The world still looked the same. Trees, loam underhoof, light and shadow, stuff and air. But Sunset could feel the magic again.
It wasn't her magic. Not really. That was why she'd not been able to grasp it, been able to command it, impose her will upon existence as she had since she had been a hot-eyed orphanage filly. The magic here wasn't Equestrian magic. It wasn't obedient, compliant. It wasn't… tame.
And it didn't listen to her.
As Sunset searched for the grey and their mutual mistress, she was distracted by trails of… not-sight, not-seen things.There was a world beneath the world, and she didn't have eyes to see it properly. Nor did it come into focus like proper cantrip-sight or second-sight ought. Her lessons - well. The techniques weren't working.
She could work with it. No spells, then... It was just a matter of experimenting.
And that was the moment she caught up to the fleeing fool filly and her cargo. Glowing like the distant promise of the dawn.
Oh, not a halo, not a glory or a blazing fire. But Daenerys Stormborn had a certain... glitter about her as she sawed at the recalcitrant mare's reins, trying to get her horse under control.
Sunset charged forward and got just ahead of the twitching horse. The khaleesi's brilliant eyes lit up as Sunset threw her horned head against that big grey-coated chest, helping turn the half-cantering, half-bucking runaway, and the two of them got the horse to turn around in a tight circle instead of breaking out into another dead run.
That was how the first two members of the khaleesi's khas found them, as two riders passed around either side of a nearby tree-trunk and into view. Suddenly, there they were, shouting. More distantly, the high boughs overhead half-muffled the hallos and casting cries of the rest of the scattered khas, scurrying about in search of their lost charge, and the magic faded, lost in the crush of horse-riding apes and their foam-specked, sweating, wild-eyed mounts.
It was a good thing that they found them after Daenerys had gotten her grey under control, for Sunset didn't care for the strike against her mistress's reputation for horsewomanship if the Dothraki had seen the runaway at its peak. By the time the young riders caught up to the khaleesi, she was no longer a helpless girl clinging to the back of a wild horse, but a regal figure roughly handling an agitated beast.
Perception was not all, Celestia had always said, but it was a great deal. Or so Sunset thought, watching her new mistress sit taller in her saddle, doing her best to look like she was in control of a situation Sunset doubted she understood in the least. The glowing around Daenerys was fading, and the rest of the Dothraki barely shone at all.
If Sunset didn't know what was going on, how could Daenerys? Sunset had so many questions, and almost all of them could get her- get her-
What did the Dothraki do with witches? Sunset looked around at the milling riders as they collapsed upon their khaleesi, their arakhs drawn, their horses almost as agitated as the blasted dim-witted grey.
"We attacked, something in the not-light," barked the khaleesi in very bad Dothraki. "Ice spear. Got dark. Cut at Sunset Horse. She - keep me from them. Didn't see what was - what it was. Shadows, damn it. Shades rising up out of the forest floor - blast! Sunset Horse! What word for shades?"
"Zanishkikh, princess. Shadows. They were cast by no thing, and moved like armed men. Not skilled armed men, or I would be dead."
Sunset looked around herself, reminded of the dispelled threat - was it gone? All around her in the glade they had found the khaleesi, the Dothraki milled about, arguing, as wild-eyed as their beasts. Nobody was listening to each other.
Whatever cloud had hidden the day's sun had passed away, and the forest glade was dappled with diffused beams of brightness. There was shade, here under the heavy canopies, but the shadows were slight, and unthreatening, and - tame? Sunset couldn't see anything more, no movement-which-could-not-be-movement or the - coldness that had filled those animate shades. What she could feel was the fire behind her horn, a little reservoir whose mighty pressure had faded. It had been strong, terribly strong, that pressure when she's first poked her horn into the bottom of some vast magic-dam, and when she had pulled her horn out, the magic had come spraying out with all the weight of those countless tons pressing down.
Sunset knew control, she knew how to restrain great power. If nothing else, studying under the Princess of the Sun had taught her that much. She could have handled that. But now - perhaps her images, her metaphors of how it worked weren't right, weren't accurate. Had the shadows been something else? Was there fire and light underlying those - no, they were shadows.
But surely fires cast shadows?
Would the shadows return? Was this a single attempt? The beginning of a campaign? Why hadn't Sunset ever heard about these things, if they existed in this world? Why didn't she know?
Distracted by her internal barrage of questions, Sunset barely noticed it when Rahkaro finally showed up to take charge of the chaos. He'd been furthest away, and -
"Qohorik shadow-sorcerers," Rahkaro spat. "Has to have been. I was following something that looked like the khaleesi, two pale flickering things. They lured us away, decoys. I was wondering what happened to Sunset-horse when there was that big noise and that flash, and suddenly the khaleesi and her mount were gone. They had us following a fake!"
You could see the other Dothraki embracing the new story, elaborating on it, making sure that they all saw exactly the same thing, did the same right-things. Sunset wondered if Rahkaro had actually seen such a thing, or if he was just offering the rest of the khas an out, a way to save their pride, salvage their honor.
Impossible to tell. And difficult to question without questioning that honor.
All the pride of having gotten her magic back was washed away as she watched the riders re-write the day's events, to justify themselves in their own eyes, and those of the khaleesi. And, Sunset realized, as she followed behind the gathering herd, the khal and his bloodriders. We all will have to justify ourselves in the eyes of the khal.
Rahkaro fell back from the troop of Dothraki, who were working themselves up into a demonstrative display of combative swagger, riding through every patch of darkened brush, slashing at what little growth there was between the great tree-trunks. He looked down from horseback at the little unicorn, and eyed Sunset.
"You've been quiet, Sunset Horse. The khaleesi wasn't the only one that escaped the shadows. What did you see? Why did they just - go away? Shadow assassins don't stop until they kill everybody."
"I've never heard of such a thing!" snapped Sunset, scared of what he was asking. "Why haven't I heard of this before? Your world has magic! Dark magic! I thought you all just had… it all sounded like donkey-superstitions, the way you talked about it. Everypony talks about donkey-magic, but it's all cons and-" Sunset suddenly realized she didn't have words in Dothraki for grifting or the con which weren't basically 'stonehousemen's lies'.
"That wasn't horseshit," she went on. "That was real. And ugly. And frightening!" She tried to lay it on thick, but couldn't tell if...
"What, killing shadows?" said Rahkaro, looking more than a little spooked himself. "They say that the stonehousemen, some of them, they make deals. With devils, with gods.I don't know what. The Great Stallion doesn't make deals. The Dothraki don't deal. We take what we want, our gods do the same. If the Great Stallion wants to give you a gift, he'll toss it into your tent, when you least expect it. No bargains, no this for that. Gift, free given. Or nothing. And don't ever expect anything.
"The Qohorik stonehousemen, they in particular - nobody pushes them too hard. When it comes time for gifts, the khals give them extra consideration, you know? Not like the other stonehousemen, not so - it isn't just because they have all these blasted, trackless trees. Or those fortified bridges, either, because that's only on the west side of the Qohorik ranges. If we wanted, we could raid them forever from the east. Never know if you piss on the wrong Qohorik, your own shadow might rise up when you sit down to your dinner and eat you instead."
"Is this common? Does everybody have to worry about their own shadow coming alive and strangling them where they stand?"
"Sunset Horse, they're stories. No, I've never personally heard of anyone getting it like that, no one I knew, or anyone that knew someone who had . But a wise rider, he pay attention to stories."
Rahkaro sat back in his saddle, and thought.
"No, nobody. Not in my time, or my father's time. Nor- well, back in the day, they say some things happened when the khals waged war to the hilt with the Qohorik, and certain Dothraki, named in the stories. Long ago, maybe? But it is known, Qohor is full of witches and sorcerers. It only does not happen because they're too busy with their quarrels, or so it is said. And, of course, if they did - we would sack them once again. Nobody does this to the Dothraki, and lives!"
"Mutually assured slaughter?"
"Something like that. We need to get the khaleesi back to the khal and the bloodriders."
"On that, we are agreed, Rakharo."
Sunset looked back at her mistress, surrounded by young archers and arakh-men, trying to look hard and tough. Daenerys was looking back at her, and her violet eyes were gleaming with -
She knew. Had she seen? Was Sunset's magic a secret, or just something that hadn't been spoken yet?
Rakharo got the khaleesi's tumbled, confused khas moving, and they cast about until an outrider found the abandoned roadway. The khas moved back westwards, searching out the main body of the khalasar, and Khal Drogo.
Fifteen minutes after they found the road, they encountered some outriders of the Dothraki van, and Rakharo had words for the leader of the scouts, who sent riders into the forest on either side of the road, searching for a few missing members of the khaleesi's khas. Two messengers raced westward with messages of the incident, as the khas followed more slowly in their wake, surrounding their affronted mistress. Another fifteen minutes brought the sight of gleaming spear-heads bobbing along in the half-lit distance. It was the Unsullied escort, marching in front of the forward elements of the horde, almost like a pilot-fish leading a ship into shoal-ridden waters.
Sunset and the rest of the Dothraki eyed the castrated warriors in their serried ranks as they passed around the column of dark-skinned war-slaves. They were led by one of their own, a hard-eyed sergeant-type Sunset had noted before, but never gotten the name of; at the rear of the column was a lanky man who was obviously not one of the Unsullied, with a complexion halfway between that of the Pentoshi stonehousemen Sunset had known, and the Dothraki themselves. He shouted out something as Daenerys and her escort approached, and the Unsullied sergeant barked out something that Sunset barely recognized as a close cousin of the coastal-Valyrian word for 'stop'.
Daenerys rode placidly by the Qohorik delegation that escorted the khalasar in its passage through the forests, and as she passed, her own furious, glaring escort stared down at the enemy, and stroked their weapons.
Fury wafted in their wake as the warriors of the khas returned to the khalasar. This wasn't over.