by Sean Platt
Before Clint could make the coach, he tripped and fell. He was finished. He rolled onto his back, waiting for the hammer blow. But then above him, the giant paused with his hammer overhead. Then he lowered the weapon and stowed it. There were Teedawges in the square. Too many to fight, but none took aim or fired. All of them were staring at something behind Clint.
Clint rolled over and looked up.
“Clint?” said the man in black.
The gunslinger couldn’t speak.
Inexplicably, Dharma Kold spun, leapt onto a brown horse, and began to gallop away in a cloud of dust, heading up the trail toward the mountains.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
PURSUIT
Someone, very loud, screamed, “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” preceded by an enormous flash of brilliant white light.
Teedawges flew like leaves in a breeze. Most struck something as they landed, then staggered to their feet, stunned. The giant again raised its hammer, but before it could swing, it was struck by what looked like pink taffy. Then, hopelessly entangled, the enormous thing tripped over itself and fell writhing to the ground.
Edward, now appearing fully himself again, charged past Clint without slowing. The gunslinger felt himself lifted into the air, then flung onto the unicorn’s bare back. Edward was in full gallop. Clint was forced to adjust himself on the fly, holding on for dear life.
“I’m hit,” he said.
Edward’s horn glowed. Clint’s side glowed in echo. His skin knitted, and his pain vanished.
“No point in hiding now, I guess,” said Edward. “I have a sneaking suspicion that Kold knows we’re here.”
“My guns,” said Clint.
“… are buried outside of town. You’ll have to use your charming wit to fight him.”
“You didn’t go back for them?”
“When was I going to go back? Kold appeared six seconds ago. Don’t worry. Your guns won’t matter and neither will his, although those things are true for exactly opposite reasons. This should be a fun fight we have coming. I hope you enjoy futility.”
“If I had my guns, I’d be able to shoot through shields.”
“Certain kinds of shields. And when both men fighting have unicorns to heal them, shields are pointless. Try not to be insulted, but this is going to be me versus Cerberus if it’s going to be anything. Kold will be there, possibly shooting lightning bolts or something impressive. He shouldn’t even need the magic he stole from Cerberus anymore. Not with the Triangulum on his side. They will both be superpowered. You, on the other hand, will be useless.”
“You’re saying we can’t win.”
“Exactly.”
“So why are we chasing him?” said Clint, aghast.
“Because,” said Edward, “my keen powers of observation have shown me that he is running from us.”
Clint tried asking Edward why Kold would be the one running — and, for that matter, why he’d be riding a horse instead of his unicorn partner Cerberus — but between Edward’s thundering hooves and the blowing of wind around his head as they ascended the trail behind Kold, it was difficult to speak and took Clint’s full concentration to simply hang on. Edward seldom ran, and this was the fastest the gunslinger had ever seen him go. Without the loathed saddle, Clint needed his leg muscles and hands to stay horsed, and it was taking everything he had.
They rounded one bend and then another, always with Kold at the horizon of sight. They were gaining on him. His horse was mortal and tiring, whereas Edward was magic and tireless. The unicorn seemed to sense this and galloped with renewed vigor. They could soon see massive gates — slowly parting — in the path before them. Clint felt as if they were racing time — that maybe Kold needed Cerberus to fight true, or needed the Triangulum close at hand. Mayhap if they overtook him now, they could end him, then take on Cerberus separately. Mayhap the unicorn of a different color, once deprived of his dark rider, would abandon the citadel. Mayhap after his poisoned bond with Kold was severed, Cerberus would slowly regain his natural balance and return to his coat of white. It didn’t seem logical that Cerberus would care about taking over The Realm. After all, what interest had Edward ever shown in Clint’s human ambitions?
“If we catch him now, will he be easier to defeat?” Clint shouted, leaning low and trying to avoid getting his nose broken by the unicorn’s pistoning neck.
“I don’t know.”
“Does he need to be near the Triangulum to use its power?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he drawing power from the Triangulum now? Can you feel it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you sense Cerberus?”
“Nar.”
If there was a time limit on their catching Kold, the sands were almost through the glass. Kold leapt from his horse without slowing, landed in a pile, and scrambled toward a massive set of stone doors that seemed to lead into the core of the mountain itself. Clint and Edward pursued, holding their union as rider and mount. The doors were plenty large enough for them both. Edward’s horn began to glow. As he watched Kold retreat, Clint — even as a mortal man with mere lead-flingers on his back and hip — felt his confidence growing. Kold was on the run, with clear panic in his every movement. Clint leaped from Edward’s back and drew his pistol. Sighted. Fired. Kold ducked behind a pillar in the massive hollowed-out entranceway to his baron’s palace, but there was nowhere to go. They walked forward. Clint could see the black sleeve of Kold’s shirt billow around the pillar, could see how it heaved as the man fought for breath.
There was a cacophonous crashing from behind them as the massive doors heaved closed.
Clint and Edward spun. The brown horse had wandered into the lobby behind them, and as they watched, its coat darkened to black and a long spiral horn of obsidian emerged from its forehead.
“Thanks for coming,” said Cerberus.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
THE TRUTH
Kold stepped out from behind the pillar. While Clint Gulliver had aged during his time in the sands, it appeared that Dharma Kold had not. He still had his handsome face, uncharacteristic of his gnarled heart, and kind green eyes that did nothing to bely the evil inside them. His cheeks were smooth, light, and clean-shaven — almost rosy, glowing in the room’s flicker. The corners of his mouth twitched with false compassion. He fixed his gaze on Clint, washing the gunslinger with a sudden flash of memory of the day they found themselves together on the wrong side of the wall.
Kold’s hair was askew, so he smoothed it. His shirt had come unbuttoned at the top, so he tried to button it, but then realized his button was missing.
“Oh, dagnit,” he said. “This shirt was expensive.”
Clint couldn’t help himself. He already had his gun aimed, so he fired. The shot struck a spot in the air several inches in front of Kold’s eyes and exploded into red sparks and twirling streamers.
Kold looked at Clint, wounded. “Oh, come on. That’s hardly polite. And look at you. A guest in my house, and you didn’t even bring me a sparkling bottle of Fanta. Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners? Wait. Don’t answer that. Of course she didn’t. You were always a jerk.”
“Just like your unicorn,” said Cerberus behind them.
“I’ll let you keep those pop-shooters if you enjoy them,” said Kold, gesturing at Clint’s pistol and twin shotguns. “But don’t fire them again, pleasem and thankoo.”
Cerberus circled around so that he stood behind Kold. The man in black and his dark unicorn made for a matching set. Clint had a bizarre thought that he should have coordinated better with Edward, but here he was in denims and a light chambray shirt with fancy scrolling on the breast.
From the side of his mouth, Clint said to Edward beside him, “See if you can get through his shield. I’ll fire when I can.”
Edward sighed and lowered his head. “There’s no point. You’d know it true if you could feel the magic.”
“Yar, the magic,” said Kold, overhearing. “The famous Triangulum Enchantem.
The instrument that will get me into The Realm.”
“So that you can end the worlds.”
“So that I can restore balance,” Kold corrected. He walked to the side of the chamber, then sat on a ledge carved into the wall, perching as he casually swung his legs.
“So that you can take your revenge,” Clint countered.
“Clint… if I may still call you Clint…?” He waited for Clint to give him permission to be familiar, then pushed on when he didn’t. “I know your memory is fogged and you won’t remember our youthful chats, so let me tell you a story we once passed back and forth in our palaver, back when we dreamt through endless days and nights.”
Kold smiled, and Clint felt an odd sense of wonder. Then the man in black continued.
“Once upon a time, there was harmony between good and evil. The two offset each other like cold and hot, up and down, before and after. They offset one another the way —” He gave a nod to Cerberus. “— that unicorns and their riders offset each other. Two halves to a whole, with each lending meaning to the other. Today, we talk about ‘dark magic.’ But think about it: without ‘light magic’ to compare it to, ‘dark magic’ would just be ‘magic.’ Without dark there is no light, and without light, there is no dark. It takes both, and each is necessary for the other. But one day, in this binary world of co-existing opposites, one side of one particular pair decided that it wasn’t happy being a mere half of a whole. This side wanted more for itself. It wanted to be ‘the thing’ instead of ‘the thing that is the opposite of — and defined by — some other thing.’ ”
“The Darkness, yar,” said Clint. “I know.”
Beside him, Edward was surprisingly docile. “Nar, you don’t,” he said.
“The pair I’m talking about isn’t light and dark,” said Kold. “I’m talking about beings. Specifically, us. Humans decided to try and manipulate the magic for their own ends. They gathered it. And that seemed harmless at first, because it was only gathering, after all. They created small reservoirs of white magic and learned to manipulate it, to make it do tricks. That meant that somewhere else, there was a bit more dark magic than light, but it mattered nar; it was only the work of a few human hands. Those few learned to summon spells with the magic. They found they could use it to levitate heavy objects and make it do their bidding. They could use it to warm food, to hunt… all sorts of things. Magic was the ultimate tool to give a spartan life more comfort.”
Something that might have been sadness crossed Kold’s face. Clint could feel Edward’s growing discomfort — or was it uncertainty? — beside him.
“But you know how these things go. Centuries passed. Millennia passed. Humans started to cluster. They did so slowly. And as they clustered, they drew their magic-gathering abilities together. They taught each other the tricks they’d learned with the white magic. Soon they learned to harness that magic to power machines. And this was all strange, but it still didn’t seem terribly troublesome because there was so much magic in the worlds, and the humans were brushing but a corner of it. So the guardians did nothing, and let the humans be humans. The unicorns moved in to work alongside them, hoping to shepherd their magic-sifting knowledge, to keep it sensible and not let it get out of hand. You see, unicorns themselves are pure white magic, but here’s something not many people know true…”
Kold leaned further from his perch, as if conveying a secret.
“Did you know that unicorns can use both types of magic? It’s true. It took me a long time to understand that, since for a long time Cerberus spoke only in riddles. He withheld information from me, and told me that ‘I’d never understand.’ ” The dark rider laughed. “It was infuriating. But eventually I realized that when he spoke about the same magic being good or bad depending on the user’s intent, I started to see that he meant there was really no such thing as black and white — and here, I speak of meaning. Darkness isn’t always used for evil, if ‘evil’ is even a real thing when there’s no ‘good’ to compare it to. Light isn’t always good, for the same reason.”
Kold leaned back against the wall, making himself comfortable.
“Anyway, the humans, being humans and limited in their human way, could only use the white magic because they were never intended as guardians or users. So the unicorns tried teaching them balance, but the humans liked the new things they’d created with the white magic and knew they ran much better if they didn’t ‘pollute’ them with darkness. And besides, they didn’t want darkness in their towns and cities.”
Clint didn’t know what to say. He had to end Kold, but didn’t know how, and he couldn’t understand why Edward had given up so completely.
“You’re talking about The Realm,” said Clint.
“The Realm! Yar, the glorious Realm. I’m talking about the pinnacle of human progress — a civilization so greedy that it hoarded and hoarded even as storms started brewing. A civilization that created so much polarity in the magic that it managed to fracture the worlds.”
Clint shook his head. “Ridiculous.”
“Really?” said Kold. “I thought you rode with a savant?”
Clint thought of Sly Stone, and what Edward had told him about Stone’s family line holding an archive of knowledge in their genes. That’s the word Edward had used: savant. He looked at the unicorn, but Edward said nothing.
Kold shifted on his plinth, now leaning forward, opening his body, going for friendly.
“Clint, do you remember the first time we fought?”
Clint tried to recall. He remembered Kold’s anger outside The Realm as they’d chased it. He remembered the futility of pursuing a city that was like a mirage, that never came closer no matter how long they marched toward it. He remembered how anger over The Realm had twisted Kold’s soul and started to slowly turn Cerberus’s color. But he remembered no fights. One night, he and Edward had simply gathered their gear and left. There hadn’t been a confrontation until…
“Solace,” said Clint.
Kold shook his head sadly. “Nar. But I don’t blame you. As magic-addled as the time was, I doubt even Edward remembers. See, that’s the advantage of embracing the dark, as Cerberus and I have. Darkness allows you to see the truth even when it’s reprehensible. Legitimate solutions to a scenario like ‘kill an innocent man for the greater good’ are visible inside a shroud, whereas light never allows you to so much as consider them.”
Beside Clint, Edward kicked at the stone underfoot. It was as if he’d surrendered.
“The first time we fought,” said Kold, “was over Mai.”
“In Solace.”
“Nar. Years before. Years before you met her, even. You were only aware of her reputation back then. But see, you knew, Clint. You knew that she was the Orb of Benevolence.”
It was a lie. The first time he’d met Mai had been in Solace, when she’d come to town as a traveler. She’d made fun of him within five minutes of meeting him. He’d acted annoyed, but actually he’d been enchanted. That had been the beginning.
Kold’s eyebrows were up, waiting. Edward was still looking at the floor.
“It’s true,” said Kold. “Look inward. You will see.”
The air was gone from his lungs. His long fingers found Edward’s side, to steady himself.
“Lies,” he said.
“Lies? Nar. Truths. We knew who and where she was. We were going to take her, then take the other Orbs. I wasn’t going to do it, gunslinger. We were.”
“Lies,” Clint repeated, his knees growing weak.
“Truths,” said Kold more emphatically. “But you were too noble to do it. So as Cerberus and I began to darken enough to see the best solution to the unwinnable scenario, you and Edward departed. But I was right, you see. This was for the greater good. I needed her to complete the Triangulum, and I needed the Triangulum to breach the wall of The Realm.”
“So why haven’t you gone in?” said Clint. “Couldn’t find the third Orb? And now you want our help to find it? Well you can forget…�
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“Oh, I have the third Orb,” said Kold. “It’s below this mountain — deep, deep down under tons of rock. It took the giants weeks to find it, even with Cerberus pointing the way. It’s an ancient, ancient machine that fills a room this size. The giants called it a ‘generator’; they have legends about the machine under the mountain. A ‘generator,’ they say, is a machine that begets energy, but first requires power to do so. Like keys. To start the generator, I needed the other Orbs. But something happened. When I fed the generator the Benevolence Orb I’d taken from Mai, it hitched and sputtered. It ran, but just barely. It gave me enough power to run the city and to command the magic Edward is so afraid to face, but I couldn’t build the bridge or breach the wall. So I studied until I saw the problem: benevolence can’t be taken. It must be given.” Kold laughed. “It’s so obvious, right? The concept of benevolence is all about giving. Why did I ever think I could take it?”
A strange realization was beginning to seep into Clint’s mind. He looked over at Edward, and saw the same realization settling into the unicorn’s eyes. Edward lifted his head. Mayhap they couldn’t defeat Kold and Cerberus. But now, at least, Edward looked like he was willing to try.
“You still need Mai,” Clint said, his hand moving subconsciously to his gun.
“Oh, still your gun hand, Marshal,” Kold said, waving as he leaned back. “Even if shooting me would make a difference, I’m not going to seize Mai while she’s relaxing at Barlowe’s house outside of OldTown. It wouldn’t work, remember? I can’t take the Benevolence Orb. She must give it to me.”
Clint shook his head.
“I need you to convince her, Clint. I need you to get Mai to give it to me.”
“You’re insane,” Clint growled. “Nothing but evil.”
Kold shrugged. “Another half of a polarity. What is ‘insane’ other than something arbitrary contrasted against something equally arbitrary that people call ‘sane’?”
“You dragged her through the desert for years, impaled by Cerberus as if on his horn itself. And now you want my help. Her help.”