Speed seemed to be its only concern. It paid no attention to the branches that whipped and tore at Kellen’s flesh and clothing, lacerating him as if he were running a gantlet of riding-crops wielded by sadistic riders. He buried his face in the unicorn’s neck, low against its shoulder, to protect his eyes, and was very glad he had—brambles plucked at his arms and legs, ripped his clothing, tore at his hair, and once, for one terrifying moment, the hood of his cloak caught on something, threatening to strangle him or drag him from the unicorn’s back. He clung to its neck with all his strength as the unicorn strained, until at last the cheap cloth of the Felon’s Cloak gave, tearing free to be left behind.
And still it ran, tireless, faster than the fastest horse Kellen could imagine. He knew from the burning along every exposed part of him, the outsides of arms and legs, and to a lesser extent his shoulders and back, that he was bleeding from a thousand scrapes and scratches all along his arms and legs—if he had not shed enough blood to seal the pact between them before, he was certainly shedding it now.
His chest was bruised, he was battered from neck to toes by collisions with branches, and he was having trouble breathing as his arms and chest muscles began to ache from the sheer effort of holding on. Battered and breathless with sheer speed, Kellen wondered if he’d specified anything in his spell about reaching the boundaries of City lands alive—this almost seemed worse than anything the Outlaw Hunt could do to him.
When the unicorn seemed to have settled into a straightforward bounding motion—and Kellen hadn’t been hit by anything for a while—he decided to risk a glimpse at his surroundings. Raising his head cautiously, he looked around.
They were out in the open, and up ahead, Kellen could see the flicker of moonlight on water. There was a stream ahead, its flat surface glistening in the moonlight, a stretch of water perhaps a hundred yards wide. He loosened his stranglehold on the unicorn’s neck, assuming he was going to dismount and wade across.
“Don’t do that,” the unicorn said briefly.
It didn’t slow down.
Kellen watched in horror as the unicorn approached the river at top speed and launched itself from the bank with an enormous leap. It hit the water with a splash that drenched both of them, but the river was only a few feet deep and it forged quickly across through the chest-high water while Kellen clung on for dear life. It lunged up the other bank and was running again before Kellen had even managed to catch his breath from the icy shock of his dousing.
Fortunately, that was the widest of the streams they had to cross that night, because, as Kellen quickly discovered, the unicorn did not mean to stop for anything. It jumped ditches and logs and rivulets; what it could not jump it climbed. What it could neither jump nor climb it went through, leaving Kellen to cling to its back like a tick, and fend for himself as best he could. He was chilled to the bone, with every scratch tracing a separate line of fire along his skin, and every bruise aching with every jolt.
They soon found themselves back among trees again. Kellen had long since buried his face against the unicorn’s neck once more, risking only occasional quick glimpses of his surroundings. Even so, he got the impression that the ground was rising, and that their path was becoming even more difficult. Once or twice the unicorn actually had to slow down, as if it had to pick its way carefully, and a couple of times it came to a complete stop before launching itself vigorously into space. At those times, Kellen was just as glad he couldn’t see where they were going. He certainly wasn’t eager to look down at any point.
He could tell that it was getting colder, though, even if his stream-soaked clothes had long since been air-dried to no more than a faint clamminess by the speed of their flight and the heat of the unicorn’s body. There was a sharp different smell in the air; the scent of pine trees.
Nothing had hit him for the past chime or so, so he raised his head cautiously again and looked around. It seemed they had been fleeing forever.
Once again, as his arms complained that he had been holding on for far too long, he noted that they seemed to be moving through a more open area, one where it might be safe to risk a look around. Cautiously—very cautiously—he raised his head again.
By now Kellen had lost all real sense of time, but he knew they’d been going for a long time—bells, and not just a few chimes. Every muscle he possessed cried out with cold and stiffness as it flexed; he was utterly spent, but if he was exhausted from nothing more than clinging to the unicorn’s back all night, how much more weary must the magical creature itself be? It had never slowed its hectic pace for more than a tenth-chime; even now it moved forward as fast as a galloping horse, its footfalls eerily muffled by the bed of fallen pine needles. The trees on either side were little more than a dark blur as they passed.
The forest through which they now rode was mostly evergreen, with little in the way of treacherous underbrush to attack Kellen. He sat up as far as he could while still holding tightly on to the unicorn’s neck and realized that when he looked back through a gap in the trees he could see down into the valley behind. He could see for leagues.
Surely they’d reached the edge of the City lands by now?
He looked up, into the sky overhead, and could no longer see the moon, only the bright unfamiliar stars of the darkest part of the night. He looked ahead, and when he could not see the moon through the trees, Kellen realized it must be low in the western sky. It was setting. The night must be nearly over. In a bell—less—dawn would come.
And with dawn, the Outlaw Hunt would be released.
The horror of the thought made him flinch. He would certainly have lost his grip on the unicorn’s neck then except for the fact that by now his clenched hands seemed frozen in place.
A low-hanging branch brushed his cheek, and Kellen quickly ducked his head again.
AFTER that, if possible, the terrain over which they rode got even rougher. They seemed to spend as much time going down as up, over territory that would have made a mountain goat think twice. Half the time, Kellen was hanging over the unicorn’s shoulder, the other half, trying to keep from sliding off the unicorn’s rump. He’d have offered to walk, but there was no way he, a City-bred boy whose only experience in climbing was in climbing stairs and the occasional wall or tree, could have kept up with the unicorn. Their path led them down into deep ravines, into which the unicorn slid as much as galloped, and up the other side, with Kellen dangling from its neck, his whole weight hanging from his aching arms. He tried to wrap his legs around the unicorn’s narrow torso, but the slick fur didn’t give him much to grip on to.
The unicorn pushed its way through thickets that reopened the crusted scratches on his arms and legs and gouged new ones, and once, leaping some obstacle Kellen couldn’t see in the dark, it landed badly, slipping and falling and rolling over and over down a slope covered with the rotting remains of last year’s leaves, Kellen tangled up with it and desperately trying to avoid its razor-sharp horn and thrashing hooves.
He thought he’d been in pain before; he realized in that moment that he’d had no idea of how much pain a single person could be in. It felt as if every bone in his body was being systematically broken; he yelped with every impact until the moment when a boulder hit him square in the stomach. He finally rolled free and landed against a rock—hard—gasping in protest as the breath was knocked out of him.
He sat up, blinking and shaking his head, trying to see where they were. He was liberally smeared with mud and last year’s rotting leaves; they had a sour smell, like the dregs of cold tea left too long. This was much worse than falling out of the tree back in the garden.
“Come on. Get up,” the unicorn said remorselessly. It was standing a few feet away. Kellen could see it, faintly glowing in the darkness exactly as if it were the ghost of a unicorn, but he could see nothing else. If it had been injured at all in the fall, it certainly didn’t sound like it.
Kellen shook his head. Stars danced in his vision, and pain lanced through his h
ead and ribs when he moved. In that moment he hated the unicorn, hated magic, hated everyone and everything that had brought him to this place—bruised, aching, and essentially alone in the freezing dark. He didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing here, he didn’t know how any of this would end—he was cut off from both the future and the past, and he had no way to predict what might happen next.
“Don’t tell me you can’t,” the unicorn said nastily. “If you’re still alive, you can.”
With a snarl, Kellen used the rock to push himself to his feet. He staggered through the slippery stinking mush of last autumn’s leaves toward the unicorn, certain that when he reached it he would use the last of his strength to throttle the life out of the maddening creature. But when he reached it, he was too tired—
So there was nothing to do but drag himself onto its back once more, gasping hollowly with the dull, bone-deep ache of hot new bruises that screamed in agony when he moved and throbbed with pain when he didn’t. His muscles shook as he forced his arms around the unicorn’s neck once more.
And they were off again.
At that point, in the midst of the pain and the dark and cold, Kellen felt tears prickle at the back of his eyes—not because of the fall, or the pain, but because he knew that somehow he was going to get through all this. Thanks to the unicorn, he was going to live to see the border and beyond. And then he’d be out of City lands, in a whole new world, and—
And then what?
He had no idea. Where would he go? What would he do?
This was all just too much. He couldn’t do this, whatever it was. He didn’t know what he’d meant to do when he’d faced down his father and the High Council, but it hadn’t been this.
The unicorn, paying about as much attention to Kellen’s internal turmoil as Lycaelon ever had, kept running.
Kellen’s world narrowed to one of utter physical misery, and his mind centered on one thought only: Don’t fall off.
Don’t fall off, because he knew he couldn’t find the strength to mount the unicorn one more time.
Don’t fall off, because falling off the unicorn again would hurt more than he could bear.
Don’t fall off, because the Outlaw Hunt was somewhere back behind him, and if he fell off, he’d never get to the border.
Everything hurt. And he very much feared that what didn’t hurt, didn’t work anymore. He closed his eyes and clung on, grinding his teeth with every jolt and leap. Then, finally, there were no jolts and leaps …
After a very long time, Kellen opened his eyes, feeling dull and stupid with pain, and realized two things.
The unicorn had stopped moving.
And the sky was light.
He sat up with a startled gasp, struggling as if he were trying to wake up from a long nightmare, and instantly fell off the unicorn’s back.
“Don’t get comfortable,” the unicorn said tauntingly, looking down at him. “This is just a very brief stop to rest, nothing more. We’ve still got a long way to go to get out of the lands claimed by your City.”
“It isn’t my City anymore,” Kellen muttered under his breath, getting stiffly to his knees. He blinked and looked around, rubbing his eyes.
It was just dawn. They were at the edge of a stream, and the sound of running water made Kellen’s throat convulse with thirst. He knelt over the flow on hands and knees and scooped up palmfuls of the icy water, drinking thirstily before remembering he had a water-bottle with him. Moving a little less stiffly now, he shrugged the backpack off his back—somehow it had managed to survive the night’s ride—and pulled out its contents, the leather water-bottle and a loaf of bread. He’d fallen on the bread several times that night, but it was still in pretty good shape, considering. He emptied the water-bottle into the stream—for the water was stale and musty by now, and there was no reason to drink it when there was fresh at hand—and then refilled the bottle and used it to drink from. The water still tasted a bit of boiled leather, but it was faster than using his hands. Downstream, the unicorn was quenching its thirst as well.
He drank and drank until he couldn’t hold any more water, then sat back on his heels to look around.
There was no sign of the sun; from the treetops upward, the sky was a uniform shade of pale grey and mist shrouded the tops of the trees and sent little wisps down into the gaps between them. The air was damp and chill, with fog scent in it, and this little stream ran down a long, rocky slope from some point above them. The trees were a great deal taller than the ones in the gardens of the City, they seemed to be mostly conifers, and they had a wilder, gnarled look to them, as if they often had to contend with storm winds.
They were up in the hills—to Kellen, an unimaginable distance from Armethalieh. Everything around them was mist-shrouded, and the nearby pine boughs were thick with heavy dew, turning them green and silver. The boulders of the stream bed were scoured bare, but ones on the banks were heavily covered in moss, with tiny ferns growing between them. All around was the sound of dripping water, interrupted by the occasional clear birdcall.
Kellen stretched and yawned, getting to his feet, working more of the kinks out, and wincing as he discovered new bruises. Now that he wasn’t acquiring new lacerations with every passing moment, and now that his arms weren’t being jerked from their sockets, he realized that he wasn’t—quite—as badly hurt as he’d thought. Though he certainly hurt. And with every movement, he wanted nothing more than to crawl first into a hot bath, and then into a bed. His good clothes and thin leather boots—just fine for a morning of school in Armethalieh—were ruined beyond repair. The skin beneath the tattered clothing was covered with scratches and bruises, and the low soft boots were torn completely through in a couple of places. He pulled off the day-pack, then pulled off his overtunic—there wasn’t much left of it after the night’s ride and the roll down the hillside—and after soaking it in the stream, used the makeshift washcloth to clean away some of the caked dirt and blood from his arms and legs. As he did, he caught sight of the deep livid hand-shaped bruises on his arms where the stone golems had gripped him, and felt a faint weary spark of anger. It seemed a lifetime ago, but the bruises were black and fresh. Rinsing the tattered cloth clean one last time, he washed his face, wincing when he encountered a deep gouge over one eye. He hadn’t known that was there! He ran his hands through his hair, dislodging a small shower of leaves and twigs, and felt his ribs experimentally. Nothing grated, and he only aroused the dull pain of bruises, not the sharp one of a broken bone. Things could be worse. They could, most certainly, be better, but they could also be worse.
His stomach rumbled, reminding him he’d missed the last several meals, and he returned to the day-pack. He was a little surprised to find that the bread, though coarse and a little stale by now, was perfectly edible, but then he realized there was actually no reason for it to be otherwise. Most of those involved in his Banishing must have really believed they were preparing him to spend his life as a hunted Outlaw. The Council would certainly have done everything in its power to maintain the fiction of Kellen’s possible survival, after all, just as it pretended that every Banishing was merely that—and not murder in disguise.
Though Kellen could cheerfully have eaten twice as much as was there, he carefully divided the loaf in half. For the first time, he thought—really thought—about the unicorn. It had gone through just as much as he had tonight, and more: it had been the one doing the running, and with him on its back, as well.
And it hadn’t had to do it, any of it. The unicorn hadn’t been Banished from Armethalieh, after all. It had come to save Kellen’s life of its own free will, and what had it gotten so far for its trouble? A litany of complaint.
Despite his fear and weariness, Kellen felt his ears burn with shame. He’d thought he was so much better than everyone in Armethalieh, and the moment things got rough, what did he turn into? A spoiled City brat!
Only you aren’t a citizen of Armethalieh now, spoiled or otherwise.
&
nbsp; “There’s food,” he said, holding out half the loaf to the unicorn. “And, look, I …”
His voice died in his throat as he turned and took a really good look at his companion for the first time.
If possible, the magical creature looked even more improbable in the daylight than it had by the light of the moon—at one and the same time, ethereal as the mist and as solid and present as the trees. He stared at it in fascination, both self-pity and good resolutions momentarily forgotten, for in all of Armethalieh, known for its magick, he had never seen anything quite so—well—magickal.
Its downy coat was fluffed out against the morning chill, and dew sparkled on its silver-white fur, making it shimmer like the most expensive silk velvet. Its head was as long, proportionately, as a horse’s, and the ears were much the same shape as a horse’s, but there was more space for intelligence behind the wide speaking eyes, the muzzle smaller and more delicate in comparison. And there all resemblance to a horse ended.
A unicorn. I’m looking at a REAL UNICORN.
It wasn’t that Kellen had ever been told that unicorns didn’t exist, or anything like that, because they certainly existed in wondertales and were discussed in the history of the City and in his magickal texts. As a Student at the Mage College, he’d studied them, just as he’d studied other creatures of magick and the inferior Other Races that the Light had seen fit to create in his Natural History courses.
But he now suspected that the Natural Histories he’d studied had been written by people who’d never seen one, since they compared unicorns to horses, deer, lions, and even goats! Now that he’d actually seen one, Kellen didn’t think you could really compare a unicorn to anything besides another unicorn.
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