The young prince shook himself, struggled free of the firs. Time to make himself known. The panpipes still crooned their haunting soft song amid the cheerful hubbub. The two elders resumed their places beside the piper as Jan reached the edge of the glade.
“Emwe!” he hailed them, framing with care the difficult, champing syllables of pan speech. “Tai-shan nau shopucha.” Moonbrow greets you.
He moved forward slowly, so as not to startle them, until the firelight illumined his dark form.
“Have no fear. I am Jan, prince of unicorns, come in peace to seek your counsel.”
The pipe player broke off suddenly as the pan campsite erupted in confusion. Jan heard cries of “Pella! Pell’!”—Look, behold–and “Sa’ec so!” Him! It’s him. Sires and dams caught up their young as though to flee. Others snatched and brandished wooden stakes. He saw children quickly gathering stones. The dark unicorn snorted in bewilderment. Peace with the pans had held these two years running without a whisper of strain.
“Nanapo: peace,” he exclaimed. “I am no foe. I seek another of my race who has fled and taken shelter here.”
The pans hesitated. Jan himself poised, determined to run if he must and shed no blood. With relief, he saw the old male rise from his haunches and hold up one forelimb.
“Bikthitet nau,” he heard the greybeard urging: Calm yourselves. “This is not the same ufpútlak—four-footed walker—we encountered earlier. Though dark as the other, pella–observe—he does not have that one’s wild, unreasoning air. A great green feather tangles this one’s mane. And this ufpútlak speaks our tongue.”
Jan’s heart seized at the other’s words. He moved a half pace nearer. The pans twitched, pulled back, but did not flee. The greybeard held his ground.
“Elder, have you seen another of my kind this day?” Jan asked urgently. “A night-dark stallion such as I, but lawless, gaunt—It is he I seek.”
Carefully, the bearded male nodded. Around him, the goatlings murmured, uneasily. The aged female, now risen to stand beside her mate, answered, “Such a one came upon us near noon this day. What can you tell us of him?”
Jan drew a deep breath. “He is Korr, king of the unicorns.” Gasps, angry cries rose again from the goatling band. The furrows in the brows of the two elders deepened.
“If he is Korr,” the greybeard said evenly, “do you, Jan, prince of ufpútlaki, now come to revel in your broken truce?”
The young prince’s ribs constricted. “I come seeking him,” he answered slowly, carefully. “He is my sire, and he is mad. Having fled our Vale this day, he now imperils not only himself and his folk, but our allies as well. I must find him and return him to the Vale, that his madness may be healed.”
More murmuring from the pans. They eyed him, suspicious still. He sensed a slight—if only very slight—easing in the two elders. The fire crackled. The young prince waited. No one spoke. Finally he broke the silence.
“Tell me, I implore you, where I may find him. What deeds of his have made you so wary and put our peoples’ hard-won truce in jeopardy?”
Glancing at one another, the elders considered. The rest of the goatlings held silent, watching. At last, the wizened female spoke.
“This midday,” she said, “while we rested in the shade of the brittle-blossom trees, this mad ufpútlak stampeded among us, cursing us—so we surmise—in his own tongue. None were spared: not elders nor suckling young.” Her tone grew hard. “Even children he would eagerly have trampled, had fathers and mothers not snatched them from his path.”
Jan felt the blood drain from him at the thought of the mad king charging unchecked among these slight, retiring goatlings, only lately come to trust unicorns. “Did he harm any of you?” the young prince breathed, praying to Alma his worst fears might not prove true.
“Nay,” the greybeard replied, and Jan’s heart eased. “To our relief, your king drew no blood. We fled and dodged. Our warriors drove him off with volleys of stones—as we shall drive away all unicorns from this day forward! Your king is well-bruised. He fled toward the grassy land that borders our Woods. What do you call it? The Plain.”
Jan’s breath caught in dismay. The Plain was far more dangerous than the Woods: rife with grass pards that ambushed their prey. Sharp-toothed dogs that hunted in packs. Unicorns, too, roamed the Plain—wild wanderers outside the Ring of Law, of a tribe other than Jan’s own. Korr had sworn eternal enmity toward these so-called Renegades. If he were reckless enough to attack Plainsdwellers as he had this goatling band, he would do so at his peril. The Free Folk of the Plain were as dauntless in their own defense as any Ringborn unicorn. Jan set his teeth. He must fly with all speed to intercept his sire.
“My heart grieves with you that this outlaw from my Vale has caused you such alarm,” he answered, bowing deeply before the two elders of the goatling band. “My own tribe as well has suffered such inexplicable acts of his madness. A terrible secret haunts his mind. I mean to discover it.”
He scanned the pans, gauging their mood, hoping desperately that the damage Korr had done the newborn alliance was not truly beyond repair.
“Meanwhile, I beg you not to let his trespass spoil our peoples’ long-sought peace.” Jan turned his eyes back to the elder pair. “Korr will be stopped. That I vow. Even now I hasten to call him to account. I ask only that you send runners to my Vale. There you will find my mate, the regent Tek, with her foster sisters, Sismoornnat and Pitipak, and their dam, Jah-lila. Treat with them before you decide to abandon the peace. Tell them I seek my sire upon the Plain and will not rest until I find him.”
Silently, the pans deliberated. The elders’ eyes roved over the rest of the band, seeking consensus. Jan felt his heartbeats pulsing one by one, his muscles growing taut. At last, the aged goatlings nodded.
“Very well, Moonbrow,” the greybeard replied. “We will do as you ask. The newfound friendship between our two peoples is indeed too precious to be lightly shed.”
His mate beside him echoed, “Find your sire, Prince Jan. Our goodwill speed you.”
The prince of the unicorns bowed low before them. Their fire, untended, had dwindled to a feeble glow. Jan turned and launched himself, galloping away through the moonlit trees. Alma’s daughter, waning now, illumined his path. Behind, he sensed the glow of coals newly stoked and fanned to life again, heard the panpipes resume their plaintive song. He headed west through the still, dark wood, sprinting in the direction of the Great Grass Plain.
6.
Summer
Tek stood in the entry to the cave. Moonless night breathed warm around her. Above, a myriad of summer stars flocked the heavens like thistledown. Still discernibly blue, the early evening sky held onto the set sun’s light. Nine weeks. The pied mare shook her head. Most of summer flown since the serpent’s dance, since peacemaking with the gryphons and, a few days following, goatling envoys.
Snorting, the warrior mare marveled. No diplomat, she had had no fine phrases such as her mate always used to win his enemies’ trust. Instead, she had employed her storier’s art, reciting the tale of how, two winters past, Korr’s derangement had slaughtered nearly half her own people, driven her from the Vale, and imperiled her unborn young. Only intervention by Sismoomnat and Pitipak had enabled Tek and her twins to survive. That seemed to mollify the pans.
She spoke with loathing of Korr and of how, were it not for her faith in Jan, she and others would have fallen upon the mad stallion years ago and driven him from the Vale. In the end, the peace held—but Tek knew it could shatter in a moment if Jan proved unable to capture his sire. Korr had, so the envoys averred, now fled the Pan Woods for the Plain.