“That very year by the Summer Sea I pledged your dam. She bore you to me the following spring. I reared you sternly, that you might never stray, as had I in my youth. I sought to keep you safe…
“To keep me ignorant!” Jan cried. “How is it, my sire, you loathe all Renegades so? Did you not once long to be one? Did you not, in your youth, once strike out across the Plain, make promises you spurned to keep—only to think better of your flight and return to the Vale?”
Korr shuddered. The dust on his coat rose and settled. “And if I did?” he muttered sullenly. “I came to my senses with none the wiser. Would you condemn me for mere folly?”
“Not for folly, but for deceit,” Jan answered hotly. “You told me I was prince-to-be and deprived a princess of her birthright.”
“Aye,” the dark king snarled. “The red wych bore her filly in the wild, reared her there two years till she was weaned—then brought her back to the Vale and left her in Teki’s care. To shame me! And never a word of who her filly’s father was. I made her swear never to tell what had passed between us. All these years, her silence has tortured me, chasing my reason!”
“It is your own silence,” cried Jan. “Your own silence that has maddened you.”
The other sank, sagged. “But I am dying now. My silence is broken.” Salt covered him. He turned glazed eyes toward Jan. His bony head looked like a skull. “So, my son,” he grated, “you have wrested my secret at last.” His voice was a rasp and a rattle of bones. “Has it been worth the trek?”
Jan stood unable to move, to think. The Waste all around him lay utterly lifeless, motionless, still. He groaned. “How am I to tell Tek?” he wondered, desperate, only half aware he spoke aloud. “How do I dare?”
The haggard king rolled onto his side. His frail head touched the dust, then rose with momentary strength.
“Speak of this to no one,” he hissed. “Carry my secret to the end of your days. Jah-lila will hold silent. Her daughter will never rule. The herd will not dream they stand duped by a second son. Tell them, and you destroy them! They will cast you out, strip you of power. If not their prince, what are you? Who are you, if not my son?”
Jan stared at nothing, the words of the dark king still ringing in his mind. Wind hissed about his fetlocks, lifting the sand, stinging him. He had not felt it rise. It hummed, moaning. The mad king of the unicorns laid down his head. His body shuddered, tremored, stilled. His stark ribs rose, subsided, his breathing growing shallower, more labored. Jan stood fixed, swaying. The wind gusted and whipped. Salt grit beat at his ears, his eyes and nostrils. His mane and tail thrashed, lashing him.
His fallen sire lay at his feet, unmoving now. Jan scarcely recognized him, so thin and fleshless had he become. Korr’s lifeless form lay like a shadow, a deep pool in the sand. Gazing down at him, Jan felt oddly disoriented, as though he were beholding a great chasm, a darkness reft of moon or stars. He had no notion how long he stood gazing into this void. The wind increased, lifting clouds of pale, bitter sand.
Jan stirred, though whether his trance had lasted a heartbeat or an age, he could not say. He felt numb. His sire was dead. He must complete the burial ritual. The prince of the unicorns bent his horntip to the sand and drew a circle around the fallen king. Wind blew the shallow depression in the sand away. Jan tried again, and yet again, to close the circle, but the wind prevented him. He tried to fill his lungs, to sing the endingsong:
Rising tempest stole the words from his teeth. Salt blinded him, smothered him. Wind battered and deafened him. The world tilted, steeped in the bitter redolence of ashes and dust. Jan teetered away from the fallen king, afraid somehow that if he remained, he might fall into endless, bottomless nothingness. He tried to turn, but the wind drove him on. He managed one backward glance, and saw fine sand drifted high against Korr’s side. It spilled over, pale grains streaking across the blackness of him like hurtling stars.
Jan’s hooves sank, grit rising to pull him down. He struggled, aware he must keep moving or be buried in salt. The storm, coming out of the west, drove him eastward, away from the Plain. Blindly, reluctantly, he stumbled on toward the dreaming mountains—invisible now—that bounded unseen horizon’s rim and bordered the end of the world.
11.
King’s Mate
Wind howled. The salt grit stung. He could move no direction other than toward the sandstorm’s lee. A weight like that of the world crushed him. How many leagues had he already traveled, one torturous step at a time? Thirst tormented him. He could hardly breathe. His empty belly ached. He tried to halt, to rest, but the gale harried him. Whenever he lay down, dust drifts overtook him within moments, threatening to bury him. He rose and stumbled on.
Time proved impossible to gauge. He had no notion of night or day. The way seemed to be rising, becoming more solid. Fatigue stupefied him. He dared not stop. The ground grew firmer, its shifting granules coarser underfoot. Cold wind cut through his numbness. He felt as though his pelt had been scoured from his hide.
What woke him to himself at last was the sound of his own footfalls. He was walking, slowly, step by step, must have been doing so in a daze for he knew not how long. Numb still from the hours or days that it had flailed him, he realized the wind had ceased. He felt indescribably light. His mouth still tasted of salt. He dared not even try to swallow. But he could breathe. Pitch dark surrounded him. Night, he reasoned: moonless night.
No sound met his ears other than that of his own hooves, scrunching loudly. Each step sank into something loose and rough and pebble-sized, but irregular in shape, and much lighter than riverstones. He felt as though he were treading great piles of cracked acorn shells. He felt muffled, dusty, caked with grit.
Jan halted and shook himself. Sand flew from his coat and mane. He twitched his ears furiously to clear them. The smell of dust rose. He felt light enough to be treading sky, not earth. He became aware of stars, not sure whether they had emerged suddenly or slowly, or whether, perhaps, he had been walking with his eyes shut.
He gazed up, lost in their brightness, trying to recognize a pattern there. They dazzled him, many more than he had ever seen. Too stunned by hunger, thirst, and fatigue, he could find no familiar constellation. He gave up. The scrunch under his hooves gave way to solid stone, rippled and hard. His hoofbeats scuffed, rang, at times struck sparks. Moonless night lasted forever.
After a while, he perceived an utter darkness to one side of him, dividing the night. A faint echo rang from that quarter. To his other side, stars blazed, filling that half of the sky as far above him as he could crane, and as far below as he could peer. The air from that direction felt empty and unimpeded. No echoes rang. A hint of breeze wafted thence, lifting his mane.
Suddenly the starless darkness fell away. He heard a quiet, continuous rushing sound, very familiar to him, but in his daze, he could not think what it was. The susurrous murmur soothed him. He had heard it many times before, he knew, though not for a very long while. A slight pressure lapped against his hooves, a cool ripple, a gentle rill.
Stars burned all around now, above and below. Those beneath him were in motion, winking and wavering, moving past him to a point seemingly only a few paces distant where, converging slightly, they simply vanished. Other stars continuously replaced them, gliding forward from behind, their fixed companions above burning steadily.
Walking among the stars, Jan reached the place where those in motion vanished, and stepped beyond it. Every heavenly light before him hung motionless. The plashing whisper continued behind, quiet, lulling. The coolness streaming against his hooves had ceased. He could not go another step. His eyes slid closed. He realized that he had just lain down. A vast, illumined void surrounded him. He had no idea where he lay. A breath of starwind sighed across him, thin and slight and very cold. He slept.