“Be still,” the gryphon said. “I am not yet done.”

Surprised, the young prince subsided, felt the careful, meticulous touch of the tercel’s claws along the crest of his neck, tugging at his mane. The claws released him, and Jan stood up abruptly. The halter slipped free. With a great whinny of triumph, he shook himself, rearing to paw the air, then fell back to all fours again and ducked to scrub either side of his muzzle first against one foreleg, then the other. His face felt oddly uncluttered, light. He was free.

“Unending thanks to you, friend Illishar,” he began.

The tercel before him lay running the links of the halter through his talons, eyeing the crescent-moon shaped browpiece with interest. But as Jan raised his head and turned to speak, his attention was seized by the feel of something both light and stiff against his neck. As he rolled his eyes, green flashed at the far limit of his vision. Snorting, shaking his head, he felt the thing, light as a leaf-frond, caught in his mane.

“What have you done?” he asked Illishar. “What more have you done besides what I asked?”

He felt surprise, puzzlement, but strangely, no alarm. The gryphon looked at him and held the halter up.

“You have given me this,” he said, “to bear back to my people in token of our pledge. I, too, have given you a token to carry to your flock. One of my feathers I have woven into your mane. Let none of your boar-headed people dare doubt now that you have earned the goodwill of a gryphon.”

Once more, Jan shook himself, tossing his head. He felt elated and untrammeled. He felt like the strange, wild unicorns wrongly called renegades—who dwelt upon the Plain, unbound by the Law and customs of their cousins of the Vale. They called themselves the Free People, and wore fallen birds’ feathers in their hair.

“Go now,” the gryphon told him, “and treat with this Tlat of the shrieking herons. I will prepare myself for your return, when I will allow you to break and reset my wing.”

The sky stretched high and blue and clean of clouds. The air was warm, full spring at last. Jan halted, breathing deep. Ryhenna emerged from the trees at his back to stand alongside him. Their three-day passage through the Pan Woods had proved blessedly uneventful: no encounters with goatlings, no ambuscades. The Vale of the Unicorns unfolded below them: rolling valley slopes honeycombed with limestone grottoes. Unicorns dotted the grassy hillsides, grazing.

“So many,” Ryhenna breathed. “So many—I never dreamed!” But to the young prince’s eye, their numbers seemed alarmingly scant: almost no colts and fillies, very few elders. Even the ranks of the warriors were thinned. A pang tightened his chest. Eagerly he searched the herd below for someone he knew. Far on the opposite hillside, the healer stood among the crowd of older fillies and foals that could only be acolytes. Jan gave a loud whistle. The pied stallion raised his head, then reared up with a shout, his singer’s voice ringing out across the Vale.

“Jan! Jan, prince of the unicorns, returns!”

Jan loped eagerly down the slope, Ryhenna in his wake. Astonished unicorns thundered to meet him as he reached the valley floor. They surged around with whickers of greeting and disbelief, eager to catch wind of him, chafe and shoulder their lost prince. Jan glimpsed runners sprinting off to bear news of his arrival to the far reaches of the Vale. Laughing, half rearing, Jan sported among his people until cries of consternation rang out behind him.

“Look—hornless, beardless. Outcast! Renegade!”

He wheeled to find the whole crowd shying, staring at Ryhenna. The coppery mare stood alone. Jan sprang to her side.

“Behold Ryhenna,” he declared, “my shoulder-friend, without whose aid I could never have escaped captivity to return to you.”

The crowd fidgeted nervously, then abruptly parted, allowing Teki through.

“Greetings, prince,” he cried. “Yonder come your sister and dam.”

Looking up, Jan beheld his mother, Ses.

“My son, my son,” she cried.

Behind her, Lell eyed him uncertainly with her amber-colored eyes. Jan held himself still as the tiny filly approached, sniffing him over. The sharp knob of horn upon her brow, just beginning to sprout, told him she must be newly weaned. Gazing up at him, she smiled suddenly and cried out,

“Jan!”

Teki began to speak of the winter past. Jan listened, dismayed how precisely his dreams had already revealed to him his people’s fate. Sheer madness and bitter waste! Under a sane and reasoned leadership, the herd might have fared the brutal famine and cold with far less loss of life.

“Where is Korr now?” he demanded hotly.

“In our grotto,” his dam replied with a heavy sigh. “He grazes only by twilight now, eats barely enough to keep himself alive, though forage is once more plentiful.”

Jan bit back the grief and anguish welling up in him. “You say he turned against Tek and drove her from the Vale—why? Why?”

The pied stallion cast down his gaze, shook his head and whispered, “Madness.”

“But what has become of her?” Jan pressed. “You say she was in foal?”

Teki’s face grew haggard, his eyes bright. “We have no word,” he answered roughly. “Dagg, who went in search of her some days past, has not yet returned.”

The healer stopped himself, regained his breath. His chest seemed tight.

“We fear she may be dead.”

Jan stared at the others, staggered. He turned from Teki to Ses, but his mother’s gaze could offer him no hope.

“Nay, not so!” a voice from across the throng called suddenly. “I live!”

The whole herd started, turned. Jan’s heart leapt to behold Tek, long-limbed and lithe, her pied form full of energy, loping toward him, flanked on one shoulder by the Red Mare and on the other by Dagg. Others, less plainly visible, trailed them but the young prince’s gaze fixed wholly on Tek.

With a cry, he sprang to her. The press of unicorns had fallen back to let her and her companions through. She stood laughing, no sorrow in her. Her breath against his skin was sweet and soft, her touch gentle, the scent of her delicate as he recalled, aromatic as spice. He nuzzled her, whickering, “My mate. My mate.”

She gave him a playful nip, then started back suddenly. “What’s this?” she cried. “How came you by this gryphon plume?”

He felt her teeth fasten on it, tugging angrily to work it free, but he pulled back, nickering. “Peace,” he bade her. “Let be. I will tell you when you have told me of yourself. How fared you this winter past?”

“My daughter sheltered in my cave,” the Red Mare answered, “as safe and warm and well-fed as were you, prince Jan, in the sorcerous City of Fire. You have freed another of its captives, I see, and brought her home with you. Emwe! Hail, daughter of fire,” Jah-lila called. “Do I guess thy name aright: Ryhenna?”

The coppery mare stood staring at Jah-lila. “It is true, then?” she stammered at last. “Ye are the one that erewhile dwelt among my kind?”

Jah-lila nodded. “Born a hornless da in the stable of the chon. Drinking of the sacred moonpool far across the Plain, I became a unicorn. So, too, mayst thou, little one. Follow, and I will lead thee there.”

“I will accompany you!” Dagg exclaimed. He stood transfixed, staring at Ryhenna as though in a dream. Jan watched, taken by surprise, as the other approached the coppery mare. “I am called Dagg, fair Ryh—fair Ryhenna.” He stumbled over the unfamiliar name. “The way to the wyvern-infested Hallow Hills is long and dangerous. For all the Red Mare’s sorcery, I would feel easier for you with a warrior at your side.”

The prince of the unicorns bit back a laugh. Plainly his friend was smitten. After months moping beside the Summer Sea a season past, the dappled warrior seemed finally to have found a mare to spark his eye. The swiftness of it astonished Jan. Ryhenna was now returning Dagg’s gaze with shyly flattered interest.