Red Unicorn

by Tanith Lee

  Red Unicorn

  Electronic book published by ipicturebooks.com

  24 W. 25th St. New York, NY 10011

  www.ipicturebooks.com

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 1997 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  eISBN 1-59019-588-4; Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  To the memory of my jade-eyed mother, Hylda Lee, who first told me stories about witches, princes, and magical beasts.

  Foreword

  (The story as told in Book One: Black Unicorn . . .)

  Sixteen-year-old Tanaquil, the red-haired daughter of red-haired sorceress Jaive, lives with her mother in a fortress in the desert. But Jaive's neglect, and her havoc-causing spells, make Tanaquil desperate to leave. She has some hopes of finding her father, although Jaive has never told her who he is. One night one of the peeves, desert animals who have begun to talk due to spillages of Jaive's magic, unearths the bones of a unicorn under the rock hills. Tanaquil has no apparent talent for magic, but she can mend things. She fixes the bones together. And presently the unicorn puts on flesh and comes alive. It leads Tanaquil—and the talking peeve—away into the desert.

  Helped and hindered by the black unicorn, Tanaquil meets the Princess Lizra, in a city by the sea. And next, Lizra's father, the cold, difficult Prince Zorander, and his unpleasant counselor Gasb. The city has a legend of a fabulous unicorn which will bring a curse or a blessing. When the black unicorn appears it attacks the prince, whom Tanaquil has by now discovered—to her disgust—is her father. Realizing the unicorn is the creature of another world, finer than her own, she locates the sorcerous gate-between-worlds in the cliffs by the sea. She mends it, and enables the unicorn to return. But the peeve follows the unicorn through, so Tanaquil must also follow.

  The black unicorn's world is the Perfect World, everything is beautiful, balanced, peaceful, good. To her horror, finding her mere presence seems to injure this perfection, Tanaquil, with the peeve, goes back to her own world, magically closing the gate behind her.

  However, when Gasb attempts to have her killed, she learns that the unicorn has made both her and the peeve invulnerable. They are safe from all danger. She must face the fact that the peeve is her familiar, and, with her amazing knack of mending, she is a sorceress.

  Zorander is ill, and Tanaquil's sister, Lizra, declares she must stay with him. But Tanaquil sets out with the peeve to see her own world at last.

  (The story as continued in Book Two: Gold Unicorn . . .)

  After a year of travelling, Tanaquil is coming back towards Zorander's kingdom, to see her mother in the desert. There is talk of war, and on her way Tanaquil has an encounter with the powerful, clever and irritating magician, Worabex. He has apparently made a weapon against the much-feared invading empress, Lizora Veriam. The weapon turns out to be some things called mousps, a cross between wasps and mice.

  As Tanaquil rides on, she is arrested by soldiers of the wicked empress's army. But when she meets the empress, she is none other than Tanaquil's sister Lizra. Zorander is dead, and Lizra has taken on the rule of his kingdom—and much of his cold, unfortunate manner. She is also now obsessed with conquering the world and so making it 'better' with kindly helpful laws. Of course, no one wishes to be conquered, and it is war all the way.

  Lizra's artisans have made a steam-driven unicorn plated with gold, which, marching before the army, will inspire terror and so make conquest easier. However, it will not go, so Tanaquil, more or less Lizra's prisoner, is unwillingly forced to mend it. Naturally her magic does the trick and the unicorn strides out, causing fear and damage. A story quickly grows that it is ill-fated to cross under the unicorn's belly. People who have done so have seemingly vanished.

  As the war campaign drags on, Tanaquil comes to know Lizra's favourite, a young handsome mercenary captain called Honj. His men are called the Locusts. Lizra has made him a prince, and he is obviously her lover. Tanaquil and he can only argue whenever they meet, but the peeve likes him. Tanaquil is herself brought to grudgingly respect him, when she sees Honj is less self-serving than genuinely brave and compassionate.

  Finally, having conquered yet one more city, Lizra's war camp is attacked by a large swarm of dangerously stinging mousps. In the confusion, Honj, Tanaquil and Lizra, the peeve, two of Honj's men and one non-stinging mousp, rush under the belly of the gold unicorn—and fall into another world.

  Emblem of war that the unicorn is, the space beneath it has become a gate to a hell-world of red skies, black wastes, desolation and endless battle. They are joined by the others who have fallen into it, and set off on a grim trek. After witnessing an appalling skirmish, where two metal unicorns fight, they are surrounded by the bizarre forces of a demoniac war-lord, a creature with toothed eyes. He draws Lizra away to his palace to be his empress. To her companions' dismay she seems to go gladly. Revolted, Honj and his men, Spedbo and Mukk, can do little. Nor can Tanaquil, and after the peeve is abducted by an evil bird of black bone, she loses most of her spirit.

  However, the peeve escapes, and in falling from the sky, manages to break Honj's arm. Tanaquil then discovers she can sorcerously mend bones also. She realizes that she loves Honj.

  Lizra meanwhile outwits the emperor of hell, and gains a way for all of them to leave the hell-world. They see they have misjudged Lizra badly.

  Once safely back into their own world of hopeful sunlight, Lizra calls a halt to her war of conquest. She is broken down and vulnerable after her experiences. Honj indicates to Tanaquil that he loves her as she loves him, but says he must stay with Lizra, who now needs him so badly. He asks Tanaquil for a silver ring she wears, and begs that she will go far away so as not to tempt him to break faith with Lizra. The general talk is that he will soon marry Lizra, and become her royal consort.

  Bitterly sad, Tanaquil is at last returning to her mother's fortress, when Worabex makes a re-appearance. He tells Tanaquil he was the mousp who accompanied her into hell, and so knows all about everything. Now he wishes to visit her mother, Jaive, whom he has long admired from afar.

  When Tanaquil angrily refuses his company, Worabex turns himself into a golden flea, and vanishes in the coat of the peeve. . . .

  One

  I

  The first thing Tanaquil saw almost every morning on waking was the face of the man she loved. But that was because, for five or ten minutes at the start of each day, Tanaquil allowed herself to think about him. She pictured him, handsome, smiling, scowling, charming, unnerved, or simply blank. And once she had looked at him, with all her love and anger, she put him out of her mind. Or . . . she tried to.

  Sometimes it was easy. At least for a few moments. As for example yesterday, when, on waking, she found a brown furry snout dangling a piece of cold limp toast, adrip with congealing melted cheese, an inch from her nose. "Uh, God, whatever? Peeve!"

  The toast fell on her stomach.

  The peeve stared at her hopefully.

  "Nice? Hungry? Yes?"

  "No. Revolting. Not hungry. For heaven's sake—"

  At which the peeve scrambled down, and sitting on the floor, gave itself a wash, starting with the bits of solidified cheese now stuck to its chest.

  Tanaquil had sat up. She was contrite in a second, realizing the peeve had been trying to tempt her to eat.

  "Thank you, anyway. It was very kind of you. It's just, first thing, I'd rather have something plainer, no, wait!"

  Too late. The peeve had leaped out of the window. She sat in a faint uneasy despair, until it
returned about half an hour after, and presented her with a completely unmoist, rather stale, slice of bread.

  She ate some of this. It would have been too churlish not to. "Maybe a little butter would have . . . I don't know. This is probably best."

  "Good," encouraged the peeve.

  When she had eaten half the bread and drunk some water from her glass, the peeve climbed up and nuzzled into her arms.

  She thought, desolately, It knows I need to hold someone.

  She had only shed tears, in her sleep, once. She had dreamed of Honj, and that she had been going to meet him, under a tree in some flowery field. But when he rode up, he rode straight past her and away.

  She ran three steps, and called his name, but no sound came from her throat, and all the grass and the flowers had grown much higher suddenly, and she could no longer see over them. Even if Honj had looked back, she would have been hidden.

  That time the peeve had finally distracted her with gruesome antics on the floor. It pretended its tail was a dangerous snake, and—in order to stop the peeve from 'killing' its tail—Tanaquil had to leave her tears and her bed, and give it a slight shake.

  Then it sprang to the window embrasure.

  "Go out? Walks? Yes?"

  "Maybe."

  "Yes," decided the peeve, and dove out and over the roof of Tanaquil's mother's fortress in the desert. And for an instant, as she watched, Tanaquil remembered how she and it had first come together, in this very place, surrounded by the same glittering hot desert, under this dome of dry blue sky. But they had been different then. Even in memory, she could not really go back. Instead, always, she had to go forward. Out into some desert or other.

  And the desert was in Tanaquil's mind now. Miles, miles of dunes and dust. But not a rock, not an oasis. No hope of any city.

  This will have to stop.

  Oh no, said the desert in her mind and heart. It never will.

  When first she returned here, Tanaquil had thought she might be getting over her grief at losing Honj and her sister. She felt brighter with anger too, against Worabex. Convinced he lurked still in the peeve's fur as a golden flea, she had brushed and combed the peeve vigorously every day before breakfast and after supper, a process it had liked at the start, and then refused to put up with. At a small town, still some miles from the desert, there had been a fairly awful scene. Sheltering in a barn the peeve, rolling over and over and kicking to avoid Tanaquil's Worabex-flea-searching comb, had cannoned into a small furnace, (the nights were getting colder) and set the place on fire.

  Tanaquil, the farmer, and his men, these in slippers and cursing, had managed to put the fire out, despite the peeve, who leapt excitedly round their ankles and almost tripped them up. Tanaquil paid for the damage. She went off under the usual cloud of disapproval, her 'blasted nuisance dog' as the farmer had titled the peeve, trotting blamelessly by the camel's side.

  After this, the peeve would not let brush or comb near it. In any case, it was possible, she thought, that Worabex in flea-shape had now removed himself to the woolly camel.

  Whatever else, all this kept her mind on other things than loss. And besides, she thought she might be relieved, nostalgic, even happy, to reach home. Home being the fortress where she had grown up.

  Tanaquil even began to look forward, perhaps, to meeting her mother again.

  Jaive was beautiful and essentially a good person, but she was careless, reckless, mad, a sorceress, and had always seemed uninterested in Tanaquil—until the very last moment. The moment when Tanaquil and Jaive both discovered Tanaquil was too, in her way, a talented witch.

  Once in the desert, picking their route from their map with caution, Tanaquil would take out the emerald necklace she had kept for Jaive from Lizra's unwanted presents, and look at it by the light of the moon. Could a mother refound compensate for the true love of your life that you had had to give up? No, but she might help. They had that in common now, after all. Tanaquil's father had abandoned Jaive. Though Honj and Tanaquil had agreed they must part for Lizra's sake, heartbreak, whatever the cause, could be sympathetic ground.

  Maybe she and Jaive could talk about it, and that would help both of them.

  So long, of course, as the mighty Worabex, that commanding, overpowering know-all, did not interfere too much.

  The night before the day before they should arrive at the fortress, the peeve spruced itself before the fire.

  Overhead the sky was blue as indigo, speckled with stars, and set with a huge moon. The night was icy, and the light snow rimmed the dunes. Tanaquil sat breathing in the somehow forgotten scents.

  "All gone," announced the peeve.

  "Oh yes . . . sorry, what?"

  "All gone," repeated the peeve. It rose, and stood like a burnished fur barrel, its feet planted firmly, ears up, tail up, eyes beaming firelight.

  "What's all gone? Your supper? Do you want something else?"

  "Not," said the peeve. "No flea."

  Tanaquil observed it. A shiver of apprehension went over her. "You mean, are you saying you've caught all your fleas?"

  "All."

  "Are you . . . sure?"

  "Find and snap. Yip," said the peeve. "Want look?" it added winningly.

  "That's all right. But surely—"

  The peeve frowned, which somehow it had recently learned to do. By watching Tanaquil frowning at everything? "None," it said.

  She thought. Could the peeve have groomed out and eaten Worabex?

  That must be impossible, though serve him right if it had tried. But he was a great magician, this had to be admitted. Probably he was cunningly hiding somewhere in the peeve or camel's coats, keeping utterly still, vile with smugness, and sophisticated adult amusement.

  In the morning, soon after sunrise and breakfast, they went on towards the fortress. The peeve, sitting bolt upright on the camel's neck, was the first to make the building out. The peeve uttered loud squeaks and grunts, wordless for once. Tanaquil looked harder, and saw a mass of rock that might only be a mesa. It was the same baked-cake shade as the sand. But then roofs glimmered greenishly, and you saw chimneys, and weathervanes that gleamed and flashed.

  Tanaquil was home. Was she?

  As if she must anyway act out enthusiasm, Tanaquil put the camel into a fast lope. By now, she supposed, as they swung in from the sands, someone would have seen her. Hopefully Jaive's drunken soldiers would not take aim and fire their crossbows or cannon. Most outsiders, to them, might be fearful enemies. Perhaps they were still asleep.

  No sound came from the fort. Not a wisp of smoke from any still-simmering chimney.

  It looked so strange. So new. As if Tanaquil had never seen it before. But how could that be? How long had she been away? Not even two years.

  Just then a pink firework, perfectly visible on the day sky, shot up into the air and broke into a rain of spangles.

  "Oh, Mother!" Tanaquil exclaimed, annoyed. This at least was only too familiar. And then—and then Tanaquil thought, Is that because she knows it's me? Is that a welcome?

  But when she had come to the vast and imposing main doors, which never in all her time there had she ever used before, they swung wide to reveal, not Jaive at all.

  "Good morning, Tanaquil," expansively and so kindly said Worabex the magician.

  "How fascinating. You got here ahead of me."

  "By at least a week."

  Obviously, if he had wanted to impress Jaive, and he had previously made it rather clear he might want to, he would not arrive as a flea.

  Wrapped up in her own life, Tanaquil had not properly worked this out.

  Beyond the big doors, that would have been stiff and creaky but for magic, a large, ornamentally arched courtyard offered a flight of steps. These ended at the fortress's main inner door. Tanaquil was not surprised to see one of the stone lions on the steps twitching its tail rapidly.

  "How's my mother?"

  "Jaive is very well. We've been expecting you, naturally. She's giving a feast
tonight in your honor."

  "Oh, lovely."

  "I see your face has fallen. Believe me, Tanaquil, this feast will be worthy of anything seen on your travels. After the servants left, a more effective service was put—"

  "Excuse me. The servants left?"

  "Really, the change will be wonderful for them."

  "When did they leave?" asked Tanaquil.

  "About four days ago."

  "About three days after your arrival."

  Worabex smiled pleasantly. He was as she had seen him last on her journey, middle-aged but tall and strong, quite athletic in build, with an absolute mane of black, gray-frosted hair, and a bold handsome face. If this was his real appearance, or only one designed to entrance her mother, it had been apparently effective.

  Tanaquil glared at him.

  "What did you do to the servants? Some of them had been here before I was born. Prune and Yeefa . . . the cook . . . my poor old nurse—"

  "The old nurse is still in residence. She's very glamorous now. You'll be interested."

  "Pillow had a child. Have you just thrown them all out, or did you and my mother do something so truly awful they ran away?"

  "There was a small caravan of traders. They went with those. All were well rewarded. A small fortune, from your mother's coffers. You're really taking this much too seriously. People sometimes want a change in their lives. After all, dear girl, a sorceress of your mother's capability hardly needs human assistants."

  "I think," said Tanaquil, "she kept them here for company. Human warmth. I mean, when she noticed them."

  "Yes," said Worabex, "you've always been your mother's sternest critic, haven't you?"

  Tanaquil literally bit her tongue to stop her flow of verbal anger. It was no use talking to him. And now they had reached the top of the lion flight, and the stone lions were all flicking their tails and yawning, and licking their paws, in a showy way. She was out of breath. The calm camel stood below, drinking steadily from a trough of cool water. Worabex had supplied the water with a click of his fingers.