He felt the bite upon his neck begin to bleed, the long shallow rent across his chest blaze hot with pain. Beside him, Lell—scarcely half his size—dodged, trying to get around him, seeking to fall upon their attacker herself. Korr skidded, wheeled. Jan rushed him, mostly to keep himself safely between his young sister and the king. The black prince slapped hard at his sire with the flat of his horn, pounded him with his heels, driving him back, away from Lell and the others.
At last, with a despairing cry, the mad king shook free, wheeled, fled across the valley floor and up the far hillside. Lightning shattered the sky. Rolling thunder pealed. The wind lashed, flailed. Rain became a downpour. Stunned, the herd broke and scattered, scrambling for haven in the caverns and hollows of the surrounding slopes. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jan sprang in pursuit of his sire. Desperately, Tek galloped to intercept him.
“Jan,” she cried. “Hold. Forbear!”
The young prince scarcely checked. “Nay,” he cried furiously. “Nay, not this time! He’ll not evade me more. I’ll have the truth if I must chase it to world’s edge! Take charge of the herd, Tek—I’ll return as soon as may be.”
5.
Rain
Rain hammered down. Jan’s cloven heels bit into the soft hillside, sliding on slippery turf. Thunder crashed. Wind whipped at him. Having long since lost sight of Korr, he gained the trees. Jan shook his head, teeth champed, panting with effort. The downpour was blinding. A glimpse of shadow through the trees ahead. He dodged after it. Treeboles gave way once more to rocky slope. Above, a gaunt figure struggled to the hillcrest and vanished over it. The young prince redoubled his efforts, loose, wet rocks kicking from under his heels. As he topped the rise, rain pummeled him anew. Snorting, he pitched to a halt.
Below him lay the Pan Woods, home to Sismoomnat and Pitipak’s folk, the two-leggèd goatlings. Until a few short seasons ago, the pans had been among the unicorns’ bitterest foes. Now both peoples enjoyed free forage through one another’s lands. Gazing down, the prince’s eye met nothing but dark woods, sprawling toward horizon’s edge through a grey curtain of rain. He listened, but discerned nothing above the deafening downpour. For all the king’s haggard appearance, he made swift quarry.
The young prince cast back over one shoulder at the Vale, lying deserted in the rain. He eyed the council rise, empty and small-seeming, about which he and his fellows had lately parleyed and danced. He marked his own cave on the hillside below, where Tek and the twins now doubtless sheltered, and felt a twinge. Impatiently, he shook it off. He would be returning in a few hours—at most a day or two. Just as soon as he had found his sire and wrested his terrible secret from him. Surely then all could be put to rights. Jan set his teeth. Without another thought or backward glance, he plunged over the hillcrest into the dark Pan Woods.
The trees rose thick around him, dripping with moisture. The morning’s deluge had subsided at last to a pattering drizzle. Jan trotted along a streambed, seeking tracks. He had combed for hours in widening circles, hoping to come upon his sire or sign of him, or else to encounter friendly pans from whom to ask news or aid.
Jan splashed to a halt in the middle of the stream and bent his long neck to drink. The water tasted cool in the humid summer air. He shook his sodden coat for perhaps the twentieth time. His head reeled. He had not slept in an evening and a day. It was long past noon. Jan stumbled out of the streambed. He had followed it far enough and found no sign. The young prince felt the hollow ache between his ribs, the weakness in his limbs as he reentered the trees. He would have to feed soon, rest.
A glade opened before him, perfectly round, vegetation carefully cleared from its center. Jan recognized it for a pan place, one of their ceremonial circles. A ring of stones enclosed a heap of ash in the circle’s heart. Young oats and rye grass sprouted among the trees bordering the clearing. Inhaling the lush, verdant scent, the dark unicorn bent his head, tearing greedily at the fragrant, juicy stuff. Leaves and buds augmented his fare. The hollow in his belly began to fill.
A thicket of firs stood near the clearing’s edge. Their strong, resinous aroma beckoned him. Jan nudged aside a spray of boughs and pressed forward, shouldering past outer branches until he reached the hollow interior. The firs stood so close, their spreading foliage so dense, that despite the morning’s rain, the fallen fir needles beneath had remained dry. Only when he had sunk down and folded his limbs under him, did the dark unicorn realize how exhausted he was.
His heart rocked against his ribs. Breathing deep, he settled himself into the soft, fragrant carpet. Jan laid his head along his outstretched forelegs. His eyes closed once, opened, closed again. He thought of Korr and resolved to rest only briefly before going on. The gaunt, dark unicorn fled before him in dreams. Hooded serpents swarmed. The young prince twitched, eyelids fluttering, as a viper rose to strike the king. He who had never danced the serpent’s dance, never scratched his flank or received the venom-proof blood, cried out as the dream nadder’s fangs pierced him.
Jan felt himself racing, sprinting to fend off the serpent’s sting—too late. The haggard stallion reared, screaming, then fell endlessly away from Jan into a yawning crevasse. The speckled serpents attenuated into a tangle of stars. The young prince found himself still running, galloping along through dark emptiness high above the rolling globe below. Cold wind whipped his mane. He was crossing a bridge, a precarious curve that spanned the whole sky, arcing ever more steeply down to horizon’s edge. In a rush he realized he could not stop, momentum propelling him, hurtling him swift and inevitably toward the end of the world.
Panpipes woke him, their low, susurrous music fluting through the quiet. Jan stirred, groggy. He lifted his head, felt the closeness of fir boughs. Peering through darkness, he realized it was night. In the clearing, just visible through the trees, graceful, two-leggèd figures crouched or reposed about a flaring fire: young pans and old, full-grown warriors, elders, weanlings and infants. Jan glimpsed roots and other forage passing from forelimb to forelimb, dams suckling their young. The guttural clicks and gestures which were the goatlings’ speech made little more than a murmur above the crackling of the blaze.
The gentle trilling of their panpipes wove through the summer air. Halfway around the circle Jan spotted the piper. Beside him sat a grey-bearded male, horns ribbed with age, and a bare-cheeked female, skin wizened as willow bark. A much younger pair rose from the circle and approached with forepaws clasped. They bowed low before their elders and handed them sheaves of grass in exchange for garlands. By their rich, sweet scent, Jan knew the flowers to be night-blooming lilies. Their perfume blended with the tang of woodsmoke and the aroma of the trees.
The young couple embraced, forelimbs entwining, and retired to the far side of the ring. Jan heard glad murmuring among their fellows as, each with a gesture and a word, the two elders rose and cast their sheaves into the fire. Red sparks flared up, subsided. Jan could only conclude he had witnessed some sort of joining, perhaps even the pledging of mates, and was swept suddenly, keenly, by memory of his own pledging to Tek almost three years past, by the shores of the Summer Sea.