Black Unicorn (Dragonflight)

by Tanith Lee

  Nothing else came near for the remainder of the night, and she might have accused herself of dreaming the unicorn, but for the fire.

  When the sky began to lighten, Tanaquil went out of the cave and scraped rime and snow off the top of the dunes, putting the sandy stuff in her mouth. She was not yet thirsty, but once the sun came she soon would be. The peeve did as she did, licking busily and congratulating itself.

  Tanaquil tore off a third of her embroidered skirt, leaving the bright blue petticoat to protect her legs. She fashioned a head covering from the skirt, and bound her hands with strips of the material. She cursed her shoes.

  The peeve became excitable as the sun rose. It bounded about the cave entrance. "Going? Going?"

  "Yes. We'll go and see if we can't meet someone."

  The sky was a pale and innocent blue as they set off. It was pleasant at first after the harsh night. But they had to walk with the sun. Tanaquil kept her head down.

  The going was hard over the sand, as always.

  They went on for about an hour. Gradually the comforting heat of the sand changed. It started to bake and blister. Each step was a punishment. The gong of the sun blared in Tanaquil's eyes and beat just above her head.

  Tanaquil thought ferociously of ice. Mountains of ice, scorching her with cold. They melted.

  Another hour passed.

  Tanaquil wanted only to lie on the sand. Eventually she had to sit down. There was no shade or cover in any direction. She could hardly swallow.

  "Mother," croaked Tanaquil, "what are you doing?"

  The thought came that Jaive imagined Tanaquil had rejected her. After all, Tanaquil had threatened to leave. Perhaps Jaive believed Tanaquil and the unicorn were accomplices. In that case, would Jaive renounce Tanaquil? Would Jaive abandon Tanaquil to the desert?

  Tanaquil bit her lips. She wanted to cry, but shedding tears would only make her thirst much worse.

  Suddenly the peeve went flying off. Tanaquil croaked at it; it took no notice, disappearing over the slope of some dunes to the left. Had the peeve also abandoned her?

  "She could have sent one of her demons," whispered Tanaquil from her husk of throat. "She could have found me. She's a sorceress."

  One tear came out of her right eye. She would have pushed it back if she could. Why should she cry at her mother's neglect? Her mother had always neglected her. Tanaquil was a disappointment to Jaive, who had obviously wanted her daughter to be exactly like herself. They had nothing to say to one another.

  "Confound her," gasped Tanaquil. "That's that."

  The sun was very high; time had moved quickly as she sat there in a stupor, and it would soon be midday. Tanaquil began to scoop the scalding sand aside, making a burrow for herself. It was not deep enough, but she got into it and curled up, scrabbling back the sand. She felt as if she were being cooked, but the direct rays of the sun were now lessened. She doubled the skirt to protect her head and face.

  I'll survive. Something will happen.

  She tried not to hope the unicorn would return. But she dreamed or hallucinated that it did so, and struck the sand with its horn, whereupon a stream welled out. Instead, it was the peeve licking her forehead and cheeks with a hot, sandy tongue.

  Tanaquil attempted to embrace the peeve, but it insisted on thrusting something against her mouth. Tanaquil recoiled. The something was a snake the peeve had hunted and killed over the dunes.

  "Meal," said the peeve.

  Tanaquil looked at the snake dubiously. It had been attractive before the peeve attacked it. Now it was a broken piece of raw meat she did not want. However, it would be sensible to eat some of it, and ungrateful not to.

  "Thank you."

  "Welcome," said the peeve. It commenced eating the other end, showing Tanaquil how good the snake was by making noises and screwing up its eyes.

  Tanaquil managed to extract, chew and swallow some of the snake. The flesh was cool, soothing her throat. But the fine skin upset her. Mirages swam before her eyes, gardens, and lakes with boats on them, such as Jaive had shown her in the mirror. She thought how Jaive always harped on about how badly made the world was, and that there were others even worse, and one created perfectly. Evidently Tanaquil's world was all wrong, a place where you could only live by murdering other creatures. Every animal preyed on another. Even those who got by through eating herbage destroyed the living fruits and seeds. In the perfect world there was a perfect food which all there ate. It was not alive, did not have to be attacked or slaughtered.

  "Just look, there's the sea," said Tanaquil to the peeve.

  She lay down on the sand with the green cloth over her face. She was aware of a faint extra shade. She realized the peeve had sat by her head, and the sun as it turned from the zenith began to cast the shadow of the peeve's body onto her.

  Tanaquil thought Jaive was combing her hair. She was rough with the comb, and Tanaquil protested. They were in a boat on a lake. The boat bobbed violently, and Tanaquil was slammed up and down against the cushions. The peeve landed on her chest. It looked up past her head, snarling at Jaive, who was still raking Tanaquil's hair with the comb.

  "Ow. Mother, please," said Tanaquil.

  She raised her heavy gritty lids, and the sun lashed at her eyes. Something was pulling her by the hair. She was bouncing over the dunes, and the peeve was scrambling about on her, spitting and hiccuping in wrath.

  Tanaquil squinted. Without surprise, she saw the nightblack shape, the day-flame of the horn pointing exactly over her.

  The unicorn dragged her by the hair.

  This was a dream.

  "What are you?" said Tanaquil to the unicorn. "I mean really what are you? Where do you come from? What do you want?"

  She was hauled up a hill of sand, behind which the sun flickered away. And then the sun burst out again, and she was tumbling and cascading through a river of grains and particles, the dusts of the desert's centuries. Choking and coughing, she plummeted twenty-five feet into a hard gray bruise. The peeve revolved past her and fetched up, head down, in a sand drift. From this it emerged without dignity and in great noise.

  Tanaquil smiled. Although the bruise she had hit had duly bruised her, she now lay in a long blue bar of shade that seemed cold and lovely as a river.

  For some while she let it console her. Then she watched the sun, divided by a tree, making gold among great fans.

  Then she rolled over. The bruise was a stone, marking a vertical tunnel in the sand. It was a well-head, with a well beneath. The well had a leather bucket. It had deep, cold, black water in it.

  The blue bar of shade stretched from a single palm tree of impressive height. The peeve, recovered, had already climbed the trunk and was bumping about in the coppery leaves. A shower of dates pattered into Tanaquil's lap.

  The peace of the oasis was wonderful. It gave no warning that night must return, the well freeze, and the snow come down. At the oasis afternoon stretched out forever.

  Tanaquil was not thinking at all. She had given it up. Everything was nonsensical anyway.

  The sun swung lower, and the sky congealed in darker light. The shadow of the palm seemed to go on for a mile.

  Tanaquil looked along the shadow and saw another mirage. This time it was of a jogging movement of the land. The sand went up in a burnished cloud. Forms like beasts began to appear out of the cloud, and riders and carts. The mirage was not like the others. It had a sound, too, a rumble and mutter and the clean singing of small bells.

  Tanaquil watched the mirage benignly. It came closer and clearer, and grew louder. Tanaquil saw five cream camels, with colored tassels and men up on their hilly backs, swaying forward out of the dust, and then the big wheels of three carts with six mules walking before each one. She saw men in tunics, trousers, and boots, with cloth swathing their heads, and next three more camels of brick red, with rocking silk cages perched on their tops.

  She got up. She would have to start thinking again.

  "Peeve, listen to m
e. It's a caravan—it truly is. Of course, this is an oasis. They may be—must be—going to the city. Now, we have to be clever. No mention of my mother—they very sensibly won't trust sorcery. And peeve—don't talk."

  "What talk?" said the peeve. It was part of the way up the palm trunk again, staring at the approaching caravan.

  Tanaquil stood, dizzy and stunned, never having known before such elation. For these were strangers—people—and they were going to a city.

  "Good evening, girl," called out the man with the goad walking beside the first cream camel. "What are you selling?"

  Tanaquil blinked. "Nothing."

  It occurred to her that persons from villages might gather at an oasis where a caravan was due, in order to offer produce to the travelers.

  "Then why are you loitering here?"

  Tanaquil was affronted. "I'm here to join your caravan. You're going to the city, presumably?"

  The man glanced up at the three riders on the nearest camels. All four men laughed. It was not proper laughter, but more of a sort of threat.

  "Yes, we're going to the Sea City. You'll have to ask the caravan leader if you can join us. We don't take any old riffraff, you know. There's the fee, as well. Can you pay it?"

  Tanaquil had not thought of this. She spurred her brain. Just as it was no use boasting of a sorceress mother, so it was no use expecting strangers to offer her care.

  "I'm from the village of Um," said Tanaquil.

  "Never heard of it."

  "Few have. It's a very small village. I saved up to buy a place in a caravan, but as I was coming here I was set on and robbed. They took everything, my money, my donkey. I almost never got here. Now I'm afraid I'll have to throw myself on your kindness."

  The men regarded her. She was only really used to the soldiers, drunk most of the time, and easygoing, who actually had treated Tanaquil more like a wise elder sister. Now Tanaquil saw how most of the men of the world looked at most females. It irritated her, but she concealed this. She smiled humbly up at them. There was a code in the desert, she knew. You could not leave the lost or needy to perish.

  "All right," said the man on the ground, striking the goad against his boot, which was hung with small silver discs. "You'd better see the leader." He turned and raised his arm, calling loudly back into the dust and trample of the arriving caravan: "Night's rest! All stop here!"

  The caravan sprawled about the oasis in the sunset. In all, there were seven covered carts, and these had been drawn up to make a wall against the desert. In the gap between each pair of carts burned a fire. Jackals had approached, and howled to each other in the near distance. The palm tree and the well were the center of the camp. Here water was drawn continuously, and dates—and incidentally the peeve—had been shaken down.

  "What's that?" the man with the goad said, pointing at the peeve. "Funny-looking thing."

  "My animal," said Tanaquil.

  The peeve growled, and Tanaquil tapped its head. "Ssh."

  "Bad," said the peeve.

  "Eh?" said the man with the goad, glaring at the peeve.

  "Oh," said Tanaquil, "it's just barking."

  The man with the goad was called Gork. His head cloth was secured by a silver band, his dark clothes were sprinkled with ornaments, and across his chest hung a large gold pocket watch. He constantly ticked and clinked, and when he felt he was not making enough noise, he rapped the goad on his boots and whistled.

  "This way. The leader's awning is going up over there."

  Under his awning, the leader of the caravan sat on a chair in the sand. He had been journeying in one of the silken cages on top of one of the three pinkish camels that had brought up the rear. He was a fat man with a beard.

  Gork explained the situation in his special manner. "This bit of a girl's come after us, but let herself get robbed on the way. She hasn't a penny, and expects us to take her on."

  "I'm afraid we couldn't do that," said the leader, not bothering to look at either of them, only into a box of candied grapes. "You must pay your way. Food alone is expensive, not to mention our protection."

  "'You can't," said Tanaquil firmly, "leave me in the desert to die."

  "Well of course that would, technically, be against the law," said the leader. He beamed upon the grapes. He said nothing else.

  The peeve stirred restively at Tanaquil's side.

  Tanaquil said quickly, "My three brothers at Um know I meant to join this caravan. Eventually, if they don't get word from me from the city, they might seek out the caravan's leader."

  "She's a nuisance, isn't she?" said the leader to Gork. "Give her that lame mule on Wobbol's cart. And a snack to tide her over. Then she can bundle back to her village."

  "I don't want to go back to Um," said Tanaquil. She clawed at her wits and said, "Isn't there something I can do to earn a passage with you?"

  "What on earth could you do?" asked the leader, looking at her for the first time, as if she were a rotten grape found in the candy box.

  There was a spluttering crash and chorus of yells and oaths. Up on the dunes, the watching jackals cackled.

  The leader, Gork, Tanaquil, and the peeve all turned to see. Displayed in the firelight, one of the carts had thrown a wheel. The cart now listed, and the man who had been at the wheels, cleaning them of sand and oiling them, lay feebly struggling under several large bags and sacks that had fallen out. Men ran to rescue him—or the bags and sacks.

  "Useless," said the leader. He ate another grape. "Deprive that fellow of rations tomorrow."

  "Trouble is, leader," said Gork, beating on his boot, "Wobbol was the only one who was any good at repairing wheels and stuff. And as you remember, Wobbol went off in a huff when you bought his cart and load off him at quarter price—"

  "Yes, yes," said the leader. "The goods will have to be put onto the mules."

  "The mules won't be able to take it, leader, not for all those miles."

  Tanaquil felt light-headed. What had happened to her was crazy, but also it must have been right. For now everything conspired to help her. Surely she would never see the unicorn again, and she would come to disbelieve in it, with time. But still a kind of magic was working about her, because she had taken the risk.

  "Don't worry," she said, "I can fix your wheel."

  "You?" said Gork.

  The leader only grimaced; he had sly, flat eyes.

  "Don't mock, Gork. Let's see if she can. If she can," he added, "she can travel with us, eat with us, no charge. On the other hand, if she can't, I'll throw her to those jackals."

  Tanaquil shrugged. It was on her tongue to say the jackals would be preferable company anyway to the leader, but she did not. Instead she walked over to the spilled cart, the bristling peeve on her heels.

  "Clear these sacks out of the way," said Tanaquil, in the imperious tones of her mother. "Are there any tools?"

  Presently she was kneeling by the cart. Since it was Wobbol's, she suspected he had engineered the faulty wheel out of revenge. The wheel shaft was set crooked, and the pin in the wheel had snapped. Tanaquil organized one of the fires into a forge. She sent the caravan servants running about to fetch and carry. Herself, she hammered out the new pin from a brooch she was handed. It did not take great strength. Even Gork came to watch the stupid village female who could mend wheels.

  When the wheel was soundly back in place, Tanaquil stood up.

  "That's a fair job," said Gork grudgingly. "Where'd a girl learn that?"

  "My brothers taught me," said Tanaquil prudently, "at Um."

  5

  For almost three weeks Tanaquil traveled in the caravan. Every hour she was excited. Every hour she lived with a sense of insecurity and danger she had never known before. She was out in the world.

  At least once a day, they would pass some marker in the sand, indicating the route to the city. Most of these were plain stone posts about ten or eleven feet in height, often looking much shorter where the sand had washed against them. But as they cam
e nearer to the city, there began to be occasional stone pylons stretched up at the sky, carved with prayers or quotations. On the ninth day they reached another waterhole. On the sixteenth day, near sunset, there was a large oasis of palms, acacias, and fig trees, with a village at its edge. Tanaquil was nervous; they might put her off here. Nothing else had had to be mended, and she added weight to the cart in which she traveled. The peeve, too, had caused problems. Although she had still been able to convince listeners that its grumblings and exclamations were an odd type of barking, she had seen various people, including the merchants who rode in the silk cages, making superstitious signs against the peeve. Twice it had gone among these merchants' shelters at night and used someone's costly rug as a bathroom. The previous night had been the worst. The peeve had laid its dung near the head of sleeping Gork, then, in covering it, nearly buried the man alive. However, no sooner were they in the oasis, than frowning Gork's gold pocket watch ceased ticking. Having shaken it, cursed it, and hurled it in the sand, Gork found Tanaquil at his elbow. He gave her the watch with awful threats, but she repaired it in half an hour. Not even a hint was made after this that Tanaquil should leave the caravan.

  The leader she seldom saw. He rode by day as the merchants did, in a bulb of silk pulled over a wicker frame, on a camel. The other men in charge of the caravan gave orders, shouted, laid down the law on every topic, discussed chariot races, and played violent gambling games. The male servants treated Tanaquil much as one of themselves, although she was a girl and therefore inferior. She had been given their castoffs to replace her gaudy dress. As far as she could tell from splits in the sacks, smells, and accidents, the caravan carried cakes of soap, sugar, conifer incense, and paper, from a city to the east. Tanaquil had never heard of this city. Her mother, who had given her lessons, had only ever spoken of the city to the west. Was this significant?

  Mostly Tanaquil tried not to think of her mother at all.