Meanwhile, the prince’s mate had learned, Jan had followed his sire onto the Plain. Again, Tek tasted despair. That limitless expanse gave Jan everywhere to search, Korr anywhere to hide. The herd’s lack of ties with the Plain’s few, scattered wanderers troubled her as well. For centuries her own folk had hated and feared these wild unicorns, believing them outcasts and rebels from the Vale. Tek knew differently, yet still felt the greatest unease at Jan’s venturing among such unknown folk. Outside the Ring of Law, who knew what customs they might keep? That the Plain was also home to great, banded pards and savage grasscats filled her with dread.

Despite all dangers, Tek had found no dearth of volunteers to scout the Plain. The first to set out had brought back nothing. The Mare’s Back was simply too vast for outlanders to track either friend or foe. She instructed her next scouts to seek out Plainsdwellers and ask their aid. But, as she had feared, the ones most of her own folk still stubbornly called “Renegades” shied clear of dwellers of the Vale—and again her scouts returned thwarted.

Her resolve only strengthened, she had called on Jan’s and her own shoulder-companion Dagg to lead the next search, and this expedition had at last borne fruit. Dagg had encountered Plainsdwellers, and though he clearly lost no love for ones he considered Ringbreakers or descendants of such, he had approached politely as many times as needed to persuade them. In the end, he had learned what he had come to learn: that Korr had rampaged across the Plain. The Free People called him the dark destroyer.

Jan, too, apparently because of his similar coloring, had at first been mistaken for Korr and been shunned. At length, he had managed to gain the trust of a party of Renegades even as Dagg and his fellows now had done, and convinced them that he sought to contain the mad stallion, not repeat his crimes. Dagg had learned of the long chase Korr had led his friend, how Jan had sought and received aid of a seer or singer known as Alma’s Eyes. But when Dagg had eventually caught up with this one, the young prince had already left him, vanished away into the Salt Waste on the trail of the king.

“It was odd,” Dagg had said. “When first I saw him in profile, by moonlight, my heart lifted with joy. I thought he was Jan. They have the same legs and frame, the same muzzle and mane. Their voices, even some of their gestures, echo in the most uncanny way.”

The dappled warrior had snorted then.

“Of course, by day, none could mistake the two. The seer is an evening blue speckled with stars. His manner of speech is that of the Plain. He is older than Jan, not quite Korr’s age, and spent ten days in Jan’s company.”

Again the dappled warrior had snorted, remembering.

“After their parting, so I gather, this Alma’s Eyes went among his people singing the history of Jan and the Vale. Jan, it seems, recounted a number of our lays to him, which allayed much of the Plainsdwellers’ mistrust. Korr’s acts clearly had stirred much ill feeling against our folk.”

Dagg shrugged, sidled, seeming almost chagrined.

“I believe the links Jan forged during his sojourn upon the Plain will serve us well come spring. Jan, so it seems, made a fair enough singer to catch the ear of this Alma’s Eyes, who recounts nothing like our own formal singers of the Vale—and yet, a kind of wild beauty haunts his song. His folk admire him, and through him, Jan.”

Tek laughed quietly to herself, thinking of her mate. He had always revered her singer’s gift, declaring himself reft of any skill. Yet she had always suspected he, too, harbored the bent. How he loved the old lays, remembered them flawlessly, remarking even the slightest variation from one recitation to the next. He spoke with ease before even the greatest throng. What if until now, his musical nature had manifested solely through fiercely expressive dancing? She had always known him to be as much a singer as he was a warrior, a peacemaker, a dancer, and a prince.

Someone moved beside her on the slope before the cave. She started, remembering belatedly that she shared this stony spot with Dagg. The dappled warrior moved closer to her. She did not turn her head, the image of his robust frame, pale eyes, grey mane, and yellow coat firmly imprinted on her mind. The grey spots flocking his withers and hindquarters thickened into stockings on all four legs. He rubbed shoulders with her companionably. She leaned, shouldering him in turn. Quietly, unselfconsciously, Dagg voiced her greatest fear:

“What if he does not return? What if Jan does not appear by spring? What then?”

She shuddered, sighed. “We must honor our pact with the gryphons regardless. We must leave the Vale and press on to the Hallow Hills.”

“The herd will follow you, and gladly”, Dagg told her.

Tek shrugged, smiled. “In Jan’s name.”

Here Dagg surprised her. He shook his head. “For your own sake. You are a great warrior. Our folk would charge with you into the wyverns’ jaws for that alone.”

She felt a little thrill of gratitude, of pride, tried not to show it. “Now that Jan’s blood makes us all proof against their stings, such a charge should prove easier.”

Dagg chuckled softly. “I doubt you delude yourself thinking our task will be accomplished with ease.”

“First we must see the herd safe through winter—Alma grant us another mild one, I pray, for the sake of our fillies and foals.” Tek frowned, thinking. “Kindling marks the opening of winter, and Quenching its end.”

She gazed down at the valley floor where, in the lengthening shadows of evening, beneath a blue, brilliant sky, her twin offspring ramped whinnying along with Lell and with Dagg’s firstborn, Culu. Barely a year and a half old, the suckling foal sported forequarters of intense, true yellow shading to brilliant salmon at the rump, exactly the hue of the sundog for which he was named. The pan sisters Sismoomnat and Pitipak chased the four colts amid much whistling and squealing. Ringing their swirl, Jah-lila, Ses, and Dagg’s mate, Ryhenna, stood, shooing stray tag-players back into bounds.

Tek eyed the coppery mare, who, like her own dam, had been born outside the Vale to a hornless race, but who, upon joining the herd, had drunk of the sacred waters of the moon’s mere deep within the Hallow Hills and been transformed into a unicorn. Ryhenna’s coppery coat exactly matched the hue of her standing mane. Her tail fell full and silky. Like Jah-lila, she was beardless, lacking tassels to the tips of her small, neat ears and feathery fringe to her fetlocks. Instead of being cloven, her hooves were solid rounds.

Yet despite such differences, Ryhenna had been welcomed into the Vale even as Jah-lila now found welcome, hailed as Jan’s savior for aiding his escape from her own captors, the two-footed firekeepers. Ryhenna’s transformation had been celebrated in myth and lay, her copper-colored horn admired, and with her mate’s aid, she had set about learning the ways of a warrior with a will. Jan had declared her mistress of fire, and she presided over Kindling and Quenching, the herd’s newly created ceremonies at winter’s beginning and end, striking the sparks from which all the torches of winter would burn.

“By winter’s end, before we march,” Tek said to Dagg, “we must all harden our heels and horns that we may smite the wyrms’ bony breastplates without shattering our weapons.”

Dagg nodded. “Come spring, it will be time.”

The game below had broken up. Tek watched the figures moving up the hill toward her, colts and fillies frisking still, the mares moving more leisurely. Lell pranced alongside Sismoomnat, the elder of the two pan sisters. The pied mare caught a snatch of their conversation as they ambled by, Lell tossing the milk mane from her eyes, Sismoomnat resting one forelimb on the dark amber filly’s withers with a trace of a smile. Tek, too, smiled. Lell reminded her more than a little of Jan as a colt: hot-headed and passionate, fiercely intelligent but ruled by her heart.