A Rift In Reality

“An unexpected leader
Who chose to leave her home.

And one who’s young and foolish,
But brave through to the bone.

A warrior from the tree tops,
Who left love to wander among stones.

A royal secret, a hidden king,
Who finally takes his throne.

A winged and scaled princess
From a palace ‘neath sea’s foam.

Another world’s child,
Out of place, but not alone.

An ancient prophetess,
But not even she sees what’s to come....”

Chapter 1-Fate And Fire

It would have been around the silvery beginnings of June, if the creatures of Atlee-us had used our way of naming to identify the moons-based months in their seasons-marked year, but they had no names for their months. At that, they didn’t even tell time as we know it: they knew early and late, and Night, Midnight, and Morning and Evening, and Afternoon, Sunset and Sunrise, but never would you see an actual clock, or even a sundial, or hear the time of day reckoned with a set of numbers, throughout their entire world.

And so, as far as Wind-Chaser was concerned, it was an early Summer late Afternoon in Phanarith Valley. Wind-Chaser was a Unicorn, which was just fine, because so was everyone else living in Phanarith valley. As far as anyone was willing to admit, there were no humans in Atlee-us and never had there been. But the creatures that did live there– the Dragon, the Unicorn, the Gryphonne, the Monkey, innumerable others– they weren’t totally unlike humans. They walked on two legs, most of the time, they wore clothes, and spoke, and thought, and built. Many things a human would likely recognise, but deem as archaic: knights and mounts, the world’s clothing, kings and crowns, swords and lances and arrows. Even their language was, at it’s heart, English. But all the same, Atlee-us was different. And the chief difference was that no Atlee-an creature could ever deny the existence of magic: it was practically all around them.

Wind-Chaser walked the dirt paths of the main city in Phanarith. That locale was known as The CalterVentenuFalt, an odd word, even by Atlee-an standards (the people of Atlee-us had a passion for names and naming). It wasn’t an official name and there was no Baron of CalterVentenuFalt, as there were Barons of CalterTarn, VentenuTarn, and Faltarn. CalterVentenuFalt was simply a name dreamed up by someone who lived there, a local colloquialism. These regions were named for the three rivers that snaked across Phanarith: The VentenuRath was the thunderous main one, a river that wandered all across the mainland of that world, and for that portion of it, ran through the mountain-encircled valley that was the main homeland of Unicorns. The city built on this river was VentenuTarn. Two rivers branched off from it, the FaltRath with the city FalTarn built around it, and the CalterRath running right through the middle of CalterTarn (as you’ve probably already figured out, a name ending with “rath” means a river, just like the ending “tarn” is usually a town). All these places were down-river from CalterVentenuFalt, though, which was the grandest of the four, and planted firmly at the fork where the three rivers separated (hence it’s real name: RiverSplit).

Wind-Chaser wandered, enjoying the busy town’s streets. She was born into a relatively high caste, and her family was well off, but not so important a family that she couldn’t walk alone, or talk to anyone who wasn’t a nobleman, and nor was her life run by the councillors who worked for her father (who had been a General, killed in battle without him and his only child ever meeting face to face). Wind-Chaser was getting closer and closer to her coming-of-age, and she was pretty much running her own show.

A small Unicorn child, a fawn, as they’re called, ran laughing by Wind-Chaser, who smiled. The fawn was quickly followed by a bleating Sayhlu, which was something like a small, friendly, bright blue goat with six legs – a popular pet. The Sayhlu stopped briefly to tug curiously at Wind-Chaser’s robe-like dress, then ran off again.

Wind-Chaser laughed at the blue little beast, and continued on her way. She liked to walk through the city, yes, but she also had a purpose in mind. Her robes swirled as she walked, dark burgundy-red, trimmed with a pleasant yellow, a colour like a stronger version of the mute, hinted-at amber of her own mane– which draped long and well-groomed from her neck, and hanging to her shoulders– and her tail, which was at the moment hidden under her robes. Her father’s medallion, gold and with the two twined coils that denoted the Atlee-an symbol for seven, hung about her neck, the seven brilliant against the wide, dark green stripe that started just below the robe’s collar and travelled all down the front of it, dividing the burgundy from itself. Like all feminine garments of Unicorns, the collar of her robe went low in the back, exposing the shoulder blades and leaving room for the wings they could call to appear there at will. The gold of her medallion was evenly matched by the gold of her horn, which looked like many golden rings stacked one on top of the other, progressively smaller, tapering to a fine point. The hair that covered the rest of her body was a simple white, and her placid blue eyes scanned the streets contentedly.

In among the simply but brightly painted buildings of the town that rested under the benevolent shadow of the Unicorn king’s palace, between two shops with their tent-like, cloth-on-a-wood-frame awnings, was a house like any other in the district: mud-brick walls panelled over with wood, covered over with paint, with an efficiently thatched roof. Wind-Chaser’s hooves– though they walked upright, Unicorns still had hooves– clopped hollowly as she stepped from the dusty dirt street to the flat stones of the simple house’s front porch. She knocked on the door, with a sound not unlike her footfalls. A Unicorn’s hand was partially hoofed: the back of the hand had a hard, hoof-like plating to it, and so did the fingers from the first knuckle to the back of the hand. When the Unicorns made a fist, for all intents and purposes it became a hoof, allowing them to descend to four legs when they had to run their fastest. The remaining portions of the fingers had white hair on them, like the rest of the body, and of course fingernails like a human. The palms and the pads of the fingers were hairless and slightly leathery.

The blue painted door was answered by Rip-Tide. He was another Unicorn, and Wind-Chaser’s friend. He wasn’t born to a well-off family like she was, but still he was her best friend – as Wind-Chaser often assured her mother and Rip-Tide his grandparents (Rip-Tide lived with them; he was an orphan), they were “Just. Friends.” Rip-Tide grinned casually, almost lopsidedly.

“Wind-Chaser! There you are! Mahrãndi, Wind-Chaser!” Rip-Tide greeted her. He was several years younger than Wind-Chaser and he was mostly white all over, like her, and his horn was longer, but still similar. His mane– a bit shaggier– was blue, as was his tail that poked out of the tail-hole in his grey, denim-like pants. His eyes, though, were blue but also green; they were green, but also blue. Two colours at the same time, it seemed. They tended to remind people of the sea, and some said that’s why he’d been named Rip-Tide. His shirt was beige with an embroidered vine-and-leaf pattern in green along the collar, the short-sleeve hems, and the waist hem, and the vest he wore over it was darker red than Wind-Chaser’s robe.

Wind-Chaser smiled at him.

“Mahrãndi, Rip-Tide, mahrãndi. Are we ready to go?”

“I’m ready for anything.”

Rip-Tide retreated back into the house he shared with his grandparents, and returned only a moment later with a woven basket in one hand, and a pair of fishing poles in the other, leaning on and angled back over his shoulder, with the lines swinging behind him.

“Today’s the day,” he said, “Today, my friend, my pal, my compatriot, my ahriost, my companion, today you learn to fish!” The art of the angler was clearly something that Rip-Tide got excited about. Not that he liked to eat fish, he just liked to catch fish. Wind-Chaser laughed.

“Let’s go then, the fish are waiting.”

The city was busy. It was the centre of most life. The noise and crowds started to taper, though, when you got away from the centre of town, and out to the edges, and all but disappeared into a picturesque background when you got away from the outskirts. And out there in the town-less country, that’s were real life began. Because it was a wide, roundish, dish-like valley, Phanarith was a very hilly place. Hills rose and fell, and hid behind one another, small hills in places, others like towers. It was the kind of scenery that makes your eyes want to wander over it, and then your eyes make you want to wander it.

It was sunny, and it was summer, and it was green.

The FaltRath was the smallest of the three rivers. If it were terribly smaller, it would have been simply another nigh-nameless brook springing from the VentenuRath. But even it was fed by the powerful VentenuRath, and so, was strong enough to feed little brooks of it’s own that wriggled through the dips between the easy hills. Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide went out of the town south-east, along the worn foot-path beside the FaltRath. A little while and a bit of idle, friendly conversation later, the foot path turned further east and away from the river, now following the steady coarse of a respectable stream. The path they were on was one many people took, and so the stream was well-known, and jokingly called the “NotRath”. At the end of the stream was the end of the path. The VentenuRath fed the FaltRath, that fed the stream, and at the end of the stream, the little lake was fed. The lake was clear, formed in a deep dip where a few hills converged, and probably outlet by seeping through bottom, dripping into the underground caverns that came their closest to seeing surface in the caves in the mountains. The Unicorns knew about these caves, and it was generally understood that in an emergency situation, the large cave to the north of CalterVentenuFalt was where they were supposed to flee to. In that cave, moss grew that could be eaten and underground rivers reached the surface, and so they could stay there for an extended period of time, if anything ever happened that called for it.

Of course, nothing like that had ever happened in living memory, and no one believed it ever would.

The path ended in a dock that extended six or so feet over the lake, supported on one end by the land, and at the other by a tree-trunk pole at each corner. The poles went down to stick in the ground under the water that lapped against them, sending round, rippling rings radiating out across the lake. On a sunny day like the one Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide had chosen, you could see the fish swimming back and forth in their alternate world under the water.

Rip-Tide, fishing poles and basket in hand, clomped out over to the end of the dock and sat down with his hooves dangling in the water. Dark shadows started creeping up from the hems of his pants as the material absorbed water. It stopped several inches above his ankles. He got out the fishing rods and put the basket down beside him. He looked up and over his shoulder at Wind-Chaser, and gestured for her to come and sit down. Wind-Chaser looked like she just remembered something uncomfortable.

“Uh...Rip-Tide...about the bait...do we have to...do I have to...”

Rip-Tide knew exactly what she was talking about.

“When it comes to bait, some people prefer little bits of meat. Other people swear by worms. But don’t worry, I think plain old bread’s better than either of those. There will be no hooking of worms today.”

Rip-Tide took the lid off the basket, revealing a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth, some extra hooks and line, and ample room for their catches of the day. Wind-Chaser smiled, perfectly content with his answer. She clopped out on to the dock and gathered her robe up to her knees, then she sat beside him with the basket between them and her feet in the water. She sat on her robe-hems so she wouldn’t get them wet.

Rip-Tide handed her a fishing pole, and showed her how much bread to put on the hook and how. Then he showed her how to flick the fishing pole– a long, sanded stick with the line fixed firmly to one end– so the hook would fall in a nice spot in the water: not so close to the dock that the fish wouldn’t come, not so far out that when the fish pulled, it would break the line, or yank the pole from her hands, or pull her off the dock into the lake if the fish was a big one. And of course, made sure to tell her that anything they caught that wasn’t big enough to eat, they were supposed to throw back.

“And now,” said Rip-Tide serenely, “Comes the best part off all: we sit quietly on the dock, over the lovely lake, in the sunshine, doing ab...so...loutly...nothing...”

For quite a calm, pleasant while, wonderful ab...so...loutly...nothing was exactly what they did.

The afternoon warmth was almost a physical object, almost a blanket. Just when they were starting to toast nicely in the sun, Wind-Chaser was woken out of her half-sleep by a tug at her fishing line. Never having gone fishing before, it took her a moment to register what that meant, then she laughed in recognition.

“Rip-Tide! Rip-Tide! I got something!”

The fishing pole was twitching in her hands, the fish on the other end pulling to get away. Wind-Chaser laughed victoriously, and leapt to her feet. Rip-Tide jumped up beside her, excitedly shouting encouragement and reminders.

“Way to go, Wind-Chaser! Careful! Don’t pull when it’s pulling, you’ll break the line! That’s it! That’s it! It’s giving it a rest, now back up!” She backed up “Angle the pole upwards! One more step back-wait, it’s pulling again!” Wind-Chaser laughed: this was more fun than a barrel of Monkeys. “It’s stopped again! I bet you can get it this time, just step back quickly, and yank the pole up and pull it out on the dock, and you’ll be-“ he stopped short, caught up enough in Wind-Chaser’s catch that he forgot he was still holding his own pole and it took him a moment to react to the pull at it.

“Wind-Chaser! I got one too!”

Wind-Chaser looked up from the wildly flopping and rather large fish. She was dancing skittishly around it, trying not to let it touch her. Rip-Tide was laughing as he executed the same set of steps he’s just helped Wind-Chaser through: pull wait, pull, step, step, wait, angle the pole, then pull it up on the dock. This may seem to you a very strange way to go about fishing, but you must remember the construction of their fishing poles, and the fact that this construction did not include any such thing as a “spin-cast reel”.

The flipping and flopping of the fish subsided after a while, and Rip-Tide examined them as he packed them away. They wouldn’t be casting again that day: the Evening was already purpling the sky, and they had to be getting home.

“They look about the same size. About fourteen or fifteen brens.” Rip-Tide said (a “bren ” is about the length of your thumb). He grinned up at her-he was kneeling over the basket, she was standing on the dock. “I think your’s is a bit bigger.”

Wind-Chaser smiled back as Rip-Tide closed up the basket and stood up. He’d caught the bigger one, and she knew that. He was just trying to make her feel good about her first fishing trip.

They spoke again, talking about nothing, on their way back. The conversation stopped suddenly, when Wind-Chaser stopped on the path and pointed out to a rocky landmark to the left of the path that ran closely parallel to the VentenuRath.

“Rip-Tide, look! It’s still there! Do you remember this?” Wind-Chaser said, voice bright with recognition. She sauntered across the grass, up to the rocky pile and started moving the stones away, a few times pausing to make sure her robes didn’t get caught or crushed by the rocks, or to brush some dirt off of herself. Rip-Tide had to admit he hadn’t the foggiest what she was doing.

“Rip-Tide, this is “The Baron’s Castle”! Remember? When we were fawns and we used to come into this thing to play that game? Come, look!”

Rip-Tide wandered over, jumping over the stones facing the path. Inside, the rock was dish-shaped, the centre of it dipping down to the ground, leaving a hole about the size of a small room, and a perfect size for a few Unicorn fawns pretending to be the nobility of some great, wonderfully non-existent nation, or to come before the regal king of some equally wonderful and fictional kingdom and generally imagining all sorts of adventures. Now, Rip-Tide did remember.

“Hey, you’re right! This is it! We used to play here with Rose-Bud, and Rain-Blossom, and that set of identical twin brothers...what were their names?”

“Star-Shadow and Star-Shade.”

“That’s right! Rip-Tide, do...do...do you smell something?”

“Yes, I do-the fish. They’re starting to smell a bit: it’s hot out today. We’ve got to get them home and cooked.”

Wind-Chaser nodded and followed Rip-Tide out of the stones. They followed the path the rest of the way back to the city. It was quieter than they left it, most of the Unicorns having gone home for supper. Smoke curled out of the chimneys, and the city smelled faintly like food. It was a comforting smell.

Rip-Tide invited Wind-Chaser into his house to find something to wrap her fish in so she could bring it home. Rip-Tide’s house was modest, with the inside, like the outside, painted and panelled brightly, after the manner of Unicorn houses. There were only a few rooms in the old, cozy house: a livingroom with a few pieces of wood-framed furniture, stuffed with down from the cotton plants that grew in the south-west area of the valley, and upholstered with soft, dyed hides, and the kitchen was attached to that, with a table and cooking hearth, and the bedrooms were up a flight of stairs in the kitchen. Sea-Flower, Rip-Tide’s silver-maned grandmother, was sitting in a big, soft sea-blue chair. She smiled at them as they came in.

“Did the fish bite?”

“They sure did-one for us and one for Wind-Chaser! Big ones too. Do we have anything to wrap her’s in?”

“Oh, Wind-Chaser’s here? Hello, hawea! What? Oh, yes, Rip-Tide. There are grifas in the kitchen cupboard.”

Wind-Chaser laughed slightly. Dawn-Flower was always calling her hawea. It was a term of endearment, like when your grandmother calls you “dear”.

A grifa was a paper-like tight-weave of grasses just exactly for what Rip-Tide and Wind-Chaser intended to use them for. Rip-Tide pulled a sheet of grifa out of the cupboard, and put Wind-Chaser’s fish down on it, then wrapped it up and handed it to Wind-Chaser.

“There you go: you shouldn’t even dirty a finger getting it home.”

Rip-Tide was always teasing Wind-Chaser about how clean she liked to stay.

“C’mon, Wind-Chaser, I’ll walk you home.”

Wind-Chaser followed him out his back door, and down the path back to the street. A few soft lowing sounds came from inside his family’s stable, followed by one breathy, shuddered growl that wasn’t aggressive at all. Rip-Tide’s family were small-time farmers, and in their stable were a small handful of Gronts for heavy work, and one Gõrõdon for riding.

Rip-Tide walked with Wind-Chaser and they laughed and talked until it got dark.

“Grandmother must be finished cooking that fish and I bet they’re waiting for me. I’ll be getting home.”

“Mahrãndi, Rip-Tide.”

“Mahrãndi, Wind-Chaser.”

Wind-Chaser walked the rest of the way home by herself, and when she walked into her house, the fish wrapped in a grifa was set reverently on the kitchen table. She looked around for someone to show it too. Her mother, in a pale blue robe walked down the red-carpeted stairs from the bedrooms and sitting room upstairs.

“Mother! Look! Rip-Tide and I went out to the lake and I caught this!”

The grifa made a quiet, swishing sound as Wind-Chaser flicked it open to reveal the dead fish. Wild-Wind, her mother, grimaced at the dead fish on her table, but tried to look proud of her only child.

“It’s...uh...lovely, hawea, it’s...lovely. What do you plan to do with it?”

“I thought we might have it for supper!”

Wild-Wind smiled. She’d waited for Wind-Chaser to come home, but she hadn’t been expecting any dead fish. A live fish in the water where it belonged was quite tolerable, according to Wild-Wind, and though a fish as dead animal was almost the most unappetizing thing she could think of, a fish as meal was quite pleasant. Fish for dinner sounded just fine to her.

“I’ll go find Blue-Berry to make it up for us for supper.” Wild-Wind said, then crossed the kitchen into the hallway, disappearing little by little down the stairs to the basement that served as Blue-Berry’s quarters. Blue-Berry was their servant, after a way, as far as Unicorns had the concept– basically she lived in and worked on the upkeep of one house for a pay, but unlike the traditional human concept of “servant”, Blue-Berry was free to leave for another job at any time, though it was customary for her to tell them so in advance, so her current employers would have time to find another employee before she left. Perhaps Unicorns in Blue-Berry’s profession were closer to being maids than servants, but “servant” was the word they used for the job in Atlee-us.

Wind-Chaser walked out of the kitchen to the left and into the large, white-walled living room with red furniture and a wide, blazing fireplace. She relaxed in front of the fire for a while before going up the first set of stairs her mother had come down, then through a short hall past her mother’s room and a sitting room and a drawing and map room to her own room and lay on her red and blue canopy bed, looking at the pastel blotches of colour spattered all around her room. She once had been given permission to chose the colour of her own bedroom, and she hadn’t been able to decide. There was a woven wool rug by her bed, which was in the middle of the room. In the wall at the head of her bed was a wide window, facing east to catch the sunrise. To the left and right of her bed, against the wall, were a dresser with chests to either side of it, and a bookshelf, respectively. Several feet away from the foot of her bed was the open door.

“Dinner’s served, Fiidãh.” said a female voice several minutes later, as Blue-Berry appeared humbly in the doorway in a short (eight inches past her knees, but short for a robe), grey “dusting-dress” with a slightly greasy apron on top of it.

Wind-Chaser joined her mother for a pleasant supper, but ever since she’d come home after fishing, something had been growing on her mind. She didn’t know what it was, but knew it couldn’t be good news. She acted normally enough, though it was all she was thinking about as she ate amiably with her mother, then changed into a nightgown by the light of a candle on her dresser.

When she lay down in her bed to go to sleep that night, she felt something was definitely wrong.

* * * * * * *

Wind-Chaser put her feeling aside and continued to go about her daily business. She did her best to behave perfectly naturally, and with the nearing of the Unicorn banquet, Di-Siif, which happens on the evening of the longest day of every summer, no one had time to notice that anything was off about Wind-Chaser or anything else.

Di-Siif, the celebratory banquet, was based on the main concept of Atlee-an beliefs: that the sun was Abayten, and the longest day of the summer was his best gift and should be celebrated, just the longest night of winter should be celebrated as Ri-Siif, the gift of Shenra and Tardûn. Perhaps this should be clearer: the Atlee-ans believed that their world– and all the others, for they knew there were more planets out there than theirs– were fruit hanging on one of the Divine Trees in a place called the Celestial Orchards. The Orchards were situated in a place that was very like an infinite garden, called the Unending Plains Of Nantenûr. There was one Gardener who never began and will not end, and he had two children, one son and one daughter. They have no mother and were never born, yet Abayten is still their father. Only the sages understood this. Abayten is of human form, but wolf of features and winged, Shenra tiger-like of features, and Tardûn rather like a bear. There is another, who hangs back from the Divine Trees, because it is afraid of light. This is The Sleeper, a human form made from and wreathed in flame, who was the one Abayten and his children had to keep away, or it would cause the end of absolutely everything, but that is quite another story. Abayten watched the Celestial Orchards in the day time, and made it day for the Fruit Of Worlds. There was an orange jewel in his forehead, and this they believed is what makes the sun. Abayten’s son and daughter watched by night, with the aid of jade lanterns. The Atlee-ans believed these to be the moons, which they named after the children of Abayten. Whenever one lantern goes out, the other is full, so The Sleeper cannot come. The crescent moon they believe is a burned out lantern and a full moon to be a lantern at full light, and with this they mark as the beginning of the month (the next month begins when they reverse– the crescent moon has grown full and the full moon has waned to crescent).

At the Di-Siif banquet, it was the tradition for the near-adult Unicorns to help prepare the banquet and to serve the first course of food and the first goblets of wine. That Di-Siif, Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide were among the Unicorn youth expected to serve The Firsts, as they’re known. The banquet would not be until that evening, however, and Wind-Chaser, Rip-Tide and several others they were unfamiliar with were resting under the Singing Skies. The banquet would be held there in about four hours time (if they held to hours in Atlee-us) but it had been prepared already and the young Unicorns were let free to relax prior to it.

The Singing Skies were a strange place, in a fork formed by the split in the feet of the Maztring Mountains that surrounded the valley, to the west of CalterVentenuFalt (a rather long word– perhaps it is time to start referring to it by it’s official name: RiverSplit). There were well used footpaths going among the hills between the Singing Skies and RiverSplit; it was a well-worn way that many of them travelled, sometimes daily. The Singing Skies was a restful place. No one really understood it, or even, in the long run tried to...They had a special section of the heavens above them. The clouds themselves were coloured, the colour only visible from underneath them. They seemed painted, almost- twilight hues of blue and dusky red. Like some artistic sorcerer had used his magic as a brush to paint some abstract, pastel portrait on the clouds.

There was something else special about the clouds. Well, no. Not the clouds, or the sky, but the whole place. If someone sat beneath them-quiet calm, and best at dawn or sunset-and they stayed still, inside and out, they would hear what made the path between the Skies and RiverSplit so well travelled. It’s to hear the clouds singing. But to hear the music, one looks within themselves.

Wind-Chaser was laying on her back, eyes closed and ears twitching at nothing audible. She was listening to the music. Rip-Tide lay nearby, pretending to hear it. He was never really able to think still enough to hear a thing. At that particular time, he was thinking about the game of Cahrica that was sure to take place in the field at the banquet and new strategies he could use in the game after he finished helping serve Firsts. Cahrica was the most popular game in all of Phanarith. Technically, it was the name of a kind of tree, but the tendrils of the willow-like trees that grew in a forest in the north-eastern corner of the valley were the items used in the game, and thus was the sport’s name derived.

Wind-Chaser could hear the music though. She frowned: it sounded frightened, like it was trying to warn her of something. She knew why this would be. If the music came from inside yourself, of coarse it would reflect whatever was there. And that shadowy worry had been there for several weeks (if Atlee-ans had actually had a concept of a cyclic week). It was only the nature of the Skies to reflect that there was something looming that terrified Wind-Chaser, quietly paralysed her with fear. Or at least would soon.

Wind-Chaser’s music swelled. It became a picture under her closed eyes. The Singing Skies visions were always gravely important, but they were not dreams, not exactly. Sometimes, when you know what is to come but do not see it, your mind tries to show you. Since the Skies amplify the mind, they magnify this unknown knowledge into a clear picture, giving your mind a way to practically shove the facts in your face. It can do this when you’re asleep too, and these account for some dreams, but dreaming is not as strong as the Skies, and you can’t shrug the Skies off as “just silly dreams”.

There was a fire and it was not red. It was green and blue and white and violet and many colours changing. Wind-Chaser was just preparing to jump through it– she would never have come it through alive; It was not a big fire, but it would have killed her to go alone all the same and Wind-Chaser understood this– when Rip-Tide showed up. Another fire kindled and the both were the blistering, burning red of an angry flame, like a storm-heralding dawn in winter, angry red like blood. They jumped through together and survived. The smell of burnt flesh rose, though: Rip-Tide had sustained a minor injury to his shoulder.

A shadowy flash flicked around them, jumping and rolling and clamorously chattering, but Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide were not afraid of it. (“No,” Wind-Chaser thought, “not an ‘it’. The fast one is a ‘him’.”) He seemed to be moving so fast that he trailed fire, and he smelled of death, though not his own, and not their’s and the victims were not his, and this Wind-Chaser knew without being told. He was a Monkey, it looked like, though it was hard to tell, because though he was standing in a dark place with fire, he was in shadow and Wind-Chaser’s dream did not show her his face. A staff flashed into his hollow, black paws, seemingly from nowhere. With a shrill cry, he struck the ground with it, making a sudden sound that seemed misplaced, sounded like a single drum beat, and where the staff struck a fire snapped to life, and all three: this shadow, Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide jumped though the fires together.

An arrow sang down from some absent archer above them. It was an arrow when they looked up at the sharp whistling. Then it was a smouldering Phoenix, a great fiery bird streaking down like a diving hawk. Then it was an arrow again when it hit the ground in front of them and exploded into a fourth fire. A creature stepped out of the fire, head and shoulders taller then Wind-Chaser, and it was an astounding beast, like some warrior-king out of the old legends in old books. But Wind-Chaser did not fear the outline of his eagle’s head and wings, and the silhouette of his twitching lion’s tail, and the folded, but still massive, eagle’s wings that protruded from his back. He was right in front of her, and the dark place was lit with four fires, but still he looked like a walking shadow, the silhouette of himself. There were three things that stood out about him, though, as if the shade were dressed in armour: a silver breastplate with a regal red sash, a golden sword at his side (“Beautiful and deadly is that blade.” Wind-Chaser thought.) and the glinting steel helm on his brow, with the black arches of a raven’s wings adorning it’s sides. They did not fear the standing, armed and armoured shade, and the four of them jumped through the fires again, together.

Wind-Chaser was beginning to feel it was much like a dance, a ballroom dance, the sort that kings and princesses host. They jump through the fire, and another joins the dance. They jump through the fire, and with their own unique set of steps, another joins the dance. But it was a fire dance, and there was danger, great danger. But still, it was like a ballroom dance in a pearl dance hall. The next fire came in a stream and when it stood kindled tall on the ground, they saw the source: a shadowy Dragon stood on the other side, her dark outline of a mouth closing after breathing herself the fire. There was something noble about her flowing, swishing robes and clinking jewellery that they could not see, for it was all a shadow. She had a partially arrogant, partially sad air about her, but Wind-Chaser got the sense that she was not as sad yet as she would be by the end (“The end of what?” Was Wind-Chaser’s reflective next thought). The Dragon started walking closer, and they could hear the water swirling about her feet as she stepped out of it. There was another sound there with the water. A sticky slurping noise. (“That’s wrong,” Wind-Chaser thought, “that sound should not be there.”) The shade stepped out of the water-or maybe off of it, who knows in a Skies vision-and all...five of them now...jumped though the fires, next step in the dance.

She stepped from the darkness as if she’d always been there: a child, so armoured head to toe that Wind-Chaser could not see her race. Her face was in shadow under the silver and bronze helm– but a she this was, and a young she, Wind-Chaser was unshakably sure-and her chest and back were covered in a cuirass, steel and silver, gilded with jade. From her waist there hung a knight’s sword that looked far too big for her. It did not make her look foolish, this longsword hung from a child’s sword-belt, it made her look...formidable. Complete. At the other hip hung a knife with twinned serpents for a guard and a cube for a pommel, all in forged silver. It was long for a knife (“A dagger,” thought Wind-Chaser. “Not just a knife, a dagger”). But still not a sword. The frost-blue shield she held was proportionally large for the child as well. She could guard herself with it from head to knee, practically, and had symbols around it, and though Wind-Chaser could not see the shield well, she saw one emblem clearly: the two-swirled symbol for seven, the one Wind-Chaser wore as a pendant. The brazen greaves that girded the child’s legs, however, these looked to be practically made for her, as did the helm and cuirass. (“Odd,” Wind-Chaser thought, “that the armour that must fit her to function is perfectly sized, while the pieces that will do a bit large are not.”) When the armoured child appeared, so did a new danger, some great and iron evil circling just outside the firelight, waiting to come in. The child’s fire appeared, and her’s was first cold, then hot like the others, and then all jumped through the flames.

That iron evil circled as they jumped in the fires, the whole thing feeling like some desperate, symbolic tribal dance. Wind-Chaser was seeing things, seeing shadows, and hardly knew what to make of them, but still she danced, danced with the shadows until she saw the seventh dancer. The seventh dancer was not a shadow. Wind-Chaser saw her clearly, standing to one side of her flame, silent and not moving. The seventh dancer was a Unicorn like her and Rip-Tide, but she felt that this third Unicorn was older. Much, much older. The seventh dancer was violet and black-mottled all over, with cerulean eyes and a silver mane and tail and horn. She was dressed in a flowing, tattered robe. A priestess’s robes, white and run through with red along each hem, and down either side of the chest, with stylized faces of a bear below her right shoulder, a tiger below the left shoulder and the wolf in the centre just below . The dancer had a fourth symbol on her robe, that she must have put there herself: a seven. The dancer did not dance. She stood and stared, then spoke-the only words in the vision:

“I live my life as children dream,
I’m from the valley with the hills.
And I will shine like a light beam
When Iron Dark would do you ill.

I live my life as children dream,
I think less often than I play.
I’m braver, though, than I may seem.
I’ll fight to keep you safe the day.

I live my life as children dream,
Among great trees, so tall and fair.
And when, in Dark, you want to scream,
I promise to be with you there.

I live my life as children dream,
I swing the sword and pull the bow.
I have in light and darkness been,
And I know where you want to go.

I live my life as children dream,
I breath the water, swim in air.
I know the places that I’ve been,
And if you want, I’ll take you there.

I live my life as children dream,
From where there’s Boulevards and parks.
Though I’m young and little I’ve seen,
I’m strong enough to brave the dark.

I live my life as children dream,
How well I know the pass of time.
I know a thousand hills and streams.
I’ll share the gifts within my mind.”

The priestess spoke, then stood and the iron outside the firelight circled. She jumped through the flame, and all went dark.

* * * * * * *

“Wind-Chaser! Wind-Chaser!”

Wind-Chaser’s eyes fluttered open before her mind fully returned.

“Seven dancers...” she murmured dreamily, “Seven dancers in the fire with iron circling ‘round.”

“Wind-Chaser? Are you alright? What are you talking about?” The voice was Rip-Tide’s and sounded confused. Concerned too, definitely, but mostly confused.
Wind-Chaser came fully awake.

“Talking? Rip-Tide I didn’t-“

”Yes you did: something about seven dancers made of iron on fire.”

“No. Not on fire. In fire. And the iron was circling around.” Wind-Chaser corrected, with the tone of those who remember having had a very important dream, but can’t for the life of them remember what they had dreamed and was trying to grasp it from their memory.

“What?”

“Never mind, Rip-Tide.” Wind-Chaser said, friendly, but dismissive. She seemed to have a sudden thought. “When is it?” she asked, which was roughly akin to asking what time it was.

“Almost too late. Early evening.” he looked at her for a moment. “Are you sure you’re alright, then? You still look rattled. Should I get you a healer?”

“No, Rip-Tide. Really. I’m feeling fine.”

“Feeling fine?”

“Yes. Feeling fine. But I’m pretty sure I’ve been laying in the grass for a while. How do I look?”

Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide, still in sitting positions on the ground, stood up. Wind-Chaser, still in her dress for Di-Siif that she’d put on earlier, turned slowly once around. The robe was wide in the arms. After the elbow, it belled out, the elegant, flowing, wide sleeves hanging almost as long as the robe it’s self. It was golden yellow with white-embroidered designs on the front and around the low area just below her exposed shoulder blades.

“If you really are feeling fine, you’re looking it too.” Rip-Tide said, grooming a few stray bits of grass off of Wind-Chaser’s back. “What about me?”

Rip-Tide was wearing a formal robe, styled for a male: narrower sleeves, a closer collar, no exposure of the shoulder blades, and the chest and torso area of the robe tighter, fitting closer to the body. Rip-Tide’s robe was navy blue with sea-green, pale, embroidered forms of a lion and a Unicorn, stylized, and holding a shield between them. It was the ancient crest of their race. The Unicorn was said to represent themselves, the lion to represent strength, and the shield that they would never willingly hurt another, using their strength only to defend themselves–the shield being a defensive armouring. The meaning of the symbols in each quadrant of the shield was unclear, though most said it was the coat of arms of some great king who’s name and story were lost to the millennia. This crest was inscribed on many things–distant graves, metal urns, plaques, all buried, all forgotten. They all practically predated time. The symbol was still used, though that part of it’s meaning was unknown, in decorating, the sort of way it adorned Rip-Tide’s robe. His sleeves were an even six inches wide all the way down, with a sea-green, six-inch band just above each wrist.

“You look just fine, too. We’d better get over there. Firsts are probably just about ready to be served.”

Rip-Tide and Wind-Chaser jogged across the field with the painted sky to the rise of a small hill, scattered sparingly with Cahrica trees. Tables, long, wide banqueting tables, had been layed out on the flat plateau of the hill, with comfortable wooden chairs layed out every few feet, some of them already occupied. The places were set, glass cups and plates of the sort Unicorns were partial to were clean and glittering. The metal utensils that Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide themselves had helped to carefully polish lay in pristine rows parallel to the glass plates.

The two Unicorns went quickly to the head table, the one prepared for King Night-Bane and his family, looked down the hill that sloped away behind it, then jogged past the table, down the hill. Just beyond the hill were the roaring cooking fires lit for Di-Siif. Cooked vegetables, meats, delicious broths, soups and other exciting dishes were being taken off the fire by the cooks, who were working in a cloud of mouth-watering food-scents. In a knot nearby, the half-grown Unicorns like Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide were in their best clothes, congregating, getting ready to serve Firsts. The conversation at the tables floated to their ears. It was a gentle buzz, getting louder as more gathered to the table. Everything, even the conversation, went quiet for a moment, and after a hush, those at the tables erupted into applause: King Night-Bane, Queen Shadow-Eye and the young Prince and Princess Night-Tide and Shadow-Flower had taken their seats and Firsts was to be served.

Rip-Tide was handed a large platter of salty-smelling, finely fragrant fried fish by the cook, and he turned, carefully walking back up the hill to serve that part of the meal. Wind-Chaser was asked to pour the cannonberry wine into the adult Unicorn’s cups, from a large, luxuriously carved and painted amphora made of clay. Various other youths were asked to dispense different dishes. Young Unicorns did not see serving Firsts at Di-Siif as a chore. Di-Siif was a celebratory event, and someone at the banquet was more than likely to have fun, no matter what this someone was doing. While they were serving, there was no reason they couldn’t socialize with each other or with the seated ones who were older or younger than them.

Wind-Chaser was excited and distracted. She and her friends, including, among others, Rip-Tide (of course) as well as a young male Unicorn with slightly brownish hair all over and a dark red robe. Silver-Tree was his name and he was a grey-eyed joker.

Silver-Tree was always in the middle of a joke, but the one he was telling right at that moment was particularly engrossing. Those who were serving Firsts were coming to the tables closest to the King’s, the tables where the nobility sat– on Di-Siif and Ri-Siif, the common folk were served first, the high and gently born families second, and the royal family last– and Wind-Chaser was only half paying attention to what she was doing. Silver-Tree’s joke had the other half of her attention.

“So a Sprite walks into a tavern. He sees a big, shaggy-furred Sayhlu tending the counter. The Sprite, of coarse is really surprised to see a thing like that. So the Sayhlu says “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a Sayhlu tending bar before?” and the Sprite says “No, no, That’s not the matter. I was just wondering...What happened to the Gõrõdon who owned this tavern? He sell the place to you?” Silver-Tree said, and laughed at his own joke. (You may not find it particularly funny. But if you replace the Sprite, the Sayhlu, the tavern and the Gõrõdon, with a man, a dog, a bar, and a horse...you may still not find it very funny, but it should be oddly familiar.)

Wind-Chaser laughed whole-heartedly at Silver-Tree’s joke. But she was not focussing when she poured the noble-born heiress’s wine. She stopped laughing almost instantly when she tipped the amphora toward the glass goblet and missed it.

The sparkling, flower-fragrant liquid cascaded from the amphora mouth in a minute waterfall and snaked across the table in a diminutive red river. Thoughts, strings of words flashed, seemingly at random and of their own volition, through Wind-Chaser’s mind as she stood in dumb, open-mouthed confusion.

“It’s for a reason. A reason. You need to know. Need to see. For the ghost. You need to know, need to see, for the pearls, the wine, the ghost.”

The greatly agitated voice of the noble heiress temporarily cut in on the words that trailed through her mind in another person’s unknown voice.

“You foolish girl! Watch what you’re doing! Now I’ll have to go home and change my robes and come all the way back here! And I live in FalTarn!” The heiress gasped, grabbing and clutching at her strands of pearls that hung from her neck. “My necklaces! They’re ruined! Look what you’ve done! They’re coming apart already! The wine will rip the pearls apart!”

Wind-Chaser noticed exactly how odd the phrasing of the heiress’s last statement had been, and her cryptic thoughts, that seemed put there by someone else, crept in again.

“For a reason. You needed to know. Needed to see. The wine will rip the pearls apart. The ghost.”

The heiress was standing up, wiping her clothes with a cloth napkin.

“Well?! Say something, you foolish...fawn!”

Wind-Chaser snapped back to herself and the present situation.

“I’m so sorry! I really don’t want you to have to go all the way to FalTarn and back, but this is all my fault...I’m going to be changing out of my robe soon, into some more normal clothes, when the games start. You can put my robe on, then. It looks like it should fit, and you can even keep it if you like, especially since I ruined your pearls.”

The heiress sat, covering the stain on her robe with the napkin. She grudgingly gave up the bulk of her hostility.

“Well...I suppose it would be better than going to my manor and all the way back...but be quick!”

As the rest of Firsts were served and the young Unicorns serving sat down for a bite to eat for themselves, a hundred variations on a single phrase echoed in Wind-Chaser’s thoughts.

“It needed to happen. You had to see it so you’d know. Know for the wine, know for the pearls, know for the ghost.”

Only a single word had the power to break through Wind-Chaser’s partial meditation.

“Cahrica!” a young voice shouted, “Cahrica! Cahrica!”

The game, the favourite game of young Unicorns everywhere, was due to begin. In a thundering herd, a drove of spry Unicorns leapt from their seats, grabbed the bags they’d brought with them, and sprinted off to congregate around a collection of small, thrown-together-looking, hut-like structures. These were the changing houses, where they took turns changing as quickly as possible into more sport-oriented attire.

As Wind-Chaser waited her turn, the heiress to whom she’d promised use of her robe stood scowling nearby. When her turn to change rolled around, Wind-Chaser leapt into a changing house and into a blue shirt and pink pants (which were styled exactly identical to a male’s but the shirt was looser and exposed the shoulder blades in the back). She dashed out across the field, pushing the crumpled robe into the heiress’s hands as she passed her.

Out on the field, there was a substantial pile of Cahrica tree tendrils and an equally substantial number of excited Unicorns arranging themselves so they’d be on the same team as their best friends. Wind-Chaser met up with Rip-Tide there, who had changed into a nondescript shirt and pants made of a burlap-like material. He clearly was counting on getting muddy to the point where the clothes he was wearing would have to be thrown away.

The game of Cahrica is played by two teams, differentiated by either a red or green piece of cloth tied to their forearm...at least that’s how it’s usually set up: technically, the game can be played with as many teams as there are players and different colours of cloth available, and when you get up to around five or so teams, real chaos ensues. Real chaos has it’s own amusements and merits, but the game at Di-Siif is usually comprised only of two teams. The goal of the two teams (or of however many are in the game) is to get all the Cahrica branches, which start in a pile in the middle of the field, tied around their team’s tree, which is marked by a coloured cloth, like the one they tied to their forearm. The key there is “all the branches”, because it’s perfectly reasonable, so long as they haven’t gathered all the branches and won, to untie branches from opposing teams’ trees and run off with them (the branches must be tied at a level where everyone, even the un-winged males, can reach them). One player may carry as many branches as they wish, but when they arrive at their tree, may only tie them on one at a time, which still leaves them open for one of the other things that add challenge to the game: if an opposing team member tags you while you’re carrying branches, you have to surrender all the branches you have on you to that person. If a player from the opposing team is closing in on you, however, you always have the option of passing or tossing your branches to someone else on your own team.

Seconds before the game started, the female Unicorns showed out their wings, which were the colour of the rest of their bodies, and bird-like, and the reason their shirts went low past the shoulders. Wind-Chaser’s flexed slowly as the tense moment before the Unicorn standing between the two teams in the middle of the circle dropped the pebble (signalling the start of the game).

“Any time you see me grab some branches and fly up into the air,” Wind-Chaser whispered to Rip-Tide, who was on her team, “follow along on the ground under me so I can pass them to you if I need to.”

Rip-Tide nodded.

The pebble fell.

* * * * * * *

It was several days following Di-Siif and talk about the banquet still buzzed through the air. Wind-Chaser had gotten her robe grudgingly returned to her: the heiress showed up one day at the doorstep of her house, handed her the golden-coloured robe and grumbled it had been too small across the hips anyway, but she would be expecting money to buy a new robe of her own. She seemed almost unhappy to have nothing left to complain about when Wind-Chaser willingly gave the heiress a small purse of flat, round copper halads, Atlee-an money. In various groves of Cahrica trees, small score-settling games of Cahrica would sometimes erupt. Not that it wouldn’t have happened if there had been no scores to settle, but all the game’s fans were latching on to the idea of settling the controversial win at the banquet: was it cheating or wasn’t it? It’s not as if a move like that had a rule forbidding it, but it certainly didn’t have one condoning it either. Some, like Rip-Tide, were content to discuss the game without replaying it. Usually, they had been on the winning team.

“Rip-Tide, I haven’t the foggiest clue what you’re complaining about!” Wind-Chaser said, “Our team won, what else could you possibly want?”

“I know we won, I just wish everyone else would stop being malcontents and accept a little creativity! There was nothing wrong with that move!”

Wind-Chaser sighed resignedly and nodded.

“Yes, ‘creative’ is one word for it.”

They were sitting in the rather elegant living room of the house where Wind-Chaser lived with her mother. Wind-Chaser’s rosy-grey dress and Rip-Tide’s blue shirt and grey-green pants stood out pleasantly from the dark red of the upholstery. They had a plateful of lunch in each of their laps–bread and cheese and a few pieces of roasted grass-hen. Wind-Chaser had been trying very hard to bring up the subject of her vision and premonitions, but any time she said anything, Rip-Tide seemed to take it as a cue to talk about some completely unrelated topic. He couldn’t be doing it on purpose. How could he be? But the fact remained that he was doing it at all, and that was enough.

“Rip-Tide, would you listen to me for a minute?”

“...I thought I was...”

“Well, you really aren’t. This is important. Can you be serious for a moment?”

“Half a moment is my limit.”

Wind-Chaser sighed in an annoyed and rather unladylike fashion.

“Well, listen quickly then.” she said, and seemed to get lost there. How was she supposed to continue? “See...alright, you know when we were at the Singing Skies the other day and you had to sort of...wake me up?”

“That thing about the iron dancers on fire?”

“No, that thing about the seven dancers in fire. Well...that’s not the first time that’s happened to me. Or something very like that. I’m starting to get the feeling it’s not just odd, it’s direly important.”

This seemed exciting and piqued Rip-Tide’s interest.

“So what exactly’s been happening?”

Wind-Chaser told him everything. She told him about the night of the day they went fishing, and the sudden and unexplained feeling that something was horribly wrong. She told him that it had stayed with her in the back of her mind right up to the Singing Skies when the Skies gave it form and she had her vision. Wind-Chaser described the vision in great detail, the fires, the dancing, the seven dancers. She made sure he understood that she’s never known any of them but herself and Rip-Tide, and all others had been shadows of themselves, except the poem-reciting priestess. She concluded by explaining exactly what flashed through her head when she’d spilled the wine.

Rip-Tide had listened quietly.

“That’s fascinating, Wind-Chaser,” he said with genuine interest, “But shouldn’t you tell Wild-Wind this?”

“I tried. She wouldn’t have a word of it. She said I’d always had too much imagination for my own good. She said that nothing was even out of the ordinary, never mind wrong. I have to admit, superficially, it looks like she’s right. I don’t feel that she is, though, and I decided if my mother wouldn’t believe me, I’d have to find someone who did.”

“So you told me?”

“So I told you.” she said, then added, “Besides, you were in my vision.”

“Alright then,” Rip-Tide said with what he hoped sounded like seriousness, but actually sounded a bit silly, at least coming from him, “Let’s take stock of what’s happened. Well, nothing’s actually happened, per say, except to you. But anyway, we have two premonitions, one of a general sense of wrongness, the other of wine and pearls and ghosts.”

“And that wine can wreck pearls, which I had to know because of the ghost...for some reason.”

“Right. And one vision about us, one other Unicorn we don’t know, and five shadows we don’t know either.”

“Right.”

“And is that all?”

Wind-Chaser shook her head slightly. The sun from the wide window behind the couch where Rip-Tide was sitting glinted off her horn. She looked at the floor as if the bit she’d left out was a little silly.

“So what are we missing?”

“Well, it’s nothing really.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Alright, well, it’s a third premonition, sort of...see, I’ve been collecting things. Kind of...odd little things. Ropes...pottery...knives, like from the kitchen. Other things. Some of them I use, or I do something with them...like I threw a bunch of clay pottery in the VentenuRath yesterday because I had to see it float, just like I had to see the wine dissolve the pearls. And whenever I see antique weapons and armour -- you know, like what you see hanging over fire places and above doorways?--I get really excited, but then disappointed because...because...well, this will sound strange but because there’s no number seven on them. And they’re too plain, they look wrong. I’m looking for something, and the something’s a bit like those things, but it’s not those things, and unless they’re the right things, these things won’t do!”

“Now, Wind-Chaser, calm down. And stop saying ‘things’ so much if you can, it’s getting confusing. I’m trying to keep track. Is there anything else?”

Wind-Chaser nodded vehemently and had a look like what she was about to say was very important.

“Fire! There’ll be fire, I know it! I don’t know where or how or when or why, but I know there’ll be fire! And the fire won’t be fire. I don’t know what that means either, but I know it’s true! I know it’ll be just about the worst thing this valley has ever seen, it’ll be like nothing else and like fire, and it will be horrible!”

Rip-Tide frowned.

“This does sound important. I believe you, Wind-Chaser. I think others might too. I think we should tell someone and maybe we can all avoid the worst of that fire and whatever else. We should tell someone. Maybe even the king.”

“Rip-Tide, think: how are we supposed to get in to see King Night-Bane?”

Rip-Tide could be quite persuasive when he wanted to be and it wasn’t long before they were walking quickly, almost jogging, down the wide, main street of RiverSplit toward the great castle-manor where King Night-Bane lived and worked. The castle was at the end of the northern end of the street, the entire city laying open to it to the south. Since it was the northern-most building in the northern-most city and to the south of Phanarith lay only wasteland and ocean, the great grey-white turrets that flanked the main building also served as lookouts, as outpost towers. The main building was behind a wall that had a single gate in it that opened to the south. The castle was set directly in the place where the rivers divided and spray of the rivers coursing around it, tumbling around the sides of it, splashed up the castle walls. The waters then meandered lazily away in the riverbeds after their plume of display against the castle walls. There was a wide, walled, wooden plank bridge to get visitors from the street into the front area of the castle, and get them there dry. Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide were approaching the covered bridge and RiverSplit Castle.

Rip-Tide had dashed briefly back to his own house and gotten into his best robe while Wind-Chaser had been changing into her’s. They were now dressed in the same clothes they’d worn for Di-Siif.

Wind-Chaser looked nervously up at the castle.

“Rip-Tide...I dunno...this seems a bit dumb now that we’re here. What possible reason could they have to let us in?”

“What reason are they gonna have not to? We’re as valuable as any other member of the community.”

“Not the King.”

“Well, that’s who we came here to see, isn’t it?”

Rip-Tide took her arm and led her confidently across the bridge.

Going through the gateway into the front area of the castle, Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide saw a sort of foyer-like room. There were chairs in it, in a sitting area off to one side. Big, red, expensively upholstered chairs. These chairs sat on a big area rug that looked oddly like a tapestry intended for wall-hanging and against the wall in this sitting area was an oak bookcase full of expensive, leather-bound books. None of the chairs were occupied at that time. This was on the right side of the room going in, and to the left was a heavy oak desk with a marble top and a Unicorn in marble-hued robe sitting on the other side of it. The desk had a heavy book open of one corner of it, and beside that, a quill and ink. Various other papers littered the desk, which was set diagonal in the corner beside a large oak twin door, and sectioned off the far left corner of the room.

Rip-Tide pointed to the Unicorn behind the desk.

“She must make the King’s appointments, let’s ask her if we can talk to him for a couple moments.”

Wind-Chaser reluctantly followed him over.

“Mahrãndi, friend. My name is Wind-Chaser and this is my friend Rip-Tide. We were wondering...well, actually, this is mostly his idea, but what does it matter...if we might...uh...” Wind-Chaser started trailing off here, sort of muttering the last few words. “...have a really quick word with King Night-Bane...”

The Unicorn behind the desk shook her head.

“I can’t actually say yes or no. I don’t make his appointments, I just open this door. I’m the Door Secretary.”

“Well,” said Rip-Tide, “Can you open the door, please?”

“Alright. I don’t see why not.”

The Unicorn took a key out of the desk drawer and then walked around the desk, then unlocked and opened the double oak doors. Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide stepped through, and the Unicorn shut the doors behind them.

Stretching and yawning before them was a tall, wide hallway. At the far end of the hallway was the tall, arced door that led into the throne room where the king would be, into the castle proper. There were doorways with no doors in them lining the hall and each contained a desk and some decor and one attendant.

Rip-Tide tugged Wind-Chaser’s arm to get her to follow him, and they walked down the red carpet in the middle of the hall to the arced door at the end where an armed and armoured guard stood to the left and right of it.

“Mahrãndi, sirs.” Rip-Tide said to the guards in a perfectly chipper tone, “I’m Rip-Tide and this is my friend Wind-Chaser. We’ve been let in because we have to see the King.”
“Let’s see your papers, then.”

“Papers?”

“Yes, your papers. If you went through all the appropriate steps to get here, you’ll have them.”

Wind-Chaser looked nervously at them.

“We don’t have...papers.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to go back and get them, aren’t you? First office on your right, in front of the door to the entry hall.”

Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide trudged back down the hall.

“So now we know.” Rip-Tide said, “The reason why no one ever invades the valley is because if they wanted to breach the castle, they’d have to work their way through the offices first. What an inventive safety measure. Very creative.”

“Are you sure this is all worth it?”

“Definitely. If anyone can do anything about anything, Night-Bane can. He’s the King. Kings can do anything.”

Wind-Chaser raised her eyebrows.

“I think not.”

“Well, he can’t fly or anything, but he gets things done.”

They walked into the office at the end of the hall and on the left. Stepping off the red tapestry carpet of the hall, the office floor was made of intricate stone tiles and each wall was hung with quiet, tasteful paintings. Against the far wall was a long desk with one Unicorn sitting behind it. She looked up as Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide entered.

“How may I help you?”

“We need some papers to see the king.” Wind-Chaser said conversationally.

“I’m not authorized to do that.”

“Who is? We’ll go see them.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Send you to the King’s Appointment Secretary.”

“Then how do we get in to see them?”

“Well, I’m just the Secretary of the Undersecretary to the Secretary of the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary.”

They both looked at her blankly.

“So what is it, exactly,” queried Rip-Tide carefully, “That you do?”

“I let people in to see the Undersecretary to the Secretary of the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary.”

Wind-Chaser nodded. Rip-Tide rolled his eyes.

“Well, could you let us in to see whoever that is?” Rip-Tide said, sounding like he had so many better things to be doing with his time than dealing with the King’s underlings. Wind-Chaser elbowed him.

“Behave yourself.” she scolded him, whispering hissingly.

The secretary overlooked Rip-Tide’s tone.

“Certainly I can.” she said, and took a piece of paper out of her drawer in her desk. She took up a quill pen, dipped it daintily in an inkwell, and scrawled her signature on it. She blew on it carefully, then a moment later, handed the paper to Wind-Chaser.

“She’s working out of the office two down on the other side of the hall.”

Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide nipped off down the hall.

The next office was an exact duplicate of the first, right down to the paintings, with the exception of the attendant behind the desk. Wind-Chaser walked in and held up their paper as proof that they were allowed to be in there.

“Excuse me,-” she said politely, then was cut off by Rip-Tide.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to skip over all the things we covered with the other secretary, but let’s just sum up what I’m assuming: you’re the...” he glanced at the paper and read the title off it. “You’re the Undersecretary to the Secretary of the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary, correct?”

“That’s right.” she said in an insatiably cheery voice.

“And you can’t let us in to see the King?”

“Of coarse not.”

“And you can’t let us in to see the person who can?”

“Not quite, no.”

“So if I asked you what you did, what would you say?”

“That I let people in to see the Secretary of the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary.”

“Could you do that now, please? Let us in to see them.”

“If you insist.”

Like the one they’d spoken to first, she took out some paper, signed it, then dried the ink and handed it to them. Rip-Tide took this one, handed it over to Wind-Chaser, and turned to leave the room. Wind-Chaser followed and turned around just before the door.

“I must apologize for him, he hates taking the roundabout way of a thing.” she said quickly then quickly followed.

In another duplicate office, another Unicorn sat behind a desk. Rip-Tide stepped forward again with his condensed conversation.

“The Secretary of the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary, I presume.”

“That’s right.”

“And you can’t let us in to see the king or anyone who can, right?”

“No, but someone a rung or two up the ladder can.”

“So we’re nearing the end?”

“Well, it’s in sight.”

“Excellent. I guess you’re the one who can bump us up that rung of the ladder you mentioned.”

“Yes.”

“Can you do that now?”

Like the two before her, the Secretary of the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary signed another piece of paper and gave it to them, and like they had twice before now, they moved on to the next office, and like she had once before now, Wind-Chaser quickly apologised for Rip-Tide’s pushy way of dealing with business.


“See, Wind-Chaser, getting things done is a valuable skill. You’d still be chatting with that second secretary.” Rip-Tide said as they walked briskly down the hall.

“Yes, well, when we get to the Appointment Secretary and especially the King, I think I’ll do the talking.”

“Fine, alright. You handle diplomacy, I’ll handle efficiency.”

With a great, relieved flourish, Rip-Tide jogged into the Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary’s office. Wind-Chaser trailed behind him, holding the sheaf of permits and papers they’d collected.

“You can let us in to see the one who makes the King’s appointments!” Rip-Tide said as if the Unicorn behind the desk could let them in on the secret of immortality instead of into an appointment book.

The Unicorn behind the desk failed to see how this was such a revelation.

“...yes...I suppose so...” he said.

“Please.” Rip-Tide said, “Please, write that little permit now. We really must get in. We’ve been putting forth quite an effort.”

The Appointment Secretary’s Undersecretary signed the needed paper, mostly to get this rather strange pair of Unicorns out of his office.

Rip-Tide nearly fell over himself getting into the Appointment Secretary’s office. Wind-Chaser elbowed him to remind him that she’d talk to this one because they had to be nice to him to get in to see the King. Rip-Tide backed off a bit and let her talk.

“Excuse me, sir? Yes, mahrãndi. I hope you’re doing well today.”

“Well enough. Who are you...?”

“I’m Wind-Chaser, and this is Rip-Tide. We think we may know something that’s really very important, and we think it may be of dire need that King Night-Bane know it too. Could we please get in to see him?”

The Unicorn behind the desk looked at them for a moment and flipped open a large, heavy book that lay on the desk in front of him. He poured over the pages for a while, nodding sometimes.

“Well, you’re in luck.” he said. Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide grinned. “There’s an opening for you, and it’s really quite a bit closer than it sounds when you think about it.” their faces fell halfway. “Please come back, with all your papers intact and in-hand on...on the nineteenth day after Di-Siif.”

Rip-Tide breathed a sigh of relief.

“That’s only a day or two from now!”

The Appointment Secretary paused for a moment, a bit awkwardly.

“Actually, I meant next year’s Di-Siif.”

Rip-Tide all but exploded.

“What?! No! I want to go in now! Preferably sooner!”

“Sir, the King is booked solid.”

“No! No, he’s not! I haven’t seen another person even trying to get in! There’s no one coming for an appointment, so let us in!”

The Unicorn behind the desk looked stunned and shaken, not to mention a little threatened: Rip-Tide was a decent size for a Unicorn of his age, solidly built, tall, and obviously admirably strong.

“Alright, sir, I meant no offense. I suppose I could let you in for a short time–a short time, mind.” he said quickly, and signed the last piece of paper Rip-Tide and Wind-Chaser needed. They stepped out of the office and walked up to the guards they’d spoken to before they got their papers.

“You can’t get in without speaking to the proper secretaries! Get your papers!”

Wind-Chaser held up the sheaf of papers in her fist triumphantly.

“We have our papers!” she announced.

One of the guards took them and examined the signatures. He nodded once and handed them back.

“Go in, then.”

The guards stepped briskly off away from the door. One opened the heavy oak partition and let the two Unicorns walk through, then closed it with a hollow clump behind them.

Inside the RiverSplit Castle proper, as they now were, past the front foyer, past the secretaries and offices, and the heavy oak doors, was exactly what you’d expect the inside of the castle to look like, the one that sits in the roar of three rivers. The floors were of blue marble, the walls made of some sort of ivory-white stone. It was built on two levels, the lower one with the door back to the offices. On the left and right wall were doorways that led off to the lookout towers. Far overhead was the second level of the castle. It was a sort of balcony over the lower level attached to the farthest wall from the door, with curving white stairs up to it on the left and right sides of the room and a white rail along the edge of it. It had three doors leading off the balcony to rooms in other parts of the castle. In the wide alcove formed between the two sets of stairs that arced their way to the second level, was a garden. The wall under the balcony was built up and carved to look like natural stone, and over the stones wandered a gently gurgling waterfall that dripped into a pond in the floor, a pond surrounded by creeping garden flowers, then coursed out left and right through tiny riverbeds carved into the floor and into discreet drains where they rejoined the great rivers. The whole room seemed almost in slow-motion, as if wandering in ecstasy or, somehow, weeping. It was joyful and mournful. It was changing and ancient. It was breath-taking.

Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide looked at each other. They knew they were supposed to talk to the king while they had a chance, but didn’t know where to find him at all. They felt out of place. Despite their best robes, they felt woefully underdressed.

“Come, you that are there!” a voice called from the middle door of the three on the balcony. Slowly and what they hoped was gracefully, Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide ascended the left flight of stairs.

“This time, watch you say, Rip-Tide.” Wind-Chaser whispered.

“Of coarse I will, I’m not a total fool.”

Through the centre door was the throne room of the King. The smoothly angular archway of the entrance was not carved with vines, but hung with them: they were alive and green. Climbing ivy, it looked like. His throne room was designed to look like the outdoors and with the exception of the red tapestry carpet leading up to the throne, it did exactly that. Plants grew seemingly wild, and great stones were King Night-Bane’s attendants. Night-Bane himself reclined with conspicuous ease on the ivy-covered green marble of the throne. He was a Unicorn of dark complexion: a blue as dark as a storm on open ocean, with an overlayed mottle of black, patterned like a fisherman’s net with the holes tugged to strange shapes by sea-currents. His mane, and assumably his tail, were as silver as his horn. He had been king a long, long time and he was older than many Unicorns, but still more than hale, despite the silver-grey twisting of beard that diverged from his chin. His robe glittered in the sunlight from the high windows. It was the robe worn by generations of Kings. The threads of the fabric were of spun gold--real gold, real as death, but spun fine and light and soft as silk, though the garment was still as strong as stone.

King Night-Bane was a good king, accepting of the words of all his subjects. He smiled at them as they stood in quiet awe of the King’s abode and robe.

“I do not often see ones so young come in here. A welcome change, is this. Mahrãndi. Please introduce yourselves.”

Wind-Chaser promptly did exactly that in the oldest, most formal way she rightly knew.

“My name is Wind-Chaser, Daughter of my Mother, she called Wild-Wind, Daughter of my Father, he called General Rain-Hunter.”

Night-Bane looked intently at her for a moment and she thought she’d done something wrong, that perhaps it had been very bad form indeed to have dropped her father’s title as she had. But she had made no mistake.

“Your father was Rain-Hunter? General Rain-Hunter?”

Wind-Chaser nodded.

“I remember him, but don’t presume you do. A great leader. Great general.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

He looked at Rip-Tide.

“And who are you?”

Rip-Tide hesitated before answering. Was he to give the names of his natural parents or his grandparents who raised him? Well, the old words declared “Mother” and “Father”, and as his had died in honour, he chose to honour them.

“My name is Rip-Tide, Son of my Father, he called Grey-Light, Son of my Mother, she called North-Star.”

The King inclined his head in acknowledgement and introduced himself likewise.

“And my name is King Night-Bane, Son of my Father, he called King Dawn-Soul, Son of my Mother, she called Queen Rain-Flower. Another welcome change, is this, for two so young to be so mannered. Now we shall speak of your business for that is the way of these meetings.” he said, gently herding Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide and the conversation in the right direction for what must be a most intimidating scenario for the young Unicorns.

“Our business is this, sire-”

Wind-Chaser was cut off by the King.

“Many Kings wish to be addressed so, but I do not. I am not your sire and would not presume to ask you call me so. Especially when I know your true sire is one so honourable as General Rain-Hunter.” he said, then gestured. “Only a gentle correction. No harm is done. Please. Continue.”

“Our business is that we must tell you: we both firmly believe that the valley is endangered.”

Night-Bane looked up, taking them very seriously, visibly pricking up his ears.

“Endangered? How so? I must know.”

“Fire.” said Wind-Chaser simply. “Fire that is not fire is to come and will devastate all of RiverSplit, all of Phanarith. We cannot stop it, but we can prepare for it.”

Rip-Tide nodded vigorously when King Night-Bane gave them a politely disbelieving expression.

“The Singing Skies told her so!”

“Really?”

Wind-Chaser looked at the floor.

“Well, no...not exactly. The Skies told me...well, I’m not sure what the Skies told me, but I got the sense of danger and fleeing and seeking something. The fire its self came from normal dreams and things.”

Night-Bane nodded.

“Not as important as a Skies vision, but there are still precognitive dreams, and some Unicorns are prone to them. Are you one such?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are!” corrected Rip-Tide wholeheartedly. “What about all those times when we were young and it was a beautiful day but you’d still say you’d better wear your coat and hood because you dreamed of rain, and sure enough, it rained? All those times you dreamed someone had gotten hurt doing something, and that let you warn them not to do it? And every time they don’t listen to you, they really do get hurt?”

“Rip-Tide, my dreams like that aren’t always right. I only get them once in a while and sometimes they’re right off.”

“But what if this one’s right and the valley is destroyed?”

Night-Bane spoke.

“What exactly do you think we can do about the fire?”

“Wet all the thatched or wooden rooves in the city.” Wind-Chaser answered quickly. “Soak them so they won’t catch. And the grass and trees. Take water from the VentenuRath and soak as many things as possible before the High-Moons Midnight. Keep it all wet until the fire comes. And make sure everything’s safe and everyone’s evacuated.”

King Night-Bane looked a bit startled, but Wind-Chaser was too absorbed in her warning to notice.

“Evacuated?!”

“Yes! To the caves! The safe ones in the Maztring Mountains. We’ll be up there in the end whether you evacuate us or not. Just...more will make it if it’s not a panicked dash through fire.”

“Are you the only one having this dream?”

“Uh... yes... As far as I know.”

Night-Bane nodded.

“Alright. If you meet anyone else who’s having the dream, I want you to return. Come right in, don’t bother with the offices. But one individual’s dream is not enough for me to responsibly act upon. I’ll put out an advisory to wet thatched rooves, but such an evacuation is simply out the question.”

“But-”

“I’m sorry. I really can’t do more. You have my leave, Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide.”

Disappointed and deeply worried, Wind-Chaser and Rip-Tide left the RiverSplit Palace of King Night-Bane.

* * * * * * *

Wind-Chaser was laying in her bed. Her white nightgown seemed ghostly pale in the moonlight that crept in from between the shutters on the windows above the head of her bed.

Wind-Chaser was neither asleep nor awake.

She was in the crack between waking and dreaming, the space where you can see night phantoms and still know them for what they are. One of those Realms Between we all know without understanding.

From the darkness of her room, there came the face of The Priestess; The Priestess from the Singing Skies vision who had spoken the poem. Her cerulean blue eyes where piercing in the dusky gloom. Again, The Priestess spoke the only words:

“It is happening. It is now.”

And the cerulean eyes and violet face were gone.

Wind-Chaser clamoured out from under her bed sheets and blankets and turned over, sitting up to look staringly out the window above her bed for any sign of what “is happening”.

She was just in time to hear the first explosion and see the shards of blue and green and almost-red fire explode over RiverSplit, setting a thatched roof on fire.

It was quickly followed by many more, some as far as FalTarn, some near– right overhead in RiverSplit. Phanarith valley was lit from many directions by flashes of sick light, making everything seem an unnatural colour. If Wind-Chaser had ever heard cannon-fire or a gun’s report before, she would have likened it to one of those. As it was, she got a fleeting mental image of great granite boulders being pushed from a cliff to shatter with a deafening boom a long ways below as she ducked down away from the window and rolled to the floor. She crouched, unsure what to do.

Down in the streets, Unicorns had fled their homes. Above their yelling was shouting of another sort. Deep, certain, trustworthy, authoritative. It was one of the city guards. In that moment, they had issued from the watchtowers of King Night-Bane’s castle to direct the citizens of RiverSplit to the northern caves. Wind-Chaser started to stand to run outside and dash for the northern caves– Wild-Wind and Blue-Berry would already have run away, as soon as they heard the crash– but decided she had to get there as fast as possible.

She didn’t bother to stand. Pulling on the nearest pair of pants she had and not bothering to change her nightgown for a shirt, she tied the gown at her waist so it wouldn’t drag or billow and crouched on her hands and feet. Her hands formed fists giving her hooves. Then with a three-beat thumping, she sprinted– galloped –for the streets.

Wind-Chaser thundered down the upstairs hallway like a racehorse. At the stairwell, she didn’t stand, she didn’t stop, she didn’t even think: she just cleared it with a gathered jump, a perfectly-executed leap that surprised her. She hit the ground at the foot of the stairs and faltered for a moment with the shock of interrupted momentum, then regained her feet and galloped flat out for the door.

In the street was mayhem. The falling fire had ignited large parts of the city. Houses alight and crops in cinders and there was rubble strewn across the streets and glowing with heat. The crowds were moving mostly northward, but this obviously wasn’t everyone in RiverSplit. Some dashed on all fours, others ran, carrying an armload of possessions.

A guard stood on a pile of wood and stone. He was the one shouting.

“Go north! North! Toward the castle and past it! There’s a field, and across it the entrance to the caves! Run! Quickly, to the caves! Take nothing with you! There’s no time! Take nothing!”

As Wind-Chaser started her own galloping dash through the city, a small handful of guards passed close to her, mounted on great, black riding beasts called Gõrõdons. They were running through the city opening all the stable doors and letting out the Gõrõdons and gronts and cõgran to herd them north to the caves: they’d need every one of these work-beasts they could get when it came time to rebuild the city.

Another detachment of mounted guards passed by Wind-Chaser. These ones were running into houses, checking that the occupants had gotten out and taking anything might be needed as supplies to take care of the people of Phanarith while they stayed in the caves–blankets, food, clothing, other necessities. The guards carried these out to the Gõrõdons and packed the items into bulging saddlebags.

Wind-Chaser stopped suddenly. She saw a Unicorn fawn sitting in a corner where two houses came together. He was sitting in his pajamas, crying. Wind-Chaser walked to him, still on all fours. A blue face peered from behind the child: a Sayhlu. Wind-Chaser had the vague impression these were the fawn and blue beast that she remembered passing her on the street the day she’d learned to fish.

“I can’t find the caves...I can’t find anyone...I don’t even know where north is...”

“Get on my back. I’ll take you to the caves.”

The fawn gathered his pet in his arms and got on Wind-Chaser’s back.

“Hold on as tight as you can. It’s important that I don’t stop again.”

The fawn held on to her sides with his knees and to her mane with one hand, the other clutching the Sayhlu to him.

Wind-Chaser ran for the caves.


The hail of fire was crashing around her ears as she made the dash out the north gate of the city. The field beyond was on fire. She hesitated for a moment, then broke back into a run, dodging the spreading fire and guards carrying things back to the cave, the ones carrying barrels of water filled from the VentenuRath to extinguish the flames.

A low poundering came from behind Wind-Chaser and she looked over her shoulder. The guards were coming with the herds of the animals driven before them. One of the guards was gesturing forcefully to her to get out of the way. The fawn on her back whimpered. Wind-Chaser was running in front of a stampede. She strained, trying to push just a little faster, but the herd of beasts was gaining ground behind her. They were large beasts and she wouldn’t be able to outrun them or run among them: they’d trample her easily. She strained a bit faster.

Wind-Chaser’s eyes flicked to a brown and grey form on the right. The opening of a hollow log that was ounce a huge Cahrica tree. She had an idea. She knew it was risky. One wrong move, and she could be trampled on the spot. She kept running another moment. Her heart sounded like war-drums in her ears. Her breath was like the turning of rusty gears in a dying machine. She turned sharply to the left, nearly dropping the fawn. The herd was closer than ever at her left flank. Seconds before the first heavy, clawed foot of a Gõrõdon would have crushed the bones of her leg into shards and powder, Wind-Chaser leapt like a deer into the hollow log. She felt the wind from the Gõrõdon’s footfall behind her.

She stopped inside the log, which was tall enough to stand in, looking out at the passing beasts. Her plan had been to wait there for the stampede to pass, but she couldn’t. There was a loud crash and a roar of destruction as the log was hit with bright red fire. Running again on four legs with the fawn and Sayhlu on her back, her hoof beats made a hollow sound inside the log, like running in a tomb. The herd of beasts was still near and still a problem, practically right at the other opening of the hollow tree, which was being consumed behind her in fire.

Wind-Chaser jumped. The herd passed through the space she’d been in. Wind-Chaser was inside a stone. The hollow one. The Baron’s castle rock. She didn’t have time to think about that, though it told her they were to the south-east of where they should be. She waited for the herd to pass, then jumped out the hollow in the rock, now running at a safe distance behind the herd. She followed the beasts. They were being driven to the north to the caves and following them would take her there too.


Arriving at the caves, the beasts were corralled in a quartered off cavern. Wind-Chaser carried the fawn and Sayhlu into the cave and let them off her back. She stood up normally again, breathing in heavy ragged gasps. She wandered away from the opening of the door and leaned against a wall, below where one of the wall-mounted torches cast a greasy, pale glow over the inside of the cave. With a shuddering sigh, Wind-Chaser sat slowly down, her back sliding down the wall. She closed her eyes for a moment, panting and holding her knees to her chest. Her eyes opened again when she felt a pair of small arms around her neck. It was the fawn, with his parents standing a ways behind, smiling gratefully.

“Thank you...you run really fast.” the fawn said quietly.

“You’re welcome. And I try.”

The fawn and the Sayhlu walked off with the parents. Wind-Chaser closed her eyes again, just breathing and just glad to do it.

Stragglers and people from the further towns were still arriving. All had run or ridden and were exhausted. Most were crying: they’d all lost something. Many had lost everything. But that wouldn’t matter as much if they hadn’t lost someone too. The fire had claimed many.

Wind-Chaser’s eyes suddenly snapped open.

Had she seen her mother?

She stood, though her legs ached. She didn’t see her mother outside, struggling up to the caves. She didn’t see her in the downcast crowds. She was simply nowhere.

“Mother?”

No answer.

“Mother?!”

Nothing.

“MOTHER!”

A few looked at her. None were Wild-Wind.

“Wild-Wind! Wild-Wind!” Wind-Chaser said, calling her mother by name. No reply. Wind-Chaser sat down, her head back and eyes closed. She would not cry.

”Don’t you cry.” Wind-Chaser thought, ”There’s a time to be sad. A time to mourn. A time to cry, if that’s what you want, but it’s not right now. Right now is a time to be quiet. Now everyone has to be strong for everyone else. Now is a time for Hope.”

She heard someone sit down beside her. Opening her eyes, she saw the grimmest-looking expression she’d ever seen on Rip-Tide’s face. He had a folded grey blanket in his hand and was fully dressed in red and grey shirt and pants with a vest.

“You didn’t find your grandparents.” Wind-Chaser said as Rip-Tide threw the blanket over both of them. It wasn’t a question.

“You didn’t find your mother.” Rip-Tide said. It wasn’t a question either.

Neither said anymore. The two friends leaned on one another’s shoulder, watching the others sitting or standing or milling about.

The Unicorns of Phanarith were interspersed about the cave. Some stood in clumps, some sat alone, some had lain down to sleep. Guards patrolled the cave and guarded the mouth, helping the wounded to the infirmary and ensuring all was as well as it could be. These soldiers were readily identifiable by their armour: dark steel plate coloured like glittering ash. They had a two-piece cuirass on– a back piece and breastplate held together with heavy leather ties over their ribs. Their sword hung by their side and their greaves plated their legs. Their helm forked around their horn and ears and arched above their eyes. It covered the back of the guards’ heads and necks and was ridged going down like a snake’s belly, as if their manes themselves’ were made of steel.

The cave was wide and open with one entrance and several exits. One of the smaller caverns was the hold for the animals, which had another exit to the outside off of it. Another cavern had equipment and supplies in it, a third had healers installed in it with a makeshift treatment facility for wounds. Yet another was designated to serve as guard barracks, a fifth led away to where the streams of water and edible cave-plants grew, a sixth was a place for the children to go, and a seventh the royal family’s own cavern. The largest cave that the other seven opened off of was the public one, where everyone could sleep and eat and wait until they had somewhere else to go. The cave was lined every few feet with torches that poured murky firelight into the Midnight blackness. A few piles of things belonging to people who had carried their personal possessions to the caves in spite of warnings had collected in corners. In the centre of the great cave was a wide flat stone, just over a metre tall.

From the royal family’s cavern, King Night-Bane stepped forth. All eyes were instantly on him.

”He didn’t listen.” Wind-Chaser thought, ”I told him this would happen.”

King Night-Bane stepped up on the stone pavilion.

“People of Phanarith, (“But they’re not all here, are they?”) I will be honest with you. (”Honest, yes. And stubborn, and blind, and foolish, and doubting...”) I know how hard this night has been for all of us. (”No you don’t!”) But I don’t have any idea what was causing it, no one does. There was no way we could ever have known this would happen or prepare for it. (”I told you it would happen! I told you what could be done, but you didn’t listen!”) But that doesn’t mean we’ll bury our heads in the sand and simply erase it from our history books. We will find an answer. Our best scholars will search the oldest records. Our best warriors will travel all of Atlee-us looking for the answers. (”But they won’t find any. And anyway, it’s too late, isn’t it?”) Our best builders will make everything new again, and better. But these things will take time. (”You didn’t listen.”) We stay here until we have somewhere else to go. (”And now my mother is dead.”) I’ll send a messenger to the Monkeys north of here. (”You didn’t listen.”) They should help us gather the supplies we need to rebuild if we can find enough forged metalwork to trade to them for wood and building materials, since I doubt they need our healers’ help more than us right now. (”And now Rip-Tide’s grandparents are dead.”) That’s the most that can be done, and we’re doing it.”

King Night-Bane was finished speaking and he walked back into the royal cavern as Wind-Chaser thought more angry thoughts at him as he departed.


Every person there was exhausted. It was late–or early depending on how you looked at it. Some time after King Night-Bane’s speech, Wind-Chaser was the only one left awake and thinking. She muttered out loud to herself, trying not to let it wake Rip-Tide who was sleeping leaned up against the wall beside her.

“They’ll never find out what they need to know. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. They will never find the answer, and they will rebuild the valley and it will be torn down again worse, and they will never be able to repair it! It’ll be no more habitable than The Acid Coast....But I think I could save it. I don’t know how I know that either, but I do..Fate, perhaps is whispering it to me, but Fortune sure has an unpleasant way of getting me to hear it. I should leave. That’s what I should do. And even if I find nothing, I should still leave. There is nothing left for me here. Only pain....I should leave.”

Wind-Chaser stood carefully up, careful not to disturb Rip-Tide. She looked around. She wanted to do this right. What first? A pack. Compile a pack. She’d need to bring things with her. Cautiously, she crept around the sleeping bodies of the other Unicorns, gathering things she thought she’d need from piles of ignored objects and the supply cavern. She took these things and made a pile of them outside the mouth of the cave. She collected together lengths of rope, a compass, packs of food, skin-bags of water, a spark-rock (we’d call it flint), a bedroll, extra clothes–all cheap, shoddy clothes she felt she could wander in, which she wrapped in an old, threadbare towel. She also packed a single, beautiful robe. Because you never know who you’ll meet. She had an assortment of other, smaller things she didn’t need, but picked up anyway: a clay cup, plate, knife, and fork and a metal pot. A hunting knife and dullish short-sword she didn’t really know how to use. A few hand-torches. She nodded. That should do quite well.

What now? Something to put it all in. She stood in the mouth of the cave looking around. Thinking, she lightly touched the medallion she wore around her neck. Ah! Over by the fence grating at the mouth of the animal cave, there hung pack-saddles and bridles. Creeping through the cave again, she took one of both of those. She loaded all these things into the saddlebags, taking time to change her nightshirt for a normal shirt, already having the pants on. She picked up the saddle and bridle, putting the saddle’s weight on her shoulder.

The next step was obvious: get a Gõrõdon and put the saddle on it. She walked around to where the corral cave had an extra exit and looked at the tightly packed animals inside. There were Cõgrans, about the size of large, shaggy, dark dogs, but having plated, arched backs like an armadillo and large ears and a square head. There were gronts, which looked a bit like smallish oxen with shaggy hair and tusks. There were also the Gõrõdons, which were typically black and looked like wolves with long legs, but they were slightly taller than a horse and much more bulkily muscular than one. They had ears like a hare’s but opened toward the back and at their temples began the spirals of a ram’s horns. Their tails were red and reptilian, with a boney green ridge down it and four spikes curving up at the end, like a stegosaurus’ tail. Wind-Chaser selected one that looked hardy and compliant, a female. She opened the gate carefully and closed it again, just as carefully. Walking over to her, Wind-Chaser took hold of the animal’s left coil of horn and began to lead her in the proper fashion out the gate of the corral. Wind-Chaser had a look at the horn, which was usually etched with the animal’s name.

“Aneres.” Wind-Chaser read. “Well, Aneres, it looks like you and I are going on a little journey. Hope you’re good for that.”

Aneres just wuffed like a big, bored dog. Wind-Chaser took the bridle–a little like a horse’s but different because of the horns. A leather circle crossed through with a bit was put around the creature’s muzzle and the metal bit placed in the mouth, resting near the back where the rear-most teeth were separated from the others by a small space. From the leather circle with the bit came the reins. Another strap of leather ran around behind the ears to under the chin just in front of the horns. This leather hoop was held to the one with the bit by short, wide lengths of leather that lay flat horizontally along the face. Wind-Chaser fitted this bridle onto Aneres and held the reins as she affixed the saddle. It was much like a horse’s as well, but changed because a Gõrõdon runs like a wolf, not like a horse. It took Wind-Chaser a moment to find the appropriate places to put some of the things she packed. The saddle bags go behind the saddle, she knew that, and after some thinking, she remembered the bedroll tied on the back of the saddle above the saddle bags, and she’d seen people riding with their coils of rope looped over the thing at the front of the saddle (she’d heard it called a horn, but didn’t know what it was really for) so she put those there. The belt with the sheath of the hunting knife attached to it she put around her own waist, but couldn’t find where to put the short-sword...Ah! There it was, under the skirting of leather that surrounded the actual seat of the saddle: a sheath built into the saddle for use by soldiers and guards. Wind-Chaser put her sword there now.


Wind-Chaser looked up and around. Dawn was coming, but it was grey and cloudy. The sun seemed ashamed to rise. Or maybe it feared what it would see. The light was so weak and grey that it may as well not have been there at all. The valley looked like a hard land in winter. It was burnt to a cinder with bits of green showing through like moss on a charred stick. It was grey and sick. Wind-Chaser almost refused to believe it was the same valley. This was not the Phanarith she knew.

That had been sunny, and that had been summer, and that had been green.

Wind-Chaser shook her head. Leading Aneres towards the foothills of the path that led into the mountains, Wind-Chaser turned away from the valley and didn’t look back.



The mountains loomed above her. She was still not riding Aneres, only leading her. Now at the very root of the mountain trail, she felt she could see every crack in the hard granite.

A sound of hooves. She’d been followed. She turned around quickly, ready to be questioned by any guard who was there.

What Wind-Chaser saw, she was not prepared for.

It was Rip-Tide, looking serious and expressionless. He was leading a Gõrõdon of his own, as laden as her’s was. He had heard her speaking to herself, then waited until she left and followed her.

Wind-Chaser shook her head, her eyes telling him to go back home.

“Leave me, Rip-Tide. Turn back.”

Rip-Tide lead his Gõrõdon, walking up to Wind-Chaser. He put his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye.

“No.”


They looked at each other for a moment. Wind-Chaser nodded. Rip-Tide nodded. They both mounted their Gõrõdons and started up the mountain trail, leaving the grey-black ash of Phanarith Valley behind.

Neither looked back.