With an effort, the young prince managed to shove the older stallion aside. He pinned the serpent’s body between one forehoof and the opposite hind heel, then struck its head off with his razor-edged horn. The dead thing continued to flop and bow upward even after he leapt free. Jan turned to Korr. The king stood staring at his own foreshank. Blood ran from a double wound.

“I’m stung,” he said.

The prince felt the strength drain from him. His knees trembled. He could not seem to catch his breath.

“No,” he whispered. “No. A flesh wound. A scratch, the venom already spent.”

The king shook his head, still gazing at the wound. “Deep,” he answered. “To the bone.” His voice sounded petulant, perturbed. “It smarts and burns.” He flexed his leg, then shook it. Blood trickled down.

“Don’t,” Jan gasped. Dust filled his lungs. He could get no air. Everything tasted of salt. “Stand still. Don’t help the poison spread.”

Korr tried to put his hoof down, but stumbled. Jan shied, his reflexes strung tauter than a deer’s. The king’s foreleg seemed unable to bear his weight. He stood three-legged, frowning. He muttered, “Numb.”

“Cut the wound,” Jan cried. “Bleed the poison out!”

He sprang to rake the tip of his horn across the swelling gash. Runnels of red spattered. The other stallion shook his head, staggered again.

“Late,” he remarked. “Too late.”

Jan felt a scream tear from his breast as Korr’s legs folded. He pitched forward. A grey puff of dust welled up, swirling. The king lay struggling to rise. Jan smote the ground for lack of any serpent left to strike.

“Why?” he cried. “Why did you fly at it? What harm to have let it go?”

Korr’s forehooves dug at the sand, uselessly. “It thwarted me,” he mumbled.

Jan heard himself railing, unable to stop. “Why did you not let me fend it off? You’ve no defense from serpent stings—”

The king tossed his haggard shoulders weakly, gave up trying to rise. He murmured, “I needn’t listen to you.”

“You do!” Jan burst out. The landscape around him reeled. “If not because I am your son, Korr, then because I am your prince! Even a king must obey the battleprince in time of war…”

“Prince,” the dark king snorted, refusing to look at him. “You’re no prince. I should have let your sib have the office. I should have acknowledged her at the start.”

“Lell?” Jan demanded. His sister had been but newly born when Jan had become warleader. “Lell’s barely five years old, still unbearded, not yet a warrior. She’s not even been initiated…”

Korr’s sudden glare cut short the absurd laugh rising in his throat. “Not Lell,” he snapped. “Your other sib. My firstborn. Tek’s twice the warrior you’ll ever be.”

The king’s words made no sense to him. Nothing made sense. Time stopped. Jan stood staring at the dark other. Nothing happened. Nothing moved save the airborne dust, which all around them, very slowly, was beginning to settle. The murky air gradually cleared. Jan heard his own ragged, labored breath. His lips and teeth and tongue were numb. He could not speak. Korr rambled on.

“Small matter she was born outside the Vale and by that red wych. She was an heir any prince could be proud of—until you sullied her. I warned you against courting! The pair of you pledged against my will and got your vile get. Ruined now. She’ll never lead the unicorns.”

The taste of salt swelled, closing Jan’s throat. His gorge rose. Pale dust made the other grey as a haunt. Himself, too. “What are you saying?” he managed, barely able to whisper. “What are you saying of Tek?”

Korr examined the sand-caked wound on his leg. It barely bled. “Corrupted,” he murmured. “Like all the herd. Jah-lila’s to blame. And you. Weanling sop, what have you ever done but nuzzle up to gryphons, renegades, and pans? As though the world were a courtship! You and your peace have betrayed Halla’s legacy: eternal vengeance and war till the day we regain our rightful Hills…”

Jan scarcely heard, hardly able to follow the gist of his words. “Are you saying Tek is your daughter?” he gasped. “Your first-born—my elder sister? Out of Jah-lila? You got foals on two different mares, and the first mare still living?”

The king’s head lolled. Roaring filled Jan’s ears as he realized the other was nodding. He felt as though lightning had seared him. The agony was uncontainable. Boundless wasteland swallowed his cry.

“Why did you never tell me? Why?”

The king’s head, dragging with weariness, lifted once more. The hollow eyes looked at him.

“I tried,” he whispered. “When you went with her to the Summer Sea, I warned you against courting…”

“You gave no clear warnings!” Jan shouted. “Only veiled threats that meant nothing. You urged me to choose a mare my own age—you never said Tek was your daughter! Never called her my sister.”

The dark king shook his head feebly. “I couldn’t. I meant never to speak of it, to…to spare her…”

“To spare yourself!” Jan choked. “To spare yourself the shame. You pledged yourself to Jah-lila long before you ever danced the courting dance with Ses by the Summer Sea. You raised me and Lell all our lives without telling us we had a sib…a sib by a different mare.”

Strength returned momentarily to the withered king. His nostrils flared. “She beguiled me, that wych. No beard, round hooves, mane standing in a brush. She was not even a unicorn! I made no pledge to any unicorn mare. Our sacred pool may have given her a horn, but it could not make her one of us. I left her and returned to the Vale, telling no one that, in my folly, I had consorted with a Renegade. I bade her not to follow me…”

Furiously, Jan cut off the other’s storm of words. “Jah-lila is no Renegade. She comes of a different tribe, the daya whom the two-footed firekeepers enslave. When she escaped and fled to the Plain, she asked your succor. Drinking of our sacred mere in the heart of wyvern-infested Hallow Hills, she became a unicorn. She is one of us now, and the mother of your heir.”

“I never intended—” dying Korr shrilled. “I gave my word to a mere Renegade, to no one…”

“It was still your word,” retorted Jan, “the word of a prince’s son, the prince-to-be, grandson to the reigning queen. You pledged yourself to Jah-lila, a bond unshakable in Alma’s eyes, and then deserted her.”

Korr laughed, a dry, wheezing sound. His body tremored as though with cold. The sun overhead blazed shadowless. “Aye, but she found me. Tracked me all the way to the Vale. Who would have thought it? Arrived in foal for all the world to see. Yet she never shamed me, never named her unborn filly’s sire. Hoping to tempt me to acknowledge her! Fool. I pretended not to know her.”

Again the horrible, airless laugh. Jan’s hide crawled. The king continued.

“When Teki sheltered her, all assumed him to be her unborn’s sire. Neither he nor she spoke a word of denial. Teki could easily shoulder my blame—he is the herd’s only healer, immune to censure. He could sire a dozen foals on a dozen dams and the herd would never cast him out. They need him—far more, it seems, than they needed me.”

Korr’s voice grew bitter. He sneered.

“Jah-lila haunted the Vale for months, seeking acceptance, striving to lure me back to her side. But the herd never accepted her. I saw to that.”

“They accept her now,” Jan breathed. He doubted the other heard. “They welcome and honor her.”

“At last she departed, self-exiled to the wilderness beyond the Vale. I thought me done with her and heaved a prayer of thanks. Alma had forgiven me. My granddam the queen had died, my father Khraa become king. I was prince now. I devoted my reign to serving Alma and the Law.”

“You served neither,” Jan growled. “What you called Law was tyranny; what you named Alma, madness.”

Korr ignored him, spoke on, gasping now.

“That very year by the Summer Sea I pledged your dam. She bore you to me the following spring. I reared you sternly, that you might never stray, as had I in my youth. I sought to keep you safe…