Eventually, the dark unicorn hit upon tangling fish and shellfish in a mat of seaweed and dragging the whole contrivance back to the gryphon on the rocks. Ryhenna suggested that if she lifted the other end of the seaweed clear of the ground, the pair of them might carry it with greater speed. Jan laughed through his teeth, marveling at their innovation as, trotting side to side, he and the coppery mare brought their prisoner his meal.

Despite obvious hunger, the tercel accepted their offering with little grace: screaming and hissing. Ryhenna refused to approach, so Jan pulled the food-laden mat within a few paces of the shrieking tercel by himself, then sprang away to stand with Ryhenna as the wingcat hauled himself laboriously near enough to snag the seaweed and draw it to him.

He fell upon its contents with savage relish. Jan watched, fascinated as the gryphon’s razor beak made short work of the skate, slicing and swallowing down the tough cartilage along with the flesh. Strong yet amazingly nimble talons picked lacelike bones from the fish, pried open shellfish, and plucked strings of flesh from the crabs’ hollow limbs.

At last, the seaweed mat completely pillaged, the wingcat subsided with a heavy sigh, green eyes half shut. Plainly it had been the most sumptuous meal he had eaten in more than half a year. Behind the dark unicorn, Ryhenna twitched nervously, anxious to be gone, but Jan lingered. Slowly, carefully, he approached the tercel, halted just out of reach. “Earlier this day,” he said, “you called my people trespassers. What did you mean by that?”

The tercel stirred, obviously annoyed at Jan’s proximity—his very presence—but too sated and contented to raise further protest.

“I called your people what they are, unicorn: thieves,” he answered, almost amiably. “The great vale we call the Bowl of Ishi was ours long before you unicorns came.”

Jan stared at him. “Yours?” he cried. “How so? No gryphons ever dwelled in our Vale. It was deserted when the princess Halla first claimed it, forty generations ago.”

The wingcat’s eyes snapped open, then narrowed angrily. “Deserted? Pah!” he scoffed. “It housed the sacred flocks of goat and deer Ishi gathered for my people’s use: to provide first meat each spring for our newly pipped hatchlings. But you vile unicorns drove away the tender flocks, profaning the Vale with your presence. Now the formels must hunt your bitter kind in spring, though we prefer the sweet flesh of goats or deer.”

The prince of the unicorns stood dumbstruck. The Vale of the Unicorns—claimed by gryphons as a sacred hunting ground? He had never heard of such a thing. Yet ever since the first attacks upon the princess Halla and her followers, gryphon raiders had returned to the Vale every spring. At last, after forty generations of conflict, Jan had learned the reason why.

“Four hundred years have we sought to drive you out,” the wounded gryphon rasped. “My own parents died on such a mission two springs past. They flew to kill the unicorns’ black prince. Not you, the other one—the one before you. But they failed. Their names were Shreel and Kilkeelahr.”

Jan cast his mind back, two years gone, to the time just before his pilgrimage of initiation, when his father Korr had still reigned as prince and a pair of gryphons had nearly succeeded in assassinating the then-prince Korr, his mate and son. The memory was bitter, tinged with bafflement and fear.

“My people slew your father and mother,” he told Illishar.

“How well I know that,” the gryphon snapped. “When they did not return, we knew they must have perished.”

“They came near to killing my sire and dam,” Jan added, remembering still.” And me as well.”

“Yes!” Illishar replied angrily. “Had they succeeded, they would have been called heroes, perched high in the pecking order once more. Queen Malar would have rewarded them with a prestigious nesting site, a ledge close to her own upon the Cliffs of Assembly, first pick of the kill. A glorious mission. But it failed.

“Thus was I orphaned as a half-grown chick, disinherited by powerful factions within my clan: my parents’ enemies. I grew up a nestless beggar, though I am well-born, kin to the matriarch herself. My father was her younger nestmate—but he fell out of favor. That is why he and Shreel were desperate enough to undertake so daring a raid, to win the glory that would buy them back their pride of place. For what is a gryphon without honor? Only a pecked-upon squab. Now I, too, have failed in my bid for glory. The proud line of my parents ends with my death.”

Jan let him talk, scarcely daring to interrupt. It had not occurred to him how lonely the gryphon must be. The dark unicorn shook himself. He, too, had spent the winter as a prisoner among strangers. When guarded queries did nothing to stem the gryphon’s words, Jan grew bolder, questioning the tercel about his life before the raid, among his own people. Illishar spoke freely, proudly, of the customs of his flock, of their wars and religion, of the constant struggle both within and between the clans.

No single leader ruled, though Malar, the matriarch of the largest clan, was the most ruthless—and therefore the most respected—leader. She was evidently some sort of cousin—possibly an aunt—to Illishar. Jan could not determine quite which. The wingcats counted kin differently from unicorns.

As the afternoon drew on, Ryhenna grew more fidgety, and Jan sent her back to the beach to forage again while he stayed with the gryphon—careful always to remain out of reach of the raptor’s beak and claws. She returned as dusk drew on, dragging the ragged tail of a large grey shark, badly picked at by seabirds. Illishar fell on it with ravenous appetite, while the coppery mare grimaced and spat the fetid taste of fishskin from her tongue.

As evening fell and the air grew chill, Jan collected driftwood and struck a fire. The gryphon reacted first with alarm, then awe, and finally delight, drawing close enough to the blazing driftwood to warm himself. On opposite sides of the fire, he and Jan talked on into the deepening dark. Ryhenna hovered nervously, afraid to approach because of the gryphon.

Jan sang Illishar the lay of the princess Halla, of his people’s long-ago expulsion from their own sacred lands, the Hallow Hills, by treacherous wyverns, of their long wandering across the Plains until they reached the Vale, seemingly deserted and unclaimed, of their settling for the winter into their new home in exile only to be forced to defend themselves the following spring—and every spring thereafter—against raiding gryphons.

Illishar grew silent, sobered after Jan’s recounting. The dark prince lay staring into the smoldering coals of driftwood, flameless now, but still shimmering, red with heat. Ryhenna whinnied uneasily in the darkness behind him. He heard her muffled hoof-falls above the calm sea’s wash: trotting, pacing. She had not yet lain down.

“A great pity, Illishar,” Jan murmured, “that neither of our peoples ever sought converse before: no envoys exchanged, no explanations offered or sought. Much spilling of blood might have been spared, I think, had we chosen to speak before exchanging blows.” He sighed sleepily. “My people long only to depart the Vale, though it has housed us well for many years. We wish to reclaim our own lost lands by driving the hated wyverns out.”

Wearily, the gryphon nodded, chewing at a stem of seaweed, his crippled wing propped against a stone. “Perhaps you are right, unicorn,” he muttered grudgingly, “much though it pains me to admit that one I have long held my greatest enemy might have a point.”

A little silence then. The breeze lifted. The waves plashed, lapping. The coals of the dying fire shimmered. Unseen, Ryhenna trotted, circled.

“Greater pity, yet,” the wingcat added at last, “that with my wing healed wrong, I can never return to my flock to tell them what I have learned. Nor will your people be eager to believe any word you might speak if such word go against their customed hatred of my kind.”