Tek had always known fall as a time of feasting in the Vale: a season for fattening on sweet berries, ripening grain, tallowy seeds and nuts. This year, however, the healer’s daughter felt no joy. The air’s pervasive chill cut her to the bone. Much vegetation had been nipped by early frost, and storms blew in every other day, roaring across the Pan Woods to rot what little provender remained and force the unicorns to spend full as much time huddling underhill as they did foraging for food.

The pied mare shivered, watching the swirl of grey clouds overhead. All the herd seemed to share her gloom. Somehow, many muttered, the children-of-the-moon had displeased Alma. Now the Mother-of-all was making her displeasure known. Tek snorted at so much witless talk. Yet as regent, Korr did nothing. Still wrapped in grief, the king barely uttered a word even to Ses. Jan’s young sister Lell, the new princess, was a mere nursling: many seasons must pass before she might lead the herd in anything but name.

The pied mare sighed, keenly aware of the loss of her mate. Jan would never have tolerated his people’s superstitious champing. Instead, he would have set them all to gleaning every scrap of available forage before first snow. Angrily, Tek shook her head. Her breath steamed like a firedrake’s in the wet, chilly air. Another storm approached.

Korr’s silence and Lell’s youth left the late king’s widow, Sa, as the sole voice of authority among the unicorns. Tirelessly, the grey mare ventured abroad, recounting what had been done in seasons past when winter came early and hard, what foodstuff helped best to deepen the pelt, thicken the blood, and form a rich layer of fat. She urged her fellows to be out and about early each morn, despite the cold, to forage all they might on whatever they might, and spent long hours combing the hillsides of the Vale for browse.

Standing in the entry to the grey mare’s cave, Tek cavaled, lifting and setting down her heels in the same spot to get the stiffness out of her legs. It was such a foraging expedition that the late king’s widow headed now, reconnoitering the Vale’s far slopes with a band of young warriors not half her age, searching for berry thickets and honey trees. The healer’s daughter hoped to see them safely back before the storm broke.

Hoofbeats above drew her half out of the grotto, craning upward, expecting Sa—but it was Dagg. The dappled half-grown slid down the last of the steep slope and crowded past into the dim grotto’s shelter. Dagg shivered, shouldering against her and stamping for warmth.

“So,” she asked, “how was graze on the high south slopes?” She knew that Dagg had, at the grey mare’s urging, set out early that morning to scout that particular ridge. She herself had roved the lower south slopes with a third band the afternoon before.

“Lean,” Dagg answered dejectedly. “We found little but bramble.”

The pied mare murmured in sympathy. Dagg twitched, lashing his tail.

“We’ve got to find more forage!” he burst out. “We’ve enough to feed the herd for now, just barely. But none among us is putting on any flesh—none, that is, but you.”

He glanced at her with open envy. The healer’s daughter shifted, unsettled by his gaze. Her belly had indeed begun to swell ever so slightly—but it was not fat, as would surely grow plain to see as soon as the weather grew colder, forage scarcer, and her ribs began to show. She wondered anxiously if it could be gut worms or colic—but she did not feel ill. And though none of what slender fodder she found seemed to be going to fat, still her girth, day by day, infinitesimally increased.

She had not wanted to trouble her father, Teki, as yet. The usual round of minor complaints among the herd consumed his time: bites and scrapes, strained tendons, thorns. Soon enough, she speculated with a shudder, more major ills would claim his attention, brought on by cold and lack of feed. Moreover, the healer had his teeth full simply gathering the many herbs required for the coming winter, most of which were proving even scarcer than the forage this year. Some days, she knew, he searched from daybreak to dusk, and still returned with only a few poor sprigs.

Shouldering against Dagg, the pied mare sighed. She wished her mother, Jah-lila, were here to advise her. The Red Mare was a loner, a midwife and magicker who lived apart from the herd. Some called her the child of renegades, yet she herself was no renegade—despite Korr’s wild charge—for since coming among the herd before Tek’s birth, Jah-lila had never been banished. Rather, the Red Mare now lived in the southeastern hills beyond the Vales by her own unfathomable choice.

Calling Teki her mate, she had left her weanling daughter in his care years ago, that Tek might be raised within the Vale. At long intervals, Jah-lila still ghosted through, never announced, as often as not to consult with the pied healer but briefly and be gone within the hour. Sometimes the young Tek had not even glimpsed her, merely caught scent of her dam in Teki’s grotto upon returning home at day’s end. The pied mare shook herself. No use wishing.

“It’s only that I don’t run myself ragged, as you do,” she told Dagg, dragging her mind back with an effort to the dappled warrior beside her.

Her words were true enough. She could not seem to run as nimbly as she had before: her burgeoning belly got in the way. Again Tek shook herself—and dismissed her own mysterious condition with a shrug.

“With luck, Sa and her band will have found something in the Pan Woods,” she added, hoping. She worried less for herself and Dagg than for the herd’s fillies and foals. It was they who would suffer heaviest from the coming winter’s lack. And after the young, it would be the elder ones, the mares and stallions Sa’s age.

Dagg nodded vigorously, facing about now in the limestone grotto, the cave the old king’s mare had long inhabited with her mate. Since the death of Korr’s father, the grey mare had had no one to help her warm the empty space until now. Since returning from the Sea, the healer’s daughter had sheltered with Sa. During Tek’s absence, Teki had accepted a number of acolytes: young fillies and foals not yet initiated. The pied stallion was busily teaching them his craft—and though she felt more than welcome, the prince’s mate sensed ruefully that lodging in her sire’s now-crowded grotto would only have put her under heel.

“When do you expect Sa to return?” Dagg asked her, coming to stand beside her at the cave’s narrow entryway.

A flutter of white feathers drifted from the sky. The pied mare snorted, her breath curling and smoking like cloud. “Soon, I hope.”

“First snowfall,” Dagg muttered. “Birds’ down.”

More lacy flakes gusted past, whirling and dancing. Tek watched the rapidly thickening flurries with dread, thinking of the cover it would provide, concealing what remained of the Vale’s dwindling supply of foodstuffs, making the unicorns’ foraging even harder than before. Would Korr respond? she wondered. Would the advent of winter at last bestir the king?

Hoofbeats roused her, a dozen sets, coming not from the hillside above this time, but from across the flat below. Dagg whickered, and Tek peered ahead through the ashen turbulence. Dying day grew greyer by the moment. In another few heartbeats, she spotted Sa, the rest of the band scattering, each to his or her respective grotto. The grey mare trotting up the brief, steep slope toward Tek and Dagg whinnied in greeting. Healer’s daughter and dappled warrior fell back from the cave’s entrance to allow her passage. Once within, the grey mare stamped, shaking the snow from her back and mane.

“What news, kingmother?” Dagg asked. “Did you discover forage?”

The grey mare chuckled.

“Did we indeed! A thicket of tuckfruit ripe as you please—neither birds nor pans have found it yet. We ate till I thought we would burst! Tomorrow I’ll lead the rest of you to it.”