“Korr’s always favored you highly. Truth, many’s the time he’s treated you better even than his own son!“

The healer chafed her gently, reassuringly. “The king will relent.”

But Tek shook her head, heaved a great sigh, painful against the crushing tightness of her breast. “Nay. Never. I should have stayed on the beach with Jan. I wish I had died instead of him.”

Days blended one into another, sometimes stormy, sometimes fair, but always cold. Fever consumed the dark unicorn. Often, he lay shuddering among the trees, too weak to rise. The mysterious voice spoke clearest to him then, urging him westward along the strand. It almost seemed that he himself were made of fire. More than once he came to awareness amid surroundings he did not recognize, certain that hours or days had passed of which he had no memory. Time wandered by in a dream.

Evening fell. Sun sank in a fiery blaze beyond the western horizon, the sky to the east grown dark as bilberries. Stars burned overhead, thinly veiled by fog. The full moon peering above the waves shone ghostly bright. Frowning, the dark unicorn stumbled to a halt. An amber glow flickered in the distance before him. As he left the strand and headed toward the dusky glimmer across the dunes, he caught a whiff of acrid, pungent scent. The sound of chanting reached his ears.

“Dai’chon!”

One clear voice sounded above the rest, calling urgently, ecstatic, echoed by a chorus of other, deeper voices.

“Dai’chon!”

It was no tongue the dark unicorn recognized. He halted on the rim of a deep pit in the dunes, as though the hoof of some unaccountably vast being had dug a trough in the sand with a single sweep. Perhaps two or three dozen creatures hunched in a circle at the bottom of the pit. Smaller than unicorns, they were shaped like pans, with round heads and flat faces, their upper limbs not fashioned for the bearing of weight.

Their smooth, nearly hairless bodies were swathed in something that was neither plumage nor pelts. The dark unicorn’s nostrils flared. It smelled of seedsilk. He stared, fascinated by these two-footed creatures’ false skins. All of them knelt around a fire, its bright, reddish flames dancing over blackened driftwood. Grey tendrils of smoke curled upward through the misty air. The dark unicorn shivered.

“Dai’chon! Dai’chon!”

Chanting, the two-foots faced a stone embedded in the deepest part of the pit. The sand there was scorched, fused into glass. Deeply pocked and charred, the stone resembled a small, dark moon. The black unicorn recognized readily enough what it must be: a sky cinder. Such heavenly gifts were formed of a substance both harder and heavier than true stone, a substance that resounded with a clang when struck or stamped upon.

Before the sky cinder, a tiny figure stood, pale crescent marking the breast of its dark falseskin. Grasped in one black forelimb rose a long, sharp stake. From the other hung a vine, its end frayed into a flail. The figure’s limbs and torso resembled a two-foot’s, but its neck was thicker, longer, a brushlike mane cresting the ridge. The muzzle of its face was long and slim, like a hornless unicorn’s, with white teeth bared and red-flecked nostrils savagely flared.

Smoke rose from those nostrils. Astonished, the dark unicorn snorted, his own breath congealing in the cold, damp air. Strangely rigid, the little figure never moved. It smelled of fire and skystuff, not living flesh. Some object created by the two-foots? It must be hollow, he realized, its belly filled with burning spice.

Before it, the foremost of the two-foots rose and bowed. Green falseskins draped her. A crescent of silvery skystuff glinted upon her breast. The four kneeling nearest her were also females, the dark unicorn perceived by their scent, the remainder all hairy-faced males. Puzzled, the young stallion frowned. Why so many males, so few females? And where were their elders, their young? The eldest male, though grizzled, did not look much past the middle of his age.

“Dai’chon!” the green-clad female chanted, and the other twofoots echoed her, “Dai’chon!”

Forelimbs upraised, she beckoned her four companions, who rose. One by one, the males approached them, bearing seedpods and spicewood, dried foliage, and much else the dark unicorn could not identify. These the females laid carefully, as though in offering, at the feet of the little figure smoking before the sky cinder. What could the purpose of such a strange object be? the dark unicorn wondered.

The eldest of the males stepped forward with a great bunch of ripe, fragrant rueberries. The dark unicorn’s belly clenched at the sight and scent of food. He leaned after it longingly. Reaching to receive the gift, the moon-breasted female glanced up. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she gasped. The dark unicorn froze. Drawn by the delicious heat of the two-foots’ camp, he realized with a start, he had emerged unawares from the mist and shadows into the light of the fire.

The other females lifted their eyes. The males forming the circle before them turned. Abruptly, their chanting ceased. For five wild heartbeats, two-foots and unicorn stared at one another. Then the male crouching nearest the dark unicorn sprang up and bolted with a cry. Screaming, the leader’s four companions dropped their offerings and fled. With shouts of fear, the remaining males scrambled after them, dashed desperately up the steep sides of the sandpit and vanished into the fog.

The dark unicorn stood dumbstruck, dismayed. The camp below lay in disarray. Only the green-clad female remained, transfixed. The young stallion shifted nervously, nearly staggering from hunger and fatigue. Tossing the forelock back from his eyes, he switched his long, slim tail once against his flank, uncertain what best to do or say. Below him, the other’s gaze darted from his mooncrested brow to his steaming breath to his fly-whisk tail. Catching the firelight, the dark skewer of his horn glinted.

Behind her, the black figurine with its hornless unicorn’s head stood wreathed in smoke, its chest emblazoned with a silver crescent, the hornlike skewer clasped in one forepaw, the frayed vine dangling from the other. The two-foot leader’s words came in a rush.

“Dai’chon,” she whispered, crumpling to the ground. “Dai’chon!”

She pressed her forehead to the sand. Confused, the dark unicorn gazed at her. Had she collapsed from fear? Unsteadily, he descended the pit’s sandy, glassy slope and nosed her gently. The black hair on her head smelled clean and very fine, like a new colt’s mane. Trembling, she raised her head. Carefully, he tried to repeat her words.

“Taichan,” he managed, but his mouth found the strangely inflected syllables almost impossible to frame. He tried again: “Daijan.”

“Tai-shan?” the other said suddenly.

She touched the moon image upon her breast and gazed at the pale crescent underscoring the horn on his brow.

“Tai-zhan,” he tried, finding that a bit easier. “Tai-shan.”

The creature before him listened, rapt. The dark unicorn snorted, not pleased with his awkwardness. The two-foot language was full of odd chirps and grunts.

“Forgive me,” he told her, reverting to his own tongue. “I mean you no harm.“

The crackling blaze of the fire drew him. He stepped nearer, trembling with cold. The two-foot made no move to halt him, only gazed at him as though spellbound. Dried fruit, fragrant seed grass, and other offerings lay strewn about the sand. Hungrily, the dark unicorn eyed the tempting stuff.

“May I share your forage?” he asked. “I’ve found little but bitter bark and shoreoats for…for many days.”

His thoughts remained tangled, his memory confused. He could recall nothing from before his emergence from the sea. Still kneeling before him, the other made no reply. Unable to resist, the dark unicorn bent his head to a branch of thornfruits at his feet. Tough and leathery, they nonetheless smacked more succulent to him than the tenderest spring grass. He found himself tearing into the prickly rounds, unable to stop. He scarcely noticed when the green-clad two-foot softly rose and drew nearer.