“Moonbrow,” Ryhenna urged him, “let’s away.”

Jan nodded abruptly and turned. “Aye, Ryhenna. I’ve long promised to show you all our haunts along the Summer shore. I’ll do so now while I ponder what’s to be done with this foe.”

He started off across the sand, and with a relieved sigh, the coppery mare fell in beside him. Glancing back, Jan glimpsed the tercel sagging as though only anger had kept him upright to challenge Jan. Once more the young prince champed his heart tight against pity. Marauding wingcats deserved none! Quickening his trot, he led Ryhenna away from his injured enemy, eastward along the shore.

For the better part of the morning, Jan showed the coppery mare the beaches along which he and his fellows had galloped that half year past, the cliffs under which they had sparred, the sparse coastal woodlands in which they had foraged and bedded and sought shelter against mild summer storms. He described for her his people’s alliance with the dust-blue herons and spoke of how he and Tek had courted and pledged. Ryhenna harkened, rapt, but as she walked through the vast courting glade, he heard her soft and bitter sigh.

“Why do you sorrow?” he asked, puzzled.

The coppery mare tossed her head. “I think on the day, not long distant now, when we shall join your herdmates in the Vale.”

Jan frowned, moving to stand in front of her. “I thought you welcomed the prospect!”

The coppery mare refused to meet his gaze. “I do,” she murmured, “and yet I dread it. What will become of me among thy people, Moonbrow? Will I ever dance court in this sacred glade?”

Jan cocked his head, trying to see her better. “Ryhenna, such is my dearest wish,” he told her, “that one day you may find in this glade that same joy which I so lately found with Tek.”

His companion sighed again, as though swallowing down some hard little pricking pain. “Who among your people would want me?” she said heavily. “Hornless—crippled. Useless. Imperfect.”

The dark prince fell back a step at her quiet vehemence. “You must set no store by Queen Tlat’s thoughtless words….”

“Even though they be true?” Ryhenna finished, turning to meet his gaze at last. “O Moonbrow, dost think I have not always known that while I might one day walk among thy people, I can never be one of them?”

The dark unicorn stared at her, astonished. He shook his head vigorously. The halter of silvery skystuff clinked and chinged. “Nay, Ryhenna,” he told her. “You are wrong.”

The breeze off the golden strand stirred the trees surrounding the glade. Ryhenna’s coat gleamed fiery copper in the late morning sun. Jan looked away, at the seabirds gliding overhead, at distant herons winging home to the Singing Cliffs from fishing in the bay.

“The sea-unicorns told me—and Jah-lila herself once told me a thing which leads me to hope our rescuer’s tale may be true—that my mate’s dam was once hornless as you are, born in your City of Fire, but fled and, joining our company, became a unicorn.”

The coppery mare’s gaze changed, intensified, grew full of such wild longing suddenly that he found it difficult to meet.

“Surely this is but an old mare’s tale thou hast spun to keep my spirit up,” she breathed. “My own dam used to do the same, but I pray thee to have done. I am no filly to be made docile so.”

Again Jan snorted, shaking his head. “I pledge to you, Ryhenna: my mate’s dam is a powerful sorceress; if any among the unicorns has power to make you one of us, it is she.”

He saw the coppery mare flinch, shuddering. “And if not?”

“If not,” the dark prince told her, “then you will be no less welcome among us, admired for your bravery, your counsel, your beauty.” The silver halter jingled as he spoke. He made himself say the words: “A horn upon the brow—it is not the world, Ryhenna. “

The coppery mare turned away suddenly. He followed her. “Moonbrow,” she breathed, “I fear this above all else: that rejoining old friends in the Vale, thou wilt forget me.”

“Ryhenna,” the young prince cried. “How could you think it? Such shall never come to pass.”

The coppery mare turned again to face him. The breeze sighed through the trees. “Thy mate will reclaim thee,” she said bluntly, “and thy duties as prince. I am not thy mate—”

Jan shook his head. “Nay.”

“Among daya,” she offered, “a stallion may have many mates.”

Again the dark prince shook his head. “But not among unicorns.”

She gazed at him, lost. “In the City,” she whispered, “I was called thy mate, if only from courtesy. What am I now to thee—what can I be—if not thy mate?”

Her voice was tight, her tone desperate. He moved to stand next to her. “My shoulder-friend,” he answered her, “she to whom I owe my freedom and my life. Those among the unicorns who love me, Ryhenna, will love you as well.”

“I shall never love any as I love thee, Moonbrow!” she cried.

He nuzzled her, very gently. “Nor I you, Ryhenna,” he said. “Tek is my mate. I love her. You are my shoulder-friend, and I love you. I love you both, but differently. And when in a year or two years’ time, you dance court within this glade, it will be with one whom you love in a way entirely other than the way that you love me. I am your companion, your friend, Ryhenna, just as you are always and ever mine. Stand fast with me,” he said, “and no foe shall ever part us.”

The pain so plain upon her features all at once subsided. She whickered low, and champed him lightly once, a comrade’s nip, no more. “Well enough then, my shoulder-friend.”

He shrugged against her laughing, relieved. Sun overhead was climbing toward noon. He shook himself, snorting.

“So tell me, Ryhenna, what should I do with this gryphon?”

The mare beside him shuddered. “Leave him,” she answered. “Leave him to his fate.”

Jan sidled uneasily. “By rights, I ought to kill him,” he murmured, “as a sworn enemy of the unicorns.”

He heard Ryhenna gasp. “Too perilous,” she answered quickly. “Weak and starving as he is, Moonbrow, he nonetheless might do thee harm.”

The dark unicorn nodded. “Aye. And skewering a crippled foe scarce seems honorable—yet simply leaving him to starve smacks hardly more noble….”

“He frightens me,” Ryhenna whispered, “and yet—”

“Yet?”

“I pity him,” she finished, glancing at him, “hobbled by his broken wing as surely as a firekeeper’s tether once hobbled me. Captive of the herons—and now of us—as truly as once we two were captives in the City of Fire.”

Jan stamped, frustrated, lashing his tail. He longed now only to quit the Summer shore and begin the last, short leg of the journey inland toward the Vale. Yet the gryphon’s fate stymied him.

Great Alma, guide me, he petitioned silently. Tell me what to do.

The air around him hung utterly quiet, silence broken only by the whisper of breeze, the soft sigh of Ryhenna’s breath, and the faint, far cries of seabirds fishing. Herons winged swiftly overhead, crops heavy. Some carried more fish, silver gleaming, in their bills. The prince of the unicorns sighed. His goddess remained mute still—or else spoke in words he could not reck.

“We’ll feed him until I can decide, Ryhenna,” he muttered, trotting across the glade toward the trees and the shore beyond.

He and Ryhenna spent the early afternoon gathering food for their captive gryphon. Well aware that the tercel needed meat to survive, Jan searched the tide pools for trapped fish. Two of the six he managed to skewer with his horn were of hefty size. Ryhenna meanwhile, at his direction, pawed the wet, golden sand for the fluted clams and rosy crabs that burrowed there, stamping them with her hard, round hooves to crack their shells.

A dead skate, newly cast up by the tide, rounded their haul into a fair-sized catch by the second hour past noon. Jan set about devising a means to transport their gryphon’s food to him. The two-foots, he recalled, carried all manner of goods in wheeled carts. Though he and Ryhenna possessed no carts, he mused, they could still drag.