Jah-lila stood looking down at the dark pool. Though it was daylight outside the cave, here at the grotto’s innermost chamber, no sunlight reached. The phosphorescent lichens from the larger, outward chamber cast little light. Few grew on the smooth ceiling above the spring. The little chamber was dim. Jah-lila gazed into the spring’s dark pool. Its surface stirred, but did not break.

She saw the Salt Waste, two dark figures, widely separated and very small, converging. As though she were a kite, she watched, suspended high above. The tiny figures reflected in the pool met. She moved closer, saw the maze of low canyons, a white serpent coiled to strike. She saw the haggard king fly at it, the young prince desperate to save him. The serpent struck. The prince dispatched it. The king stood staring at his shank.

The red mare felt her breast tighten. It was the moment she had feared all the years since she had first sipped of the Hallow Hills’ magical mere and become a unicorn. It was the fate she had fought so hard to stay—that the first and only love she had ever known should die of a serpent’s sting. She wished then that she might halt, withdraw, end the vision here, but she forced herself on.

Jah-lila gazed deeper into the pool. The image rippled. She heard the words Korr and the one he called second-born exchanged, heard the younger stallion’s cries of horror and disbelief. She saw the king collapse, saw the one he had raised from colthood standing stunned. In the dark pool before her, a colorless cave fish slipped through the lifeless form of the king. Korr’s image wavered, broke, re-formed. The red mare saw the young prince trying to draw a circle in the dust.

She bent her own horn to the dark pool’s bank and traced the semblance of the fallen king into the sand. Completing a circle around it, she scraped dirt onto the likeness with one round, uncloven heel, obliterating it. In the pool before her, wind lifted. Sand began to fly. The burial song rose in her throat. Jah-lila breathed upon the water. She watched the dark prince stagger away.

Softly, painfully, she hummed the endingsong through, then closed her eyes and bent to where the form of fallen Korr reflected. The water felt cool upon her tongue, quenching the song, soothing the parched ache in her throat. She drank a long time, deep, then raised her head. No image lay upon the water. Something brushed her side. Jah-lila turned. Painted Aiony stood nearby, Dhattar peering into the chamber. He came to join them.

“What saw you, Granddam?” Aiony asked her. Dha echoed her. “What did you see?”

“Your father, little ones,” she answered.

“He was well?” asked Dhattar.

Jah-lila nodded. “Aye.”

The filly spoke. “We’ve not seen him since he left the Plain.”

“He’s very far now,” the white foal added.

Jah-lila said nothing, lost in thought.

Aiony asked her, “Is our father in the Salt Waste still?”

The red mare shook her head.

Dha’s voice was hopeful. “When will we see him?”

Their granddam bent to nuzzle first him, then his sister. “You know well enough,” she answered. “Hist now, or your dam will come looking.”

She herded them away from the spring, into the outer chamber. Her daughter, Tek, was just coming in the entryway. “There you are,” the pied mare exclaimed. “I sought you everywhere. Off, now. Outside. Your granddam has work, and Lell wants to show you the rueberries she found.”

She chivvied each gently and scooted them toward the grotto’s egress. Beyond it, the daylight shone. Whickering and giggling, they went. The red mare watched them disappear, heard Lell’s whistle of greeting, the twins’ answering calls. Tek turned to her dam.

“You found him,” she said, voice low, urgent with certainty. Jah-lila nodded. The pied mare closed her eyes, gave an out-breath of relief.

“At last,” she murmured. “Safe?”

“Aye.”

Her daughter studied her by flickering lichenlight. “Korr,” she said softly. “You found him as well.”

Again the red mare nodded. She heard the wariness in her offspring’s voice, the loathing and dread.

“So Jan has found his sire,” she breathed.

“Found and lost him,” Jah-lila replied, heart heavy as stone. The lichenlight was far too bright.

Tek stepped directly into her path. “And?”

“And Korr has spoken.”

“Then Korr’s madness is healed?” The pied mare’s words held sudden hope.

“His madness is over,” the red mare replied wearily.

“Then Jan will be returning—” Tek cried, full of gladness now. Jah-lila cut her off.

“Nay. Not at once.”

Tek stared at her, outraged. “Why not?” she demanded. “What can Korr do to keep him from us still?”

The red mare drew a great breath, spent to the bone. She felt fragile as a bird’s egg.

“Daughter,” she said. “Jan will return to you; I have promised. In time. I beg you now, let it rest. Farseeing drains me. Let us go outside.”

Her daughter pressed against her, instantly contrite. “Forgive my impatience,” she murmured. “I miss him so.”

The red mare leaned into her daughter’s warmth, then nipped her gently and nosed her out the grotto’s egress ahead of her. Jah-lila waited until her daughter’s shadow passed, muffled hooffalls ringing out on the slope below, heading down. The light of midday stabbed the red mare’s eyes as she rounded the bend to stand in the cave’s entryway. Lell and the twins’ whistles and whickering drifting from far up slope as Lell shouted, “This way!” and the twins insisted, “Hey up!”

Much nearer, on the hillside below, Jah-lila spotted her daughter trotting toward Ryhenna and Dagg. The coppery mare was, like the red mare herself, a runaway from the city of two-footed firekeepers. With Jan’s help, she had come to live within the Vale. Drinking of the moon’s sacred pool in the Hallow Hills, as the red mare once had done, had given Ryhenna her spiral horn. The pied warrior Dagg, Jan’s shoulder-friend, had pledged with her little over two years gone, and their tiny foal, Culu, suckled at her flank.

Idly, Jah-lila watched her daughter converge on the trio downslope as she blinked the sunlight from her eyes. Another unicorn stood by, coat palest cream in the noonday sun, her mane like burning poppies. Jah-lila turned and the chestnut eyes of Ses, Korr’s mate and the prince’s dam, found her own black-green ones. She whispered, “Jan?”

The red mare murmured, “Alive.”

A long pause. Very long. “And Korr?”

Jah-lila gazed at her. “A serpent.”

The pale mare started. Her eyes winced shut, her whole frame rigid. She stood racked with a recurrent trembling that might have been suppressed sobs. When she spoke, the red mare scarcely heard. “I feared it.”

Silence. The sun beat down.

“I should have told him,” Ses gasped suddenly, her voice strangled. “He never knew I knew. So many times I longed to tell Korr all. If I had…”

Jah-lila cut her off quickly, firmly. “No word of yours, however well meant, could have spared him.”

The pale mare choked back tears. “I am to blame…,” she started.

Jah-lila touched her withers. “Never! Do not shoulder a burden that is Korr’s alone. It has lain within his power all these years to speak out, free himself—but always he refused, afraid to confront his past. Till now, at the very end, too late.”

At last, the pale mare spoke: “He confided to Jan? Told him of Tek?”

Jah-lila nodded. “Everything. All that he knew.”

The pale mare gathered herself, fighting for breath.

“Do not fear,” the red mare bade her, “for he will weather it.”

Ses set her teeth. “Should we tell the others?”

“Not until your son returns.”

The prince’s dam opened her eyes. “Should we announce Korr’s death?”

Again, the red wych shook her head. “The elders would only declare Jan king. Let us wait. When he returns, he will bring that news with all the rest.”