But she said nothing. Only wind murmured. She vanished into the dark of the trees. Calydor discerned no trace. As though a haunt, she had turned once more to mist. The Plain lay utterly silent save for the faintest breath breeze. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a pard cough. Above him, the moon, silvery gibbous, blazed like the greatest of Alma’s eyes among the summer stars.

Gazing into the depths before him, Jan realized it was not near-summer sky he saw, but the darkness of the waters on the dragon queen’s brow. Glimmers there were not stars but gleams reflected from the lake of fire. All view of future events faded. He knew himself to be in the den of Wyzásukitán. How long—an hour, an evening? He had no sense of time. Still he felt neither hunger nor fatigue, thirst nor intensity of heat. He had not been with the dragon long, surely. No more than a few hours at most.

The clear fluid of the pool before him trembled, sudden ripples traversing its surface, shaking apart the stars. Dragon’s breath swirled about him like fog as Wyzásukitán sighed, lifting her head. The dark unicorn fell back a pace as the massive, reptilian queen now gazed down upon him from a great height. The long muscles beneath her taut, jeweled skin flexed. Her wings and limbs and tail arched, rid themselves of stiffness. Again she sighed, and her white breath shot out like jets of cloud.

“What troubles you, prince of unicorns? I sense your disquiet.” Jan gazed up at her steadily, refusing to let her vastness overwhelm him.

“I am grateful for this foreseeing which you have granted, great queen,” he answered, “but uncertainty chivvies me. Is what I see before me only that which can be—or that which will be, which must be?”

“I grant nothing,” Wyzásukitán murmured in her measured, guarded way. She sounded quietly amused. “You behold only what you yourself are capable of beholding.”

Abruptly, she fell silent. Jan waited a long moment. When she did not continue, he made bold to say, “You have not answered my question, great queen.”

The red dragon betrayed not the slightest affront. She seemed only interested, perhaps approving. “You must answer it yourself, dark prince. What is it you see?”

The dark unicorn hesitated. “What I see has the feel of truth…” The words trailed off. The dragon waited. “Yet if what I see has not yet come to pass, then it can be neither true nor false.”

Wyzásukitán’s mouth quirked, suppressing a smile.

“Oh?” she asked, so softly he almost did not hear. “Is it the future that you see?”

“Aye,” he answered tentatively, then with conviction. “Aye. It is the future—no mere dream.”

“Ah,” the red dragon queen sighed. The steam of her breath rose toward the ceiling in roiling columns as she drew the long syllable out. “What troubles you, then?”

Jan felt a sudden crick of frustration. Was she toying with him? Suddenly he wondered, then shook himself. Nay, truth, he was sure she was not. He suspected her of being deliberately obtuse, while at the same time certain there was no malice in her. She was not questioning him merely to amuse herself, though he sensed his answers somehow amused her. Quashing a sudden urge to reply in kind, he drew breath and tried again.

“I wish to know if what I see is possibility or certainty. Do I see but one of many paths the future may take, or do I see the surety of what will without question come to pass?”

The dragon’s jewel-encrusted browridge lifted. Her nostrils flared. “Consider. If what you saw were mere possibility, why should that trouble you?”

Jan thought a moment before replying. “If mere possibility, why bother to observe it?”

Wyzásukitán’s great shoulder shrugged ever so slightly. “To spy a goal toward which to strive—or a warning of perils to avoid?”

The dark unicorn frowned. “Perhaps.”

“Now consider this,” the red queen continued: “if what you saw were indeed predestined, unalterable?”

Jan shifted uneasily. “Then I am most troubled.”

She watched him. “Why?”

“Because I do not see myself in these scenes-to-come. Where shall I be? Am I not my people’s Firebringer? Must I not journey among them to the Hallow Hills and lead their preparations to battle the white wyrms?”

“Must you?” the dragon replied. “Is that indeed foreordained? Are you privy to the last step of every dance set in motion by Her of the Thousand Jeweled Eyes?”

Her look grew suddenly less detached. Inquisitive. Penetrating, even. Jan felt his discomfiture grow. “Nay,” he answered. “Alma reveals little of her plans. What I learn I invariably glean in snatches, glimpses.”

“Yet always she has guided you?”

He nodded. “Even when I myself remained unaware.”

“Then what uneases you?”

Jan frowned, trying hard to frame the words. “I sense somehow, gazing into your brow, that time slips away. That I should hasten back to my folk before their hour of need.”

“You believe that the hour does not yet betide,” answered Wyzásukitán. Doubtfully, Jan considered. Nay, of course not. Why caval so? None of what he had foreseen had yet come to pass. All lay in the offing. Ample time remained to rejoin the herd. Ample time. Did it not? The dragon queen shrugged. “Perhaps you do not see yourself among your folk because you do not wish to be among them.”

The dark unicorn gazed up at her, baffled. The dragon gazed down.

“Might your absence have less to do with inability to rejoin them than with your refusal to do so?”

“Refusal?” Jan exclaimed, astonished. Outrage pricked at him. “Refusal to rejoin my folk—to accept the destiny toward which I have striven all my life?”

Wyzásukitán evidenced no surprise. Gently, she said, “Another thing troubles you, Firebrand. A duty unbearable holds you back from your folk.”

Jan stared at her, her great gleaming form vast and beautiful above him, the light of the lake of fire winking and glancing off her jeweled skin like a thousand summer stars. He felt his unease collapse into terror.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered. She looked at him. “Indeed?” she asked. “You do.”

“Nay, I…,” he started.

“Say me no nays,” she answered curtly. “It is your mate, is it not? Tek, the rose-and-black mare who leads your herd. You love her. You long for her. Yet you fear reunion. Admit why that should be, Aljan of the Dark Moon. Tell me why you refuse to rejoin your mate.”

Jan’s head whirled. The cavern seemed to tilt. He felt himself falling helplessly through infinite space.

“It is not…not Tek,” he managed, lock-kneed, swaying. The careening chamber steadied, stilled. He breathed deep. “Not Tek I fear, but what I must do when next we meet. What I must tell her…”

The dragon inclined her head. “That is?”

Words choked him. “That she is Korr’s heir before me, my own sister by half, sired by my sire, the king’s secret firstborn daughter, queen of the unicorns.”

He scarcely believed he had gotten it all out. He stood panting, unable to look at Wyzásukitán. He stared off across the huge chamber toward the lake of fire. It rippled, shimmered, not silent, but making low roarings from time to time, its thick, molten flux moving at crosscurrents. Hissing sounded, fiery vapors venting, and the thick fizzing of spattered drops. Blaze and shadows played against the chamber’s walls. He felt his whole being in a state of tumult like the lake.

“Trust what you feel,” the firedrake told him. “What rises in you at this news?”

Anguish. Fury. Nausea. He could admit to none of them. “I don’t know.”

Above him, Wyzásukitán turned her head to one side and eyed him askance. “Do you mean to renounce your kingship to Tek? To renounce her as your mate?”