by Sara King
Imelda did not like the sound of that. “I really think you’ve got me mistaken for someone else.”
But the unicorn was sounding thoughtful. “You get close to the roads, it’s like all the power’s leeched out of the land, you know? All stopped up, so it’s not flowing right. Like a logjam in a river. Sometimes you gotta knock a few logs loose to get things flowing again.” Then he cocked his head. “Except this time, it’s not just one town. It’s a lot of towns.”
“Look,” Imelda said carefully, not wanting to hurt the unicorn’s feelings, “I was never stoned, and I certainly can’t set off a volcano.”
“Of course not,” the creature said. “You’re still all bound up. Your strings are all tangled.”
“My…strings.”
“Yeah. You’re like a great big hairball, with lots of little ends, and all of them are connected to the stuff around you, tugging and pulling. Or should be, but aren’t, because something knotted you all up. Right now, it’s only a couple that got unraveled, but the knots are coming loose, so we’ll have to watch for people trying to stone you while I keep you prisoner.”
This is what going insane feels like, Imelda thought, feeling the pulsing of her migraine increasing, fuzzing out the edges of her vision. God, what she wouldn’t have given for a handful of pills and a glass of water.
“Let’s back up a second,” Imelda said. “You asked if I had headaches, earlier. How did you know that? Do all Fates have headaches?”
“I think so,” the unicorn said. “At least until they get unwrapped. Sometimes they’re born knotted up—like one of the gods goes and does it before they’re born—and sometimes the gods send someone to knot them up as little kids. But it’s a good thing if you’re having headaches. It means you can’t be making volcanoes go off by accident.”
“By…accident.” Imelda did not like the sound of that.
“Yeah,” the unicorn said. “I told you people don’t like Fates. There’s a certain amount of time between when they get their hairball unknotted and the time that they can start controlling their tugs that things just really go wrong. A lot. That’s usually when they get stoned, but the one in Pompei was an old Fate. She was going to die soon, anyway.”
“Why do things go wrong?” Imelda insisted. “A Fate brings bad luck?”
The unicorn snorted. “No, you make bad luck.” As if she was a simpleton for even asking.
“How?” Imelda gritted, fighting the impulse to grab the unicorn by the soft white ears and twist his head around to face her. “I would like to know why people would stone me.”
“Oh.” The unicorn seemed to consider a moment, then said, “Well, I think it’s because anything they want to happen will happen. They actually have to learn how not to work their magic, because if they don’t, bad stuff happens.”
Imelda felt her throat closing up. “How long does it take?” she managed, through the tightness of her horror.
The unicorn shrugged. “A few seconds to a few days… However long it takes the Fate’s cords to yank stuff around so it happens.”
A few seconds… she thought, in dismay. Most people, Imelda assumed, would sit there in her place, riding that unicorn, and think about how wonderful it would be to have everything they wanted in Life happen as soon as they wanted it. She, schooled in the many ways to be cursed by those she hunted, knew that it was a certain sort of Hell to get what you wanted, all the time.
Things like, oh, say, idly wanting a bottle of migraine medicine while traveling through the forest, and getting it immediately—along with the helicopter crew and the Fury aboard that came to deliver it, in the midst of collecting her up for a return visit to the dungeon?
“How do I stop it?” Imelda asked quickly.
The unicorn gave her a funny look. “You can’t. That’s what you do. That’s why you’re here. Fates only show up when they’re needed. They spend half their life learning the world, their hairball bound down real tight as they mature, and then, when it’s time, they have to learn to start using it.”
“How do I find someone to bind it back down?” Imelda demanded. “I do not want that.”
The unicorn frowned at her. “Only an agent of Fate can do that.” Like she didn’t know anything at all.
“Like who?” Imelda demanded. “Where can I find one?”
He sounded confused. “You don’t. They find you.”
“What if I want one to show up and bind everything back up?” Imelda demanded.
“Oh,” the unicorn laughed. “Well, Fates can’t change their own Fate. Not really well, and it always snaps back.”
Imelda considered. “So that Fate in Pompeii was Fated to die in that volcano.”
“Yeah,” the unicorn said. “She was old, and she probably needed to be born somewhere else.”
“So that’s it? A Fate can only not change her own Fate?”
Then he frowned at her. “Well, there’s other things that a Fate shouldn’t do. They can do them, but it makes the energy sick, and as soon as they stop tugging on it, the flow of things slides back to the way it was.”
“Things like what?” Imelda insisted. She had no more understanding of cords or energy than she had of how the unicorn was managing to step on the snow without disturbing the snow. Or, for that matter, how it had walked up the side of a tree…
“Things like…hmm.” The unicorn considered. “Well, if someone’s supposed to die, you shouldn’t stop it. And if someone needs to die, but is being stubborn and won’t, sometimes you’ll get a push from their gods to help them along, and it’s bad to ignore that.”
“What, like Hitler?” Imelda demanded.
The unicorn frowned at her. “No, more like your brother or sister or your mom or dad. Sometimes, their patron gods will take advantage of a Fate in the area and light them up like a flare so the Fate’ll take care of the problem.”
Her gut sinking as she thought of Padre Vega, Imelda said, “What would that look like?”
“I have no idea,” the unicorn repeated. “I’m not a Fate.”
“What else?” she demanded.
“Well,” the unicorn said, “Think of it like there’s a really big Plan, and everybody can change the plan a little bit, set it off track, but a Fate is the one who has to set it right again. The easiest way for a Fate to make things go sour is if they want something to happen that shouldn’t happen because it’s not in the Plan.” He twisted to look back at her. “They get a feel for it, though. It’s like a bird flying. Nobody teaches them how. They just figure it out before they hit the ground.”
Imelda had to swallow down a growing sick feeling in her gut. “And you know all this from stoning a woman in Pompeii?”
The unicorn laughed. “No. Just about every lifetime I’ve had, the culture has stories of the Fates. This is one of the first where I didn’t grow up giving them prayers or sacrifices. And I met one. Isn’t that funny?”
“Hilarious,” Imelda managed.
“So,” the unicorn said, “how close do I have to get?” He came to a sudden halt, though there seemed to be no forward momentum on Imelda’s part, as she would have expected from multiple flights over the neck of a horse. It took her a moment to get her bearings.
They were standing in a windswept white valley, with snow so deep it buried the highland scrub in dune-like drifts, leaving nothing but flat, clean snow for miles. On either side, mountains towered above them in big, rocky crests. A steady rush of icy wind tugged at her borrowed trenchcoat, and Imelda had to duck closer to the unicorn just to stay warm.
“Where are we?” she asked, into his mane. She was pretty sure they had only been traveling a couple hours. If that.
“Oh,” the unicorn said, sounding embarrassed. “I thought you wanted to go to the dragons. Was this the wrong place?”
Imelda stared up at the windswept hillsides as a slow wash of awe left her breathless. “You took us to the Brooks Range in two hours.”
“Yes?” the unicorn said, nervousness
tight in his voice. “That’s where you wanted to go, right?” As if he was afraid she would stop being his ‘prisoner’ because he had taken her to the wrong mountain range.
No wonder the feylords use them as steeds, Imelda thought, stunned. “Um, yes, this is where I wanted to go…I think. Are there dragons nearby?”
The unicorn glanced up at the mountain with all the anxiety of a rabbit eying a leopard’s den. “They’re probably watching us right now.”
Imelda suddenly got that spine-prickling sensation that she’d gotten in training, whenever the instructor was looking at her through the scope of a rifle. “I think you’re right,” she said, her skin tightening with goosebumps. “Would we be able to see them if they were there, but didn’t want to be seen?”
“I can’t,” the unicorn said, as he pranced uncomfortably beneath her. “That’s how that girl dragon almost got me. I was drinking by the river and then suddenly she grabbed me and flew… I thought she was going to eat me until she trapped me in her cave and tried to wrestle me into a collar.”
“Well,” Imelda said, sharing the unicorn’s unease as she eyed the utterly abandoned slopes, “maybe if we head west a bit, one of them will say hi.”
“That won’t be necessary,” a deep, rumbling voice said from the air nearby, high above their heads. As it spoke, a monstrous winged shape the size of a jumbo jet, deep mahogany and gleaming like anodized bronze, appeared in the snow in front of them.
The unicorn cringed and backed up, and Imelda grabbed his mane, fully sharing his sudden urge to flee.
“So,” the great beast said, its many-horned head lifted several stories above them, “how is it that a human stinking of the Inquisition comes to us riding a unicorn? Did you brainwash the poor creature?”
“She’s my prisoner,” the unicorn said, sounding almost defensive, and Imelda immediately winced. As if that didn’t sound like brainwashing…
The dragon, however, sounded amused when it said, “You captured yourself a maiden, then, little stallion?”
“Um,” the unicorn said, “She agreed to it. Three years. I’m going to treat her well and feed her good.” Then he lowered his head and looked somewhat ashamed. “Though I haven’t been able to find food for her yet. I don’t eat the same as her.”
After watching the unicorn for a long moment, the dragon cocked its head at Imelda. “You realize that taking advantage of an innocent will earn you many painful years in Hell, do you not, Inquisidora?”
He’s speaking to me in my mind, Imelda realized, suddenly feeling utterly paranoid that the beast was digging through her thoughts. Her hands tightened in the unicorn’s mane, and for the first time, her steed did not complain. For his part, the unicorn looked ready to bolt.
“Oh, don’t scamper off,” the dragon chuckled, which was a booming rumble that reverberated through Imelda’s lungs. “You wouldn’t get far. Why are you two looking for dragons?”
She had thought she would have more time to compile her thoughts, more time to prepare, but it was now or never, Imelda realized. Straightening with all the courage she could summon before this magnificent creature, she said, “I am a former Inquisidora of the Holy Order of Angels. I have come to tell you that you and all of your kinsblood in these mountains are in danger of extermination.”
For a long moment, the dragon’s light amber eyes pinned her with its stare. Then, languidly, it said, “Have you ever seen what happens to a human body when it is caught in a blast of incienda draconis, Inquisidora?”
“She was just trying to warn you!” the unicorn cried, dancing around the dragon. “There’s helicopters everywhere and Inquisitors are taking everybody and there’s a Fury that’s draining their blood and Imelda saved me so you can’t kill her.”
“I wasn’t threatening your mortal,” the dragon rumbled, twisting to follow their progress with its horse-sized head. “Stop prancing, fool. You’re making me dizzy.”
The unicorn ignored the dragon and kept easily doing circles around the massive beast. “I need her alive,” he babbled. “I can’t talk to her if she’s dead. Go find someone else to kill, or I swear I’ll poke you with my horn.”
“Stop!” the dragon roared, slamming a front foot into the ground hard enough to make the unicorn stumble. “Or I will show you the inside of my stomach!” When the unicorn came to a wary halt, off to one side, the dragon slowly turned its great bulk to face them again. Imelda felt the very mountains shudder as the massive beast shifted in the snow. Then, after a contemplative silence, the colossal beast said, “All right. I take it you haven’t been schooled in the subtleties of conversation, so I’ll keep it simple. What I was trying to tell the Inquisitor was that there are two hundred and thirteen dragons in these mountains. We’ve spent the last two hundred years fortifying and preparing. Should the humans try to attack us, we are going to fry their bodies to little crisps and shit on the remains.”
“Oh,” the unicorn said. “Okay.”
“You can’t wait that long,” Imelda interrupted. “The Inquisition has technology you have never heard of. They have artifacts and poisons and magics from every creature the Order has ever captured. There are ways to capture a dragon. Dozens of them have passed through basement of the Vatican.”
“Then they were careless fools,” the dragon said.
“Even the wisest master can stumble and fall,” Imelda countered.
The dragon cocked its head at her and gave her a narrow look. “My name is Wyst the Red and I speak for my kind when I tell you we have no fear of the Inquisition.”
“Yet you hide from it,” Imelda said.
He stared at her, his golden eyes blinking. “Are you trying to annoy me, mortal?”
Imelda merely shrugged. “I just find it odd that you’ve been spending all this time fortifying, as you call it, preparing for war, and when the time comes to defend yourselves, when you know that your fellow immortals are falling like flies, you decide to hide in your holes and wait it out.”
“When the Inquisition wants to bring the war to us,” the dragon growled, “we will be ready for them. Until then, it’s none of our business.”
“They will pick you off one at a time,” Imelda insisted. “It won’t be a war. It will be an attrition.”
For the longest time, the dragon only watched her. Then it grunted. “I will sponsor you to petition the Council. But don’t be surprised if they turn you down.” He lifted his head and glanced at the ridgeline. “You see that outcropping of rock, unicorn? Take her up there. There’s a crack in the stone that turns into a very large cavern. Make yourselves at home. You will be under my protection. I will summon my fellow Council members.”
“Um,” the unicorn said, glancing up at the rock jutting from the snow. “I don’t like caves.”
“Well, I need to go up there,” Imelda said. “I guess I could walk, but then I wouldn’t have to be your prisoner anymore.”
Quickly, the unicorn said, “I’ll take you. You have to let me carry you wherever you want to go for three years, remember? We’re oathbound.” And then the unicorn was trotting up the hill, towards the rocks.
Imelda heard an amused rumble in the back of her mind. “…many years in Hell, Inquisidora.”
Chapter 21: A Clash of Furies
“He’s down there!” ‘Aqrab cried, pointing. Thunderbird was still in his avian form, flat on his stomach, his electric feathers littering the sixty-foot groove that he had carved into the forest floor. He wasn’t moving.
The dragon grunted and dove. Above them, the Furies were yelling at each other and gesturing, their wings lighting up the clouds above them, continuous lightning flashing in the near-black hailstorm around them.
Savaxian flared in the newly-made clearing and landed beside the unmoving demigod, giving the body a disdainful sniff. He made no move to try and flip Thunderbird over, however, as the black feathers were still crackling with electricity.
‘Aqrab slid off of the dragon’s back and knelt beside raven-w
inged immortal. “Peace,” he called, sharing Savaxian’s wariness of actually touching the Thunderbird as he slept. When he received no response, he cleared his throat and said, louder, “My liege!”
Thunderbird remained motionless. Wincing, remembering the smoldering wreckage of the helicopter, ‘Aqrab looked around for a stick. Ripping a branch from a fallen tree, he came back and tentatively poked Thunderbird in the feathered back. “Wake up.”
“Half my hoard says the prissy fop is faking.”
‘Aqrab ignored the dragon. He pushed the stick harder into the Thunderbird’s body, the ribs, this time. “My liege! We need to get out of sight!”
No response. ‘Aqrab tossed his stick aside in frustration and eyed the nine-foot beast. “How much do you think he weighs?”
“I am not carrying that pompous peahen on my back.”
“Come on!” ‘Aqrab cried. “We can’t leave him.”
“I can,” the dragon muttered, ruffling his scales and glancing up at the Furies.
Cursing the dragon’s heritage, ‘Aqrab turned back to his friend. Then, before he had a chance to think about how much it was going to hurt, he squatted, grabbed Thunderbird’s sizzling wing, and hefted it backwards as hard as he could.
Surprisingly, it only made his hand tingle. In prying the demigod off of the ground, however, he saw just enough of a gigantic, bloody gash through his chest to release a startled spasm of heat before the weight of the creature’s wing overcame him and he had to drop it again.
“He’s wounded,” ‘Aqrab said. “It’s bad.” He dropped beside Thunderbird’s head—his beak was long and black, like a raven’s, and partially burrowed into the frozen ground—and pressed his fingers through the feathers of his friend’s neck, looking for a pulse.
It was there, but extremely weak.
“Oh Goddess,” ‘Aqrab whispered. “We need to get him flipped over so I can heal him.”
The dragon rolled his eyes. “What, he got a little bump on the head and now he’s going to take the rest of the day off?”