“She made an image of herself to be the sun’s mate, the same compass as he and filled with his borrowed light. This new creation she called the moon, which strives to travel the starpath ahead of the sun. He must gallop his hardest to catch her up. As he gains, she wanes, spending more and more of her light. When he seizes her, by the dark of the moon, both moon and sun tread the netherpath as one, a time of miracles and strange tidings, when the world sees by the light of Álm’harat’s eyes alone.

“Thus has it been for time out of mind. We of the Plain yet wear feathers in her memory. Birds take strands from our manes and tails in payment for their fletch. When Álm’harat created us, she skimmed from the moon some of her shining stuff and poured it into our hooves and horns, into the hearts and minds of all unicorns. Moondancers of the Vale commemorate the goddess at fullmoon, when she fares brightest and farthest from the sun.

“But we of the Plain honor her at moondark, when she and her mate run joined in joy, dancing the longdance to its end. This is the Great Dance, the Cycle unending. Let us live as the maker of all things invites us, as she herself has always done, withholding herself never, sharing favor with all, preferring none of her creatures above any other, loving all wisely and well.”

The tales Jan heard and the days he spent in the company of the one the Plainsdwellers called Alma’s Eyes were like none he had ever known. The grass grew thinner, shorter, paler, the farther north and east they strove. The green, once so savory upon the young prince’s tongue, began yellowing, its sweetness soured. Waterholes became scarce. Once he and his guide sipped from a spring no bigger than a puddle—one they had searched half a morn to find. The soil grew poorer, looser, drier. Dust increased, rimming Jan’s nostrils red. As the land grew hillier and grass sparser, he saw scant trace of other unicorns. Calydor’s fellows, it seemed, avoided these parts.

The seer spoke of his far-traveled folk, how widely they ranged and seldom they met. He sang of pards and the heroes who had dodged them, of summer storms, flash floods, droughts. The one thing he did not speak of, Jan learned in time, was war. The folk of the Plain had no use for it. Here, those who quarreled either settled their dispute, ignored one another, or parted. Each freeborn unicorn was his own ruler: Plainsdwellers attached little merit to following others and viewed obedience with varying degrees of amusement or disdain.

It occurred to Jan at length that the Vale’s lore told mostly of battle: mighty warriors and contests, all struggles ended by force. The Plainsdwellers, he saw, praised heroes who turned foes into friends or averted strife. Keenly aware how Korr’s violence must embody for Calydor and his folk all the worst of the Vale, the young prince strove to offer another side, recounting the end of centuries-long feuds with the gryphons and the pans. He held out hope for treaties with the seer’s tribe as well. Telling of the herd’s anticipated return to the Hallow Hills, he pledged his folk would harry no Plainsdwellers while passing through their lands.

“My son, your herd will not even see us unless we mean you to do so,” the other replied. “We will not allow you to bait us. At your approach, we will simply vanish, returning only after you have passed.”

The pair of them lay in the long grass near a tiny waterhole they had come across just at noon and there resolved to rest an hour in the heat of midday. Though the year was fast rounding toward summer’s end, noon sun could still beat fierce. The young prince turned to Calydor.

“I beg you,” he countered, “do not remove yourselves from us. My herd is ready for change. Warlike ways united us during our first, long years of exile. But that exile is soon to end. We must custom ourselves anew to peace.”

“Peace which is to follow your war,” the seer reminded him. “You mean to wrest the Hills by force, my son.”

“As once they were wrested from us!” Jan found himself exclaiming. He stopped, confused, then stammered, “Thus has it been prophesied, by Alma’s will…”

The words trailed off. Never before had Jan realized how vainglorious the boast sounded. And yet he knew it to be true—he knew! Calmly, the star-scattered stallion gazed at him. Mirrored in the other’s eyes, Jan saw himself for the first time as one seized by war, enthralled by it: ever pondering strategy and measuring potential foes while smugly spouting the goddess’s permission for it all. Doubt teased at him, brought him up short.

“My son, none but Álm’harat truly knows the will of Álm’harat,” Calydor quietly replied. “But this I do know: the goddess wills much that is beyond our ken. And she is both the maker and the unmaker of the world.”

Jan learned much from Calydor of the singer’s elusive, wandering folk. By night, the star-marked stallion recited his people’s legends, with heroes and heroines all grander than life. Wild paeans to the goddess Álm’harat he chanted, too, as well as passionate ballads extolling the joys of the longdance. The Plainsdwellers, Jan discovered, gathered for such dancing not just in late summer or early fall, but whenever they pleased. The northernmost reach of the Plain, which lay beyond the Hallow Hills, was warm enough, Calydor informed him, for mares to bear their young in any season.

That unicorns might know such freedom astonished Jan. Among the herd, mares conceived only during that season which yielded a spring delivery. No stallion dreamed of asking his mate to do otherwise. Had he and Tek been born upon the Plain, Jan concluded, stunned, he and she might partake of the longdance as often as they chose. Was it really nearly three years since he and his mate had pledged eternal fidelity in their courting by the Summer Sea?

The memory made his blood beat hot—but mates always took care to space their young at least two years apart. Whatever Tek’s charms, the young prince would never have considered their dancing again until the twins were weaned—as by now they must be, he realized with a jolt. Fury and longing rose in his breast. Instead of chasing his elusive sire halfway across the Plain, he might have sported the summer beside his mate, renewing their vows.

In exchange for Calydor’s godtales and ballads, Jan recited as best he could his own folk’s ancient lays—until, on the fourth night, the singer gently told him he much preferred to hear of Jan’s own life. The young prince blushed beneath the black hairs of his hide, certain his unpolished rendition must be the cause. Truth, he was no singer: that he knew. Yet here Calydor contradicted him with vehemence and surprise, insisting he had all the makings of a fine singer—timing, cadence, ear—but a heart that clearly joyed far more in spontaneous recounting than rote recitation of histories long past.

At last Jan relented, relating his battle with the wyvern queen, his sojourn among the two-footed firekeepers, his truce with the gryphon Illishar, his pact with the pans, the herd’s ordeal during the usurpation of mad Korr, and of Tek, his mate, whose many trials had brought their young safe into the world. Deeply absorbed, the star-flecked seer listened.

“I have no mate, no young,” he said at last. “I envy you, my son. Though life upon the Plain allows great liberty, I will say for your Vale that it lends a continuity unknown among my kind. You have friends whom you encounter every day. You do not spend your waking hours trekking from one waterhole to the next. You do not sleep each night in a newfound spot, one ear cocked for pards.”

Hearing this, Jan felt a secret triumph, savoring his companion’s admission that the Vale might have its merits. The young prince had liked Calydor on sight, sensed his admiration returned. He experienced the oddest camaraderie with the seer, a natural familiarity. Plainly, the older stallion enjoyed his company as well. Jan had never encountered such easy kinship before. It felt uncannily like something he ought to recognize, ought to have known in his colthood but missed somehow.