“I fear you are right, Dagg,” she said softly. “Grief seems to have stolen my son’s reason.” All around, the dispersing unicorns drifted, pale haunts through the ashen snowfall. Sa looked at them. “Clearly, we have much to do.”

Dagg glanced around him, frowned. “To do?”

The healer’s daughter snuffed. “We must scout out the rest of the herd, of course,” she answered, “and uncover our allies.”

Dagg shook his head, still lost. “Allies?” he asked, then abruptly blinked, voice dropping to a whisper, truly hushed now for the first time. “Defy Korr, you mean? Disobey the king?”

Tek shrugged. “Who knows?” she murmured. “We cannot know what is possible until we count who and how many his opposition are.”

“Young warrior,” Sa said tartly, “you seem to forget: my son is not the ruler of the unicorns. Lell is our princess now, though not even she can make or unmake the Law. That is the Council’s prerogative.” The old mare smiled grimly. “If enough of the herd so demand, the elders—of whom I am one—might choose another regent.”

The dappled half-grown let out his breath. Clearly, he had never even considered such a thing. Yet that of which the king’s dam had just reminded them was true: it was the Council who—quietly, unobtrusively, year after year—made the Law, declared the succession, and invested warleader or regent with power. If they chose, the elders could rescind that power. Tek’s own heart thumped. The Council could depose the king.

“It’s settled, then,” she said after a moment. “Dagg and I will scout the herd. But—” she added, glancing a warning in his direction and lifting her chin slightly toward the king’s distant Companions.

The dappled warrior nodded. “We must proceed with the greatest caution, aye.”

“That we must,” Sa agreed. “But not you, Tek. You must avoid entanglement in this above all.”

Tek started, stared. “How so?”

The grey mare shook her head. “Dear one,” she said, “did you not mark the way my son looked at you?”

Bitterly, the healer’s daughter laughed. “All the herd marked it.”

Sa nodded. “Aye, he has singled you out to his wolfish ‘Companions’ and all the rest. They and others will be watching you close, and what could be more disastrous for you than to be accused of subversion?”

“No more dangerous for me than for you,” Tek answered hotly.

Dagg snorted beside her. The snow was falling thick as mare’s milk now. Their breath steamed around them like wafts of burning cloud. “Nay, Tek. Far more dangerous for you,” Sa was saying. “I am the king’s dam after all. Do you truly think that even grief-maddened as he is, my own scion would turn me out into the snow? And Dagg was your mate’s shoulder-companion from earliest colthood. I doubt Korr would do him serious harm for anything short of open rebellion.”

Again she shook her head.

“But you, my child. Though once Korr appeared to esteem you, at times even above his own son, his feelings towards you have greatly changed.”

Stubbornly, the pied mare ducked her head. “I’ll not be warned away,” she said. “I’ll not let the pair of you charge boldly into wolves’ teeth without me alongside.”

Dagg shouldered her gently. She leaned against him, grateful for his support. The grey mare sighed ruefully.

“Very well, child, I cannot stop you. But have a care! In your present state, I fear the king’s ire can only increase as the winter months go by.”

Tek shook her head, puzzled yet again by Sa’s words. She sensed the same reaction from Dagg.

Once more she said, “How so?”

The king’s dam snorted, eyeing the young mare’s gently swollen belly.

“My dear, have you not yet realized?” she answered dryly. “You are in foal.”

Tai-shan savored his new life in the fire-warmed enclosure, well pleased with the layer of winter fat at last beginning to sheathe his ribs. Whenever the weather held fair, the green-clad daïcha accompanied the dark unicorn to the open yard that he might frisk, leaping and galloping fiercely. Yet—maddeningly—he caught not so much as a glimpse of others of his kind. Gradually their scent within the enclosure’s vacant compartments grew old.

The chill, dark afternoon was growing late, the daïcha just leading him back toward shelter. The weather had turned much colder than the morn. Ice slicked the squared cobblestones where formerly puddles had lain. His breath steamed like a dragon’s in the bone-dry air. All at once, Tai-shan pricked his ears. Abruptly, he halted. The muffled sound of hooves and far-off whistles reached him.

With an astonished whinny, the dark unicorn wheeled and bolted across the yard toward the sound. He scarcely heard the dismayed exclamations of the daïcha behind him. His own heels rang sharply on the icy stones. The low, calling whickers grew louder as he ducked down a narrow passage between two buildings. Emerging, he beheld another, far more spacious yard, unpaved, and surrounded by a barrier of wooden poles. Beyond milled a group of unicorns. Tai-shan’s heart leapt like a stag.

“Friends,” he cried. “I have found you at last!”

The others turned in surprise. They were all mares, he noted, save for a couple of well-grown fillies, and all quite small. Their coloring was disconcerting, dull shades of brown mostly, not at all the hot sunset reds and skywater blues of the fellows he only dimly remembered. Among these strangers’ subdued, earthy hues, one mare alone stood out. Slender, clean-moving, her coat a vivid copper that was full of fire.

“A stallion!” he heard her whisper.

A companion nodded, murmuring, “Aye, a stallion—here! And mark the color of him.”

“So dark—near black.”

“He is black…”

Tai-shan trotted toward them. “I am a stranger here,” he called. “Can you tell me what place this is?”

None of the mares replied, though one of the fillies exclaimed, “Look! Upon his brow—”

The coppery mare shushed her. The dark unicorn halted, puzzled. Beyond the wooden poles, the mares shifted nervously, eyeing him with mingled curiosity and alarm. Several seemed on the verge of bolting. At last, cautiously, the tall coppery mare started forward. Her companions cavaled and whickered, calling her back, but she shook them off.

“Who—what art thou?” she demanded of him, seemingly poised between boldness and terror. “Whence comest thou?”

The dark unicorn blinked. The other’s odd manner of speech was new to him, softly lilting. He found himself able to understand it only haphazardly.

“I am…I am called Tai-shan,” he began, aware all at once that he still could recall no name other than the one the daïcha had given him. “I come from…from far away—”

“Moonbrow?” the young mare interrupted. “Thou art the one our lady hath named Moonbrow?”

Tai-shan frowned. Was such the meaning of his name? “You speak the two-foots’ tongue?” he asked.

“Two-foots!” the other exclaimed. All at once, she burst out nickering.

“Why do you laugh?” the dark unicorn asked her.

“Thou calledst our keepers ‘two-foots’!”

“Keepers,” the dark unicorn murmured. Short for firekeepers, doubtless. “You speak their tongue?”

The coppery mare tossed her head. “Nay. No da can manage that. But I reck it some.”

By reck, he guessed she must mean understand.

“Da,” he said. “What is…?”

He choked to a halt suddenly, noticing for the first time what he had missed before: the mare across the wooden barrier from him was hornless. No proud spiral skewer—not even a nursling’s hornbud—graced her brow. He half-reared, exclaiming in surprise, and saw that her fellows behind her were just the same: foreheads perfectly flat. Their manes stood upright along their necks like the manes of newborn foals. Like fillies’, their chins were beardless. Stranger still, their tails were not tufted only at the end, but were instead completely covered by long, silky hair. Beneath smooth, unfringed fetlocks, each hoof was a single, solid toe.