“Your many young are beautiful, Queen Tlat, strong-limbed and finely feathered. May their crests grow brilliant. Would that my mate were here to see them. But he is lost to us. We do not know where he is. We were set upon by gryphons just before the storm. Now we cannot find Jan.”

“Gryphons!” shrieked Tlat, hopping backwards. “Stormriders, yes.”

Her people fluffed and began clapping bills, some dancing in agitation. One young bird started to whoop, and one of Tlat’s mates stalked over and pecked it to silence. Tlat preened, fanning her crest, and looked at Tek one-eyed.

“We saw the cat-eagles, yes! Approaching across the bay—we longed to send you warning, but the wind was already too strong. We dared not leave our cliffs. So they attacked you? War! War! Marauders.”

She stabbed at a crab digging itself out of the sand near her toes, cracked its shell, then tossed its contents down. More bill-clattering from the flock. Tek fought for composure in the midst of the cacophony.

“We regret you were unable to bring us warning,” she replied, striving to recapture Tlat’s attention. The queen of the seaherons stood turning her head from side to side, eyeing the dead crab first with one eye, then the other. “But we ask your aid now. The herons are our fast allies, and we value the deep friendship between our two peoples.”

“Friendship,” clucked Tlat. “Allies, yes! How may we aid you?”

“Lend us your wings and your eyes,” Tek urged her. “Help us to search for my mate, our prince.”

“Prince’s mate!” the heron queen cried. “Look for your mate—yes. We will! We will help you seek the prince of unicorns!”

With a scream, Tlat unfolded her slim, lengthy wings and fanned the air. The seawind—now no more than a breeze—caught, lifted her. Dipping her long neck to catch up the empty crabshell in her bill, the heron queen rose. Her consorts and children and the rest of her people followed, soaring aloft, shouting, “Find the prince! The prince!”

One of her consorts skimmed near to pluck the crabshell from her bill. It was snatched from his by another bird and passed from beak to beak throughout the flock. Tek stood on the beach, gazing after them, mystified. Another fear had begun to gnaw at her like a biting fly: that Jan perhaps lay wounded among the trees, invisible from the air.

High above, the herons broke and scattered, some skimming up the beach, others down, and many inland, sailing low over the tops of the trees. Shaking herself, Tek whistled her own followers into a similar sweep, desperately hopeful that they would find her young mate soon.

The seaherons spied no trace of Jan that day, nor the next day, nor the next, though they found nearly a dozen gryphons dead in the honeycombs of the Singing Cliffs. Had the remainder carried the prince away? Rising panic held Tek’s heart in its teeth at the thought that she might have become the prince’s mate but for a night, their wedding dance the last joy of him she would ever know. As heron messengers returned each night, Tek found it harder and harder to stave off despair.

On the third day, Dagg ceased to speak, all optimism dashed. Other members of the band remained painfully silent: angry, grieving, stunned. Tek felt all her wild hopes dying. The day ended in storm, not so violent as that of equinox, but bone chill, beating down the seaoats to rot and whipping the foliage from the trees. When the following cold, grey morning dawned, Tek, herself frozen past any feeling but exhaustion, forced herself to speak.

“He is gone,” she told the band. They stood subdued before her, silent. “Surely the gryphons took him. They have killed our prince in open war. We must return to the Vale and bring word of this to the herd.”

Dagg bowed his head. None of the others so much as raised a voice in protest. With a start, Tek realized that they had all despaired days ago. Only she had clung to the stubborn dream that Jan might still live. Outrage filled her at her own foolishness.

When the seaherons came again, Tek bade them farewell, thanked them woodenly for their hospitality, and praised again their lank, gawking children. Pledging to return the following summer, she expressed the unicorns’ unending gratitude for their allies’ diligence in the search. Plumage drooping, crests flattened to the skull, the typically raucous herons only nodded. Tlat even solemnly returned Tek’s bow before soaring away with her flock.

Numb, Tek whistled her own followers into line. They straggled after her from the sandy shore, climbed the downs, traversed the coastal plain, and entered once more into the dark Pan Woods, having failed even to discover and carry back to the Vale their prince’s bones to be laid with proper ceremony upon the altar cliffs beneath the sky.

What will I tell his father? What will I tell the king? The refrain repeated itself relentlessly inside the pied mare’s skull as she led the band dejectedly homeward. Dagg brought up rearguard. They could not bear to face one another. Tek groaned inwardly, wretched. All the while the image of Korr, dark and brooding, loomed before her.

The rhythm of the waves woke him, their gentle wash against and across him soaking his pelt. He felt the cold sting of air briefly, then another wave. The dark unicorn opened his eyes to find himself lying pressed against wet sand. Another swell sluiced over him. Choking, he rolled to his knees, pitched shakily to his feet.

He stood on a low, flat beach, the sand silver-white. No cliffs or downs flanked the shore, only dunes—and beyond them, dense thickets of trees. The dark unicorn blinked in confusion. He did not recognize the grey sea and white sand. He had come from a place of green waves, golden shore. He remembered a storm.

Weakly, the dark unicorn shook himself, staggered. Beach grit abraded his skin. His withers and back were scored by deep wounds, his limbs and belly patterned with raw, raised welts. His mind felt poisoned, numb. The salt air breathed against his wet coat, chilled him to shivering. The waves foaming placidly against his pasterns and shanks felt soothingly warm.

Turning, he gazed cross the calm, grey expanse: no longer storm-tossed, the sky above pearly with a thin overcast of cloud. The wind shouldered against him insistently, full of salt and particles. He faced away from the sea, climbed laboriously higher onto the beach. His hooves sank deep into the soft, dry sand. He set his rump to the wind’s relentless, gentle gusts and bowed his head. The sting-welts ached. His shoulders ached. Heat burned in him, guttering against the cold.

“Fever,” he muttered.

Feebly, he slapped the draggle of wet mane from his eyes and gazed at the trees beyond the dunes. Trees would shelter him, provide forage. Maybe water. The gummy, salt taste of his own tongue constricted his gorge.

“Water,” he told himself dully. “Find water.”

Aye, a soft voice answered now. Get out of the wind and cold. Find shelter. You’ve drifted a long time.

The dark unicorn blinked. No speaker met his eye. The wind swept beach lay empty, deserted. Strange. The words had seemed to come from within. Feverchills danced along his ribs and limbs. Still muddled, he shook his head.

“Water first,” he croaked. “Then…find the others.”

He remembered companions vaguely: unicorns like himself. What were their names and whence had they come? Somehow he knew the golden, cliff-lined strand he recalled was not their home. Yet neither was this flat expanse of silvery shore.

Find the fire, the inner voice said clearly.

Glimmers of warmth and tremors of cold gusted through him. The dark unicorn shook his head.

“Fire?” he muttered.

He had forgotten his own name. Small grey-and-white seabirds wheeled overhead: dark hooded, with darting pinions. The strange voice commanding him sounded half like the sighing of shore wind and half like their high, piping calls.