by Lisa Mangum
Stepping forward, he ran a gentle hand along the unicorn’s neck. The unusually docile beast nuzzled Jack’s shoulder, careful to keep its horn turned away from him. My fears dissipated like dirt washed clean in a spring rain. Unicorns were docile, and throughout history they were defenders of the innocent. The animal’s loyalty meant that Jack had indeed extracted righteous justice, even if I didn’t agree with the method. Otherwise, no unicorn would tolerate his presence, let alone show such affection. Relieved, I took my first deep breath since I’d stepped between the hedges. I might still have reservations, but I could trust mon amour, my dear Jack.
Sprinkling nightshade across the unicorn’s buttocks, Jack whispered a spell.
“Nightshade?” I asked. “That’s for causing illness.”
Jack lifted me by the waist, his hands warm through the fabric, and placed me on the unicorn’s back. “Not when combined with the unicorn’s natural magic and the right spell.”
He vaulted up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and holding to the lustrous mane. I arranged my parasol across my lap, holding it in my left hand and gripping a tuft of mane with my right. The dwarf removed the halter, and we stepped into the garden, in full view of the patrons. Nobody gasped, nobody so much as looked in our direction.
Whispering into my ear, his lips caressing my neck, Jack sent chills down my arms that had nothing to do with the night air.
“Nightshade on a unicorn makes him and his riders invisible,” said Jack.
As he urged the unicorn forward, I asked one more question. “If you are the Violet Unicorn, and I become your partner, then what will that make me?”
With a glance at the parasol in my lap, he flashed his familiar smile. “You, my dear Floressa, will be the cunning, ever-daunting, Periwinkle Parasol.”
***
The Unicorn Prince
Gama Ray Martinez
Death greeted Anteus as he stepped out of the forest. Blackened earth stretched out before him as far as the eye could see. What had once been cultivated fields were now lifeless. Even the insects and other creatures that fed on dead things were absent. Above, the full moon shone red, a phenomenon that only happened once every thirteen years. Terrible things came out under a blood moon, and even good and noble creatures could be driven insane by its power.
In the distance sat a cluster of simple wooden houses with thatched roofs. Though Anteus had been called here, he suspected the houses were all but abandoned. He closed his eyes and tried to sense any hidden life in the dead vegetation around him. A heartbeat later, his eyes shot open and his blood went cold. This land hadn’t just been killed. It had been drained of even the potential of life. All his power wouldn’t be enough to restore a single blade of grass. Nothing would ever grow here again, not unless what had been taken could be restored. Anteus suppressed a shiver as he began walking toward the buildings, dead grass crunching under his feet.
He was still a ways off when a thin man in loose-fitting robes ran out of one of the houses to meet him. Dark circles showed under his eyes, and his gaunt face sported a patchy black beard. The image of an oak, the ancient symbol of the druids had been embroidered on his chest. Opher was only twenty-three but worry had aged him at least a decade.
“Well met, servant of life,” Anteus began with the traditional greeting between druids.
“Well met, fellow servant.” Opher’s voice wavered as he spoke, and sweat ran down his face. “Thank the Mother you’re here. I’m glad you came so quickly. You wouldn’t happen to have a panacea, would you?”
Anteus raised an eyebrow. “The universal antidote is a myth.”
“I had hoped I was wrong about that.”
“Calm down, Opher. Tell me what happened.”
“It went mad.” Opher’s words tumbled over each other. He glanced at the sky. “It must have been the blood moon. I had to reach into the land itself to draw enough power to stop it. All I could think to do was a transformation.”
“Well, that explains this.” Anteus surveyed the scorched land. “It doesn’t say why though. What exactly did you transform, and why didn’t the power return to the land once the spell was complete?”
“You wouldn’t believe me unless I showed you. Come with me.”
Opher trembled as he walked and a strong grassy aroma hung about his person. Anteus recognized it as maypop, a powerful sedative. His heart began to race.
Opher was a cultivation druid, responsible for helping farmers with their crops and ensuring they respected the land. He’d spent years pouring power into the earth to make it fruitful, and that had given him a vast reservoir of power to draw from should he ever need it, but this far from the wild, he rarely had to deal with anything more dangerous than a fox. There was nothing in twenty leagues that should’ve been able to frighten him like this, much less force him to draw so much power from the land.
Opher’s house on the outskirts of the village was the only one still inhabited. Like most druids, he preferred to be outside when he could and so his dwelling was a simple place with a single room. It had a dirt floor so he could always feel the earth beneath him. A small table and a single chair sat against the wall opposite the door, just below the house’s only window.
A box sat in the center of the room. A variety of herbs hung from the ceiling, and symbols of power had been inscribed not only on the ground but also into the wooden box. Anteus looked at Opher, and the younger druid nodded.
Anteus stepped up to the box and looked inside. In the center sat a potato. A pearly white spiral horn rose from one end. He blinked several times. For a moment, his mind refused to accept what he was seeing. Then he looked up at Opher. It was almost a full minute before he found his voice.
“You turned a unicorn into a potato?”
“Anteus, he was mad. He was attacking people.”
“Unicorns are peaceful.”
“It gets worse.”
“How could it get worse?”
“The unicorn was purple.”
Anteus sputtered. Human nobility wore fabric of blue or purple as a symbol of status, but few realized the custom had originated as an imitation of the ruling family of the unicorns.
“You turned a royal unicorn into a potato?” A chill ran down Anteus’s spine. As far as he knew, there was only one royal unicorn anywhere nearby. “By the Mother, is this Prince Ekel? Did you transform the unicorn’s heir?”
“I’m a cultivation druid, Anteus. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have a wide range of options. All I know is crops.” He swallowed. “Why didn’t the horn change?”
Anteus took several deep breaths to calm himself. When he finally spoke, he’d regained his composure, or at least as much as could be expected. Opher’s actions could throw the world into chaos.
“A unicorn’s horn is pure magic. I don’t think it can be transformed. In fact, it should be working to counter your transformation.”
Anteus extended a hand. Where the field outside had been devoid of life, the potato teemed with it. It practically hummed with power. It was actually trying to change back, but something was preventing it. He closed his eyes and concentrated. It was there, just beyond his reach. He stretched his senses out.
It was like touching a bolt of lightning.
He found himself on the ground, leaning against the wall. The wood had cracked behind him, and his back pulsed with pain. He picked himself off the ground and looked at Opher.
“What did you do?”
“I’m not sure. It was instinct.”
“You have to undo it. We might have been able to use the madness of the blood moon as an excuse if it were a normal unicorn—but for the royal family? There will be war.”
“I’ve been trying.” Opher waved his hands at the symbols around the potato. “I’d invested power in these fields for years, and I used it all. I can’t just undo it.”
Anteus shook his head. “I don’t think the transformation is complete. The power you used is trying to fi
nish it, but the unicorn’s horn is countering it. It’s a stalemate.”
“Can you break it?”
Anteus considered for a second. He was a stronger druid than Opher by a considerable margin, but breaking another druid’s spell was an order of magnitude harder than undoing one’s own work. Finally he shook his head. “It has to be you. Have you tried a reagent?”
“Fairy dust and leprechaun gold.”
“Those wouldn’t do it, not unless your power was already close to what you needed.”
He pulled a pouch from his belt and spilled half a dozen crystal vials onto the table. He picked up one containing a powdery white substance: ground dragon teeth. It was stronger than either of the reagents Opher had mentioned, but not by much. They needed something specialized instead of raw power.
He put down the vial and went through the others. Harpy feathers. Gargoyle scales. Griffin milk. Manticore poison. Finally, his fingers closed around a vial containing black dust. He handed it to Opher.
“Vampire ash from an elder nearly five hundred years old. They’re shape-shifters, so this might give you what you need to undo a transformation.”
Opher held the vial up to the light. He shook it once, and the ash swirled inside. For a moment, Anteus thought he heard screaming, but he knew it was only in his mind. The creature that ash had once been had caused death and pain before it was taken down, and the psychic resonance of such things lingered long after the creature itself had been destroyed.
“This is incredibly rare,” Opher said.
“If it helps prevent a war, it’s worth it.” Anteus noticed the younger druid shiver at his words, though he tried to hide it.
Opher nodded. He uncorked the vial and spilled the contents into his hand. He muttered a few words, and the runes around the box glowed deep red. A gentle humming filled the air, and the light spread to the potato, pulsing in time with Opher’s breath.
He reached out and touched it with his left hand. The glow crept up his fingers and vanished into the ash, which shone brightly for a second before disappearing entirely. Sweat beaded on his brow, and a vein pulsed in his forehead. After several long seconds, he let out a breath. The glowing potato and runes both went out, and Opher shook his head.
“I thought I had it, but once I actually got my hands on it …” He shook his head again. “The vampire ash is the closest I’ve come, but I need something stronger.”
“I was afraid of that. Vampires can change, but there’s more to them than that. What you need is a pure shape-shifter, or at least as close to one as we can manage.”
“A pure shape-shifter?” Opher’s voice wavered. “What do you mean?” Even as he asked the question, his eyes focused on the blood moon just above the horizon. He looked back at Anteus, who nodded.
He ran his finger along one of Opher’s hanging herbs. He could sense the power running through it. Something like this could only be gathered in a very specific way.
“Holly harvested with a silver sickle under the full moon’s light?”
Opher nodded slowly. He’d gone several shades paler, and sweat covered his forehead.
“I assume you still have the sickle?”
Opher nodded again.
“Good. You’ll need it. Tell me, have you ever hunted werewolves?”
* * *
A snapping twig interrupted the nocturnal sounds of the forest. Opher jumped and waved his weapon in the general direction of the sound. “What was that?”
“Be quiet,” Anteus said. “Werewolves are twice as dangerous under a blood moon, and there are worse things than them out tonight.”
“Sorry. It’s just I’ve never done anything like this.”
Anteus nodded. A chill wind rustled through the forest. A spiderweb brushed against his face, and he resisted the urge to cry out as he threw his arms in front of him. The tree the spiderweb hung from drew back in response to his power. Its branches pulled the stray strands away from him, and he let out a breath of relief when he saw the spider scurrying along one of the branches.
Opher looked at him, surprised by the strong reaction, but Anteus only shrugged. His affinity with the wild normally made him immune to the venom of snakes and spiders, but the blood moon could enhance their potency tenfold, and even his powers might not be enough to protect him.
Opher bit his lower lip, trying to be brave. Anteus understood his anxiety. Druids often participated in blood moon hunts, serving as a shield between the people under their charge and the terrible things that walked under the crimson glow. He himself had participated in half a dozen, but those groups had been trained for battle. Having only a cultivation druid by his side to hunt a creature that drew its very power from the moon had him even more worried than the younger druid.
Anteus knew that Opher had spent his life close to people, and had very little idea of the wild things that walked the earth under the blood moon. Though Opher had lived through one blood moon before, thirteen years ago, he couldn’t have been any older than ten. He wouldn’t have been old enough to fight. Tonight would be his first time, and the first time was always the worst.
They moved through the forest like ghosts. Even Opher, with his limited exposure to the wild, had mastered the skill of moving silently through the forest. The hours passed, and a mist crept into the woods. The blood moon infused it with a red light. As it thickened, Anteus cursed under his breath. Almost anything could be hiding in that fog.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Opher asked.
“Claw marks on the trees, particularly those big enough to do the tree serious harm. Some werewolves can make marks in rocks too. Teeth that are too sharp to come from any local animal. Heavy footprints that look more beast than man.” Anteus moved his hand through the red mist. It had grown thick enough to obscure the ground below. “Though I suppose we won’t be seeing much of the last.”
Opher nodded. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on his sickle. “Maybe we should wait until we can bring more people to help.”
Anteus shook his head. “Maybe if it were someone other than Prince Ekel. If the unicorns discover where he is—and what he is—and that you did it, we won’t be able to avoid war. We certainly can’t afford to wait for another full moon, blood or otherwise.”
Opher started to speak but stumbled. He reached into the fog, and when he withdrew his hand, tendrils of mist clung to his fingers. At first, Anteus didn’t recognize the blood on Opher’s hand. Anteus directed his power at the earth. Some of the nearby trees quivered, and a second later, a platform of gnarled roots emerged from the fog.
The doe’s body atop the roots had been mangled almost to the point of being unrecognizable. Her throat had been ripped out, and her legs bent at odd angles, the bones jutting out. Blood matted the fur, and a slash across her face had blinded the creature. Most of the flesh was still there, however, and Anteus suppressed a shiver. This was not the work of a predator. Of all the creatures in the world, only man killed for pleasure. Or something that had once been a man.
Anteus waved a hand, and the roots lowered the body to the earth. He briefly considered directing them to bury the creature, but he rejected the idea. Few animals buried their dead, and it would be no honor to the doe to treat it as a human. Instead, he opened his mind to the trees around him and concentrated.
He tried for only a few seconds. There was too much blood and there had been too much violence for him to sense anything useful. He stepped away from the corpse and began to move around it in a circle, dragging his hand on the ground until his fingers found the trail of blood. He closed his eyes and focused until he felt the faint echo of the life that still remained in the blood. His sense of it only extended a few feet, but it was enough. He met Opher’s eyes.
“Let’s go.”
Leaves crackled under the younger druid’s feet, but he clenched his jaw and regained his grip on the magic keeping him silent. He nodded once, but it was a slow, unsteady motion, and he seemed unaware of the de
ath grip he had on his sickle.
The blood trail continued for several yards before fading beyond Anteus’s ability to sense. He tried to rely on more conventional senses, but the night foiled him. The smell of tree sap hung heavy in the air, masking any scent. Insects chirped, and somewhere in the night, a frog’s song rumbled through the forest. Even his sense of the plants felt muted as if the fog was a blanket covering a sleeping world.
They looked for another half hour, but they found no sign of the beast. Finally, Opher threw up his arms.
“What are we going to do, Anteus?” he asked, almost in tears. “I don’t want to be the druid who caused a war with the unicorns.” In the quiet of the night, Opher’s voice sounded like a thunderclap.
Anteus shushed him and listened to the wind, searching for any sign of the werewolf. The forest was quiet in a way living woods rarely were. Even the insects had gone silent. In a cold panic, he directed the trees to form a wall upwind of them, the direction from which an animal would strike. Oak and ash bent down and stabbed their branches into the ground just before the werewolf leaped through the air.
The huge beast crashed through the braches, leaving a shower of splinters in its wake, but they trees slowed it just enough.
Anteus threw himself to one side, and the werewolf flew over the top of him. The wind of its passage carried the scent of rotting flesh, and the beast’s razor-sharp claws tore a rent in his cloak.
Opher screamed, but Anteus ignored him and rolled to his feet, meeting the creature’s eyes.
If death had tooth and claws, it would’ve looked like that.
The creature stood nine feet tall. Blood dripped from a muzzle filled with teeth sharp enough to bite through steel. Its arms were a solid mass of muscle that rippled under the thick coat of blood-matted fur. The moonlight painted the creature’s fur black, and its feet vanished into the red carpet of fog.
It tensed and prepared to attack again, but Anteus threw out his hand and the nearby branches lashed at the werewolf, wrapping themselves around it. For any ordinary creature, that would be enough, but a werewolf was ten times stronger than a man so Anteus had to concentrate on his enchantment to keep the werewolf from tearing itself free.