Tek stirred, uneasy. Why had the Red Mare done so? Why abandoned her weanling to Teki’s care and returned to the solitude beyond the Vale? Tek tensed, remembering how as a tiny filly little older than Lell, she had overheard the vicious whispers of her Vale-dwelling fellows, hissing that Jah-lila was not and could never be a true unicorn, since she had not been born among the herd, but in some far, unimaginable place. Red Mare. Renegade. Magicker. Tek’s eyes came open with a start.

“Eat,” Jah-lila instructed, nudging a heap of sweet-smelling fodder toward her.

Eagerly, Tek champed at the withered grass. Unpalatably dry at first, it soon grew sweet in her mouth, more savory than rueberries, sweeter even than beeswax and honey. The trickling of water nearby reminded her that her mother’s grotto housed a spring. Thirst overpowered her. With an effort, she rose and followed the sound. The tiny stream at the back of the cave tasted warm compared to the frigid snow outside. In summer, she knew, it would have tasted cool. She drank deep.

“Rest, child,” her mother murmured as Tek returned. “You need rest badly now—but do not sleep. You must not sleep until certain herbs for which I have sent arrive.”

Sent? Tek scarcely knew what her mother could mean. Had the Red Mare acolytes, as her father Teki now had? All the Vale—herself included—had long believed Jah-lila lived alone, without companions.

“I,” Tek started, stopped. Despite herself, her eyelids drooped. Sleep dragged at her. Her womb felt lifeless, her thoughts a blur. “Jan is dead,” she managed. “Gryphons killed him. We pledged to one another at courting time….”

“Peace,” her mother soothed. “My dreams have already told me. I know that you are in foal to Jan and that the king runs mad for grief. I know that Sa, who sheltered you, is dead.”

Tek stared at her, eyes wide suddenly. In truth, her dam’s powers must be greater than she had guessed. The magicker smiled.

“Rest easy. Last night’s blizzard has sealed the Vale. None of Korr’s minions may pursue you now till spring.”

Tek felt a surge of relief. A great heaviness had settled on her. Fatigue washed over her in waves. She wanted only to sleep. A sudden smarting brought her out of her doze with a jolt. After a moment’s confusion, she realized the Red Mare had nipped her. “Forgive me,” the other said firmly, “but I am in deadly earnest. You must not sleep until the healing herbs arrive. Meanwhile, my dreams have brought me other news which may serve to keep you awake: they tell me that at the grey mare’s funeral this day, Korr means to declare himself the Firebringer.”

Tek turned to stare at her. “Firebringer?” she exclaimed, her grogginess fading for the moment. “Alma’s chosen prophet?”

“Aye, Korr will usurp his son in that office as well—though the marks upon his brow and heel be only smears of white lime.”

Despair swept over Tek. What did any of it matter anymore?

“Let him call himself the Firebringer if he will,” she murmured dully. “Who shall contest him—Jan? Dead. Sa, dead. Dagg, lost. I and my unborn, forever banished.”

“Jan is not dead,” Jah-lila corrected gently. “Your mate lives. This, too, have I seen in dreams.”

Tek started, stared, heart suddenly pounding.

“What are you saying?” she demanded. “Jan…Jan alive?”

The Red Mare nodded. “Alive, but captive—many leagues from here. A race of two-footed sorcerers holds him in the city where I was born a hornless da so many years ago.”

My daughter stared at me as we lay side to side in the luminous warmth of my ghostlit grotto. The tiers of mushrooms and lichens lining the walls glimmered faintly, casting a moving pattern of light across her rose and black markings. Wild hope and confusion and disbelief played similarly across her face. Her fatigue seemed, for the moment, held at bay by the prospect of learning of her lost mate. I had hoped as much.

“Da?” my daughter murmured, frowning. “What is a da?”

“The daya resemble unicorns,” I told her carefully, measuring her, “though they live much briefer lives. Most are dead by the time a unicorn beareth her second foal.”

Memory of that long-past time and far-off place recalled once more to me the da dialect of my youth, and I slipped into it now as easily as blinking. Tek lay watching me intently, hungrily.

“Daya have no horns, nor beards, nor tufted tassels upon their ears,” I continued, “nor fringe of fine feathery hair around their fetlocks. They are mostly dull brown in color. Their manes stand upright along their necks. Their tails are full and silky, their hooves great solid, single toes.”

Still Tek gazed at me. “They sound like what legends in the Vale call renegades,” she began, “those creatures unicorns fear to become if we break the Ring of Law, becoming outcasts….”

She choked to a halt. I nodded.

“Aye, daughter, they sound very much like me, for though I now bear a horn upon my brow, I’ve no beard as thou hast, no eartip tassels, no fetlock feathers. My mane standeth along my neck, and my hooves are uncloven. Nonetheless, I am a unicorn of sorts. And I was a unicorn when I bore thee, though not when thou wert begot. Before, when I lived in that sorcerous City, I was a hornless da like all the rest, held captive by the keepers of fire.”

“Firekeepers?” my daughter answered. “What are they?”

“The enemies of all daya: two-footed creatures something like the pans in shape—” I saw Tek shudder at the mention of the goatlings inhabiting the vast woodlands not far from my cave. I hastened to add, “—though in sooth, pans are as different from firekeepers as daya are from unicorns. These keepers hold my former people prisoner, slaves to their treacherous god….”

As succinctly as I could, I described to her the wretched lives of the city’s daya.

“I was able to escape that accursed place,” I told her. “Drinking of the unicorns’ sacred moonspring far to the north, I was transformed. Had I never found my way to that miraculous well and drunk thereof, I should be a da still.”

Tek’s face was drawn now with shock, her inner thoughts as plain to me as though she had shouted them: her dam, not born a unicorn? Her mother, transformed from some degenerate, hornless freak by the sacred wellspring that was the birthright of all unicorns—a birthright I did not share? She shuddered now to realize that the strange, garbled rumors she had heard all her life must hold some truth after all: Jah-lila the outcast, the “renegade”—not a true unicorn at all!

“Who knows of this?” my daughter whispered.

“Teki knoweth,” I told her. “To Jan once I gave the barest sketch, on his initiation day. Now thou, too, knowest. And Korr.”

“Korr?” The pied mare looked up, astonished. I nodded.

It was he who showed me to the moon’s sacred wellspring—though such was against all custom and his people’s Law.”

Tek’s eyes grew rounder yet. Clearly she had never thought the black king capable of even contemplating any breach to the Ring of Law.

“After fleeing the City,” I said, “I escaped inland. Upon the Plains, I encountered Korr, the young not-yet-prince of the unicorns, a single-horned stallion far more magnificent than any da. His father, Sa’s late mate, Khraa, was prince then, and Khraa’s mother the queen. Korr, then newly initiated, used to travel alone outside the Vale, on fire to see what lay beyond, burning to contemplate the world.

‘Though not strictly forbidden then as they are now, such expeditions were no less frowned upon in his day—but who dared gainsay the prince’s son, destined to become prince himself in time? When he stumbled across me during one such youthful sojourn, I was yet a hornless da, wild and desperate from my harrowing flight.