Black Unicorn

by Tanith Lee

  "We salute the baked fish!"

  There was no fish ever to be had at the fortress, as it was more than a hundred miles from the sea. Instead the cook made a fish of salty pastry and painted it green with limes. It was borne in by a lame female steward of ninety years. The fish was always her task, and Tanaquil always expected the old lady would drop the plate, but somehow she never did.

  Served, Tanaquil glowered at the doughy greenish lump before her, while around her the maids and the retainers chattered, and the captain and his second passed two of the wine flagons back and forth between them.

  "A magnificent meal, Ma'am," Tanaquil heard the captain murmur to Jaive.

  Tanaquil looked sidelong at her mother's face. Jaive wore the sublime expression most common to her. Her mind was always on higher things, the mountaintops of magic. Nothing could compare with those heights, but she conducted the silly dinner with a vague air of generously pleasing everyone.

  The doors groaned.

  "We salute the fruit ice!"

  "The fruit ice!"

  The ice was orange, and each scoop had an orange flower perched on it. The flowers neither changed into lizards nor flew away. Where her mother was present, the respectful spells stayed under restraint.

  Tanaquil ate her ice. The cold of it entered her stomach like six cold words: Those bones are nothing to me. And then eleven more: Nothing has happened. Nothing has altered. I shall never be free.

  The silver spoons lay in the empty ice dishes. Jaive spoke. "And now I will make an offering."

  The retainers, maids, and soldiers became ponderously quiet, and the stewards straightened as they leant on their sticks.

  Although not religious, at her dinners Jaive the sorceress always performed some worshipful act.

  She left the table and walked into the space before the darkened window. She poured a stream of wine on the ground and cast some powder. The wine and powder mingled, fizzed, and bloomed up like a crimson rose. "We thank you for your gifts, and ask that you will share our feast, all benign powers. Let us in our lives humbly remember the perfect world, that is not this one."

  The rose evaporated with a sweet perfume. Dazzling wisps trailed off into the ceiling.

  The doors groaned.

  "We salute the meat!"

  "The meat!"

  In marched two of the sweeper boys in clean white clothes, playing pipes and perhaps a tune. Behind them stepped Pillow and Sausage, strewing strips of golden paper. After the scullery girls stalked the cook, amazing in a cloth-of-gold apron, and holding in one hand a golden basting spoon, in the other an ivory flyswatter.

  Following the cook came three black-and-fawn goats, washed and combed, led by the third white-clad sweeper, and drawing a small chariot on which rested the salver of the meat.

  Tanaquil stifled a sigh.

  The group of big roasts had been built into a towered fortress, with battlements of fried bread, roofs of crackling, windows of glazed red and yellow vegetables, embedded in dunes of mince.

  There was greedy applause.

  I might as well take the skeleton down, Tanaquil thought. Put all those gleaming sticks, that rainbow skull, into a chest. A unicorn. I ought to give it to HER.

  Slices of meat were being served her by a steward of eighty-three. Another, of eighty-six, came up with a spouted golden vessel of gravy. Tanaquil thanked them. She thought: I shall be here in this place until I'm eighty, as well. Or ninety.

  From somewhere, high up in her cranium, or higher, in the fort of Jaive, came a violent crash. Like a door thrust off its hinges.

  A few faces were raised from forkfuls of roast dinner. Prune said, "There goes another of Madam's spells."

  The captain said daringly to Jaive, "Better than the cannon, Madam." And Jaive smiled.

  No more attention was given to the crash than this.

  Tanaquil thought: Perhaps an enemy has approached and is bombarding us! Some hopes.

  But there was still a feeling in her head, tingling and disturbing. It was like a white bright thought prancing down the levels of her brain, tossing its neck, with hoofs that slithered and struck sparks, landed and clicked forward like knives over a shield.

  "Drink up your wine, Tanaquil," said her mother, "It will be good for your headache."

  Tanaquil realized she had put her fingers to her forehead. "Mother, something's running down the stairs."

  "Really? Just some little drip of magic."

  "No, Mother, I think—"

  Some obstacle tore open, some barricade of distance or sound. The thing in Tanaquil's mind seemed to leap out of it, and, loud as a trumpet from beyond the hall doors, came a brazen squeal of machinery run amok.

  Prune, Yeefa, and Pillow screamed. The nurse, the old stewardess, and the goats of the meat chariot gave quavering bleats. The cook turned to face the doors, her spoon and swat at the ready. The captain and his second were on their feet, wavering slightly, but with drawn swords.

  "Fear nothing, Madam."

  Jaive was bland. "It will be a demon," she said. "I shall deal with it firmly."

  Then the doors shuddered as if they had been rammed. They burst open.

  What galloped through was a whirlwind of lights. It seemed to have no substance, only motion and prismatic flame. Colors danced off from it, blindingly. There were no chimes now. But there was the unmistakable whirr of wheels, the sharp striking of hoofs. More fearsome than the soldiers' swords, a savage horn slashed the air in pieces.

  The skeleton of the unicorn. After all, it had begun to move. It had erupted into movement with a kind of luminous rage. It had snapped chains, knocked away doors, vaulted stairways.

  It rushed along the hall, and Prune, Yeefa, Bird, Pillow, and Sausage jumped from its path squeaking. The boys yelled, the retainers doddered, the cook fell over in a bundle, the soldiers bellowed, jabbed and—missed.

  Tanaquil had an impression of long streaks of lightning. In their center were tiny bronze whirlings. She saw a shake of the rainbow skull, and the soldiers flung themselves behind the wine flagons.

  Jaive had got up from her chair. She called out some incomprehensible mantra and lifted her arms like sequined wings. Rings of power rolled out of her, but the unicorn was too swift. Nothing could catch it, stop it, slow it down. It leapt upon the table—plates and goblets were hurled away. The gravy in the meat dishes splattered up. Prune, Yeefa, Bird, Pillow, and Sausage rushed howling up the hall; the boys, the nurse and one or two others crawled under the tablecloth. The meat steward threw his stick, which smote the captain on the nose.

  "Spirit of air or water, clockwork of fire or earth, take heed of the universal commandment!" declaimed Jaive.

  The unicorn of bone splashed through her plate, and there, on the sequins of the sorceress, and in her scarlet hair, glowed gravy drops like sneers.

  "It's me that it wants," said Tanaquil. She braced herself for the pain of the perfect horn breaking her heart. There was no margin for fright; she was not afraid.

  But the racing framework of the unicorn dived by her. She dropped back into her seat astounded.

  "Stop, I say!" shouted Jaive. Her face was flushing. She had had to come down from the heights, and she was angry.

  Tanaquil watched her mother lose control in a marvelous fascination. Had she ever been able to make this happen?

  The unicorn of bone pelted round the hall. It ran right to left, somehow sprang over itself and ran left to right, like the mechanism of a clock gone mad.

  The goats kicked and butted and upset the meat salver. Everyone huddled at the core of the wild circlings. The captain, his purple sash to his bleeding nose, made rushes without leaving the table. "May the God help us," prayed the nurse complainingly from below.

  Jaive clenched her ringed fists. Her body seemed to grow taller and to expand like a storm cloud.

  "I call upon the force of iron to bind, of heat to consume—"

  Tanaquil saw, across the turmoil of the hall, the peeve sitting in the open
doorway. Its fur was all on end, its tail like a chimney brush. Like Jaive, it had made itself twice its proper size.

  Tanaquil laughed.

  There was a ripping noise. One of the silk curtains had caught the wild horn. The silk tore for several feet and fell down. The unicorn of bone was swathed in rosy silk.

  "Do as I tell you!" screeched Jaive. "Obey me!"

  And she flung some gout, some boulder of her magic, across the hall, at the unpredictable flying bone and silken thing that was chaos.

  The air quaked.

  "Oh the God," said the cook on the floor, "she's done something now."

  Then everyone was silent. Probably they did not even breathe. The big, echoing draughty hall was abruptly choked, filled, as if stopped time had been stacked there. No one could move. Tanaquil thought she felt her heartbeat, but miles away beneath her feet. She turned her head, and it went with difficulty, as if she were submerged in thick glue.

  And how gluey dark it was. The torches and the fires had changed to a horrible black-red.

  Across the length of the room strewn with quivering girls, broken crockery, gravy, and goats, Tanaquil saw the heap of torn curtain brought down where the flying thing had been. Jaive's boulder had hit it. Now the curtain had no shape. No smart of hoofs, scud of wheels, no cosmic gleam and glitter.

  "Mother, what have you done?"

  But Tanaquil's voice did not leave her mouth, because the glue was also in her throat.

  As for Jaive, she had shrunk back, not to her natural dominant size, but somehow smaller. Her hair, in the gloom, was without any color.

  And then a spear of pure light lanced across the hall.

  Tanaquil gasped. It was as if strings were fastened in her heart, and now someone pulled on them.

  The heap of torn silk bubbled; it erected itself like a tent, then suddenly slid over. Something rose up, and the silk ran off from it.

  Jaive's hall was now filled by the light of a snow moon.

  And in the light, which was of its own making, the radiance of its seashell horn, Tanaquil beheld the unicorn.

  The unicorn.

  It was no longer only a beast of bone. It had grown flesh and form. It was black as night, black as every night of the world together, and it shone as the night shines with a comet. On this burning blackness, the mane and the flaunting tail of it were like an acid, golden-silver fire off the sea, and it was bearded in this sea-fire-acid, and spikes of it were on the slender fetlocks. Its eyes were red as metal in a forge. It was not simply beauty and strength, it was terror. It rose up and up to a height that was more, it seemed, than the room could hold, and its black shadow curved over it, far less black than itself.

  Jaive said, quite steadily, "I greet you. But by the powers I can summon, be careful of me."

  And the unicorn snorted, and a fiery gas came out of its nostrils. It scraped the floor with its forehoof, and there was a rocking in the hall, like a mild, threatening earth tremor.

  And then the unicorn leapt up into the air. It was like an arc of wind, and passed with a sound of far-off roaring, bells, thunder.

  Where it came down, beyond the dinner guests, the mess, and the table, it struck the round sorcerous window with the horn. The window gave like a plate of ice. Fragments sheered off to hit the sky and the cold of the night and the snow blew in. But the unicorn blew out. It soared into the pit of empty darkness and was gone.

  Then Tanaquil knew what tugged on her. She knew because it pulled her up and forward in a ridiculous scramble. Before she understood what she did, before anyone could think to grip her, she had bolted over the hall, into the hole of the window, and jumped down onto the snow-crusted sand. She felt the freezing through her silk shoes as she ran, and dimly wished she had not worn them. But really she did not grasp what had happened. The sky was colossal, and the land too. And the unicorn raced. And faintly at her heels she heard the fur barrel of the peeve thump down after her, and the skitter of its paws pursuing her, as she chased the unicorn into the desert waste.

  4

  She was very cold.

  Perhaps she should get up and light the fire.

  Tanaquil opened her eyes. She was already on her feet, and her room had grown much too large. It had no furniture. There was a carpet of white snow, walls and high ceiling of pale black moonlit night.

  A sheet of horror fell down and enveloped her.

  She knew what had happened, what she had done. Of course, she had been enchanted or possessed—her meddling with the bones had seen to that. In thrall to the unicorn she had chased after it, in a mad trance. Now, coming to, she found herself on the face of the desert, and, turning slowly round, saw nothing anywhere that was familiar, but only the snow and the sand and the night, which were everywhere the same. Her mother's fortress was not in view. The rock hills were out of sight.

  Something gleamed in the moonlight on the snow, coming down from a rise. It was a track created by the narrow hoofmarks of the unicorn. Each had filled with ice and curious greenness. Each shone like a pock of stained glass from Jaive's shattered window. The other way the track led on across the snow into the distance. She must not follow this track. She must retrace the steps the way they had come. Her own footfalls had left no imprint.

  Tanaquil walked quickly along the glassy trail. She went up the rise. This must have taken a quarter of an hour. At the top she looked over and saw the snow and sand stretching to the edge of vision, nothing on it, no clue. And the weird trail of the unicorn had vanished. Some night wind had blown over and erased it.

  Had she really come all this way? She could not remember it. It was as if she had been asleep, yet in the midst of an exultant dream, like those she had had before of running across the snow.

  Well, there were no doubts now. She had emerged from the ensorcellment and would freeze to death in a matter of hours.

  "No," said Tanaquil aloud. There would be rescue. Jaive would send the soldiers after her. They would catch up to her soon, she had only to wait.

  Miles off, a jackal gave a wail at the moon.

  Tanaquil listened. Sound carried vast distances. Yet she could hear nothing of any soldiers. But then, they would have to come from the fort, they would be erratic and fuddled . . . could they find her? Probably Jaive would put the magic mirror into service. But again, there were no landmarks here. Even if Jaive gained a glimpse of her daughter, could she be sure where she was exactly?

  Tanaquil was now too cold to shudder. Her feet and hands were numb. She jumped up and down and beat her palms together.

  As she was doing this, she saw something bounding toward her.

  Was it a starving dog or antisocial jackal?

  Dressed for the dinner, she did not even have her knife. She must use her fists, then.

  "Hey!" shrilled the dog or jackal. It was neither.

  "Peeve—"

  "Rock," said the peeve, flinging itself against her legs, "big rock with hole."

  "Do you mean the hills?"

  "Rock," said the peeve. It took a mouthful of her dress and pulled on her. Tanaquil gave up and ran with it. They hurried over the snow, sometimes slipping or falling. The night had become one large ache of cold and blundering.

  The rock seemed to appear from nowhere, looming up out of the dunes. Tanaquil had never seen it before. It was the size of a room and had a low doorway, a cave that pierced into it. Tanaquil and the peeve crowded in. It was a shelter, but felt no warmer than the open ground outside. In a shaft of the westering moonlight, Tanaquil began to see tufts and skeins of thorny plants growing inside the rock. The forlorn idea came that, if she had had her tinderbox, she could have made a fire.

  The peeve would survive in the desert, it was a desert animal. Unless it had forgotten how, from living at the fortress.

  When she sat down facing the cave entrance, the peeve got into her lap. They pressed close for warmth.

  "If my mother's soldiers don't find me . . ." said Tanaquil. She felt exhausted. She would drop asleep
, and might not wake up again. She talked on determinedly. "But they will. What a fool I was."

  "Gravy," said the peeve, apparently for no reason. It slept.

  "How did you know about the bones?" asked Tanaquil. "The unicorn must have ensorcelled you, too. Must have drawn you there to dig them out. And I repaired it. And Jaive's magic bolt brought it back to life. And . . ."

  If I don't freeze, and live till morning, thought Tanaquil, I shall be fried alive by the sun.

  No, they'll find me in the morning, or I'll find my way to the fort.

  In the cave entrance the moonlit ice shimmered.

  A bright shadow came picking over it.

  Tanaquil clutched the sleeping peeve. She watched, rigid, as the unicorn came down across the white dunes, over the silence, to the mouth of the cave. There it lowered its fearful head, and its eyes like coals flamed in at her .

  Perhaps it will kill me. Then I won't have to wait to freeze or burn.

  Tanaquil's teeth chattered.

  The unicorn raised its head. Now she could only see its body, the hard slim greyhound curve of its belly and the long and slender legs. It pawed the stone floor just inside the cave. A shower of silver sparks littered through the air, and came in at the entry. They clustered on one of the dry thorny bushes growing in the floor. For a moment the bush seemed full of silver insects. And then curls of smoke were creeping from it. The bush was alight.

  "Oh!" Tanaquil rolled the peeve from her lap. On her knees in the low cave she crawled about, breaking off the twigs of the bushes to feed the blaze.

  Like something taking flight, the unicorn lifted away. It vanished, and only the moon shone on the snow, and the hot fire on the floor of the cave.

  Tanaquil dozed through the night by the miraculous fire, attentive so it should not go out. She fed in the sticks sparingly, and the peeve lay luxuriously on a fold of her dress, stomach exposed to the warmth.