Jan found his mate, and told her all—in confidence, away from others’ ears. Still ignorant, his kith and folk and shoulder-friends embraced him, full of marvel and delight. He promised to give them the tale of his year’s adventure as soon as the herd could be reunited and cinderfall had ceased. Meanwhile, the gloomy grit sifted down and down, drabbing all hues, making ghostly the world. Most of the slain lay beneath the milkwood cliffs, heaped upon the wyvern shelves where fighting had been fiercest. Those limestone hollows collapsed in a grinding roar of smothering fire at close of the second day, consuming their dead. Other wyrmsmeat Jan and Tek ordered brought to the same spot to be burned. The unicorn dead they carried to the ancient burial cliffs and laid out beneath the sky.

By afternoon of the third day, the ashfall began to thin. As evening neared, the red mare Jah-lila stood upon a rise overlooking the Plain and called in a storm. All night fell the warm, hard rain. Sun rose undimmed on the following morning, the first real dawn since the ending of the world. The Scouts of Halla gazed upon their new homeland, admiring its splendor at the break of day. Then they departed, pledging to return ere summer’s end with their elders and young, whom the red dragons had secreted safe away during the late upheaval in the Smoking Hills. Oro bowed low to both Tek and Jan, then turned and chanted to his band, singing them into single file across the green and rolling Plain.

The Mare’s Back, too, had been washed clean by recent rain, free of the haunt-grey dust which had shrouded it. Calydor also took his leave, along with Tek’s runners, bearing news of the warhost’s victory and summoning those of the herd awaiting at oasis. On the twelfth day after the battle which had marked the close of the Era of Exile and begun the Age of the Firebringer, the herd’s colts and fillies, suckling mares and their foals, ancient elders and the halt of limb entered at last into the Hallow Hills, lush with verdant foliage and summer grass.

Jan and Tek greeted their twins, and Ryhenna and Dagg their tiny son with relief and joy. The Plainsdwellers, to no one’s surprise, evidenced little interest in the herd’s newly won lands. Jan suspected they now regarded the Hallow Hills as both battlesite and gravelands, sacred and terrible, and not to be trespassed lightly. Those who ventured the Hills escorting new arrivals took their leave hastily, almost precipitously. Tek and Jan spoke their thanks and let them go. Calydor had not been among them. His absence puzzled and saddened Jan. But he had long since learned how strange were the ways of the Free People. They came and went capriciously, often as not without farewells.

Jan called the herd together on the fourteenth day, moondark, the time of portents and miracles. On the open meadow below the milkwood cliffs that housed the sacred mere, he sang them the lay of his journey through Pan Woods and across the Mare’s Back in pursuit of Korr. He sang freely, in the manner of the Plain, of his travels with Calydor, his overtaking the mad king. His voice was strong and sure and omitted nothing, not dying Korr’s revelation of Tek’s parentage, not his own lost wandering across the Salt Barrens, not his encounter with Oro in the Smoking Hills, nor his sojourn below ground with the Scouts of Halla, nor his long rumination with Wyzásukitán.

Nothing he told his folk was by that time news to Tek or his closest kith. He had told them all in private, days before, starting with his mate. He had watched her hark to his news with tangled emotions: relief to discover at last her unknown sire, horror to find him to be Korr. And she had answered nothing, neither flying at Jan nor cursing, nor weeping, nor fleeing, nor falling into frozen gloom, nor any of the other wild responses he had dreaded. Instead, she had only stood beside him and nuzzled him, till he had cried out in helpless exasperation,

“And knowing this, what will you do?”

“I will think on it,” she had told him quietly. “Come, love, let us bury our dead.”

So they had done, while the cinders fell, till the rain of the midwife washed clean a world newly born of ashes and dust. Now Jan told the rest of his folk as well. Their reaction was stunned silence. Yet none cried out in condemnation against him or Tek. Any outrage was for Korr, and he was dead. Rather, his people heard Jan to the end. Doing so, he realized, because they loved him for his deeds alone. Prince or Firebringer mattered not.

Finishing his tale, Jan turned to me, Jah-lila, to verify my daughter’s parentage. I did so, affirming that I had indeed loved the black prince of unicorns in his youth, a year before he had taken the pale mare Ses as mate. I had encountered him upon the Plain shortly after my escape from captors far to the south. Not yet then a unicorn, I had known naught of unicorn ways. Korr had pledged himself to me, but later broke the vow, deserting me upon the Plain and returning to his folk, sure I would be unable to follow him.

But follow I did, already in foal, and found him in his Vale. He pretended not to know me, to mistake me for a Renegade. I saw that should I attempt to lay a claim on him, he would declare me outlaw and cast me from the herd. So I called Teki, who sheltered me, my mate. In exchange for my silence, Korr allowed me to remain. I pledged never to reveal my knowledge of him until he himself had spoken. Still the prince’s mistrust and fear begrudged me any peace. I left the Vale, exiling myself. When my daughter was weaned, I brought her from the wilderness and left her in Teki’s care, that she might be reared within the herd and perhaps one day reclaim her birthright.

Jan bowed to me as I concluded, then turned once more to address his folk:

“A year ago, I knew nothing of these things. Until his dying words, I was ignorant of Korr’s deception. When I succeeded him as prince, I did so in good faith, believing myself to be his heir. But I am not. Tek is the late king’s firstborn. It is she who must reign now in his stead. Though I have been your prince, I cannot become your king. I call upon the Council to proclaim Tek queen. Would that you follow her as loyally as you have followed me.”

The herd stood silent, like wights amazed. Plainly few had realized until this moment the import of Jan’s revelation that Tek, not he, was the late king’s heir. Slowly at first, and then more vigorously, murmurs of affirmation rose. They swelled, never quite becoming cheers—for Korr’s treachery and the wrong my daughter had suffered could be naught to cheer—but serving as clear and unmistakable approval. The children-of-the-moon accepted my daughter as ruler in Jan’s stead. The pied mare stepped forward.

“I accept with gratitude your acclamation,” she told them warmly. “Though Korr was my sire and I his eldest-born, I would not impose myself upon you without your assent. You and I have looked to Jan as our leader these last five years. I would not take him from you to advance myself. But if you will have me, then gladly will I serve as queen.”

Her head came up, nostrils flaring, particolored mane thrown back.

“After four hundred years in arms, we find ourselves at last at peace, and sovereignty reverts from warleader to queen. But hark me. I’ll not reign without Jan at my shoulder. Battleprince no more, consider him now harbinger of this new peace that we have won. Let the title he has so ably borne remain. As my first edict, with our Elders’ leave, I proclaim him forever prince of the unicorns.”

This time the cheers were thunderous. Members of the herd threw back their heads, pealed forth wild shouts, struck hooves to earth and drummed up sparks. The din took some little time to subside. That done, Tek bowed her head and stepped back, yielding once more to Jan.

“Know this as well,” her dark prince bade them. “Neither Tek nor I harbored any suspicion of her lineage when we pledged one to another four summers gone. Korr concealed this knowledge from us, and Jah-lila bought her daughter’s safety and place among the herd with a vow of silence to Korr.”