“I come seeking my sire,” the younger stallion replied. “My herd acclaims me their warleader, and Korr was once accounted our king. Three winters past, in my absence, he seized power, leading a mad crusade that cost many their lives. At last his fanaticism was condemned for what it was. He has been outcast since, shrieking curses upon my mate and her dam, upon his own mate and child, and calling Tek’s and my offspring abomination. Lately, he railed of some past deed upon the Plain. Now he has fled here, as though so doing can dispel whatever memory from his youth haunts him still. It is time his rampage ceased. This years-long silence must end. It is his silence that has maddened him. If I can but persuade him to reveal this secret he holds, I am convinced he will know peace.”

The star-strewn unicorn listened in thoughtful reserve. The little filly leaning against him had closed her eyes.

“I judge you to be sincere,” he answered quietly. “No deception shades your voice. Your folk and mine share a long history of enmity, but I see no reason for you and me to perpetuate it. Ask of me what you will.”

Jan sighed deeply, and then drew breath, hopeful yet cautious still. “Has Korr harmed any of your folk?”

“Frightened, mostly,” the other replied, tossing his head. “By and large, the injuries he dealt were flesh wounds. We are a fleet and wary folk.”

Jan nodded, relieved. “Did those who brought news of him to you recount any of Korr’s words?”

Sadly, the star-specked unicorn sighed. “Only curses and threats. Those who encountered him called him crazed: violent and inconsolable. Who proffered peace and strove to reason with him suffered worst.”

Jan watched the river flowing, swirling the reflected stars. He felt as though Alma’s eyes watched him both from heaven and from below. He said to Calydor, “Do I glean rightly that your folk have driven him from the Plain?”

The other nodded. “Dream reached me four days past that a band of young stallions and mares came upon him at a watering place near Plain’s edge. He flew at them. At length, they succeeded in driving him from their midst. He struck off into the Salt Waste bordering our grasslands.”

Inwardly Jan groaned. Pursuit of his sire, which had seemed at first a matter of mere hours or days, now promised to stretch on from weeks and months into a season or more. His heart ached to be reunited with his mate and young, but he could not turn back. Korr must be halted and, if at all possible, healed.

“Where may I find the spot at which he left the Plain?” the young prince asked.

Beside him, the blue-and-silver stallion nodded. “’T lies to north and east, ten days’ journey from this spot.”

The little filly beside him had lain down on the riverbank. Calydor joined her. Jan folded limb and couched himself as well. His ears swiveled to the snorts and playful whistles of the Plainsdwellers. The drum of heels and their romping cries told him the games and impromptu contests continued. The younger voices were dying down. Other sets of heels, always in pairs, beat away through the grass, accompanied by breathless laughter. Jan was reminded of his own courting rite with Tek beside the Summer Sea.

And yet, so it seemed, these celebrants had no thought of pledging themselves for all eternity under Alma’s eyes. Whatever vows they spoke would last but the night, to lapse or renew daily, exactly as they pleased This baffling custom troubled Jan. How could young know their sires if their parents parted after a tryst? Nonetheless, he realized, Crimson knew her sire. Her brother, the pale golden stallion, knew his sire as well—at least, so Jan had gathered, that his differed from the crimson mare’s.

That, too, astonished him, that brother and sister might share but a single parent. Though he could scarce conceive not being pledged to Tek or—more unimaginable still—breaking that pledge, the freedom the Plainsdwellers knew was breathtaking. He could hardly envision such lives as theirs, forever free of the constancy of kings and Law, the touchstone of eternal vows. With a start, Jan woke from his thoughts. The blue-and-silver stallion was speaking.

“Rest here the night, my son. You are weary, having pressed hard these many weeks in pursuit of your sire.”

Jan nodded heavily, head drooping, eyes slipping shut. His limbs ached. His ribs throbbed, his spine sore where it flexed. He was weary, but less in body than in spirit. He wanted this business with Korr to be done. He wanted to learn the dark secret that drove Korr mad. Only then, he was sure, might he and his mate and young be free of it. Korr, too, and all the Vale. The young stallion roused himself and reached to taste the rushes at the riverside, aware only now that in his haste to reach the Gather, he had not eaten since noon. The stallion beside him watched.

“You wear a feather in your hair,” he remarked at length, “as many of my people do. I have never seen a Valedweller so adorned. Does it signify your rank?”

Jan tossed his head and felt Illishar’s green feather slap gently against his neck. In the years since he and the gryphon had sealed their first, tentative truce, it had never worked free. He took it for a good sign. The tender rushes filled his belly, warm and sweet. He turned to Calydor.

“Nay,” he laughed. “It commemorates a peace.”

The seer’s eyes widened, then smiled. The little filly slept slumped against him, limbs folded, chin tucked. She reminded Jan intensely of his twins before they had been weaned. Their horns must have sprouted by this time, breaking the skin and spiraling up. They would be butting into everything now, scrubbing their foreheads against bark and stone to quell the itch young horns always suffered. Beside him, the singer gazed at his grand-niece with the fond absorption Jan recognized in himself for his own young.

“The mare of which you sang,” he began, uncertain quite why he was asking—and yet the singer’s tale had stirred his curiosity, piquant and strong. “You never forgot her?”

The star-strewn stallion whickered softly, as though thinking back on a memory both rueful and dear.

“How could I?” he breathed. “She was extraordinary. Never after have I been able to view your folk simply as savage warmongers, suppressed by tyrants and imprisoned by laws—but as a tribe not wholly unlike my own, despite very different ways.”

Jan snorted. “High time my folk abandoned the worst of our old ways,” he remarked, “and adopted new.”

Calydor laughed. “How strange you are. A warleader who celebrates peace. A Moondancer who eyes tradition askance.”

The dark prince shrugged. He had long since left off wondering at himself.

“But the mare,” he continued, “who consorted with you, then returned to the Vale—I have not heard of her. She must have guarded her daring well. In Korr’s time, and his father’s time, and the time of the queen before him, such a mare would have been cast out had her deeds been discovered.”

The older stallion nodded. “I named that very danger in urging her to remain with me, to no avail.” He sighed. “Had any way existed for me to go with her and join her folk, I would have. But I could not. Your Law barred me.”

Again he sighed, more deeply now, as though resigned.

“Well, ’tis done. One cannot walk another’s path, nor halt the turning of the stars, only live and seize what joys one may. I loved this mare. I would do so again, even knowing the outcome.”

Jan felt an inexplicable sadness rise up in his breast. He thought of Tek. Could he ever have so resigned himself to part from her for the rest of his days? The wound was deep enough simply being parted from her for the present.

“You never saw your love again?” he asked Calydor. The other shook his head. “Perhaps she dwells yet within the Vale.” Jan frowned, calculating. “She would be about the age of my dam.”