by Sean Platt
In front of them, maybe three miles distant, was an enormous city with a huge glass tower at its center, surrounded by countless acres of green, green grass.
UNICORN
WESTERN 7
CHAPTER ONE:
OPEN RANGE
Clint, the gunslinger, sat atop Edward, the unicorn.
Mai, the almost-bride (now restored to her old self after being scooped out and left hollow by the dark rider), sat atop an unspotted brown appaloosa named Leroy.
Pompi Bobo, the giant, sat atop a rock.
The four of them sat together on the crown of a hill high above Meadowlands, which sprawled below them unlike anything else they’d ever seen.
Pompi Bobo had seen Meadowlands before, of course, but the city had grown significantly in the two months he’d been away. When he’d been called down from the mountains along with the rest of the giants, Meadowlands had been nothing more than an unremarkable berg whose only claim to fame was that it sat at The Realm’s doorstep insofar as The Realm — unreachable by any conventional means — could be said to have a doorstep. The city had grown during the time Pompi had worked on the railroad, but what he saw below them now was, he said, nothing like the place he’d left behind.
The town, he explained, had a new land baron who’d boasted that he could build a way back into The Realm. The baron said that the people of the Sands would finally be able to open trade with the unfindable and unforgettable kingdom. Pompi said that at the time the baron made it, the claim had sounded bizarre. Everyone knew The Realm couldn’t be found. There were, of course, people who claimed that The Realm appeared in the sky to the north of Meadowlands on the brightest days, but nobody would admit to believing them lest they be thought a fool. But rather quickly, things changed. Even before Pompi had left for Baracho Gulch, the city’s skepticism had begun to shift. More and more people admitted to seeing flashes of castles and green in the sky. The city grew. New trade items came in as if from nowhere. Riches began to fill the city, spilling from some magic or another. And in the stockyards, an enchanted train that ran on magical rails was being built bolt by bolt, giving no indication that it had any purpose other than the one the baron had claimed.
The group went as close as they dared. Thanks to information yanked from the bandit El Feo before his untimely demise, they were reasonably sure that the land baron (who went by the name “Diego Diamante”) was actually Dharma Kold — the man who had captured Mai and scooped her dry, and the man Clint and Edward had been pursuing for nearly five long years. Kold was the man who wanted to breach the wall to The Realm, careless of whether or not he fractured all the worlds along the way. If Kold was Diamante — and if Diamante was as powerful as Pompi said he’d been just two months earlier — then Kold would flat-out control the town by now. A town controlled by Kold promised no equity, even if it glimmered with illusion. There would exist only the mirage of balance… and beneath it an iron fist.
Regardless, Clint couldn’t help but be astonished by what Kold had done with the six months of distance he’d set between himself and his pursuers since shaking Clint and Edward in Precipice. The city was every bit as impressive as Clint’s scant memories of The Realm prior to his exile. It was at once foreboding and bucolic, its older section buffered by vast green pastures and its newer section buttressed to the north by sharp mountains. The new construction — mostly tall buildings huddled close together — was all glass and silver alloy. From the city’s center protruded a shockingly tall crystal structure, like a clear finger pointing at the sky.
They could also make out a gleaming track of alloy circling the city. The track weaved between the buildings, cutting through the city at angles. Pompi explained that the track was for a spark train that ran twenty feet above the ground on a single rail of alloy. The elevated train, he said, was the creation of Nikolai Peculiar, an inventor who believed the city should be strung with thin alloy wires that would carry spark to houses from a central generator. And yar, the train was impressive (they watched it circle the town from their hiding place behind several large boulders), but Pompi found it underwhelming. He scoffed, saying that engines were meant to run on steam, as did the train that would ride atop the giants’ newly-laid rails. Spark trains were slow and flimsy. Steam trains, by contrast, were mighty and strong. Strong enough to require two magic rails, in fact.
Pompi’s opinion was shared by Thomas Boehringer, the inventor who’d designed the conventional, steam-driven parts of the train that would one day open a path between Meadowlands and The Realm. Boerhringer, in fact, wanted the whole city to run on steam. He’d built a network of tubes running from his steam plants to all parts of the city. From where Clint’s group sat, they could see what Pompi said were steam mains running beside the streets and above stone paths he called sidewalks. According to Pompi, the argument over spark versus steam was the city’s central debate. Peculiar didn’t like the steam mains, or the smaller lines that serviced steam-driven houses owned by Boehringer’s customers. He said having giant pipes throughout the city was unsightly (in this beautiful city they all shared, pleasem and thankoo) and dangerous. He spoke publicly, cataloguing laundry lists of scalding injuries and deaths. Boehringer, on the other hand, retorted that all of the steam-tubes were insulated and double-walled and that it was spark — which might stop a man’s heart — that was dangerous. Smart citizens knew that the mains were cool to the touch, and that steam was cheaper.
Clint listened to Pompi’s descriptions (all recounted in third-person Pompi-speak: “Pompi did this,” “Pompi heard that”) and felt his interest in Meadowlands turn to scorn. It was as if an artery inside The Realm had been cut, then bled and clotted all over Meadowlands. The debate of “steam or spark” spoke volumes about a soft decadence previously known only to The Realm. How easy must life become before people would fight over the power source for machines that didn’t exist in most of the world? Clint remembered Solace, and remembered watching a water reader dip his fingers into a rain barrel to read the shifting of the sands. He recalled how the town’s people had hung on that man’s words as if they meant life and death… which, in fact, they did. Would their town be pillaged and robbed and burned? Would they die soon? And when the people of Solace had worried about their machines, they hadn’t worried over the speed of a steam vehicle. Instead, they’d worried over a warped wringer on a hand-cranked washer, because a warped wringer might tear a man’s only suit of clothes. Or it might fail to expunge the blood that was spilled through regular living, and daily battles with the dusty sand.
Meadowlands, if it was debating steam versus spark, must harbor few such worries. They wouldn’t feel the constant threat of death at their collective door. In Meadowlands, there would be no need for gunslingers. An inept breed of civil lawman would protect them instead. That was the way it always was when there was enough magic and dollars to go around, when even the most annoying trivial pain could easily be healed by the magic in a doctor’s kit — at least for those who could afford it.
As dusk descended, they watched the city light like a fire. A soft yellow glow gleamed from glass fixtures along the streets and in the smooth alloy-and-glass buildings. Pompi didn’t know whether the night lights were powered by spark or steam, but no one in the group cared.
When the day’s light was mostly gone (and after Clint had crossed to the other side of the grassy hill to light a fire in a cleared spot on the prairie), they watched as the steam train in the outskirts lit up and started moving back and forth, chugging down a small track that cupped the city’s southern edge and then headed south. The track’s southernmost spur was nearby, so Clint and Edward left Mai and Pompi by the fire and walked over to watch the great engine as it passed. It was massive and black, lumbering and slow, and it moved along the tracks tentatively, as if testing itself. Clint could feel power radiating from the engine, even all the way up on the hill. Edward said that the power came from the magic inside of it. The steam was there to start the train, to ste
er it, and to provide extra power when needed. But the magic vein running beneath the train’s tracks (beneath, but inaccessible to any ordinary shovel) was the train’s true power source.
“The wealth in this city…” said Clint, letting the thought steep in the cool night air.
“Yar,” said Edward. “There is great wealth among thieves.”
Clint let Edward’s comment go without offering a response. Edward missed Sly Stone, because Sly would always agree with his anti-Realm, borderline-anti-human rhetoric. The Realm was rich with magic but refused to share, they both agreed. To hear Stone talk, he himself was the modern-day Hood of Legend, who’d made it his mission to rob the rich of magic so it could spread down the vein to those who needed it more.
“Which came to Meadowlands first?” said Clint. “The wealth, or Kold?”
“No way to tell.”
“Do you think he’s found the third Orb?”
“I suspect it, now that I see what the city is becoming. Based on what Pompi said, Meadowlands’ growth has been faster than non-magical means could account for. Something must be powering all this expansion, and it’s not steam or spark. The air is as thick with magic as the scent of a barber’s aftershave.”
“Might the magic you sense be coming from the leaking?” Clint asked.
“Nar. The magic I feel is not simply leaking out. It’s being generated.”
“By the Triangulum Enchantem?”
“Mayhap.”
“So you do think that Kold has found the third Orb.”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Clint was in no mood to play games. He looked the white unicorn in the eye. “Tell me, Edward,” he said. “Tell me what you know.”
Edward sighed. “The third Orb is called the Orb of Synthesis, and it activates the other two. The Orb of Malevolence represents the dark. The Orb of Benevolence the light. The Orb of Synthesis acts as a catalyst, allowing the others to blend and work together, as they are supposed to.”
“And create the Triangulum.”
“Yar.”
“Which is the deadliest, most dangerous magical item ever to exist.”
“Most powerful magical item,” Edward corrected. “Whether it is dangerous or not depends on who commands it. The same balance that rests in the Triangulum exists everywhere, including between the two of us. In the beginning, there were only unicorns. When humans came, the universe grew polluted with the darkness inside of you.” He looked over at Clint, saw his eyebrows furrowing, and added, “Don’t be insulted. It was an intended pollution. The magic at the core was always dark and light. You moderated us; we moderated you. Balance. Synthesis. You understand?”
“For a change, I think I do. But if Kold has the third Orb, then he has the Triangulum and commands its power, yar? And yet he hasn’t breached the wall.”
“He’s building a railroad that will be able to travel between Realm and Sands.”
Clint removed a toothpick from his shirt pocket and parked it in the corner of his mouth. “I figured the completed Triangulum would work more like a bomb that would blow a hole in the wall.”
“Maybe it would,” said Edward, “if the wall were actually a wall.”
“So he just needs time? For the Triangulum to gain power? For the train to be completed? And then he’ll go inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“But if that’s the case, why would…”
Annoyed, Edward sighed and repeated himself: “I don’t know.”
Clint made his own voice annoyed in retaliation. “Well, what do you know?”
“I know that I am better than you. And I know that you are very ugly.”
“Mai doesn’t think I’m ugly.”
“Yar, she does. She just tolerates ugly. She’s into ugly. She’s an ugly-chaser. She’d take trolls and rub them all over herself. She’d kiss a butt if it spoke to her kindly.”
“That’s my woman you’re talking about,” said Clint.
Edward chewed at his big tongue. “Mayhap.”
There it was: the same old issue that they kept refusing to discuss. Clint looked toward Edward, staring at the unicorn’s big white side.
“You don’t know what it was that happened to her,” he said. “With Kold, with the magic from the Rio Verde, with the transformation she’s undergone… none of it.”
“I know exactly what happened to her,” Edward replied, not looking at Clint.
“What?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“What?”
“She fought Kold’s will. She wouldn’t give her nature to Cerberus. I was wrong, months ago. I said she’d be a husk forever, and that Kold had stolen who she was when he’d stolen the Orb from her soul. But I was wrong. He took the Orb and left you Mai. A harder Mai. A better Mai. A faster, stronger Mai. He ran her through a filter.”
“Like coffee through a strainer.”
Edward rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why I tolerate you.”
Clint resisted the urge to retort. They’d had this discussion before, and no matter how many times and in how many ways Clint tried getting Edward to explain, Clint never understood. He only knew that the unicorn saw something different in Mai. It wasn’t a bad difference. Edward didn’t distrust her, or feel that she was somehow corrupted. Quite the contrary. But there was something in what Edward kept saying (about how the difference in Mai was good and fine but still worth watching) that Clint didn’t understand at all. But then again, the gunslinger never totally got what Edward said, and had grown used to it in the same way a man could grow used to a loud noise that went on for too long.
“We have to get into the city,” Clint said, changing the subject. He watched the train as it passed them, heading south. It would return. They’d followed the rails and knew the spur ended just a few miles further on. The giants would quickly lay rail in both directions — into the Sands toward San Mateo Flats and into The Realm though means that even Edward couldn’t conceive — but for now, the train only seemed to make trial runs in order to find its metaphorical legs.
“Yar,” said Edward. “But Kold runs the city.”
“Diamante,” Clint corrected. “Best to start thinking of him as Diego Diamante, entrepreneur and tradesman. Calling him Kold will only raise eyebrows.”
“You raise eyebrows anyway,” said Edward. He gave Clint a small glance. “… ugly.”
Clint ignored the insult. “It has to be Pompi who goes into the city.”
“I’d figured that much out, genius. Kold knows you. Kold knows me. He rode with Mai behind him for well over four years, so I’d say he knows her, too.”
“And Pompi is supposed to be in Meadowlands anyway. He’s a giant.”
“WOW are you observant.”
Edward, who’d never been particularly friendly, had been especially caustic lately. Clint knew Edward well enough to recognize his testiness as nerves, but he didn’t know what was bothering the unicorn. Even if he asked, Edward would nar answer him true. Edward carried his own pride, and it weighed a ton.
And then suddenly, watching the sulking unicorn, Clint found himself recalling something Edward said months earlier, in San Mateo Flats: One day, when there is time and we’ve played enough of our part, I will explain all of this to you.
One day.
Meaning: Not yet.
It wasn’t the first time Clint had felt like his unicorn partner was deliberately withholding information, but it was the first time that Edward’s withholding had seemed so willful. It was as if he were teasing Clint — dangling a carrot and taunting him with some kind of foreknowledge, refusing to share what he knew while Clint stumbled stupidly along in the dark.
Clint pushed the stew of frustration in his gut down into his boots. It would do no good to argue now.
“Something has been bothering me,” he said. “Can I ask you something without being insulted?”
“It’s so hard not to insult you,” said Edward. “But I will try.”
“Kold is working with the Darkness.”
“I believe so. Yar.”
“And the Darkness controls the birds. Some of them, anyway.”
“Yar.”
“So Kold should know we’re coming, because we’ve seen many birds.”
“Yar. He should.”
“But if he knows, then why haven’t we met any resistance?”
Edward sighed. “The answer to that might be complicated.”
“He’s evaded us for years. He’s practically run from us. So if he knows we’re here, and he has power, he should send minions to intercept us before we can organize and attack him. Or he should come himself. Or he should erect a shield, or put up some other kind of magical protection. He’d should do anything other than simply let us come, but he hasn’t. Why?”
Edward sighed again. He was staring into the distance, watching the retreating spark lights on the back of the Realm train — the one that, if Pompi was correct, would soon cross the wall. Its magic, if that were true, would be beyond comprehension.
“Unless you’re implying that Kold doesn’t care if we come after him. That he has the Triangulum now, and it makes him so powerful that we’re no longer worth noticing. But that can’t be it, right?”
The unicorn snorted. He stepped forward and touched the magic rails, tapping them with his hoof, seeming to test their permanence.
“But you’re not saying that, because that would mean we’re too late,” said Clint. “We wouldn’t just keep going, heading into a losing battle, if it was too late. So we’re not too late. Right, Edward?”
A breeze ruffled the unicorn’s mane.
“Edward?”
Edward chewed his cheek, watching the distant red lights turn to white as the train circled and started rolling back toward Meadowlands.
CHAPTER TWO:
A FANCY PARALLEL