“The Mirror of the Moon,” she whispered, naming the sacred mere about which initiates kept night-long vigils, into which they gazed to glimpse their own futures, and from which they drank in solemn ceremony, becoming warriors of the Ring.

Lell shivered again, parched with a day’s waterless journey, and yet at the same time cold. Slowly, respectfully, she approached the mere. Bending, she drank—not the single, ceremonial sup of the newly initiated, but a great draught. The taste was sweet. The amber filly stared into the crystal waters, searching for some vision such as Dhattar and Aiony beheld each time they glanced into any puddle or stream. But she saw nothing. No fate. No destiny.

Lell skirted the pool’s edge. The clatter of battle grew steadily louder. She reached the far side of the mere. Leaving the moonpool behind, the amber filly hurried deeper into the trees. Presently, she saw grove’s end, open sky beyond turning deeper and deeper gold with the advancing sunset. The milkwood plateau dropped away in an almost vertical cliff. Below lay the wyvern shelves, sloping in broken ledges to the south, toward the Plain. Caves pitted the soft, white stone.

Across this rocky expanse, the battle sprawled. Wyverns and unicorns clashed and charged across the crumbling surface. Lell saw unicorns pursuing wyrms, surrounding them. Hemmed by inward-facing rings of warriors, the captured wyverns reared and snarled, fighting with tooth and tail and claw. Horned warriors dodged and darted, feinted, struck. Others guarded entry to the caves.

Snorts and shouts sounded above the clash: shrill whistles of warriors, screams from the wounded, groans from the dying, curses, triumphant yells, the thump of heels upon the rock. A fine white dust hung above the fray, stirred by the ceaseless scritch of bellies and tromp of hooves. Sky was the color of goldenflower. Black shadow of the moonpool cliff crept slowly across the shelves.

Lell watched, mesmerized. Shaking, she was unaware of fear. She picked out the black-and-rose form of Tek below her, rearing and stabbing at a two-headed wyrm. Far ahead of the pied regent, the amber filly glimpsed the red mare, Jah-lila, and the black-and-white pelt of the healer, Teki. They seemed engaged in cutting off retreat to the south. Far from them, on the other side of the field, Lell saw Dagg’s grey-dappled figure fighting alongside the coppery form of Ryhenna. They made up part of a ring surrounding a pair of wyverns, one of whom lay wounded.

To their flank, separated from them by a great distance, Lell saw her dam, Ses. The cream-colored mare ramped and reared, mane tossing along the curve of her neck as bright as poppies, as flame, despite the late afternoon’s advancing shadow. Her mother’s back was to the cliffs. Lell watched without the slightest qualm of being spotted. What troubled her more was how she was to descend that sheer, near-vertical slope and join the fray.

The gold in the sky was taking on a tinge of fire. Scanning aloft, she did not see Illishar. Fear seized her. Then she found him—on the ground, beak and one claw buried in the throat of a massive wyrm. He was dragging the lifeless form up slope. When he cast the slain thing across an entry, blocking it, the warriors that had been guarding that cave sprang away, freed to other tasks.

The field swarmed with unicorns the amber filly did not recognize: odd roans, all brick and slate, lapis and ruddy sienna. Darting and springing about like deer, they maneuvered the treacherous footing of the wyvern shelves undaunted, fighting with ferocious energy. One among their number, a dark maroon, fought alongside Tek. Lell caught his cry above the din:

“For the queen! For the queen, in Halla’s name!”

Her own people’s shouts were “For Jan, the Allmother’s Firebringer!” and “For pied Tek, regent and prince’s mate!”

Who were these strange little shaggy unicorns? Allies, clearly. They bore down on the foe with a fury her own folk strove gamely to match. The white wyrms they fought twisted and struggled, lashing and sometimes bowling hoofed warriors off their feet with powerful sweeps of their otherwise useless tails. The amber filly, gazing upon the seething turmoil below her, had no idea how to interpret it. Were the unicorns winning? She hoped so.

Yet at the same time, she had the uneasy feeling the battle might still go either way, as easily tipping in the favor of the wyverns as not. Dusk was fast drawing on. What would happen at nightfall? Would the two sides fight on? Would darkness return the advantage to the wyrms? If they managed to slip safe below ground under cover of darkness, the amber filly reasoned, they could easily hide in the earth for as long as they chose. Would Tek dare risk leading a second assault down into the twisting maze that was their dens?

It was their sheer size, more so even than their numbers, Lell realized, which might determine battle’s outcome. The stinging wyrms were easily three and four times the size of the youthful, stingless peaceseekers she and the twins had aided three nights before. These wyverns were old, toughened, loyal to their king. Some had double heads. Largest of all loomed their seven-faced sovereign, massive Lynex, unmistakable, far larger than the bodyguards that ringed him. Furiously, Tek, the dark maroon and others of the stranger-unicorns threw themselves against the wyrmking’s protectors, trying to break through. Already three of the royal guards had fallen.

Lell came to herself with a start. Would her brother, Jan, have stood gaping so, like a witless foal, when there was a task to be done? Sky above was turning from golden to amber. She must kindle fire. No time to lose, for the twins had told her she must bring fire to the battlefield before the setting of the sun. Clumsily, Lell bent to strike the tip of her horn against one flinty heel. A spark leapt up, flared, then fell to earth and died. Nervously, Lell tried again. No spark this time. A third strike. This time two sparks glowed, but each snuffed out in midair before reaching the ground. Tinder, she realized. She must use tinder to catch a spark, nurture it. Frantically, the darkamber filly cast about her for something dry and fine. Dead grass or shredded bark, anything would do. Below her, the battle raged on. Overhead, the sky blazed, the fiery tinge intensifying with every second that passed.

The pale mare tossed back her poppy-colored mane and lunged again at another wyvern, piercing the fibrous breastplate beneath its skin and bringing it down. It writhed and thrashed, already dead. She felt its sting glance heavily against one flank. The wyvern’s colorless blood ran down her horn, soaking her brow, burning. Ses slung her damp forelock out of her eyes and fought on.

The clatter of battle rattled around her. The sun hung low, already hidden by the limestone cliff overlooking the wyvern shelves. The Mirror of the Moon lay on that forested plateau, she knew. She killed another wyvern. Were the wyrms being routed? She did not know, fought the more fiercely to keep from having to think. She had kept her thoughts from many such thorny mires of late—quandaries such as what she would do after this war, when Lell was grown. When she was free.

What would she do if Jan never returned? Nay, he must! Alma had shown her in the vision of her initiation night that she was to bear the long-awaited Firebringer. Surely he would appear. The only mystery was when. But what then? Dared she tell him the truth, as she had sworn to Jah-lila she would do?

She thought once more of that secret she had hidden from him and all the world since before his birth. Why had she done so? Self-preservation, surely. And at the urging of the Red Mare, who had assured her over and over that Jan must be born unto the Ring and reared as prince-to-be. Her own status as prince’s mate had meant little to Ses. She had kept silent to protect her son and to spare her mate, whom she had truly loved—hoping ever against hope that he would one day free himself of the dreadful guilt that had ridden him to his death.