyes. The unbroken moon, whole and undamaged, had tilted a little way down from its zenith. Jan saw a figure standing among the sleeping unicorns. It turned away, walking toward the Circle’s edge, then it sprang lightly over a sleeper and cantered noiselessly toward the far hillside. Jan felt the drumming of heels through the ground and lay wondering. By Law, no one was allowed to break the Circle until the moon was down.

As the figure disappeared up slope into the trees, Jan realized suddenly that it seemed to be heading toward that point whence the echo had come while Tek had been singing. He frowned, shaking his head. The valley stood empty now, the Circle around him still and undisturbed.

It’s restlessness, he told himself. I imagined it. He felt no drum of heels in the soft earth now. He shut his eyes, shivering with fatigue. And as he slipped again into that country between waking and sleep, it seemed the night air brought to him, just for a moment, a delicious odor like roses in summer. He slept deep without dreams then, till morning.

The trees leaned close around them as they walked, and bird cries haunted through the gloom. The air was cool, with gray jays and redwings flashing through the wells of light. As Jan watched, golden foxes slunk through the bracken. There a hare crouched, its eyes as black as river stones, beside a skeletal thicket all budded in yellow-green. Deer browsed among the shadows, raising their heads as the unicorns passed, gazing after the newcomers with great, uncurious eyes.

The pilgrims slipped through the still Pan Woods that forested the folded hills as far as the Plain, a day’s journey to the west. They had risen at dawn, all those within the Circle, sprung up and shaken the sleep from them, while those forming the Ring around them had lain sleeping still. At a nod from the prince, the initiates had turned, lept over the sleepers, and stolen from the valley—silently, lest any left behind awaken, breaking the Circle before the pilgrims were away.

They moved in single file now, the colts and fillies behind the prince and flanked by warriors here and there. Over the long train of backs wending before him, Jan caught glimpses of rose and black, the healer’s daughter, and sometimes white and black, her sire. Others he remembered from the battle of the gryphons, for Korr chose only the worthiest warriors to accompany the initiates over the Plain.