“Astrid,” Cory said in horror. “What are you doing?”
I hopped down and crossed to the carcass of the re’em. I raised the sword over my head, then brought it down hard against the unicorn’s horn.
The clanging echoed through the hall as I hacked away. It took five strokes, but at last, I sliced through the tip of the horn. I hoped it was still fresh enough. I dropped the sword on the remains and lifted the alicorn. It lay heavy and hot in my fist. Still powerful. Maybe still venomous.
Cory stepped in front of me. “Have you gone mad?”
“Yes.” I said. “It started when I came here, and now it’s full-blown.” I turned toward the door.
“Astrid, wait! Where are you going?”
“He raped Phil, Cory. I’m going to kill him.”
It only took two hours of wandering the streets of Rome to realize what a horrible idea that was.
Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn’t brought my bus pass nor any money, and walking to Trastevere—even running, as I’d done for the first twenty minutes—did a lot to burn off my rage.
Nothing seemed to have changed beyond the doors of the Cloisters. Still the same loud motorbikes, the same happy diners clustered around sidewalk café tables, the same people watchers and gelaterias with their candy-colored displays and pop music. No one knew what had happened to her, to me. The world was inconceivably as it had ever been.
I’d even run past the spot of the re’em attack on Via Claudia. There was blood in the cracks between the cobblestones, but nothing else to reveal the terror and violence of that night. A rainstorm or two, and it would all be gone. I wondered how many more bloodstains had been washed away in the thousands of years since this city’s founding. Gladiators and sacrifices, assassinations and executions, battles and protests and even accidents. What was one act of violence to generations of death? Why did it feel like my world was falling apart?
At last, my feet slowed near another ancient stone wall on the north side of the city. Where was I now? The neighborhood seemed oddly familiar. That’s right—the Villa Borghese, the beautiful park where we’d first seen Seth and Giovanni again. Phil had arranged it; happy, lighthearted, fun-loving Phil. The park was almost unrecognizable in the dark. Every memory I had of this place was now blackened by my new reality.
There was the fountain where Seth and Giovanni had waited for us. Here was the path where we separated when Giovanni took me back to Trastevere. I never should have left her alone. I never should have stayed inside the Cloisters today. Was it my fault? Was it me?
She wouldn’t even speak to me tonight. Wouldn’t look at me. Made me leave the room while she talked with Neil. She must blame me. If I’d gone with her today…
All my life, Phil had protected me. She came to Rome to be with me; she stayed on, even once she decided that she disagreed with the idea of hunting; she had my back, always, whether I was fighting with the Bartolis or a unicorn. She held me when I was scared, comforted me when I was sad, loved me more than anyone I’d ever known.
And the one time I could have protected her, I’d failed.
My legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed, exhausted, on a bench. Of course she couldn’t trust me tonight. She couldn’t trust me ever! Look at me, penniless, on the streets of Rome with a sawed-off alicorn in my hand. I’d gone running into the night with no plan. No knowledge of where to find Seth; no idea what I’d do to him when I found him; no sense of what, in fact, had happened to Phil, other than that she had lost her virginity and it hadn’t been by choice. Had he hurt her? Threatened her? Drugged her?
Had any of us known that he was capable of something like that? Phil? Giovanni? Did Giovanni know what his friend had done? I wanted to hear the awful details—the truth—and yet, I dreaded it with every fiber of my being. Perhaps Phil had been right to throw me out.
I began to sob, boiling hot tears overflowing from eyes that had held them in far too long. I cried for Ursula and Phil, for the terrified look in the eyes of the yearling Phil had stabbed to death, for the photo of Sybil Bartoli that stared up at me from Cory’s desk every day. I shed tears for Lilith, who’d had no idea what she was doing when she sent me to Rome, and for Neil, who had no idea what to do once we’d gotten there. I wept for Bonegrinder, whose love was so conditional, and for myself, whose love was anything but.
I cried until my eyes burned like brands, and beyond, until my whole body was aflame, lungs and throat and nostrils and skin and flesh. It was only then, when I could barely move from the pain, barely lift my eyelids to look, that I realized I was not alone and it was not my tears that seared my flesh.
There, less than a dozen feet away, stood a karkadann.
Massive beyond all imagining—an elephant, a tank, a battering ram of tightly coiled death, the monster stood and stared at me, shifting its giant head with the graceful slowness of all great animals. Its enormous chest expanded as it inhaled; and when the nostrils flared with exhaled breath, my body started to sting anew.
Why wasn’t I dead yet?
I don’t know how long I remained like that, in agony, too terrified even to move. The living karkadann before me made the one in the rotunda seem like a stuffed teddy bear. Each of its long, wiry hairs carried with it more menace than a dozen kirin; than ten re’ems; than a million white, fluffy zhis. Its eyes glowed orange and black, like banked coals, and frothy, pink-tinged saliva dripped from its enormous fangs. I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at its horn. The ground trembled beneath me as it shifted its weight on its colossal hooves, and I knew why the armies of Asia had succumbed when they saw Alexander astride a creature like this.
I sat, frozen in numb terror, and waited for the end.
It didn’t come forward. Slowly, through the burning, I slid to the side. It made one step, blocking me. I slid back. It did the same. I stayed perfectly still, and it waited.
“Please,” I whispered. “Kill me, but don’t mock me.”
The kirin, torn to pieces on Monte Mario as Seth choked on the stench of alicorn venom. Me, lying sick in bed in our apartment back home as my mother pressed a cool and comforting hand against my fevered cheek.
Was my life flashing before my eyes? If so, what a strange group of images for it to choose.
Grace holding aloft the claymore of Clothilde Llewelyn. Me hacking away at the carcass of the dead re’em. Bonegrinder gazing at me in adoration then kneeling before my feet.
The karkadann stared at me.
My mother. Me. My mother. Me. My mother. Me.
I pressed my fists against my aching eyes. I’d snapped. My mind was incapable of processing its imminent death. That was the only explanation. But, if so, what were the chances I’d actually be able to recognize it for what it was?
My mother, me. My mother, looking at me, touching me, my mother, me, my mother, and me…
Her Daughter.
The word formed in my mind, and then the images shifted, slid, became a series of statues I knew well, of paintings of battles, of conversations I’d had with Cory. Alexander the Great.
Daughter of Alexander.
I opened my eyes and looked at the karkadann. It was still standing, head lifted; its terrible, deadly horn pointed like a spear at the stars.
Daughter of Alexander.
It stamped its foot.
“Yes,” I said, as the world I knew burned to ashes. “I am.”
I was beaten, broken, utterly insane. Unicorns were real; I’d accepted that. I was a hunter, immune to the venom, endowed with special abilities as part of a cosmic, genetic joke. I’d even allowed for that. I’d rolled my eyes when they talked about burning temples and the goddess Diana and the marvelous career of a young Macedonian prince and his trusty, one-horned warhorse, but I went along with it. I’d seen the effects of the Remedy firsthand. I’d stood by and watched a zhi yield to a hunter, then attack someone who wasn’t. I’d accepted so much of the Order of the Lioness and its magic.
But as images rose in my min
d, unbidden, shifting and sliding in a bizarre puzzle of word association, I began to wonder if all the magic that came before was merely a prelude.
I could not be talking to a karkadann.
Daughter of Alexander, it said to my mind, and then I saw again the dead kirin on the mountain.
“That was you,” I said. “You killed those kirin the other night. Why?”
Why did I think it could possibly understand me? Was this why they said that Alexander had been able to talk to Bucephalus? If I stared very hard at the unicorn, would I be able to force images into its mind? What kind of thoughts did a unicorn have, anyway?
Ugh. Happy ones, I realized, as I suddenly got a very vivid picture of the karkadann devouring the kirin. Gross.
The karkadann snorted and tossed its head. Pride? Was that pride? I put a hand to my pounding brow. It hurt too much. “Why…does it burn?”
Alicorns alicorns alicorns…and professional wrestlers. Huh?
I was embarrassed to realize that my word association for strength was a guy in a metallic Speedo and face paint. Karkadann venom was strong. Strong enough to sense from afar. Strong enough to affect even a hunter.
“Why did you kill the kirin? Food?”
Giovanni with his hand up my shirt. I grimaced. A camera.
They were spying on us. The kirin were spying on us?
“Why aren’t you killing me now?”
Daughter of Alexander.
“No,” I said, in too much pain to be anything but blunt. “Daughter of Clothilde Llewelyn.”
Laughter.
“I kill unicorns,” I said. “That’s what I am!”
A chemistry set. A Band-Aid on a scraped knee. The figure of Clothilde Llewelyn. The statue of the hunter in the fountain in the entrance court.
“I don’t understand you.” Did those words just come out of my mouth?
What, Lassie? Did Timmy fall in the well?
I no longer knew which thoughts were my own and which had been dredged up by the monster. Was it toying with me before it attacked? Was it making a joke?
It lowered its head and shook, and I flinched. Apparently, this conversation was every bit as frustrating to the unicorn.
“I take it Alexander was better at this,” I said.
It growled, and I shied away. Was Alexander also able to withstand the stronger poison? How in the world could anyone bear to go near something like this? How did Clothilde have the wherewithal to raise a weapon against it? I could barely breathe, let alone stand.
Daughter of Alexander. Danger.
Images of Lino, aiming at one of our practice targets while Marten looked on. The figure of Clothilde Llewelyn. Phil, stabbing the kirin yearling. Me, slitting the re’em’s throat. The kirin who’d waited for us outside the courtyard. The two kirin who’d watched us on Monte Mario.
I pressed my hands against my temples and let out a hoarse scream. The images poured on. Relentless, shifting, sliding, until at last they began to make sense.
Daughter of Alexander, danger. The kirin watch. The kirin remember. The Llewelyns decimated the unicorns. The Llewelyns are forbidden.
“Forbidden from what?”
The Cloisters of Ctesias. The chapter house. The Wall of First Kills.
From being hunters? Tell that to—well, everyone. The Bartolis, Marten, and my mother all seemed to think we were the best ones. How could we be forbidden from being hunters if it was our destiny?
“Well, it’s a good thing that the kirin don’t decide, isn’t it?”
In my mind’s eye, Marten watched Phil draw her bow. Her form was perfect, the shot true. Technicians bustled around the body of the kirin yearling. Valerija held aloft the head of the other kirin. The Wall of First Kills shuddered beneath my hands—all but hers.
The karkadann stiffened suddenly and whipped his head to the side. A fresh wave of fumes caught me, and I struggled to stay upright on the bench.
Bonegrinder, frolicking in the courtyard.
I followed its gaze, and indeed, there was a zhi by the gate to the park. The little unicorn minced forward, and I saw it wasn’t just any zhi. A pink bandanna was tied around its neck.
“Bonegrinder!” I called, and pushed to my feet, wavering slightly.
The karkadann lowered its horn in warning, and I froze. Bonegrinder cocked her head, hesitant, then took a few steps forward, looking from one of us to the other.
How had she gotten loose? Cory said she’d shut her in the catacombs!
Tunnels. Freedom.
Bonegrinder came close enough to sniff at the karkadann’s leg. The karkadann opened its mouth.
“No!” I said. “She’s mine!”
Laughter. Chains. Whips. Prisons. Alexander.
“I don’t understand you. You mean that she’s domesticated?” Hardly, I corrected myself. I’d seen her go after Phil tonight.
Bonegrinder pawed at the karkadann’s enormous hoof, then bowed before it, as it did to me.
Servant.
The karkadann seemed to sneer.
The two kirin lay dead on the hillside, while Marten watched Phil shoot practice arrows.
Bonegrinder rose and looked from me to the karkadann, clearly confused. Well, that made two of us. The karkadann was growling now, a rumbling so low I felt rather than heard it. It resounded through my bones like I was the trophies on the Wall of First Kills. The karkadann was angry. Furious, in fact. Any second now, it would tear us both apart. I fell back against the bench.
Suddenly, Bonegrinder was standing in front of me, facing the giant unicorn, making her little, high-pitched, bleating growl. Her legs were placed wide, her limbs bent, ready to spring.
Servant! No! Never!
Alexander, riding into battle. The dust of a thousand dead soldiers. Bloody jaws, teeth and skin broken on a copper bit, spears, scars, endless marches through deserts. No water. No food, but for another rotting carcass of a soldier who hadn’t survived, tossed like a scrap to a dog. Alexander marched on.
The kirin on the hillside, and then…
Marten Jaeger, enormous, shadowed in harsh white light. Pain…so much pain. The sound of Cory crying, “Stop!”
The karkadann quit snarling and straightened, staring at the little zhi.
I stared, too. Was that last one…her thought? Bonegrinder’s memory of the time she’d been a lab rat at Gordian?
Bonegrinder kept making angry little yips. Her fluffy white coat stood on end, shaking slightly as she faced off against the monster. The karkadann tilted its head back again, angling its horn away from us both, and she relaxed.
In my mind, I saw tiny Ilesha drawing her bow against the yearling. I saw Dorcas attacking the re’em with a pocketknife. I was getting better at translating.
Brave little thing.
Bonegrinder stepped forward and sniffed at the karkadann again. When the giant unicorn made no move, she began to frolic again, weaving in and out of the karkadann’s legs.
I wondered if I was the only human ever to witness this interspecies unicorn interaction. Should I be taking notes? But would I even be able to lift a pen, let alone defend myself? My sight was beginning to go black at the edges. I was losing consciousness, suffocating from the fumes. My hands slipped on the bench until I was resting on my elbows. The karkadann was killing me by inches.
Bonegrinder?
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what we call her.”
She likes it. Not her name, but good.
“What is her name?” I choked out. “She has another?”
A barrage of images, but I had no more screams in me tonight. Finally, they coalesced:
All slaves do.
I lay gasping for breath on the stone.
Daughter of Alexander, do not die yet.
“Why not?” I whispered. My eyes watered, my nose ran. The park swam in my field of vision. Bonegrinder whined, nervous, her breath warm and soothing on my raw face. “You like your food live?”
Laughter. No. Not food.
&nb
sp; “Then what?”
Giovanni’s voice: “Astrid the Warrior.”
It was mocking me. This was all a game. Torture the hunter to death. And not just any hunter: the Llewelyn.
I need you. Freedom.
“From what?” I barely had breath to push the words past my lips. “You a slave, too?”
Once. Never again.
The darkness whirled now, beckoning me closer. Each breath was ragged, flat. My lungs were torn balloons.
And still the karkadann whispered inside my head.
They called me Bucephalus.
19
WHEREIN ASTRID AWAKENS
MY BACK WAS COLD. My T-shirt kept riding up, exposing my skin to the night breeze. I curled forward more, hugging the warmth deeper into my chest.
The warmth bleated.
I opened my eyes with difficulty, as they seemed glued together by dried, crusty bits of sleep. Gray, watery dawn light filtered in, slightly blurred. The park. The bench. And Bonegrinder in my lap, burrowing her face into my shoulder so that her horn jutted painfully against my arm.
I was alive.
I sat up, careful not to dislodge the sleeping zhi. Alive or not, I wasn’t sure I was up to a chase. I ran a hand over my face, then grimaced when I saw the mess of dried blood and mucus in my palm. I didn’t even want to know what I looked like. Part of this might have been from my crying fit, but I was sure even more was due to—
That hadn’t really happened, had it? I froze, halfway to the fountain across the clearing. My nice little chat with the karkadann? It was a dream, a nightmare. Perhaps my sore eyes and throat were products of my crying, of my running through the city in the grip of a murderous rage.
But the nosebleed, and Bonegrinder there on the bench…
No. It was a dream, born of too much stress and too many days spent staring at that tableau in the rotunda. Bucephalus! Right. Last night I talked to a twenty-three-hundred-year-old unicorn. Not even trees lived that long.
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