They ran. The ground over which they galloped was slick, treacherous with mud. Thunder snorted and stamped. Jan felt the herd around him growing ragged. The eyes of some had begun to roll. Lightning fell to the right and left of them, the band flinching and veering at every crash.

“Shelter!” he heard someone to the fore of them crying. “Shelter ahead!”

Jan felt the pitch of the ground rise under his feet, then curve and fall abruptly away. He vaulted into a gully and then flung himself backward, folding his legs. Tek was scrambling into place beside him. They lay, shouldered into the steep curve of the bank, sheltered somewhat from the driving rain. But above the fury of thunder and wind, he still heard the wild crooning of the Serpent-cloud.

“Where’s Dagg?” Jan said suddenly, and flung a glance over his shoulder. “Dagg?”

He searched the downpour, up and down the line of other unicorns crowding the gully. He did not see him. Where was he—had he fallen? Was he still out upon the Plain? Jan bolted to his feet and struggled up over the bank again, shouting his friend’s name. Tek scrambled after him.

“What is it?” she cried. “What are you doing?”

The stormrain whipped at his face, his eyes. “It’s Dagg!” he flung back. “I don’t see him. Da…” But then he saw another thing that drove even the thought of Dagg from his mind.

It seemed that for a moment a lull descended on him. Despite the wind and dark, his vision cleared. The stamp of thunder, the lightning’s flare, and the wet pummeling of rain faded from him. To southward he could see a long flail of cloud spinning down out of the thunderheads. It was wholly black, writhing and dancing like a whip snake upon its tail. Where it touched the Plain, great gouts of earth sprang up and whirled away.

But before Jan, between him and the storm, stood a unicorn, far away on the crest of the long gentle slope down which the band had just run. He could make out nothing more about it, neither its color nor its gender nor its age. The stormwind seemed to make its short, thick mane stream upright along its neck.

The unicorn was singing. Jan was certain of that. His body heard it through the air; it reached his hooves as a kind of trembling in the ground. It made his eyes water, his breast burn—and he wanted to follow, follow without thought, that music, wherever the singer might lead.

The unicorn turned then, westward, trotting away in a dancing stride. The low, magical singing floated back, sweeter, immeasurably sweeter than panpipes to his ears. The Serpent-cloud veered sluggishly. It seemed to hesitate, and then drifted after the retreating unicorn, docilely as a nurseling after its dam.

Jan cried out as he realized they were going. He staggered after them a few paces—and the vision ended. The rush of stormwind returned, and the lightning’s clash. Feeling the wet hooves of rain upon his back, he blinked and snorted. The water stung in his nostrils, splashing his eyes.

“He’s well,” he heard Tek shouting beside him. “I saw him take shelter.” Thunder swallowed her words. “…down the bank by Teki! He’s safe.”

Jan realized dimly she was telling him of Dagg, and felt her shouldering him back toward the gully.

“Who was it?” cried Jan over his shoulder, once he and Tek were again safely dug into the bank.

“Who?” she cried back. “I saw no one.”

“The unicorn,” he shouted, “at the top of the rise.”

“I couldn’t see the top,” Tek called back at him. “You did,” cried Jan, suddenly desperate. “You must have.”

The wind lashed furiously above them now. Tek bent to his ear. “What are you talking of?” she exclaimed. “I don’t follow.”

“You do,” Jan yelled. “It was in the Vale at Moondance; it sang then, too. And in the Pan Woods—it cried out to Dagg and me and led us astray.” The angry timbre of his own voice surprised him. He could not stop. “And it’s been behind us, on the Plain,” he cried. “You know it has. You keep slipping away from camp to look for it, or talk to it, or….”

Tek did not reply.

“Now it’s called away the storm.” Jan demanded, “What is it? Who is it?”

“I don’t know!” Tek shouted at him. “I don’t know what you mean—what you’ve dreamed here, in the rain….”

The wind tore the last of her words away. The storm had grown too wild to let them talk. She did know. She knew something and was not telling him. Frustration burned in him. He turned furiously away from Tek and settled himself to ride out the storm.

Eventually the gale lessened, the rolling thunder receding to north and west. Jan laid his head against the wet bank, aware for the first time how weary he was. Around him, the unicorns lay still. Gradually, the light rain subsided, and at last the sun broke through the parting clouds.

Jan stumbled to his feet, his fury spent. He heard others around him doing the same. He clambered from the gully and up the far bank, shaking off and struggling to the top of the next gentle rise. Dagg stood there. Jan went to him, and no one parted them. The storm seemed to have washed away all memory of the Renegade and Jan’s disgrace.

Dagg shouldered him companionably, and the two of them stood gazing toward the west. The thunderheads hung there, small and distant now, edged red-golden by the sun.

“Look,” Dagg said.

And when Jan turned, he realized for the first time that they stood in sight of the Hallow Hills.

The prince’s son and the dapple colt stood watching the dusk stream over the far line of hills as the sky behind them deepened past violet to black. The band spent nearly the whole night feasting then, waiting for the ground to grow dry enough to lie upon, and eating all they could; for there would be no feasting on the morrow, the night of the nothing-moon.

Jan alternately browsed and dozed, toying with what Tek had told him during the storm. Perhaps panic had misled his eyes; and he had imagined it all—for he had half believed, while they had fled, that Alma had sent her Serpent-cloud for him, to strike him down for having broken the Ring and consorted with Renegades. Jan snorted then. But that was nonsense, surely, and the unicorn leading away the storm, a dream.

He slipped into genuine sleep near the end of the night, and a scant slip of waning moon appeared barely an hour before dawn. Korr roused them. They broke camp before sunup, and day broke over the Hallow Hills as the unicorns loped toward them under the horns of the moon.

Korr called a halt again, still early in the day, not a half hour’s distance from the slopes. Jan watched his father scanning, testing the wind. He had ordered scouts ahead to comb for wyverns, for spring was coming in apace that year. Who knew when the wyrms might wake? The initiates he bade rest while they might, for there would be no sleep that night as they kept vigil beside the pool.

When by midafternoon the last of the prince’s scouts were safely returned, having found no sign of wyverns, Korr whistled the pilgrims into line, and they entered the Hallow Hills. Their pace, a trot, seemed leisurely after so many days of hard running.

Jan found himself traversing gentle, rounded slopes newly in grass, small groves, and wide, sprouting meadows. The groves of hardwood and evergreen that they skirted looked cool and dense. After a time, Jan noticed that the hills had begun thrusting up in short cliffs. Beneath the dark topsoil, patches of pale chalk showed through.

In the late afternoon, they reached the base of a steep hillside with a narrow trail wending its face. Korr ordered them to climb. The stone proved very soft and crumbling; Jan and Dagg had to struggle to keep their footing while showers of scree from pilgrims above skidded about their hooves.

The last dozen paces of the slope were the steepest. Jan braced himself, shouldering Dagg up over the rim of the cliff, then scrambled up himself. They halted a moment, catching their breath, and Jan found they stood in a grove of hardwood trees with pale, rutted bark on twisted trunks. They were still in leaf, and their foliage had a silver cast. Jan lifted his head with nostrils wide; the scent of the trees was like mare’s milk and honey.