I shall go on ahead.

  I, Khnuut called Khan

  My people are singers, and well I shall try to sing the song of my life. If it pleases you, to hear the last song of a warhorse. The song of all warhorses, perhaps, past and future. Mine was a strange fate, when first it was sung, and fabulous, and every bit of it right.

  The first place, I can well remember, is the rock of the desert, still warm from a sun long gone. And when I was a foal I could see the stars, every one of them, the ones fine as dust that formed great clouds in a band across the sky, and the silver ones, bright as pins against velvet, that formed faraway pictures.

  I knew the desert when my mother whispered the soul of my body into me, with the breath that formed my true and secret name, Khnuut. It is an old name, meaning king, the name of many kings that formed my lineage. I am as King-of-Kings, Sire-of-Sire, and oh, what a wretched beast I am. I hope that my children’s children can forgive me.

  But as I swear to you, on my true and secret name, whispered to no one one but the mare that I loved most, one called Fallada, this is my song and my story.

  I used to curl up on the rock, when I was but three days old. I learned words from my mother’s stories. My favorite was the story of my father, and well she knew it.

  “Your father’s song reached me. I traveled well over a thousand miles to see him,” she said, my mother Asta, called Dordepel, called Speed-Breaker. “Oh, well did I hear him, your father Khnuut called Gindarkh, called Sky-Herald, called Thousand-Colts-of-Thunder.”

  I knew very few words in those days, and even though I’d heard this story a dozen times by now I was breathless. “Why, Mama?”

  “Because,” my mother said proudly. “He sang loudly when he saw me. My kar took me to him during my heat. Your father courted me in three days, and I was tied quite gently by the kar. Your father was ever so kind. I loved him quite deeply, in the few days that I knew him. And he gave me you, my beautiful little king.”

  I knew who the kar were before I saw them. They were the two-legged masters that cared for us. Aagha, was he, my mother’s master, called Gentle-Hands. He delighted in seeing me nearly as much as my mother did. I was gold as polished glass, hung with a lace of jetblack dapples, my mane, tail, and legs shimmering like blackglass. A golden Turkoman, they called us. Warhorses, bred and polished by the Teke men who lived and died by the Akhal oasis. My song, my song includes the song of those called the Heavenly Horse, the Celestial Horse, Nisean Horse, the very Grandsires of the Scythian Stallions, bitted by the hands of the Turks, called the Ferghana horse, were we, the Blood-Sweating horses, the longma, called Tulpar by the kar, who believe we bear their souls to heaven with the very wings of Uma.

  Perhaps we do.

  Long were we bred by the kar, by those masters, called Turks. No matter what, my blood will tell.

  I lived on my mothers milk, and Aagha took and tied her near his tent, so her tiny foal would be safe close to him. He gave her camel’s milk, a pellets of dried mutton fat. I sing the song of my mother, who didn’t exaggerate when she said she traveled a thousand miles. Suns after suns after suns, with her kar, who wisely packs enough food to keep them both alive that is also light as a feather. Wise, was Aagha, called Teke, called Turk, called Gentle-Hands.

  All of the kar around us were the Teke. They lived in the desert and were as old as we were. There had never been a time, not since the days of The First Mare had kar or my mother’s people been separated. I sing the song of of the Turks, the great kar who called us akaltekin, ‘pure’, who called us ‘friend’ and treated us like their own children. I claim grandsire of the argamaks, those akaltekin who race the Russians steppes, and oh, how you race, my children. I sing the song of my people in this, my last song. Horses are the wings of people, sing the Turkish kar.

  I was Her wings. Oh, Lord God, let me see Her again. By my mother’s name.

  Now listen, and listen good, to my song, before I go on ahead.

  “What color was Papa?” I asked, following my mother when I was a bit older. Old enough that Aagha felt I could be with the Herd and learn its ways.

  “He was your color,” she said, walking beautifully. “Except without the black in his coat.”

  My mother was a dark bay, hung with her own black lace. Aagha polished her coat every other day, and she was like seaglass. A great beauty, was my mother. Uma’s own daughter.

  “Now stay close, my little king,” she said.

  We passed by some tents of the kar. A pure black stallion reared against his ties. “Get away from here, you little shits! I’ll cut the guts out of you, lor!”

  Three or four colts a few months older than me were terrified of his roaring, but didn’t want to show it. They bucked and farted, jetting their little poots in his direction. “Pak Bhrakka pak old timer haaaaa ha!”

  “I WILL KILL YOU ALL!”

  The foals scattered, leaving bhrakka pak all over the ground.

  And that was my introduction to the Herd.

  Four dozen or more of us were over the next hill. Mares and foals, allowed to graze half wild near the oasis, a great privilege. The little ones like me would learn our colt and stallion manners with the mares, who would save the kar the trouble. Instantly everyone in the herd was interested in met, the mothers trying to sniff me and those who couldn’t whispering.

  “Oh, he’s a handsome one, isn’t he?”

  “Shhh! Speed-Breaker is vain enough!”

  “Yes, don’t let her hear you. Flaunting her foal in front of all the mares who lost theirs! Shame on her!”

  My mother pranced, and squealed to keep the other mares at bay. “Go on! Get your own! He’s mine, I’ve taught him the song of his father! Sing, my little king!”

  I sang my father’s name, whinnying beside my mother.

  Some of the mares turned away, harrumphing.

  “Oh, that’s his father, is it?”

  “He knows is already?”

  A few desperate mares kept after us. “Please … i-if you shouldn’t want him …”

  “Yes, i-if he drinks too much of your milk!”

  These poor, sad things scared me greatly. “Get away from me!”

  “Here now!”

  An old golden mare with a scarred face turned her elegant head and neck into a snake, scaring away the poor witch mares. She swung around to my mother, her sorcery vanishing, and she was an old, scarred mare again.

  “Seven-Lives!” My mother gasped and wickered. “I … I wanted to show him to you.”

  “Time for that in a bit, come on!” Seven-Lives nipped my mother’s haunches lightly, driving her forward. I stayed right beside her. My first race, I suppose, ha ha.

  Many mares with new foals galloped together. Part of the herd, but trying to get away from the other half of the herd. Many wouldn’t follow if it was a gallop. For many of us newborns, it was our first gallop.

  I panted beside an ink black foal that struggled to keep up.

  “Come on, if you jump a bit you can pretend you have wings,” I said kindly. I didn’t want him to be left behind.

  “Yes,” he wheezed. He made a lamb’s leap. “I have wings!”

  “That’s right, I have them, too!” I jumped.

  The game spread immediately. All the foals jumped, shouting, “I have wings!”

  My mother jumped. “Yes! I have wings, too!”

  We separated from the rest of the herd, the witch hares left behind, the pall of fear gone from the foals. We were excited now, some of us discovering that a clumsy jump could become a buck and kick. I was very good at it right away.

  I overheard my mother whispering to Seven-Lives. “I beg you, I know you have the gift.”

  “You won’t like what I have to say.” Seven-Lives tossed her head. “There’s not a mare yet who has. Enjoy his fate as your story. You’ll be happier.”

  I didn’t understand a word of it. A second later, it didn’t matter.

  “Look out! Keeza!”

  Every mare alerted, knowing they had no stallions to fight the frightening predators. Even a fox could kill a newborn foal. And much larger than that lurked in the shadows.

  “Here, foals. To me,” Seven-Lives commanded.

  I learned much from that wise old mare, even if my mother hated her. Seven-Lives was a fair and just mare, a reliable lead, never cruel, and always tried to calm the worst of fear. We crowded around her, fearful.

  The mares snorted, further out, watching and circling. Showing the keeza how fit and powerful they were, with hooves sharpened to spears by kar hands. The kar were most feared by the wild animals, and the keeza were cowards.

  My mother had left my side. I was frightened, but calling out would summon the keeza, who would head straight for the youngest and most tender flesh. A bold jackal would bite the belly out of a foal.

  “I want my mother!” A little chestnut filly hopped in place, her tail whisking.

  “I’m scared!”

  “Me too!”

  “Hush,” Seven-Lives commanded again. “Listen to me. How many of you know the Name of The Mare?”

  The foals were bewildered. We’d all heard of the The Mother, The First Mare.

  A black with white feet snorted. “So what?”

  Seven-Lives slapped him with her tail, stinging his sensitive skin with a thousand needles. “So what? Respect, you little teat-biter! We are all the milk from her flowing river!”

  She glared at all of us. “So none of you know? Is that it? I should throw you out to the keeza!”

  That threw a scare into some of the fillies. “No! No! Please don’t!”

  The haughty black stamped. “You can’t do that!”

  “I can and I will, you rack of ribs! Mmm, delicious for the keeza! They’ll crack your bones and suck out the marrow!”

  “Stop it now!” I said, trying not let my fear get the best of me. “Don’t talk like that!”

  “Well, look at him!” Seven-Lives glared at the rude little colt. “‘So what?’ he says. So what? So WHAT!?”

  She had all of us good and scared now. Frozen like fawns on ice, especially with the next line.

  “You want your mothers to DIE by keeza! Selfish little brats!”

  Many of the foals began sobbing. “Mama! Mama, come back!”

  “Please don’t die, Mama, come back!”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Oh, but this little brat here, he CURSES his mother when he says ‘So what?’”

  The black with four white feet shied. “I take it back!” he whinnied like a two-hour milksop. “I’m sorry, please forgive me I don’t want my Mama to die!”

  “Shut UP!” Seven-Lives reeled and stamped, pawing the ground. The moonlight lit her silver.

  “Listen to me, you little brats. Listen to me! I sing this, the song of your mothers, to their protection, and great prayer to God above, that She will extend her mercy. She, the First Mother, run across the stars. She is the heat, one called Frith, who lived among the stars, and the world lived among the stars.

  “A gift, cried the birds, in every direction. A gift, for all the animals! Frith gives these gifts to all who come!

  “She heard heard this First Mare. She looked very different then. Her ears were round. She was small and meek. And she had four toes, and a hoof on each toe. She had a small tassel for a tail. No mane. Large eyes that could see things through the undergrowth coming for her. She was clever, and when she heard of the gift she thought of her children, and grandchildren. Oh, how good it would be if they had something that made them special.

  “And so she ran.”

  Seven-Lives glared around at us all.

  “She ran until she had to walk. She ran until she was thirsty. She ran until she was hungry. She ran until her hooves fell off, one by one. She ran until her toes fell of, one by one. She ran until blood pooled in her tracks, wearily climbing the last hill, late, last in her race. Frith lay calm and easy in the sky, and she was last, lost.

  “Oh Frith,” she called out humbly. “Oh Frith, My Lord God, would you have mercy, I pray? I am your most humble servant, the horse.”

  “O Horse,” said Frith. “I made the world. I have given all of my gifts. I have given strength, agility, power, ferocity, horns, and blessing away. I have no more.”

  “The First Mare bowed her head. “Oh, My Lord God. I am so happy to see you. I traveled so far to see you. It was worth the journey.”

  The last ray of Frith’s light vanished.

  “O Horse. There is no being on this Earth as humble. You are the First Mare, and I give you all the gifts I gave the others. They only got one, but you will get them all, O Horse. Strength to you, to be afraid of no other creature. Agility to you, like the deer may you leap to the stars and beyond. Power to you, in your breath and heart, your legs and your might, to strike an enemy true. Ferocity to you, to shy from nothing in your convictions, charge and defend thy Herd. No horns have I to give you, but may your hoof grow deep and strong, stronger than rock, stronger than steel. And blessing to you, O Horse, to become a god like me, I whisper your true name, Tulpar.

  “And this, The First Mare grew wings, and leaped for joy. She galloped to the stars and beyond, and came back with her belly swelling. She dropped, strange and mysterious foals. Uma, her beautiful white-silver son, a beauty he was, born with eyes as blue as the sky. And Mara, a storm-dappled daughter who charmed the kar, and made the pact with them to become our masters and guardians. And finally Kelhast!”

  Several of the foals gasped, having heard the name and what it meant.

  “Yes, Kelhast, the Bonesinger, the Limping one! Strange was his father so soft was his right hoof, and oh he limped forever behind. Bitter, for he was all his mother’s bad luck, all the bad luck of the People. His mother had been gracious to be last. He would be forever bitter.

  “The First Mare was pure white, with red ears. Some say splashes of red upon her side that were beautiful and mysterious, like the writings of kar. The Wind Horse, the kar call her. They know her name. Say her name!”

  “Tulpar!” the foals said obediently.

  “So it is. And so The First Mare turned back, when her Kelhast faltered, and ran back for him. She sheltered him. Time and time again she shielded him from keeza, from the lions and the TIGERS!”

  All the foals jumped, a few squealed. The worst monsters imaginable, and none of us knew what they looked like.

  “And what happened? She grew old and shed her body. She gave herself to the Great Lion, the Killer of Men. Kelhast, called Morvarc’h, called the Limping One, the Crooked Horse set a wicked trap for his mother, knowing she would fall and die, devoured by the Great Lion. But when he became trapped himself, the First Mare, oh Eohippus, Lord God, let herself fall and be devoured by the Great Lion. The Great Lion choked upon a bone in her rib, and died, sparing the land and Kelhast.

  “What was the world to do without our mother? Think of it, my little ones. What if you never see your mothers again?”

  The ones of us not openly weeping were sobbing.

  “Ah, well. That is the land of Kelhast. That is the land of those who betray the Herd. Those who betray their riders! Ice on top, gripping the land. And burning hell beneath it. Kelhast made it in rage at himself for his pride. He made it to punish all pride, all those who think nothing of the Herd!”

  “His brother, Uma, turned his back on his brother. He followed his mother to the stars, as far he could without wings. And came to give all the wisdom of the stars to Mara. Mara told all the children of the First Mare that wisdom, to let them keep their herds alive.

  “Mara spread the gift of her mother. The gift your mothers all share. To turn back for another, to fall for her foal. Here she is, your mother!”

  Our mothers cantered in among us, and we all cried out in fear and relief, grateful for our dear, dear mothers. I ran up to my mother, all in pieces.

  “There, there,” she said, grooming me. “I’m here. I’d never leave you.”

  Seven-Lives harrumphed. “Welcome to the Herd, little ones. May you never take it for granted!”

  “Welcome to the Herd!” the mares whinnied and stamped.

  All of us as foal were much too abashed to do or say anything. I clung to my mother’s side for the rest of the night, scared out of my mind. I imagined a thousand keeza boogeymen, and dragons and neptunes, and monstrous lions and tigers that could tear a kar and his horse apart.

  By dawn, after breakfast I was feeling much better. I practiced my kicking on the hard desert stone.

  The other foals my age gathered nearby.

  “So, you’re the one that started the leaping wings game?” The black with four white feet pranced past me, tail up. He trotted around me, lifting his feet high. “You don’t look like much.”

  My mother had told me always to face my enemy. I did so now, pivoting neatly to keep Basrus, called Ink-Fiend, in my sights. “I made up the game. It calmed everyone and they had fun. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You knew that story that old mare was going to tell us, then. Are you a devout little boy? Always do what the herd tells you?” he teased.

  “You shut up now, Basrus, you’re bad luck!” The little foal I’d encouraged from the night before called out. He made bhrakka pan as he did, bucking away.

  Basrus was astonished to be farted at by the weakest foal in the herd. “What did you say!?”

  “Four white feet are bad luck! My mother says she heard the kar say it! They won’t treat you well!”

  “You take that back, you pathetic rabbit, I’ll rip your throat out!” Basrus chased after him in a fury. “I’ll kill anyone who says that!”

  Ghyrdepel, called nothing, ran his first and only race. He won. He outran Basrus

  He would never outrun anything else.

  I stepped in after Basrus’s fourth lap. “Now see here!”

  Basrus stumbled onto the hard rock. The onlooking foals gasped. If he scraped his knees, blood would call the keeza to us.

  Basrus winced, getting up. His knees were unscathed.

  “You bastard,” he said to me. “I should kick you to death for that!”

  “You’re an awful lot of talk, Basrus!” I said boldly. “I think all of us are tired of it!”

  Several of the foals were made bold by me. “Yeah! That’s right!”

  “Do what you want,” Basrus said bitterly. “Just don’t talk bad about me, you stupid shitheads!”

  I didn’t know then that his mother had had his fate read by then. The mares of any Herd have seraipha, a sixth sense for safety. Some are better at it than others. Very few stallions, if ever, were known to have the gift. But the angels speak to the strongest ones through the stars. They read the stars the foal was born under, and report the truth of the angels.

  Seven-Lives was a particularly strong seraipha mare. But not the strongest I would ever see. Many in the herd feared how wrong Seven-Lives was, and many had asked the stallions to drive her out. But the stallions refused, seeing how she was with the kar, loved and loving in return. She apologized for every fate she read. Horses at the yearly fairs the kar attended begged her for their fortune, or their foals.

  Seven-Lives said her fate was to everyone else a bad one, and she read in the stars when she was a foal a minute old.

  “I think you were very brave,” a copper filly next to me said. “Would you like to go and see Seven-Lives? Maybe she’ll tell us another spooky story!”

  None of us doubted now that Seven-Lives could scare us silly, and we loved it.

  “Yeah!” I said.

  We all ran down to the shadiest part of the oasis, where Seven-Lives grazed and put her ears back at us. “What do you lot want?”

  “Please tell us a story, Seven-Lives!”

  “A scary one!”

  “Yes, I want to be scared again!”

  “My father says you got those seven scars from a lion! Is that true?”

  Seven-Lives sneezed to quiet us all, her nostrils clapping. “Where did your father hear that?”

  The foal in question couldn’t answer.

  “Well, all right, I suppose I have one …”

  We all gathered around, eager.

  “What is the worst way to die?”

  She chilled us all, with a single sentence.

  “Well, go on then.” Seven-Lives poked the copper filly with her muzzle.

  “I … um! Um! The keeza tear your anus out, and eat you alive!”

  “That’s a good one!” Seven-Lives nibbled her ear, impressed.

  “Thirst!” I said. “Thirst is the worst death. Even the kar forbid it as too cruel, to die, begging for water.”

  “A very grim and wise answer.” Seven-Lives groomed me with her whiskery muzzle, making me laugh with relief.

  “A l-lion,” said Basrus, warily. “They snare your insides with their talons.”

  “Rare, but true.” Seven-Lives caught him by the base of his tail before he could slip away, and harshly groomed it.

  “Ow!”

  “Keeza,” said Ghyrdepel, speaking his own death, as all horses probably do. “I agree with Inchegara. Wolves and jackals are the worst.”

  The copper filly nodded.

  “An unimaginative answer,” Seven-Lives said flatly.

  “You do know the worst way to die?” Ghyrdepel said. His whole body said he didn’t want to know the answer.

  Seven-Lives reached out her leg, pawing the rocky ground. “What is this?”

  “Brisos and raiszla,” I said. I’d listened to my mother’s stories.

  “And what are they?”

  “Brisos is the beauty of our movement. The soul of a horse is our movement. We are The Walkers. Our spirit, we share in our bodies. Spirit is brisos.”

  “Very good.” Seven-Lives skillfully switched her weight to her haunches, tearing at the rock with both hooves now. “And raiszla?”

  “It is the price we pay for brisos! For wearing our souls in our skin! We fear for our legs, for anything that may snag a hoof. The fear for our legs roars within us. Our legs may save us, but without them, we are lost.”

  “Yes!” Seven-Lives reared a bit and pawed the air as very distant thunder rumbled. “Yes, that is the light and shadow of what we are. Beautiful, breathlessly powerful, graceful. Brainless, fearful, stupid beasts. We are. And that was decided the day that the First Mare’s sons raced each other. Uma, the First Stallion, eldest son, a knight and warrior of virtue. White as pure driven snow and just as rare, he shimmered like a thousand pearls. Any light that touched him turned gold.

  “And then, there was his brother, Morvarc’h, called Kelhest forever after, the Limping One, the Crooked Horse, the third born. Black, he was, with four feet.”

  Basrus gave a horrified gasp amid us.

  “His hooves were born soft, malformed, and he was sickly as a foal for a long time. Some say he never recovered, fascinated by his own plague and suffering. But oh, how he envied his brother’s perfect, glassy perfection. Some say all he knew was hatred, from the moment he drew milk from his mother’s breast. The First Horse knew their bitter rivalry, and could do nothing. It is in the nature of stallions to fight.

  Morvarc’h overstepped himself one day, trying to show off to mares. Uma mocked him, showing off to the mare shimself, and had them swooning. Morvarc’h, breathless in his rage, challenged his brother to a race.

  “I shall prove myself to you!” he snarled at his brother. His stallion’s teeth were longer and sharper than usual. “Or let me prove the ruin of you!”

  He scored one leg in his oath, drawing blood.

  He raced his brother and lost.

  There is nothing more to it. It was a humiliation. All the horses who watched laughed at Morvarc’h limping over the finish line long after his brother had galloped away with the mares. Poison grew from the hate in Morvarc’h’s heart. He fled the Herd, forsaking its laws. And though he should have been pulled down and eaten for his weakness, Morvarc’h had strong magic. He used it to walk among our enemies. He spoke to the tiger and lion. He traveled with the jackal and the wolf. He learned their magic. And became vengeful, and powerful, fed by his own poison.

  He learned most from an old she-wolf, called First Grandmother among the wolves. She was a vain and powerful creature. Morvarc’h gave her a ball of hair that had gathered in his stomach, a powerful token of magic. “Take this, O Mother. If my people cause you grief, use this to curse them.”

  “Morvarc’h left not long after, but his trap was set. Uma grazed near a river the wolves visited often. He saw First Grandmother with her pups, vomiting up something vile and half-digested. And even worse, her children covered themselves in the filth and lapped it up, gorging themselves on flesh.

  “Look, the wolf burps bile on the grasslands!” Uma called, for his Herd to see, and for all the deer hiding in the valley, and for all the animals for miles. “Look at you, disgusting thing! The keeza are truly cursed!”

  The First Grandmother snarled, deeply insulted and embarrassed by Uma’s taunting. “If we are cursed, be cursed in turn, idiot horse! I have a curse for you!”

  She used the ball of hair, placing a paw upon it as she snarled. “If vomiting and burping is vile, let you and yours never do it! Let it be your doom, the curse of Kelhast, to peel your hooves and die gasping from twisted guts! Let it shrivel the bone and make you die screaming for the mercy of death! Then will your people be humbled, then will they beg to see Morvarc’h, the Prince of Death!”

  Uma was driven to his knees by the curse. The pain of his body being rearranged frightened him. He tried to run, but the ache turned his gallop into a stumble. He rested under the shade of forest trees. Several days later, several of his people died of the malady. It was just as the First Grandmother had said: their hooves peeling away, as they died choking on the poison trapped in their bodies, festering their insides.

  Uma raged and wept to see the curse upon his people. But his little brother was nowhere to be found. “He is called Kelhast now!? Let him be! I call him after this curse, this reckoning and punishment he brought upon us for no reason! I cast him from the Herd!”

  “So it is now. If a horse is ridden too hard for too long, his hooves peel. His guts twist, turning water and food into a mockery. Some take days to die. But some have been saved by the kar, as Mara’s love proved. A story for another time.”

  “Is Kelhast still out there?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. He wanders far and alone, the Limping One. When his time is done, he will sink down before his mother, Eos, and beg her to forgive him.

  "For a thousand thousand thousand suns, you must guide the spirits of the fallen to Heaven,” she will tell him. “But you must not enter. When I forgive you, you may enter Heaven.

  “And so Kelhast is still a devil and a trickster, still bitter at his mother and brother. He is a shadow, a flicker of darkness in the corner of your eye. He is a dark unicorn, some say, a creature that looks like us except with a great, spiral horn in the center of its forehead. It’s said sometimes he will call a horse by name. Some of the greatest warhorses of legend screamed out that they saw him, they saw Kelhast, and chased after him. They saw nothing else, not their rider’s call, not their enemy’s spear or lance. They leap, frenzied, to their deaths, chasing Kelhast.

  “So beware. Beware, my little ones, of the shadows, of the bits that dance and dazzle, for it could be him,” Seven-Lives whispered. She had us spellbound by now. “Or else … HE’LL GET YOU!”

  She jumped and screamed, scaring the life out of all of us. We bolted in terror for seconds before wheeling and laughing, because it was a joke, of course it was a joke. There were no such things as dark unicorns.

  We laughed, bashful, grown-up. Not like those silly baby foals who could barely talk. We knew about the world.

  “You’re really the best, Seven-Lives!”

  “Best stories ever!”

  She tossed her head, chuckling. “They’re just foal’s stories. I tell them all the time. Be well, my little ones. Don’t overeat.”

  “Can a horse really run his hooves off?” I asked my mother later that night.

  “I should have known Seven-Lives would put all that nonsense in your head.” My mother nudged me to lay down and sleep in the protection of the fruit tree shadows. Flies swarmed over me, but she was there to brush the flies off my whole body. “Yes, it can happen. It’s awful when it does. But that would only happen under a stupid kar. Don’t eat to excess, and don’t drink cold water after a hot run. The kar know how to stop kelhast and heal it. You won’t have it happen to you because our kar are the best and kindest and wisest. Now go to sleep.”

  “Did a lion really attack Seven-Lives?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her. Go to sleep.”

  “I’m not scared of Kelhast.”

  “I know you’re not. Now to go to sleep.”

  I went to sleep.