With snorts of alarm, the Plainsdwellers halted. The wind was wrong for them. They had not scented him. One of their number nearly bolted, but Jan called again.
“Peace! I need your aid.”
The party did indeed consist of a mare, two stallions, and a suckling filly. Feathers of birds entangled their manes. The mare was brilliant crimson, her filly palest blue. The younger and slighter of the two stallions was fair gold, his companion brindled grey. The pair circled forward to protect the mare, who stood to shield her foal.
“Look! Look!” The gold stallion whistled. “’Tis he of whom Calydor warned: the black Moondancer. Flee!”
Wide-eyed, the grey looked half persuaded, but the mare held her ground.
“Nay,” she muttered. “’T cannot be. Calydor described a haggard stallion of middle years…”
“I am not he,” Jan broke in swiftly. “It is he I seek. He has wronged my folk and our allies. I must capture him ere he harms others…”
“Already he has wronged others,” the grey snorted. “Pursued, even injured some. Calydor foresaw and warned us from his path. By your speech, you are Vale-born, your hue jet black. What assures us you are not the mad destroyer?”
Jan turned his head so that the green gryphon feather might come into their view. He remembered from a brief encounter on his initiation pilgrimage years ago that unlike his own folk, who dipped only the neck, Plainsdwellers bowed by going down on one knee. The prince of the unicorns now did the same.
“Free People of the Plain,” he answered, “I am Aljan Moonbrow, prince of my folk. The one I seek is Korr, our king, though he no longer rules us. For years we contained his madness within our Vale, but now he has broken free. He must be found. This I am come to do.”
The golden stallion frowned, suspicious still. The grey seemed somewhat less so, but the crimson mare nodded. The brown and the white feather, each tethered in the long strands of her hair, bobbed.
“Aye, Korr,” she murmured. “The one whose name means thunder… All sooth, you are not he,” she said suddenly. “I know you now—for I have seen you ere time. Recall you this? You were but a colt half grown, and I a filly about the same age. You had slipped away from your pilgrim band to sing the dead rites for a mare of ours killed by a pard. My dam and I and our companion came upon you. You told us your name. ’Twas—’twas…”
She paused, searching.
“Aljan, the Dark Moon!” she exclaimed, triumphant. “We later heard you succeeded Korr. You are now called Aljan-with-the-Moon-upon-his-Brow, are you not? A Moondancer, but fair-spoken, aye. And honorable.”
Jan drew back, astonished. Memory washed him—of his initiation pilgrimage four years before, and the Renegades he had met upon that journey—at the end of which had lain the wyvern in her den. The young mare—had she been the filly he had met? She looked so much older now, a mated mare. “I am Aljan,” he murmured, still struggling to recall, “though I never knew your name.”
“Crimson,” she told him, whickering, as though the answer were obvious. She nodded toward the other three. “And these, who were not with me when first we met, are Ashbrindle, my sire.” The grey-and-white nodded. “My brother-belovèd, Goldenhair.” The younger stallion tossed his head. “And my filly, called Bluewater Sky till she grow wit enough to choose her own name.”
Jan bowed his head to each in turn, even Sky, before returning his gaze to the mare.
“Will you aid me, Crimson?” he implored. “I intend no ill against the Free People of the Plain, only to find my sire. Do you know where I may discover him?”
Before him, the three warriors exchanged a glance, seemed to reach agreement. The suckling filly began to nurse.
“Calydor will know,” the grey stallion replied, coming forward now. “Ask of him.”
Jan looked at him. “Calydor,” he mused. “Who is this Calydor?”
“Our prophet,” the golden stallion declared. “He recks much and dreams more. He will judge if your words sing true.”
“Hist, belovèd,” the crimson mare broke in. “Let us speak this stranger fair.” She turned to Jan. “Calydor is a farseer. Many call him Alma’s Eyes. Were he not our close kin, we might do the same.”
The dark unicorn felt his spirits lift. “Where may I find this seer?” he asked. “You say he can scry my lost sire? Will you guide me to him?”
“Water first,” the grey brindle replied. “Let us quench our thirst on it.” Turning, he whistled his companions to follow. “Come, daughter, filly, and daughter’s kin. Time enough to ponder my brother’s whereabouts once we have drunk.”
7.
Stars
Jan trotted beside the crimson mare. Her pale-blue filly pranced alongside. The mare’s sire, the brindled grey, led them over grassy, rolling hills, with the mare’s brother-belovèd—what did the term mean, Jan wondered: foster brother, half brother?—pale gold, bringing up the rear. The grey-and-white trotted briskly, with hardly a glance behind. He seemed to have accepted Jan, for the present at least, though the younger stallion watched him carefully still.
Only the crimson mare seemed wholly at ease. She had spoken little during their five miles’ journey to where a slender brook meandered between two slopes. There they had lingered, savoring the creek’s coolness, dipping their heads for a second draft as the young sun cleared the horizon and floated free, turning the morning sky from misty white to deeper and deeper blue as it climbed toward zenith. At last, the grey brindle spoke.
“’Tis well,” he said. “You seem no mad raver. I would lead you to my brother, if my companions assent.”
The mare and the other stallion both nodded, the pale gold grudgingly, barely dipping his chin. So it was the crimson mare the young prince now found himself pacing: the grey ahead, the gold at rearguard, the pale-blue filly frisking and teasing. Morning had grown late, warm, the sun high overhead. White clouds gathered, their shadows slipping over the Plain.
“Tell me of your life here, upon Alma’s Back,” he bade the crimson mare.
She cocked an eye and replied, “Gladly—but first speak of yours within your Vale. My dam’s dam came from there. She said ’twas all proud princes, rules and Law, so she fled to the Mare’s Back to win freedom. You call yourself prince, Aljan, yet you seem fairspoken still, not ruled by pride.”
He laughed. As they trotted through the long, warm noon and lay up in the shade of steep banks for the hottest part of the day, he spoke of Moondance, of new warriors initiated upon spring pilgrimage, of the yearly trek by those unpaired to find and pledge their mates by the Summer Sea. He spoke of autumn feasting and spring birthing. Of Kindling and Quenching, the herd’s winter ceremonies of fire. Crimson listened intently, interrupting from time to time. Jan knew by their silence the grey and the gold were listening, too.
Not until midway into the afternoon had Crimson heard enough. She told then of the Free People, a scattered, far-traveled folk who ranged at will across the Plain. Though some were loners, most traveled in small bands. Plainsdwellers dodged pards, encountered each other at waterholes, whistled greetings to those sighted at distance, and followed one another’s spoor to meet and trade news. Alliances formed, endured awhile, then just as easily and amicably dissolved.
The impermanence of such an existence struck Jan as both utterly foreign and oddly alluring. Unbound by any sovereign or herd, each Plainsdweller was completely free—but at what cost? Danger from pards. A life spent in constant motion, rather than settled in a sheltered Vale. Friendships must be difficult to sustain, Jan mused. He wondered how mates fared in the rearing of their young.