Chapter One
King Sol looked out from his grand palace in Canterlot. His realm was merrily celebrating Hearth’s Warming Eve as the snow fell. The people were happy, and why shouldn’t they be on such a night like this? The unification of the three pony tribes was something to be treasured.
“My Lord, is everything alright?”
The king turned from the window to see his favorite page, Clover the Clever. He smiled at the young unicorn. “Yes it is. Everything is as it should be.”
Clover bowed before the great grey alicorn. “The queen desires your presence in the throne room, Sire.”
He was about to follow his page back to the celebration feast when something caught his eye. A cloaked pony was gathering sticks and tree bark in front of the castle walls. Sol frowned at this peculiarity. Why wasn’t this pony with his family celebrating Hearth’s Warming?
“Shall I tell Her Majesty that her husband is stuck in a window?” Clover asked playfully.
The king glared at her momentarily before breaking into a broad smile. “Alright, Smarty Pants, get over here and tell me who this is. Then we can rejoin the party.”
Clover’s eyes widened in interest as she made her way to the window. There were few things her master did not know. She peered into the snowy darkness. “I’ve seen that unicorn before, Sire. Rumor has it he has quite a reputation.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what I’ve heard, he leaves his home every sixth full moon to gather ingredients for a spell he has been preparing for fifty years.”
The king glanced at the full moon. “Hmmmm.”
“Others say that he spends his days wandering the Great Forest looking for his lost family.”
As Clover talked, the king kept watching the strange pony. The wind had picked up, and the biting cold began to bite deeper. The king saw the cloaked figure shudder and press the garment closer to his body. As if feeling a pressing gaze upon him, the mysterious pony looked up, right at Sol.
The alicorn held the strange pony’s gaze for a few moments before the stranger marched back into the forest.
“Come, let us rejoin the party,” Sol murmured.
Clover nodded and lead the monarch back to the celebration.
The party was wonderful, the food excellent, and the company doubly so. But as the night wore on, the king’s mind kept drifting toward thoughts of the mysterious pony. His distracted countenance went unnoticed by many, but not by the queen.
“What troubles you, my dearest?” Queen Crescent whispered.
Knowing it was futile to hide anything from his wife, he told her what he had seen outside his window in-between gales of laughter and applause. When at last he was done, his wife told him, “It is a shame you can’t stay and enjoy the party. You’d better take care of that important matter of state you were telling me about.”
Sol blinked. “What do you mean, my moon and stars?”
The queen smiled. “I have also seen that poor pony roaming the palace’s outer fields. No one should be alone on Hearth’s Warming Eve. Go see to him, and I’ll keep our guests entertained.”
The king considered his wife’s proposal. “Are you sure?”
Crescent nodded. “Go on. It is easier for you to escape these festivities than for me. Just be careful, my love.”
Sol leaned across his chair to kiss his wife on the cheek.
“I will. Thank you,” he whispered gratefully into her ear.
Minutes later, a minstrel had been brought into the Great Hall to play a jaunty, uplifting tune that had every pony laughing and clapping their hooves. The king took this opportunity to slip out of the enormous room and into an adjoining kitchen. Some of the cooks and servants gave him odd looks as he began to stuff zap apples and oats into a chef’s hat.
“I must say, Your Grace, that you can be as discreet and quiet as a breezy some moments.”
Sol paused in his labor to find Clover the Clever offering him an apple.
“And yet as obvious as a drunken minotaur at others,” she whispered.
The king looked around to see who was watching them. Everypony who met his gaze hastily turned back to what they were doing.
“Don’t you have some other duties to perform?” Sol asked as he grabbed the apple from his page.
“My first duty is to serve my king. And it looks like said king is going on some sort of errand in the middle of a very cold night.”
It was then the alicorn noticed that Clover was dressed to spend a long time in nature’s frigid embrace. The monarch sighed as he used string to close his improvised sack. He knew that even if he ordered Clover to stay in the castle, she would try to follow him anyway. But that was one of her many qualities that had endeared her to him. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide and thirty stories tall. She also was as loyal as a guardsman and one of the most gifted unicorns he had ever known.
“Alright, you can come. In fact, you can even make yourself useful and carry this package.”
Sol handed the food-laden toque to his smirking servant. After a moment’s concentration, the king teleported himself and his loyal follower to a clearing half a mile outside the castle walls.
Clover and Sol illuminated their horns and marched side by side in the deep snow. The alicorn, still dressed in his royal garb, did not flinch at the blood-freezing cold. He ignored it as he continued to survey the ground for the cloaked pony’s hoof prints. After half an hour of following the trail, the prints were becoming difficult to see, even for him. He turned to Clover. “He went this way. The prints take a sharp turn to the east.”
“Yes, sir,” came the teeth-chattering reply.
Sol turned to his page. “Clover, follow in my hoof steps. It’s warmer there.”
The unicorn did not protest as she fell in behind the alicorn. Warmth flowed into her body and renewed her stamina.
Sol did not look behind him. He should have ordered his page to march behind him sooner, but the king knew that her pride would not have allowed her. Sol knew that she was trying to prove herself to him. With her, everything was a test, and she had rarely known failure.
As time passed, Clover began to grow concerned. Even an alicorn could not stay out in the cold forever. She knew that her master’s energy was being drained at a faster rate to keep her from freezing to death.
After a moment’s thought, she decided to give a new spell she had been experimenting with a try. Using her magic, she passed a ball of mint green energy to her master. The orb passed through the alicorn’s robes and was absorbed by the tall grey pony.
The king stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. “Where did you learn to do that?”
Clover shrugged. “Oh, it’s a little something I read about. It seemed like now was as good a time to use it as any.”
Sol shook his head. “I’m alright, Clover, you should save your energy just in----.”
The king hesitated before continuing, and Clover interrupted him. “Sire, do you smell that?”
Sol frowned at his young servant. But, he too sniffed the cold air.
“Yes, I do. It smells like smoke and cedar. I think we’re getting close.”
Thus encouraged, the two ponies followed their noses to a simple log cabin. Page and monarch quickly walked up to the building and knocked on the door.
“Who’s there?” came a clipped, curious reply.
“We are here to bring good tiding’s from Canterlot my friend,” Sol answered calmly. “Are you the pony who was gathering winter fuel outside the castle?”
“What of it? Does the king count the twigs on the ground as well as the gold in his coffers?”
Clover’s teeth clenched in anger at the stranger’s reply, but she held her tongue.
“It is by the king’s command that we sought you, sir. We bring sustenance from his majesty’s table.”
There was a brief pause on the other side of the door before the cranky voice declared, “How generous of him. Leave the food, if you must, and go away.”
“It is a good distance back to the palace, and the weather is fierce and cold. Could my companion and I warm ourselves by your hearth for a time?”
Clover looked up at the king in curiosity. She did not expect for them to stay with this strange pony.
Another short pause followed Sol’s question. “Yes, you may. But only if my question is answered.”
“Of course,” Sol answered.
“I want your companion to respond. You’ve done enough talking.”
The king looked down at Clover and gestured to the door.
The page cleared her throat. “Ask.”
“Are you happy?”
The question caught Clover off guard. She had expected some odd riddle about how deep was the ground or how high was up.
Regaining her bearings, she replied, “Yes. But what is my happiness to you?”
The door opened to reveal a unicorn with a great, flowing, white beard. “To me that is all that matters, my dear Clover. Please come inside, both of you. We have much to discuss."
The king’s eyes widened as he stepped through the threshold after Clover. “Starswirl the Bearded, as I live and breathe.”
Regarding the king with less than friendly eyes, the white unicorn gave him a grudging nod of respect.
Clover barely noticed this interaction as she took in Starswirl’s home. His dwelling’s interior was deceptively enormous, easily ten times the size of what she was expecting. Everywhere she looked there were old books, colorful chemistry sets, beautiful telescopes, and wondrously ornate machines.
Tearing her eyes from this scholar’s paradise, Clover turned to the old pony in wonder. “You’re Starswirl the Bearded? You’re the leader of the Unicorn Separatists?”
“Former leader, Clover. Even one as powerful as I can see that not even magic can stop the tide of the future. The unification of the three tribes was going to happen with or without my approval.”
The page’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”
Starswirl did not answer. Instead he turned to look up at a picture. Two unicorns were depicted: one was a much younger version of himself and the other a beautiful emerald-green mare.
Hesitantly the former rebel asked, “How much do you remember about your past, Clover? Do you remember your life before your time serving King Sol?”
At the mention of her sovereign, Clover glanced over at the alicorn. Sol stared back at her, waiting for his page’s reply.
“No, my life at the palace is the only life I’ve ever known. I was told that the royal guard found me protected by a magic sphere outside the castle gates twenty years ago.”
Starswirl nodded as he added some of his gathered sticks to the hearth fire. “And that is how I left you,” he said quietly.
“What?” Clover asked.
The old unicorn looked directly at Clover. “I’m your father, Clover, for better or worse.”
The young mare stared opened-mouthed at the old unicorn for several seconds. Finally she turned once again to the king. “Is this true?”
The king sighed heavily. “I don’t know for sure, Clover. My advisors and I tried to pinpoint your lineage ever since you were brought to the castle. There are theories about who your parents are, and indeed one of them is that Starwirl the Bearded is your father.”
The page thought about this and asked, “And do you support that theory?”
Sol nodded. “I’d better, since I’m the one who came up with it.” The king walked up to Starswirl. “Though I could never prove my theory, since me and many others thought you were dead.”
The former separatist smirked. “Not yet, just retired.”
“If you are Clover’s father, may I test your claim?”
Starswirl didn’t hesitate. “Do what you must, but I’m telling the truth.”
“I’m going to have to perform the same test on you as well, Clover.”
The young unicorn nodded eagerly. “Yes, go ahead.”
Without another word, black, purple, and green alicorn magic spewed forth from the king’s horn and entered the bodies of the other two unicorns. Sol held the old and young ponies with his magic for half a minute before releasing them. Light-headed, the king sat down heavily in a nearby chair, his breath coming in ragged heaves.
Clover approached the king. “Are you alright, sire?”
Sol nodded, and looked directly at Starswirl. “You are her father, and she is your daughter.”
Clover looked at her new-found father with trepidation and wonder. “If you’re my father, then who’s my mother?”
Starswirl closed his eyes and smiled. “Your mother’s name was Emerald Blaze, and she was the most stubborn, fiercest, and proudest unicorn I’ve ever known. She was my second in command in the Unicorn Separation Front.” The old unicorn’s face darkened. “We were fools back then. We thought that unicorns were the chosen race of ponies meant to rule Equestria and the world. We saw ourselves as just one small step below perfection.” Starswirl nodded at King Sol. “One step removed from becoming like you.”
The alicorn shook his head. “You realize now that what you’ve just told me is madness?”
Starswirl nodded. “I know this now. But I believed it back then. And my wife doubly so, even up to the day she died giving birth to Clover.”
“What?” Clover said in disbelief. “What happened?”
The old unicorn began to lose his composure as he answered, “There is an extremely rare . . . disorder in female unicorns. This disorder shows itself in one out of every ten thousand mares during pregnancy. I’ve read about it in ages past. It’s called magi transmortis.”
Clover frowned. “What is that? I’ve never heard of that disease?”
King Sol closed his eyes and shuddered.
Starswirl went on in a voice husky with emotion. “Before they are born, foals receive sustenance and nutrients from an umbilical cord in the mother’s womb. But in the case of unicorns, they also receive their magic.”
The old unicorn sighed heavily. “Magi transmortis is when far too much magic is passed from mother to foal. Instead of a trickle of magic being transferred, it is a flood. This disorder happens without warning and strikes so suddenly both the mare and foal die in seconds.”
Tears began to streak the unicorn’s withered face. “I could not save your mother. But I saved you when I cut you out of her womb before your body could succumb to the torrent of magic.”
Clover gaped at Starswirl the Bearded. She wanted to call him a liar, to say that he was nothing but an old crazy pony who had stayed out too long in the cold. But she couldn’t; the pain in his eyes was all too real. Deep down in her heart, Clover knew that he was telling the truth.
Before she knew it, King Sol had wrapped Clover in a gentle hug. She did not know when she started to cry, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Why did you send her to the palace? Why didn’t you raise her?” asked the king.
Starswirl wiped away his tears. “Can you imagine the stigma she would have faced growing up as my daughter? The offspring of a rebel and unicorn supremacist? No, my shame would have followed her everywhere she went.”
The two ponies looked down at the floor in silence, unsure of what to say as Clover continued to sob silently on the king’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to stay here, you know,” Sol said at last.
The wizard blinked. “What do you mean?”
Sol pressed on. “What if we all went back to the palace together? You would pledge your allegiance to Equestria and encourage your more . . . devoted followers to do the same. We could use talented unicorns to help build this young nation.”
Clover looked up at the king in utter surprise. “You’d do that for him?”
Sol nodded. “I would. And besides, maybe he can teach you in ways I cannot.”
The old unicorn was just as surprised by this gesture as his daughter was. “Why are you doing this? After all I’ve done to try and dissolve Equestria?”
Sol shook his head. “That’s water under the bridge. Your movement was mostly nonviolent, and I know you did all you could to prevent the blood-shed that did occur.”
The former rebel nodded. “I accept your offer only if my daughter wants me to go with her.”
All eyes turned to the talented page who walked up to her father and embraced him. “Of course I do.”