"Then it bolted. No, not bolted-it didn't flee like that. It bounded up and seemed to fly right past me; all that motion and grace, like the shadow of some bird in flight cast down on the earth by the sun passing. It came by me in the blink of an eye-whisk!-and it was gone. I stood there looking after it, wondering if I'd really seen it, knowing I had, thinking how marvelous it was to view, thinking it truly was real ..."
He choked on the words as they tumbled out one after the other, released from his throat in a rush of strange emotion. His hands were raised before him, knotting with the intensity of the telling of his story. Ben quit breathing momentarily, awed by what he was seeing, not wanting to break the spell.
The hunter's eyes lowered then, and the hands followed. "I heard later that it flew right into the teeth of the chase. I heard it went past the whole mess of them like wind through a forest of rooted trees. Dozens saw it. There was a chance to hold it, maybe-but I kind of wonder. It came right over the nets. There was a chase, but ... but you know what?" The eyes lifted again. "The unicorn came right up against the Lords of the Greensward and the King's men-right up against them, sweet mother! And the wizard-the very one that organized all this-conjured up some nonsense and it rained flowers and butterflies all over everything. The chase broke up in the confusion, and the unicorn was gone before you could spit!" He smiled suddenly. "Flowers and butterflies-can you imagine that?"
Ben smiled with him. He could.
The hunter drew up his knees then and hugged them. The smile disappeared. "That was it, then. That was all she wrote. The hunt was done. Everyone sort of broke up and went away after that. There was some talk of continuing, of taking the whole line back east again, but it never came to anything. No one wanted any part of that. It was like the heart had gone out of the chase. It was like everyone was glad the unicorn got away. Or maybe it was just that no one thought it could ever be caught anyway."
The hard eyes lifted. "Strange times we live in. The King sacked the wizard and the dog, I hear. Threw them out the minute he heard what had happened. Just dismissed them out of hand for what the wizard had done-or what he thought he'd done. I don't think the wizard could have done much one way or the other anyway. Not with that creature, not with it. No one could have. It was too much a ghost for anything mortal, too much a dream ..."
There were sudden tears in the hunter's eyes. "I think I touched it, you know, when it went past me. I think I touched it. Sweet mother, I can still feel the silk of its skin brushing me, like fire, like ... a woman's touch, maybe. I had a woman touch me once that way, long ago. The unicorn felt like that. Now I can't forget it. I try to think of other things, try to be reasonable about the fact of it having happened at all, but the sense of it stays with me." He tightened his face against what he was feeling. "I been looking for it on my own since I left, thinking maybe one man could have better luck than a whole hunting party. I don't want to catch it exactly; I don't think I could. I just want to see it again. I just want to maybe touch it one more time-just once, just for a moment ..."
He trailed off again. The campfire sparked suddenly in the stillness, a sharp crackling. No one moved. Darkness had settled down across the valley, and the last daylight had dropped from view. Stars and moons had appeared, their light faint and distant, their colors muted. Ben glanced down at Edgewood Dirk. The cat had his eyes closed.
"I just want to touch it once more," the hunter repeated softly. "Just for a moment."
He stared vacantly at Ben. The ghost of who and what he had been was swallowed in the silence that followed.
That same night Willow dreamed again of the black unicorn. She slept huddled close to the faithful Parsnip in a gathering of pine at the edge of the Deep Fell, concealed within a covering of boughs and shadows. Her journey north from Elderew was five days gone. She was now only hours ahead of Ben Holiday. The hunt for the black unicorn had delayed her for almost a day as it swept the hill country west of the Greensward and turned her east. She had no idea what the hunt was about. She had no idea that Ben was searching for her.
The dream came at midnight, stealing into her sleep like a mother to her slumbering child's room, a presence that was warm and comforting. There was no fear this time, only sadness. Willow moved through forest trees and grassland spaces, and the black unicorn watched, as if a ghost come from some nether region to trail the living. It appeared and faded like sunshine from behind a cloud, now in the shade of a massive old maple, now in the lea of a copse of fir. It was never all visible, but only in part. It was black and featureless save for its eyes-and its eyes were a mirror of all the sadness that ever was and would ever be.
The eyes made Willow cry, and her tears stained her cheeks as she slept. The eyes were troubled, filled with pain she could only imagine, haunted beyond anything she had believed possible. The black unicorn of this dream was no demon spawn; it was a delicate, wondrous creature that somehow had been terribly misused ...
She came awake with a start, the image of the unicorn clearly etched in her mind, its eyes fixed and staring. Parsnip slept next to her, undisturbed. Dawn was still hours away, and she shivered with the night's chill. Her slim body trembled at the whisper of the dream's words in her memory, and she felt the magic of their presence in her fairy way.
This dream was real, she realized suddenly. This dream was the truth.
She straightened back against the pine's roughened trunk, swallowed the dryness in her throat, and forced herself to consider what the dream had shown her. Something required it-the eyes of the unicorn, perhaps. They sought something from her. It was no longer enough to think simply of retrieving the golden bridle and carrying it to Ben. That was the command of her first dream, the dream that had brought her on this quest-but the truth of that dream was now in doubt. The unicorn of that dream was entirely different than the unicorn of this. One was demon, the other victim. One was pursuer, the other ... hunted? She thought perhaps so. There was a need for help in the unicorn's eyes. It was almost as if it was begging her for that help.
And she knew she must give it.
She shuddered violently. What was she thinking? If she even came close to the unicorn, she could be lost. She should forget this madness! She should go to Ben ...
She let the unfinished thought trail off, huddled down against the night and the stillness, and wrestled with her indecision. She wished her mother were there to comfort her or that she could seek again the counsel of the Earth Mother.
She wished most of all for Ben.
But none of them was there. Except for Parsnip, she was alone.
The moments slipped by. Suddenly she rose, a soundless shadow, left Parsnip asleep in the gathering of pines, and disappeared silently into the Deep Fell. She went not on reason, but on instinct, without doubt or fear, but with certainty that all would be well and she would be kept safe.
By dawn, she had returned. She did not have the golden bridle in her possession, but she knew now where it was. Her fairy senses had told her what even the Earth Mother could not. The bridle had been stolen yet again.
She woke Parsnip, gathered together her few things, cast a brief glance back at the dark bowl of the hollows, and started walking east.
THIEVES.
When Ben Holiday and Edgewood Dirk awoke the following morning, the hunter was gone. Neither had heard him leave. He had departed without a word, disappearing so completely that it was almost as if he had never been. Even his face was just a vague memory for Ben. It was only his story of the hunt for the black unicorn that lingered on, still vivid, still haunting.
Breakfast was a solemn affair. "I hope he finds what he's looking for," Ben muttered at one point.
"He can't," Dirk replied softly. "It doesn't exist."
Ben was beginning to wonder about that. The black unicorn seemed as elusive as smoke and about as substantive. The unicorn was seen, but never for more than a few moments and never as more than a fleeting shadow. It was a legend that had assumed a scant few of the trappings of reality, but which remained for all intents and purposes little more than a vision. It was altogether possible that a vision was all the unicorn was-some strayed bit of magic that took form but never body. In Landover, you never knew.
He thought about asking Dirk, but then decided against it. Dirk wouldn't give him a straight answer if he knew one, and he was tired of playing word games with the cat.
He decided to change the subject.
"Dirk, I've been giving some thought to what the Earth Mother told us about the golden bridle," he said when breakfast was finished. "She told Willow that it was last in the possession of Nightshade, but she didn't say anything about what had become of the witch since I sent her into the fairy mists." He paused. "You knew I had done that, didn't you? That I had sent Nightshade into the mists?"
Dirk, seated on an old log, shifted his front paws experimentally. "I knew."
"She sent my friends into Abaddon, and I decided to give her a taste of her own medicine," he went on by way of explanation. "I was given Io Dust by the fairies, a powder that, if breathed, made you subject to the commands of the one who fed you the Dust. I used it later on the dragon Strabo, too, as a matter of fact. At any rate, I used it on Nightshade first and caused her to change herself into a crow and fly off into the mists." Again he paused. "But I never knew what happened to her after that."
"This rather boring recapitulation is leading somewhere, I trust?" Dirk sniffed.
Ben flushed. "I was wondering whether or not Nightshade had found her way out of the mists and back into the Deep Fell. It might help if we knew that before we waltzed blindly on in."
Dirk took a long moment to clean his face, causing Ben's flush to heighten further with impatience. At last the cat looked up again. "I have not been down into the Deep Fell myself in quite some time, High Lord. But I understand that Nightshade might well be back."
Ben took a moment to let the news sink in. The last thing he needed just now was an encounter with Nightshade. He no longer had the medallion to protect him-if indeed it could protect him anyway from a creature as evil as the witch. If she recognized him, he was dead. Even if she didn't, she was hardly likely to welcome him with open arms. And she was hardly likely to welcome Willow either-especially once she learned what the sylph was after. She wasn't about to hand over the golden bridle, however convincing the arguments Willow might offer. She would probably turn Willow into a toad-and turn him him into a toad. He thought wistfully of the Io Dust and wished he had just a single handful. That would even the odds considerably. into a toad. He thought wistfully of the Io Dust and wished he had just a single handful. That would even the odds considerably.
His eyes fixed intently on Dirk. "What do you think about a quick trip back into the fairy world?" he asked abruptly. "I did it once; I could do it again. The fairies would recognize me, magic or no magic. Maybe they could help me change back again. At the very least, they could give me another pod of the Io Dust to use on Nightshade. After all, I promised the Earth Mother I would do my best to look after Willow, and I can't look after her if I can't look after myself."
Dirk studied him a moment, blinked and yawned. "Your problem is not one anyone else can help you with-least of all the fairies."
"Why not?" Ben snapped, irritated with the cat's insufferable smugness.
"Because, in the first place, the magic that has changed you is your own-as you have been told at least half-a-dozen times now. And in the second place, the fairies won't necessarily help you just because you ask. The fairies involve themselves in people's lives when and where they choose and not otherwise." The prim muzzle wrinkled distastefully. "You knew that before you asked the question, High Lord."
Ben fumed silently. The cat was right, of course-he had known. The fairies hadn't interceded in Landover's problems when he had first come into the valley and the tarnish and the Iron Mark had threatened, and they were unlikely to do so now. He was King, and the problems facing him were his.
So how was he going to solve them?
"C'mon," he ordered suddenly, springing to his feet. "I have an idea that might work." He pulled on his boots, straightened his clothing, and waited for Dirk to ask what the idea was. The cat didn't. Finally, he said, "Don't you want to know the details?"
The cat stretched and jumped down from its perch to stand next to him. "No."
Ben ground his teeth and silently swore that, all right then, it would be a cold day somewhere damn hot before he he would say another word about it! would say another word about it!
They walked north through the early morning, skirting the grasslands of the Greensward, veering slightly east toward the foothills that lay below the Melchor. Ben led, but as usual Dirk seemed to know where they were going anyway and often traveled a parallel course, picking his way through the high grasses, seemingly oblivious to what Ben was about. Dirk continued to be a mystery without a solution, but Ben forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand rather than dwell on Dirk, because dwelling on Dirk just made him nuts. It was easier to accept the cat the way one accepted changes in the weather.
The grasslands were still marked from the passing of the hunt. Booted feet had flattened portions of the tall grass and broken down the scrub. Debris from the provision wagons littered the plains, and the ashes of huge campfires scarred the multicolored meadows. The Greensward had the look of a giant picnic ground at the close of July fourth. Ben wrinkled his nose in distaste. Meeks was already using the land selfishly again.
There were other signs of misuse as well. Signs of the wilt that had marked the valley in his early days in Landover had returned to the plants and trees-signs that could only have been brought about by a lessening of the power of the King's magic. When there was no King in Landover, the land lost strength; he had learned that on his first visit. Meeks was not the true King, despite any outward appearance, and Landover was beginning to show the effects. The signs were tiny yet, but they would grow worse. Eventually, the tarnish would return to Sterling Silver and the whole valley would begin to sicken. Ben pressed ahead at a quicker pace, as if somehow speed might help.
A caravan of traders traveling north into the Melchor to obtain metal implements and weapons from the Trolls crossed their path around midday, and they shared lunch. The gossip was all connected with the hunt for the black unicorn and the strange events of the past few days. The King had gone into seclusion, refusing to see anyone, even the Lords of the Greensward. Public works projects had been put on hold, judicial and grievance councils had been dismissed, envoys had been sent home from Sterling Silver, and everything in general had come to a dead halt. No one knew what was happening. There were rumors of demons flying the night skies, monstrous things that carried off livestock and stray children in the manner that the dragons once had. There were even rumors that the King himself was responsible, that he had made some devil's bargain to give the demons of Abaddon their way in Landover if they in turn would bring him the unicorn.
Everything seemed to revolve around the unicorn. The King had let it be known in no uncertain terms that he meant to have the creature, and the one who brought it to him would be hugely rewarded.
"If you can catch smoke, you're a rich man," one trader joked, and the others all laughed.
Ben didn't laugh. He took his leave hastily and continued north at an even quicker pace. Things were getting out of hand, and a good part of that was clearly his fault.
By midafternoon, he was in the country of the G'home Gnomes.
The G'home Gnomes were a burrow people he had encountered during his early days as Landover's King. They were small, furry, grimy creatures that looked something like overgrown moles. They were scavengers and thieves and they couldn't be trusted any farther than your pet dog could be with the evening roast. As a matter of fact, they couldn't be trusted with with your pet dog, because they considered dogs, cats, and other small domesticated animals quite a delicacy. Abernathy considered the G'home Gnomes cannibals. Questor Thews considered them trouble. Everyone considered them a nuisance. The appellation "G'home Gnome" came from the almost universally expressed demand of those who had the misfortune to come in contact with them: "Go home, gnome!" Two of these gnomes, Fillip and Sot, had made a pilgrimage to Sterling Silver to seek Ben's aid in freeing some of their people from Crag Trolls after the Trolls had carted the unfortunates away for stealing and eating a number of their pet tree sloths. Ben had almost lost his life in that venture, but the G'home Gnomes had proven to be among the most loyal of his subjects-if not the most reformed. your pet dog, because they considered dogs, cats, and other small domesticated animals quite a delicacy. Abernathy considered the G'home Gnomes cannibals. Questor Thews considered them trouble. Everyone considered them a nuisance. The appellation "G'home Gnome" came from the almost universally expressed demand of those who had the misfortune to come in contact with them: "Go home, gnome!" Two of these gnomes, Fillip and Sot, had made a pilgrimage to Sterling Silver to seek Ben's aid in freeing some of their people from Crag Trolls after the Trolls had carted the unfortunates away for stealing and eating a number of their pet tree sloths. Ben had almost lost his life in that venture, but the G'home Gnomes had proven to be among the most loyal of his subjects-if not the most reformed.
And Fillip and Sot had once confided to him that they knew the Deep Fell as they knew the backs of their hands.
"That's exactly the kind of help we need," Ben told Dirk, despite his vow not to tell the cat anything. "Nightshade will never be persuaded to give up the bridle willingly. Willow has to know that, too-but that won't stop her from trying. She'll probably be direct rather than circumspect; she's too honest for her own good. Whatever the case, if she's gone into the Deep Fell, she's likely in trouble. She'll need help. Fillip and Sot can let us know. They can sneak down without being seen. If Willow or Nightshade is there, they can tell us. If the bridle is there, perhaps they can steal it for us. Don't you see? They can go where we can't."
"Speak for yourself," Dirk replied.
"Do you have a better plan?" Ben snapped back immediately.
Dirk was oblivious to his anger. "I have no plan," he answered. "This is your problem, not mine."
"Thank you very much. I gather you wouldn't consider undertaking this reconnaissance and theft yourself then?"
"Hardly. I am your companion, not your lackey."
"You are a pain, Dirk."
"I am a cat, High Lord."
Ben terminated the discussion with a scowl and stalked off toward the burrow community. The G'home Gnomes lived in towns in the same manner as prairie dogs, and sentinels warned of his approach long before he could see anything. By the time he reached the town, there wasn't a G'home Gnome anywhere-just a lot of empty-looking holes. Ben walked to the center of the town, seated himself on a stump and waited. He had been here a number of times since becoming King, and he knew how the game was played.
A few minutes later, Dirk joined him. The cat curled up beside him without a word and closed its eyes against the late afternoon sun.
Shortly after that, a furry face poked up from one of the burrows. Eyes squinted weakly against the daylight, and a wrinkled nose sniffed the air tentatively.
"Good day, sir," the gnome addressed Ben and tipped his battered leather cap with its single red feather.
"Good day," Ben replied.
"Out for a walk, are you, sir?"
"Out for a healthy dose of fresh air and sunshine. Good for what ails you."
"Yes, oh yes indeed, good for what ails you. Must be careful of colds that settle in the throat and chest during the passing of fall."
"Certainly must. Colds can be tricky." They were dancing on eggshells, and Ben let the music play itself out. The G'home Gnomes were like this with strangers-scared to death. One always tested you. If you posed no threat, the rest came out. If any menace was sensed, you never saw more than the one. "I hope your family is well?" Ben went on, trying to sound casual. "And your community?"
"Oh, quite well, thank you, sir. All quite well."
"That's good to hear."
"Yes, good to hear." The gnome glanced about furtively, looking to see if Ben was alone, looking to see if he was hiding anything. "You must have walked quite a distance north from the Greensward, sir. Are you a craftsman?"
"Not exactly."
"A trader, then?"
Ben hesitated a moment and then nodded. "On occasion, I am."
"Oh?" The gnome's squint seemed to deepen. "But you do not appear to have any wares with you this trip, sir."
"Ah! Well, sometimes appearances are deceiving. Some trading wares can be quite small, you know." He patted his tunic. "Pocket-sized."
The gnome's front teeth flashed nervously out of its grimy face. "Yes, of course-that is so. Could it be that you are interested in trading here, sir?"
"Could be." Ben set the hook and waited.
The gnome did not disappoint him. "With someone in particular?"
Ben shrugged. "I have done some business in the past with two members of your community-Fillip and Sot. Do you know them?"
The gnome blinked. "Yes, Fillip and Sot live here."
Ben smiled his most disarming smile. "Are they about?"
The gnome smiled back. "Perhaps. Yes, perhaps. Would you wait a moment, please? Just a moment?"
He ducked back into his burrow and was gone. Ben waited. The minutes slipped past and no one appeared. Ben kept his place on the stump and tried to look as if he were enjoying himself. He could feel eyes watching him from everywhere. Doubts began to creep into his mind. What if Fillip and Sot took a look at him and decided he was no one they had ever seen? After all, he wasn't the Ben Holiday they knew any longer. He was a stranger-and not a particularly well-dressed one either. He glanced down at his clothing, reminded of his sorry state. He made a rather shabby-looking trader, he thought ruefully. Fillip and Sot might decide he wasn't worth their bother. They might decide to stay right where they were. And if he couldn't get close enough to talk to them, he wasn't about to have any success obtaining their help.
The afternoon shadows lengthened. Ben's patience simmered like hot water over an open fire. He glanced irritably at Edgewood Dirk. No help was there. Eyes closed, paws tucked under, breathing slowed to nothing, the cat might have been sleeping or it might have been stuffed.
The burrow holes continued to yawn back at him in empty disinterest. The sun continued to slip into the western hills. No one appeared.
Ben had just about decided to throw in the towel when a furry, dirt-lined face poked up suddenly from a burrow opening not a dozen yards away, closely followed by a second directly beside it. Two snouts sniffed the late afternoon air warily. Two pairs of weakened eyes peered cautiously about.
Ben heaved a sigh of relief. They were Fillip and Sot.
The squinting eyes fixed on him.
"Good day, sir," said Fillip.