A line of unicorns appeared around the bend. They were all smallish, stocky, with shag thick as the dead of winter. Their beards were bristling, their fetlocks thickly feathered. Their manes stood up an inch or two before flouncing to one side. Perhaps half a dozen filed onto the black, water-washed ledge, all darkish: charcoals, deep blues, an earthen red. Most were roans, Jan noticed, with a dapple, two brindles.

As they caught sight of him, their words abruptly ceased. Only the lead unicorn had chanted, the others sounding a harmonious drone. He was a young stallion, his coat berry-colored, almost maroon, and frosted with paler hairs. He and his little band stared up at Jan, balanced above them on his slender jut of rock.

“Hail,” their leader called up, eyeing him curiously. “Who be you? Be you come for the Congeries?”

The dark prince stared in turn. The last creatures he had expected to encounter so far from home were unicorns.

“Jan,” he managed, voice a gluey mumble. Bowing his head made the world reel. “My people call me—”

The words caught in his throat—for he realized that no matter how the herd might hail him, he was not their prince. By rights, Tek should be princess, she who was Korr’s secret, firstborn child, his own beloved mate and the mother of his young. Cold sickness surged in Jan.

“Care!” He heard the other’s cry only faintly. “Come down!” As through haze, he saw the maroon start nearer. “Why stand you on the brink?”

The dark unicorn felt his balance right, grasped only then how close to falling he had just come. Unsteadily he picked his way down the rocky slant to the broad, drenched ledge. The young maroon gazed frankly at his flowing mane, lightly fringed heels, at his midnight coat and silky beard. Behind, the others murmured and stared. Jan realized only then that the frayed remnants of Illishar’s feather still hung amid his hair.

“I be Oro,” his hosts’ leader was telling him, bowing in turn, “come for the Congeries. But what manner of unicorn be you, with a falling mane and pelt so dark and fine? What people be these of whom you speak? Whence hail you?”

“I—” Again, Jan faltered. Never before had he hesitated to declare himself Korrson, born of the Vale. Now such an admission appalled him. “Storm drove me across the Salt Waste,” he stammered, “from the Plain…”

Not a lie exactly. His head throbbed. The world receded. His knees felt dangerously weak.

“The Plain?” Oro’s voice vibrated with sudden urgency. “You hail not of here but from beyond?”

The others buzzed excitedly. Jan could not discern their words

above the plash of running water.

“What is this place?” he gasped, locking his legs to keep from falling. “Where have I come?”

Oro cocked his head. “Dragonsholm—or, as those in the time of Halla called it, the Smoking Hills.”

Jan raised his head, turned to gaze at the small, shaggy unicorns before him.

“What do you know of Halla,” he panted, “ancestral princess of my folk?”

He saw the maroon unicorn’s eyes widen.

“The Hallows!” those behind Oro exclaimed. “An he claim ancient Halla, then he hail of the Hallow Hills.”

Jan shook his head, careful not to unbalance himself. “Nay, though I have pilgrimmed there. I am from the Vale,” he said slowly, “many leagues to the south. There my people settled after Halla’s defeat.”

Again the hubbub, mixed with cries of consternation. “Defeat? Halla defeated—slain?”

“Not slain,” he explained, “but forced to flee.” His forelock had fallen into his eyes. He tossed it back. “Within the year, my folk intend…”

The sudden hush that fell was deafening. Most of the party started and drew back, some nearly touching the clear curtain of water behind. Only Oro held his ground, staring up wide-eyed at the dark unicorn’s brow. Jan saw others’ anxious glances, heard excited whispers :

“Come outlander with tidings, and/His name shall be…”

“Firebringer,” Jan murmured, “so my folk call me.”

Still staring, Oro drew near. He quoted softly, “More swart than midnight swept of stars,/The moon athwart his brow be scars…”

He seemed to come to himself, bowed deeply before Jan. His voice, at first uncertain, gained in strength.

“Be most welcome among us, swart Firebrand, outland born, moon-browed. Come below! Sing at our Congeries, whither we, already overdue, now hasten.”

To the rear of him, his fellows began ducking hurriedly into the flat darkness behind the shallow waterfall. Jan blinked, stared, unable at first to comprehend what he was seeing. Swiftly, one by one, Oro’s band walked straight into the dark, sheer stone—over which the clear watercurtain streamed rippling—and disappeared. The roan maroon was the last to go, backing away from Jan. His joyous words rang ghostly above the water’s patter.

“All Dragonsholm must hear your news! Four hundred year have we awaited it, and you.”

We ourselves hail of the Hallow Hills,” Oro was saying, “four hundred summers ago.”

He trotted alongside Jan. Moments earlier, as the dark stallion had followed the mountain unicorns from the ledge, he had found himself passing not into solid rockface, but through falling water, which sluiced the dust from his pelt, into the narrow opening of a steeply slanting cavern. Promising rest and sustenance below, Oro and his fellows sprang with careless agility along the dim, rocky path—at times less a tunnel than a shaft. Jan followed as nimbly as he could.

“We be the Scouts of Halla,” the young maroon continued, “descendants of the original four dispatched to gather news of wyrms when that verminous race first squirmed its way with honey-tongued lies into our own far Hallows. One of the four died, and another departed again to bring word to our waiting princess. We do not know if he succeeded, or what befell if indeed he managed to warn her of wyvern treachery in Dragonsholm before their flight to the Hallow Hills. You say the wyrms defeated Halla? That she fled north to some place called the Vale?”

Jan nodded, weariness weighing him. It was nearly all he could manage simply to stay on his feet.

“Each winter at Congeries we sing of Halla’s deeds,” Oro informed him, “and of the tragedy which parted our ancestors from her so long ago. We honor the line of Halla yet and hail the far Hallows our true home.”

Jan looked at the shaggy maroon trotting just ahead, negotiating the treacherous terrain with ease. “Did neither of your two forebears ever depart?”

Oro shook his head.

“What held them here?”

The other snorted. “Wounds,” he answered. “Exhaustion. Then young. Then age.” He sighed. “None of us born after have ever seen the far Hallows.”

“Have your folk never traveled thither since?” A furrow creased the dark unicorn’s brow. “Did none ever seek to find the Hallow Hills?”

“The Saltlands form a daunting barrier,” the young maroon replied. “After our progenitors died, none knew the way. Moreover, the shifting steeps to western south be at times impassable.”

“Only at times?” Jan felt the furrow on his brow deepen. Though till now too few in number to reoccupy the Hallow Hills, forty generations of his own folk had pilgrimmed there. The resignation of Halla’s Scouts to remain so long from their ancestral lands puzzled him. “Then what keeps you here?”

“Our hosts keep us,” his escort replied, clearly misunderstanding his meaning entirely. “They have sheltered us since our first forebears came. They subsist a rare long while. Many who greeted Halla’s original scouts be living still.”

“Hosts?” Jan inquired.

“The red dragons,” the maroon-colored roan answered, “who settle these steeps, which be drenched in swirling clouds of their slumbering breath. By their grace, peaks hereabouts hold stable and still, that we need not fear.”