For a thousand years, the Hallow Hills had been the homeland of the unicorns, held in trust to the goddess Alma. As guardians of her sacred mere, the Well of the Moon, the unicorns called themselves children-of-the-moon, best beloved of the Mother-of-all. Then wyverns came, white poisonous wyrms, who slew the unicorns’ agèd king and fell upon his followers. Proud princess Halla was one of few to escape that venomous end. She and her small, beleaguered band fled south across the wide grass Plain till they found refuge in a broad valley inhabited only by goats and deer. The unicorns claimed this deserted Vale, and here they dwelt four hundred years, awaiting one who would end their long exile, reclaim their lost ancestral lands and drive the hated wyverns out with the goddess’s own empyreal fire.

Zod the dreamer called this warrior-to-come the Firebringer: black as the dark between Alma’s eyes on the coldest of cloudless midwinter nights. The crescent moon would mark his brow and a white star one hind heel. Wild Caroc prophesied burning blood, sparking hooves and a tongue of flame: a colt born at moondark out of a wyvern’s belly and sired by the summer stars. Ellioc, who followed Caroc, claimed he would be no Ring-born unicorn at all, but a Renegade outside the Law. He would storm out of heaven in a torrent of fire, and his advent would mark the ending of the world. But the unicorns called wild Caroc and Ellioc mad. Their strange visions, though recounted long after their distant passing, were scoffed at. Only Zod was believed true seer of the Firebringer, and he, too, by the time of my tale lay centuries dead.

Two nights past, when we assembled here, I told of how, many years ago, I midwived the birth of the Firebringer. I spoke of Aljan, called son-of-Korr, who, while beardless and callow still, made his way from the Vale to the Hallow Hills on pilgrimage and slew a wyvern there. Her poisoned barb set his blood alight. Companions bore him in her severed hide and cast him into the waters of Alma’s mere. The deadly venom fevering his blood cooled then, and he rose weak as a newborn foal from the she-wyrm’s bellyskin: hooves and horn tempered to unbreakable hardness, his coat burnt black, a slim crescent moon traced into his brow and a white star marking his heel. Thus completing his initiation into the Ring of Warriors, young Jan returned to the Vale and became his people’s battleprince.

Night past, I sang you the second cant of the Lay of the Firebringer, how Jan pledged himself to my daughter, Tek, the pied warrior mare, a bond unshakable in Alma’s eyes. I recounted his peacemaking among the goat-leggèd pans, the battle he fought with marauding gryphons by the shores of the Summer Sea and how, in the end, he set enmity aside to befriend the wounded wingcat that had once so fiercely sought his life. I told of his sojourn in the far land of the two-footed firekeepers where, upon the sacred cliffs above their settlement, he learned the secret of the flame that smoldered within him. Before Jan departed, trekking homeward with his gift of fire, his hosts dubbed him Moonbrow, but his name among his own folk means Dark Moon.

This even, which marks the last night of my telling, I sing of how Aljan Moonbrow fulfilled his destiny as Alma’s Firebrand, returning with his people to the Hallow Hills and casting the venomous wyverns out. My name is Jah-lila. I am called the Red Mare. A seer and a singer and a traveler am I, a midwife and a magicker—fourth and final prophet of the Firebringer. Of my own small role in his triumph and downfall shall I also speak: how Aljan broke the Ring of Law and lost his kingship of the unicorns forever, how he hurtled across heaven on pinions of fire and proved every word of my predecessors true—until here at the last, he has kindled the spark unquenchable, which even now as we dance is unmaking the world.

New grass, green as gryphons’ down, covered the dark earth in fine, sparse filaments. Breeze lifted, and the downy strands rippled. Spring sun warmed the hillside’s restless air. Jan halted and shook himself. Sod packed the clefts between the toes of his cloven hooves. He bowed his head, used the long, spiral skewer of his brow-horn to pick the clods away. Sparks leapt when the horn’s keen tip grated.

With a snort, the black prince of the unicorns straightened, tossed the forelock from his eyes. He bounded up the steep, grassy slope to catch up his twin daughter and son. Aiony, the filly, glanced back at the sudden pounding of his heels. She reared up nickering, limbs fine as a fawn’s, her one side pale silver with black stockings and a black-encircled eye, the other side just the opposite: black with silver shanks and eye. Jan nuzzled her as he came alongside. Aiony pranced and whistled to her brother up the slope, the sound high and sweet as panpipes.

“Hey up, Dha! Wait for Jan and me.”

The foal Dhattar paused, the same size as his sister but pale as pure cloud. Like her, he sported a nubby horn little more than a promise on his brow. Like hers, his young mane was only beginning to lengthen from its nursling’s bristle, the tassel at the end of his ropelike tail barely sprung. He stood picking at the turf with one snow-white heel.

“I am waiting,” he called.

The prince of the unicorns nickered. Barely weaned, his children already spoke better than most colts half again their age. Jan nibbled his son’s withers as he reached him. The white foal shivered happily. Jan snorted, continued moving up the slope.

“Will you tell me what you two are so eager for me to see?” he inquired, for the sixth time.

Chivvying her father’s raven-black ribs, Aiony shook her head. Dhattar glanced at her.

“We can’t,” he answered.

“It’s a secret,” Aiony insisted.

“A surprise,” the white foal concurred.

The prince of the unicorns heaved himself past another slippery place and shook his head. “Well enough, then,” he laughed. “Lead on.”

The twins bolted, sprinting and chasing as they scrabbled up the rocky hillside. Jan glanced back, startled at how high they had come. The Vale of the Unicorns unfolded below, open meadow hemmed by partially wooded slopes. Far away on the valley floor, Teki the healer stood peering at some medicinal root or herb, his pied black-and-white coloring unmistakable. Around him clustered five or six half-growns—among the few then-colts to have survived the devastating winter that had ravaged the herd barely two years earlier.

The prince of the unicorns gritted his teeth. Half his people had perished in that terrible season of ice and snow—a death toll burgeoned in the prince’s absence by one mad usurper’s tyranny. A green-tailed, whining fly bit the young stallion’s ear, drew blood. Jan rankled and slapped it away with his tail. Korr—his own sire—responsible for so much misery, when a careful policy of scouting and sharing forage would doubtless have saved many who instead had succumbed to hunger and the cold. The prince’s ear stung. He shook his head.

“Tell us about the wyvern!”

Aiony came skittering down the hillside. The dark unicorn returned to the present with a start.

“Aye, tell how you slew the wyvern in her den,” Dhattar called. “When you were just a colt.”

“Like us.”

Whickering, Jan shook his head. “Older.”

“Lell’s age?” Dha ventured.

“Your aunt’s only four!” cried Jan. “I was six—three times your age, little goatling kids.”