“Dai’chon!” the da exclaimed, falling back with a start. “Great lord, ye walk among us. So it is true. At last. At last!”

Dull brown like other daya, this da looked much thinner and shabbier than the bluebloods he had met in the palace of the chon. Odd marks crisscrossed the deeply swayed back, and one skinny flank bore a crescent-shaped scar. The da’s posture, formerly weary and slumped, changed to joyous cavaling as the scrawny neck bowed reverently.

“Nay, friend,” the dark unicorn answered. “I am called Tai-shan.”

Still bowed, the other exclaimed, “Ah, lord, by whatever name ye choose, your faithful know you at a glance.”

As Tai-shan shook his head, the daïcha’s adornment rattled loosely about his face. The da before him wore a similar device, the dark unicorn noted, one fashioned of brown strips of hide, not links of burnished skystuff.

“I am a stranger to this place,” Tai-shan told the other. “Tell me, what is this great burden you drag?”

The other whickered. “Truth, it is nothing, Lord. I haul it gladly, in your name.”

“What is it that you haul?” Tai-shan asked, scarcely following the other’s reply.

The da shrugged humbly. “Whatever my keepers put in the cart: firewood, grain sacks, jars of oil. Bolts of fabric. Foodstuff. Dung.”

“Why is that?” the dark unicorn persisted. The point of such labor escaped him.

“Our keepers have need of such goods,” the other told him. “We daya cart for them.”

Tai-shan frowned, eyeing the chafed spots on the other’s raw bones where the vines had rubbed. The cart looked heavy. Amid the myriad clashing odors of goods and two-foots all about, he caught scent of the da before him at last, a warm, musty aroma close to that of unicorns. Yet though clearly older than halfgrown and not past prime, the flatbrow had the air of neither stallion nor mare: genderless as a beardless newborn or the very, very old.

“Of course, my lord,” the other was murmuring, “the burdens of gelded commoners need not concern you, dwelling so far above us as ye do, First Stallion to your own sacred brood mares in the stable of the chon….”

Tai-shan’s frown deepened. Many of the other’s phrases were new to him.

“Gelded?” he asked. The word had an ugly ring.

The flatbrow’s head cocked, as though the explanation were self-evident. “Fillies and foals are born in equal numbers, my lord, as ye know—but only the finest colts become breeding stallions.” He sighed. “As for the rest, we are made geldings.”

Once more the dark unicorn shook his head, still not following.

“These…these geldings,” he said. “You get no young?”

The other glanced sadly away. “Nay. We lose all interest in the mares after the priests cut us.”

Tai-shan fell back a step, staring. “Cut you?” he stammered. “Cut you?”

The one before him nodded. “Aye, underneath. Back between the legs. Then they mark us upon the flank with fire. Thus we are gelded and given the brand. Then our servitude begins.”

The dark unicorn snorted, gagging. His nostrils filled with the imagined screams of mutilated foals. His senses reeled. Could such a shameful thing be true?

“But why?” he demanded hoarsely. “Your claim makes no sense—why maim innocent colts?”

The gelding da stared back at him, plainly alarmed and baffled by the dark unicorn’s response. “Such is the geldings’ lot, my lord, just as mares are for brood and stallions for stud—by your own decree! It is the will of Dai’chon.”

Appalled, Tai-shan backed away from the gelded da. What was this infernal dai’chon with which daya and two-foots alike seemed to have associated him? No, he would not believe a word the other said—it went against his every impression of the gentle daïcha and her folk. The flatbrow’s words could be no other than a cruel jest, a haunt’s tale to play upon a stranger’s ignorance—and yet before him loomed the heavily loaded cart, the crescent scar upon the strangers flank, that odd, blank odor of genderlessness.

Shouts from behind distracted his attention. The dark unicorn whirled. The crowd of two-foots he had fled only moments before had followed after all. Tai-shan sprang away into the hustling, jostling press. He wanted only to find his way out of the crowded square and be gone from this place. He had gotten no more than a dozen paces before eager followers closed around him from all sides, most falling to their knees as before.

“Tai-shan!” some of them called out, and others echoed, “Dai’chon!”

The two words, so similar in sound, slurred and blended together. The dark unicorn ramped and sidled. Surrounded by kneeling two-foots, Tai-shan could find no opening through which to flee. All at once, screams and shouts of alarm arose from the back of the throng. Violet-plumed two-foots shouldered through the crowd, shoving their kneeling fellows roughly aside with long, sharp-tipped staves.

Scrambling to their feet, many fled, but others only fell back a few paces, staring sullenly, as the purple-plumes cleared a path from the edge of the square. Beyond, a broad thoroughfare climbed toward the chon’s palace, visible on the hillcrest above. Down this avenue, a glittering raft approached, mounted on poles and borne upon the shoulders of eight brawny two-foots. Atop the platform sat the chon, resplendent in falseskins of purple and gold. He glared at the crowd.

A heavy cart stood stalled directly in his path. Laden with blocks of fire-baked clay, it canted to one side, one of its wooden disks caught between two paving stones. The chon gestured impatiently, and purple-plumes wielding flails sprang forward, striking both at the pair of daya hitched to the cart and at their two-foot escort as well. The crowd cried out in protest. Many surged forward, but purple-plumes with staves held them back. Eyes rolling, the gelded daya strained mightily, but were unable to heave the trapped cart free.

“Homat! Homat!” Stop, Tai-shan cried—but his words were lost in the hubbub of the crowd. Leaping past the armed purple-plumes, he lent his own strength to that of the frightened daya as, shouldering the cart from behind, he felt it lurch free and roll ponderously out of the chon’s path. The crowd surged and began to cheer.

“Tai-shan! Dai’chon!”

At a sharp order from the chon, the purple-plumes with flails turned them on the crowd. Others, still clearing the chon’s path, shoved and struck their fellows with such violence that some at the front of the press were knocked to the ground. The dark unicorn fell back in consternation as the purple-plumes created sufficient space for the chon’s conveyance to be set upon the ground.

“Asolet!” roared the purple-plumes. “Asolet!” Silence.

The crowd quieted as the chon rose and stepped from the raft.

Brow furrowed, forelimbs folded across his chest, he stared at Tai-shan. The dark unicorn sensed the other wished to approach, for he shifted from foot to foot, his bearded chin thrust forward, mouth set. Murmuring, the crowd watched. Tai-shan bowed his neck to the two-foot ruler.

“Forgive me, chon of the two-foots,” he began in his own tongue. His store of words from his hosts’ odd, clicking language was still far too slender for him to attempt it now. “I see my absence from the palace has troubled you….”

Still the other hesitated, eyeing him warily and without comprehension—indeed almost, the dark unicorn thought uneasily, as though he had not spoken at all. The two-foot ruler approached him cautiously. He made loud clucking sounds. His manner seemed both determined and afraid.

“Bim,” he growled, slowly and clearly, as though addressing a wordless nursling or a half-wit. “Bim, Tai-shan!”