“Why tell me this?” the gryphon cried, spitting a twist of seaweed from his beak. “To torment me? What use for me to hear of unicorns’ legs? It is my wing that is broken—my wing! Tell me what good you can do my crooked pinion, unicorn.”
The last words were a snarl, full of bitterness.
“I could rebreak your wing, Illishar,” Jan said to him, “bring mud to plaster it. You must keep it very still, three half-moons or more, until it heals.”
The tercel stared at Jan. “Our two peoples are sworn enemies,” he whispered. “You would not do it.”
“Call me your enemy no more,” Jan bade him, drawing nearer. “I grow weary of our being enemies. The scars your talons left upon my back this autumn past are old scars now, long healed. Time to heal this ancient rift between our peoples as well.”
“No!” cried Illishar, shifting as though to drag himself away from Jan. “Even if you spoke the truth and could reset my wing so that it might heal, do you and your mare intend to remain all spring upon this shore? Who would feed me while my pinion mended? The accursed seaherons have given me over.”
Jan shook his head. “I will speak to Tlat and entreat her to continue to tend you. Now that spring has returned, the tidewaters teem with fish. The herons can provide for you without hardship. I think they will do so if I assure them you mean to return to your flock and speak for peace not only between gryphons and unicorns, but between gryphons and seaherons as well.”
“I have made you no such pledge,” Illishar protested angrily, “to speak for peace among my flock on your behalf.”
“Think, Illishar,” the dark prince urged, “of the glory to be gained. More glory in merely killing an enemy and arousing his people’s hatred against yours all the more, or in taming and allying with him, adding his strength and that of all his people to your own? What more glorious tribute could you possibly lay before your leader, Malar, than the prospect of this great peacemaking?”
Illishar twitched unhappily, pondering. His bill clapped shut. “You have a point, unicorn,” he managed, unwillingly. “Perhaps—perhaps–peace may be possible between our peoples. But the seaherons! Shrieking pests, they have tormented me all this winter past. Their kind has always been a bane to mine….”
“Peace with the herons as well as the unicorns,” Jan answered firmly. “Such is my price.”
The gryphon tercel sighed, snapping his beak shut once more. At last he muttered, “As you will.”
The dark prince whickered, tossing his head. “One more thing I would ask of you,” he added, “one more part to my price.”
The silver halter jingled. Illishar eyed him suspiciously.
“Remove this halter,” he entreated the gryphon. “Surely your talons are dexterous enough to undo the fastening. Bear it back to your people in token of the bargain we have made.”
The tercel’s green-eyed gaze grew wide, astonished.
“You would trust me so close?” he asked.
The dark unicorn rose, shook himself, shrugged. “It seems I must. I cannot remove this halter on my own. And if you kill me, who will reset your wing?”
Illishar laughed suddenly. To Jan’s surprise, it was not the shrill, raucous bird sound he might have expected, but a deep, throaty, catlike thrumming—almost a purr.
“Your hooves and horn are no less formidable than my beak and talons,” the wingcat chuckled. “It seems we must trust one another perforce.”
Jan nodded and knelt beside the great raptor, bowing his head to one side so that the other could reach the halter’s fastening. Illishar seemed to consider a long moment before Jan felt his sharp, unexpectedly delicate talons picking at the buckle. The halter grew loose about Jan’s head, but as he moved to pull away, to rise and shake himself free, the other’s grasp gently restrained him.
“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.”
27.
Return
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, jus
t 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.
Jan shouldered gently against Tek, nuzzling her, glad to steal a caress while others’ eyes fixed on the dappled warrior and the coppery mare. Beside the prince, his mate stood sleek and well-nourished—and plainly not pregnant. Just when her belly ought to have been swollen to its greatest girth, ready to deliver any day, it clearly held no life. An overwhelming sense of loss mingled with his joy at finding the healer’s daughter alive and hale.
“Teki told me you were in foal,” Jan whispered in her ear. “My love, I am so sorry to see that you have lost it. Later, in a season or two, when you are ready, we can try again.”
Shrugging with pleasure against his touch, Tek laughed. “What loss?” she asked. “Nay, Jan. Behold.”
Baffled, the young prince of the unicorns turned, following the line of Tek’s gaze. It came to rest upon the small figures that had followed her, Jah-lila, and Dagg. Two were unicorns, and two—astonishment pricked him as he realized—were not. The latter were pans, young females both, not yet half-grown. Jan felt his spine stiffen—yet surely such young goatlings must be harmless enough. The two stood calmly beneath his scrutiny, the younger pan pressing against the Red Mare, who nuzzled her.
The other two members of the party were infant unicorns, flatbrowed still, horn buds mere bumps upon their wide, smooth foreheads. Whose progeny were they, Jan wondered? Surely they could not be earlyborns, for though small, each was perfectly formed, surefooted, sound of wind—yet what mares would consent to tryst with their mates so early the preceding summer that they bore their offspring in late winter, before spring forage greened the hills? Madness! The tiny pair gazed up at him with bright, intelligent eyes.
The coloring of them was like none he had ever seen. The young prince shook his head, astonished. The filly was on one side mostly black, with silver stockings and one jet eye outlined in silver. Her other side was mostly silver, black-stockinged, her dark eye black-encircled. The foal was purest white, not a mark or a dark hair on him, and eyes like cloudless sky. The two seemed to shimmer before his gaze: brightening, fading. Tek was laughing at him. He blinked. Slowly, realization dawned.
“Nay,” he whispered. “Truth, Tek, these cannot be—not both of them!”
She nodded. “Aye. Born early, by my dam’s design—though without my foster sisters’ aid, none of us would have survived to greet your homecoming.”
“Pans!” Jan exclaimed, turning to stare once more at the young goatlings flanking Jah-lila. “Pan fosterlings?”
The Red Mare nodded. “Aye, prince. Orphaned young, they took me as their dam. Their care has kept me much from the Vale in recent years. Though passing freely among their own kind in the Wood, they know the ways of unicorns as well.”
“Emwe,” the younger of the pan sisters said to him, gesturing with one hairless forelimb. Jan felt a tremor of recognition. Their speech was like that of the two-foots—more fluting, less guttural—but clearly recognizable.
“Emwe,” the prince of the unicorns replied. “Tai-shan nau shopucha.” Hail. Moonbrow greets you.
“Greet-ings,” the elder of the two replied, enunciating the words of the unicorn tongue carefully, “great prince of u-nicorns.”
All around, nickers of astonishment, alarm from the nervously milling herd—to hear supposedly mute goatlings speak.
“I am Sismoomnat,” the young pan replied, “my sis-ter, Pitipak. Our fos-ter dam, Jah-ama, has taught us u-nicorn speech. We al-so speak in the way of our own folk. We are glad to have come among you at last, fair u-nicorns. Our dam has long pledged to bring us to you when time grew ripe.”
Swallowing his astonishment, Jan managed a low bow. Perhaps more treaties than he had hoped could be struck this spring.
“Greetings to you both, pan fosterlings of the Red Mare,” he answered. “Doubtless you know of the long enmity that lies between our two peoples. Perhaps time indeed grows ripe to resolve our differences. Would you be willing to act as envoys between your people and my own?”
Happily, the young goatling nodded. “It is the task for which Jah-ama reared us. Glad-ly will we bear words of peace between our two tribes.”
Beneath the goatlings’ smooth, long-fingered forepaws, the black-and-silver filly and the flawless white foal fidgeted, shouldering one another playfully a
nd eyeing Jan with frank, fearless curiosity. The young pans stepped back as the prince of the unicorns moved forward to nose his daughter and son. The nameless filly and foal frolicked against him, their long, delicate legs tangling, their tiny, ropelike tails spiraling with nervous energy. Jan breathed deep, exploring their every curve. Their scent reminded him of Tek—and of himself.
“The foal is Dhattar,” Tek told him softly, “the filly, Aiony—”
A low moan cut short her words. Starting up, Jan beheld a dark figure on the near slope. Unicorns fell back, some hissing with disgust. The other did not approach. Moments passed before Jan recognized the haggard stallion. The young prince stared. Could this wasted figure truly be his sire, once the robust and vigorous king of the unicorns? In less than a year, Korr seemed to have aged many.
“Freaks!” he groaned. “Begotten in lawlessness and borne in wychery. They will bring destruction! The goddess’s wrath—”
Jan stamped one heel, furious, moving forward to stand between his family and the king.
“What wrath?” he demanded. “Father, what makes my heirs abomination in your eyes? And how is it you claim to know the goddess’s will—does Alma speak to you?”
The bony figure stared. “I—nay. I…used to think so,” he mumbled, shifting uneasily. Then he raised his head, voice growing stronger. “You should never have chosen the pied wych, my son. I warned you sore—”
“My mate is no wych!” Jan retorted hotly. “She is Tek, that same brave warrior whom, before this winter past, you always honored high. Why are you so against our pledge?”
But the dark other only shook his head, muttering. “Nay, it was a long time past, upon the Plain. The wych…I never…”
As the Red Mare stepped forward, he shied from her as from a gryphon.
“You speak in riddles, Korr.” She eyed him steadily.
“Wych! Wych!” the mad stallion cried, rearing, flailing at the air. “See what your wychery has wrought? I trusted you!”
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