“Ipsicat!” the chon whispered again. Impossible. Then, gesturing with his forelimb, he shouted suddenly, “Punuskr!”

Tai-shan recognized the term: demon. A string of epithets followed, too rapid for the dark unicorn to decipher. From the other’s furious tone, however, it was clear they were dire threats. The chon motioned to his purple-plumes, shouting.

“Bei so! Bei so ahin!”

The dark unicorn needed no translation to tell him the chon was shouting, Kill him. Kill him now! But the purple-plumes at the foot of the dais stood motionless, eyes wide with awe. Several fell to their knees, gasping, “Dai’chon!”

The cry was taken up among the green-plumes, a ragged chant.

“Dai’chon! Dai’chon!”

Upon the dais, the daïcha sank to her knees as well, bowing her head and crossing her forelimbs over her breast. Below, her green-plumes did the same.

“Emwe,” she murmured. “Emwe, Dai’chon!”

Below them, the whole clifftop seethed in confusion. Wildfire leapt and crackled. Stormwind had picked up, fanning the flames. Screaming daya dashed madly about. Frightened two-foots cowered or tried frantically to flee, but the passageways beside the palace had become so crowded as to be impassable. The palace itself was on fire now. Heaped about the base of the dais, offerings kindled and burned.

A scream from Ryhenna caused Tai-shan to wheel. Fire from the burning offerings had set her mane alight. With shrills of terror, the coppery mare bolted. The dark unicorn sprang after her, vaulting down from the dais through a veil of fire and smoke. He sprinted behind her, crying her name.

“Ryhenna, stop!” he shouted. “Turn—you’ll run over the edge!”

The smoke and cinders grew so thick, he could not see her. Then he caught a glimpse of coppery flank. The smoke parted suddenly—just as the earth vanished beneath his heels. Ryhenna hung in the air before him. He glimpsed realization in her eye, felt horror clutch like a many-toed suckerfish at his own breast.

He tried to wheel, to regain solid ground: far too late. His legs flailed only empty air. Ryhenna plunged helplessly beside him. The roiling white sea dashed upward toward them. A great crack of thunder sounded, accompanied by a bitter odor and a blue-white flash. Lightning had struck the clifftop behind—above them now. They were falling.

So, too, did I fall, a voice whispered to him, not so long ago. It seemed to take forever—though I fell toward frozen earth, not foaming sea.

The dark unicorn twisted, astonished, still capable of astonishment even now. The quiet voice was infinitely familiar to him—surely the same that had spoken half a year before to him standing nameless upon the strand.

“Who are you?“ he cried out.

Your own granddam, of course, the whisper replied. Who else would I be?

Memory stirred in him, hazy and distant still. “Sa? My father’s dam?”

The hurtling wind whistled past his ears. Once I was Sa. I am part of Alma now.

“You told me to find the fire. But the fire was within me,” the dark unicorn gasped. “It was within me all along!”

The sky around him seemed to nod in affirmation. Ever since your initiation pilgrimage, two years past, when I touched your hooves with fire in the Pan Woods, and then your horn in the wyvern’s den. He remembered suddenly, clearly, standing upon the banked coals of a goatling campfire and later bathing his horn in the firebowl of a wyvern sorceress. The air sighed. I have been waiting such a long time for you to discover that spark within.

Falling, he answered bitterly, “I’ve set the clifftop alight with that spark. They’re all trapped. Now two-foots and daya alike will perish—”

No one will perish, the voice murmured. Any moment, my Red Mare’s conjured rain will douse that blaze. The fire you have kindled in their minds, however, will burn a long time after this day. Your spark will transform the city. The power of the chon lies in ruins now. The daïcha will lead the firekeepers from this hour forward, and Dai’chon come to be worshiped in a new and gentler way. It will take time, to be sure, but it will come—because of you, my Firebringer. Did you think it your destiny to dance fire solely among the unicorns?

Beside him in the air, Ryhenna screamed and flailed. Droplets pelted them. He thought at first they were spray from the frothing waves below. Then he realized they came from overhead: rain—a driving rain hard enough to damp the wildfire raging across the clifftop above. In that, at least, the goddess spoke true: those trapped on the cliff would live, though he and the coppery mare perished.

“Take my life,” he besought Alma, “but spare Ryhenna.” The goddess laughed, very gently, as he and his companion plunged. The storm-tossed sea surged up to meet them. But I already hold your life, Aljan, son of my son, Dark Moon.

The pain had passed. A dim haze of morning light filtered into the grotto, augmenting the wan lichenlight of the cavern’s walls. The pied mare lay quiet, unable to focus her thoughts. A delicious drowsiness enveloped her. Her mouth tasted smoky-sweet of rosehips. She had no memory of chewing the herb, only of hours of travail the evening before. She was alive, and the knowledge astonished her.

Warm, dry hay had been heaped around her. Sismoomnat, the elder of her foster sisters, crouched nearby, stroking her neck and crooning in the oddly musical, half-grunted language of pans. The goatling held a clump of dried seed grass near the pied mare’s nose, offering it to her. Tek managed to turn her head away. She had no desire as yet for food.

The young pan vanished from beside her, to reappear holding forepaws cupped before her. Tek’s response to the smell of water surprised even herself: slurping the delicious contents of her foster sister’s palms in a single sup. Twittering with pan laughter, Sismoomnat brought her another drink, another, and another yet. Dozens of swallows at last assuaged the pied mare’s thirst.

The muffled sound of her mother’s voice reached her then, muttering low and urgently. A strange aroma pervaded the cave: a faint, slightly bitter savor, as of chewed roots or bark. Tek tried weakly to raise her head, and Sismoomnat helped, lifting the pied mare’s cheek to rest on her shaggy flank. Their dam stood across the grotto, in the shadows where few of the faintly glowing lichens grew. The Red Mare swayed, lock-kneed in trance, chanting softly: “Brothers-in-ocean, sisters-in-the-waves: swift-coursers, far-rovers, aid us! Two of our kind are in gravest peril. Dreams speak to me of this.”

Tek had no notion what her mother might be doing—petitioning some unseen listener? The Red Mare’s chanting continued, endless, monotonous. Tek’s perceptions grew foggy. Even the slight effort of resting her head on Sismoomnat’s flank exhausted her. She felt herself drifting into sleep.

Something nipped at her, rustling the hay. The pied mare jerked awake, struggling feebly. Her limbs did little more than twitch. Sismoomnat stroked her neck and murmured soothingly, then gently turned the pied mare’s head, holding it so that Tek could view her own side and flank. Her belly, relieved now of its months-long burden, seemed oddly flattened to her eye, grown accustomed to the huge swell of her pregnant side. The younger pan, Pitipak, crouched near the pied mare’s hindquarters, stroking something which nestled against Tek’s belly.

“Seek them for me, my sisters-in-ocean!” Her mother’s soft, urgent chanting continued. “Already you are coasting the Summer shore, traveling to the sacred shoals off the Gryphon Mountains to calve. My fellows are struggling not far from you. Aid them, my brothers-in-the-waves.”