The young prince shook the forelock out of his eyes, digging nervously at the shell-embedded shore with his left hind heel. Aye, marked as the Firebringer, he thought miserably, but without so much as an inkling of where I’m to find my fire! Dagg glanced at him.

“You yourself beheld visions of the goddess’s Great Dance.”

Jan shrugged and sidled. And only darkness since: not even a whisper of a dream.

“What did you see?” he asked his friend suddenly. “You’ve never said.”

Dagg closed his eyes. “I saw a mare,” he said, “small, but exquisitely made, high-headed, her coat a strange bright hue such as none I’ve ever seen. Each Moondance, I’ve scanned the assembled herd….” He opened his eyes and turned to look at Jan. “Even though I know my search is hopeless. Her mane stands upright along her neck. Her tail falls silky as a mane. Her chin is beardless, no horn upon her brow. Each hoof is one great solid, single toe.”

The young prince stared at him, dumbstruck. Dagg nodded. “Aye. She’s not of the Ring, Jan,” he whispered. “She’s a renegade.”

Frowning, Jan shook his head. “You and I both know those legends of outlaws losing their horns when banished from the Vale are only old mares’ tales.”

Dagg stood silent. Again, the young prince shook his head.

“Yet, if not a Plainsdweller,” he murmured, “what manner of mare could this dream creature be?”

The dappled warrior snorted, shrugged, his pale eyes full of pain. “I’ve no notion. I only know she is my destiny—and I’ll never find her in the Vale.”

They both stood silent then. The breeze through the near Cliffs hummed and shuddered. Cranes wheeled screaming among the herons overhead. Tide came foaming in, wetting the two unicorns’ cloven hooves, eating away the beach. The prince’s shoulder-friend leaned hard against him.

“Jan, don’t wait for me,” he said. “Alma alone knows when I’m to find my mate. You’ve already found yours. Don’t hold off. Don’t spoil your own happiness—and Tek’s—because I can’t join you this year in the pledge.”

Jan turned to study his friend. Favoring one foreleg, Dagg forced a grin. Half-rearing, he smote at the dark unicorn smartly with his heels. Jan whistled and shied, fencing with him, grateful and relieved. He felt as though he had tossed a hillcat from his shoulders. Wheeling, Dagg sprinted away. Jan sprang to follow, and the two galloped back along the seacliffs to rejoin the band.

On the night before equinox, the firefish were running: small, many-armed creatures that swirled luminous like stars through the great bay’s pellucid water. They filled its breadth with a blaze of rose and pale blue light. The herons celebrated the advent of the firefish with noisy whoops, diving from moonlit air into the midst of those swarming near the surface of the waves, tentacles entwined, about their own strange courting rites.

Other windriders skimmed low, their bent bills laden with tangled, suckered arms as they snatched prey from the combers. Their eerie, loonlike cries and staccato splashes sounded through the cool, motionless air. For once, the Singing Cliffs held silent, no wind to wake their ghostly song. Jan and Dagg stood at the edge of a tangled thicket, watching herons and firefish and foaming sea as evening fell.

“Moon’s up,” Dagg told him.

The huge, mottled disk hung just above the far Gryphon Mountains to the east, dwarfing them, paling the stars. Its light made a long path of brightness across the placid bay. Jan nodded.

Dagg fell in beside him as he turned and trotted through the verges of the thicket. Jan’s ears pricked. Above the herons’ distant plash and cry, the quiet rush of waves along the shore, he heard the sounds of unicorns gathering: snorts and shaking, the dunning of hoofbeats, a restless stamp.

He and Dagg emerged from the trees. Horn-browed faces turned expectantly as the dark prince loped to the center of the dancing glade, a circular, open space at grove’s heart, trampled clean of vegetation by generations of unicorns. He halted, chivvying, his own blood running high. His restless followers milled and fidgeted, anxious to declare their choices in the dance. Jan tossed his head.

“This is the night we have all awaited,” he told them. “Let those who know their hearts choose mates tonight, pledging faith to one another in the eyes of Alma for all time!”

With a shout, eager half-growns sprang into vigorous, high-stepping cadence, prancing and sidling before their prospective mates. Jan watched the moving river of unicorns, chasing and fleeing their partners in an endless ring. Dagg cantered past twice, three times—but where was Tek? He did not see her. Frowning, the young prince scanned the russets and blues of the others until a flash of pale rose and black revealed the pied mare. She seemed to be deliberately skirting the fringe, ducking behind other warriors to conceal herself from him.

The young prince plunged into the dance. The healer’s daughter quickened her pace. With a surge of determination, he sprinted after her. All around him, companions circled, manes streaming, heels drumming. The moon rose higher until the youngest warriors, wearied and unpartnered still, dropped out to stand at the edge of the grove, only watching now. He glimpsed Dagg among them, pulling back, panting, sparing his once-broken foreleg just slightly.

Jan redoubled his pursuit of Tek, dodging through the remaining half-growns. In pairs, some of these had started to slip away, mares leading, stallions following, chasing off into the trees. Jan listened to their whistled laughter, their hoofbeats fading. Deep under cover of darkness, they would dance their own, more privy dances under Alma’s eyes alone.

The crowded rush had begun to thin, more than half having slipped off or dropped away, unpaired. Yet still the healer’s daughter eluded him. The young prince snorted, wild with frustration. How could she manage it, threading so nimbly among the others, always just a few teasing strides ahead? Once more he started to quicken his gait—then abruptly stopped himself, for all at once, he understood. He must stop trying to catch her, cease striving to run her down like some rival in a race—for this was not a race, he realized suddenly, nor any sort of contest at all. It was a dance.

They moved in a circuit. He could not lose her, and whether it was he who overtook her, or she who circled forward to catch him from behind, what did it matter? Laughing, he let himself fall back into the flowing ring of unicorns, and all at once, she was beside him, the two of them prancing and frisking, chasing and circling one another. Others around them faded from his thoughts. He and Tek formed their own circle at the heart of every larger circle and cycle and dance.

They had left the grove, he realized. The sound of the other celebrants faded behind them as he and Tek loped deeper into the trees. The murmur of sea and shore drew nearer. The shimmer of sealight glistened beyond the shadows, mingled with the pale gleam of moonlight.

Tek moved ahead of him, still beyond his reach, but only trotting now. She glanced over one shoulder, nickering, her green eyes lit by the moon. In another moment, he would catch her and pledge his vows, hear her pledge hers in return. Then they would be conjoined for life, their bond unshakable in Alma’s eyes. It was what he had always longed for. He knew that now, and the knowledge warmed him like a fire.