He was too much a Chieftain and too wise to forget that there was a darkness coming. Even this creature, this gift, could not be an easy thing, not colored as she was like the moon, like blood. Nor would Tabor ever be the same, he knew. But these sorrows were for the daylight—tonight he could let his heart fly with the two of them, the two young ones at play in the wind between him and the stars. Ivor laughed, as he had not in years, like a child.
After an unknown time they came down gently, not far from where he stood. He saw his son lay his head against that of the unicorn, beside the silver shining of its horn. Then Tabor stepped back, and the creature turned, moving with terrible grace, and went back into the darkness of the Wood.
When Tabor turned to him, his eyes were his own again. Wordlessly, for there were no words, Ivor held out his arms and his youngest child ran into them.
“You saw?” Tabor asked finally, his head against his father’s chest.
“I did. You were glorious.”
Tabor straightened, his eyes reclaiming their dance, their youth. “She bowed to you! I didn’t ask. I just said you were my father and I loved you, so she said she would love you, too, and she bowed.”
Ivor’s heart was full of light. “Come,” he said gruffly, “it is time to go home. Your mother will be weeping with anxiety.”
“Mother?” Tabor asked in a tone so comical Ivor had to laugh. They mounted and rode back, slowly now, and together, over their Plain. On this eve of war a curious peace seemed to descend upon Ivor. Here was his land, the land of his people for so long that the years lost meaning. From Andarien to Brennin, from the mountains to Pendaran, all the grass was theirs. The Plain was the Dalrei, and they, it. He let that knowledge flow through him like a chord of music, sustaining and enduring.
It would have to endure in the days to come, he knew, the full power of the Dark coming down. And he also knew that it might not. Tomorrow, Ivor thought, I will worry tomorrow; and riding in peace over the prairie beside his son, he came back to the camp and saw Leith waiting for them by the western gate.
Seeing her, Tabor slipped from his horse and ran into her arms. Ivor willed his eyes to stay dry as he watched. Sentimental fool, he castigated himself; she was right. When Leith, still holding the boy, looked a question up at him he nodded as briskly as he could.
“To bed, young man,” she said firmly. “We’re riding in a few hours. You need sleep.”
“Oh, Mother,” Tabor complained, “I’ve done nothing but sleep for the—”
“Bed!” Leith said, in a voice all her children knew.
“Yes, Mother,” labor replied, with such pure happiness that even Leith smiled watching him go into the camp. Fourteen, Ivor thought, regardless of everything. Absolutely regardless.
He looked down at his wife. She met the look in silence. It was, he realized, their first moment alone since the Mountain. “It was all right?” she asked.
“It was. It is something very bright.”
“I don’t think I want to know, just yet.” He nodded, seeing once more, discovering it anew, how beautiful she was.
“Why did you marry me?” he asked impulsively. She shrugged. “You asked.” Laughing, he dismounted, and with each of them leading a horse, his and Tabor’s, they went back into the camp. They put the animals in the stockade and turned home.
At the doorway Ivor looked up for the last time at that moon, low now in the west, over where Pendaran was.
“I lied,” Leith said quietly. “I married you because no other man I know or can imagine could have made my heart leap so when he asked.”
He turned from the moon to her. “The sun rises in your eyes,” he said. The formal proposal. “It always, always has, my love.”
He kissed her. She was sweet and fragrant in his arms, and she could kindle his desire so. . . .