The Outstretched Shadow

by Mercedes Lackey

  And he suspected that no one in the City had seen one for a very long time.

  “No,” the unicorn said in answer to his offer, nostrils flaring. “But I thank you for the thought. You should eat it all. You’ll need your strength.”

  Kellen did not need to be told twice. He sat by the stream and wolfed down the rest of the coarse loaf quickly, along with a great deal of stream water, then filled and stoppered the water-bottle for later use, putting it carefully into the knapsack. He’d once heard someone say that hunger made everything taste good, but to tell the truth, he was so busy cramming the bread into his stomach that he didn’t taste it at all.

  He decided to use the damp remains of his overtunic to make a sort of handhold or collar, so he wouldn’t need to cling so tightly to the unicorn’s throat. Provided, of course, that the unicorn didn’t object …

  “Now what, unicorn?” Kellen asked, getting to his feet again and stretching.

  “Now, Kellen, we go on,” the unicorn answered, picking its way carefully among the moss-covered boulders, so that Kellen could mount once more. “And—since we are bound together in this, you might as well call me by my name. That would be—Shalkan.”

  NOW that there was light, Kellen could at least see when to duck, and Shalkan was not going nearly as fast as he had been while it was dark. Kellen’s makeshift handhold worked fairly well; with the rags of his over-tunic looped around the unicorn’s neck, he could hold on to the knotted ends and sit almost upright, instead of lying along Shalkan’s back.

  “Are you sure we’re still in City lands?” Kellen asked tentatively. All he could see in any direction was trees: climbing up the rocky slopes, trailing down them, their tops vanishing into the dawn mist—trees so enormous they’d stifled most of the undergrowth beneath their canopy.

  “I’m sure,” Shalkan said. “And next you’re going to ask me how the Outlaw Hunt can possibly find us all this long way from the City.”

  “No I’m not,” Kellen protested, stung—although that had been the question on the tip of his tongue. “It’s enchanted. It has magick. Like bloodhounds, I suppose; the Mages would give it some kind of scent and turn it loose.”

  “But you have no idea of what it actually is. Have you ever seen an Outlaw Hunt?” Shalkan asked.

  “I … no,” Kellen admitted sheepishly. He wasn’t sure anyone had. He doubted anyone had been Banished from the City in his lifetime. Or—at least, not that he’d heard. There was the matter of the sister he didn’t remember … “Have you?” he said boldly.

  “Let us say I have a certain experience with the Hunt, just as you are about to, unless we are very lucky.” Shalkan shook his head, and the sharp tip of his horn seemed to give off a little more light. “So, allow me to enlighten you. The Hunt is composed of Hounds—stone statues in the shape of hounds, animated by the Mages just as they animate statues of humans to do their bidding.”

  “Stone golems,” Kellen said aloud. He thought of the stone guardians in front of House Tavadon, and shivered.

  “Exactly so.” Shalkan continued, his voice sounding dispassionate and pitiless. “The Hounds are tireless, relentless, and voiceless. Give them the scent, and they pursue until they catch their prey—or until they reach the borders of the lands claimed by the City. And when—if—they catch you, they will tear you to ribbons.” Shalkan cocked his head to look back over his shoulder at his rider. “And me, of course,” he added, matter-of-factly. “I’m helping you, after all. They’ll kill anything that stands between them and their prey. Your City Mages have gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that not only do those who have been Banished not survive the experience, but to discourage anyone outside of the City from even considering helping them.”

  “But of course, it’s all out of sight of the Mages who sent them, so their hands and consciences are clean,” Kellen added bitterly. He thought about a pack of the same Hounds that guarded the front of House Tavadon running silently along his trail, and winced inwardly. Somehow, knowing exactly what was after him made it worse. He wondered if somehow he’d always known he was going to end up this way, and that was why he’d particularly hated the mastiffs, then dismissed the thought with a shrug. It couldn’t matter now.

  But he couldn’t help wondering why, if Shalkan knew what was coming, the unicorn was trying to get him to safety … Did Shalkan owe a debt to the Wild Magic? Or was this just another instance of some poor innocent bystander being dragged into his problems?

  Like Perulan …

  Shalkan flicked an ear back in his direction again and suddenly seemed to quiver all over. “The Hounds have been released,” he said abruptly. “They’re behind us somewhere, running free. I can feel them. The question is, which of us will reach the border first?”

  A few moments later, the unicorn had resumed his headlong bounding gait to the west.

  Chapter Nine

  Facing the Outlaw Hunt

  BELLEN WAS ALMOST used to the way that Shalkan bounded through the forest by now; he was beginning to get the rhythm of it and move with it. They’d left the deep forest behind a few hours before and were now in an area that was—well—mountainous, if the descriptions in the proscribed wondertales he’d seen in the Great Library were anything to go by, with jutting granite outcroppings, sheer drop-offs, and pocket canyons. The mist had either lifted, or they had passed out of the region where it lingered, and the sun shone down on them with a cheer that was all out-of-keeping with the grimness of their situation. Here the trees grew in thickets, easy to avoid, and they rode through bright cloudless daylight. In full sunlight Shalkan was even more dazzling than he had been by moonlight and morning mist: his thick white fur had the same crystalline dazzle as the winter’s first fall of snow, and his spiral horn had the prismatic fire of polished crystal. Yet Shalkan was undeniably as much a palpable living creature as Kellen was: real and earthly (though obviously magical), and not an illusion that might vanish at any moment. And not much like that little silver-plated mascot Kellen still carried, except as to general shape. The heat of the day intensified the spicy scent of the unicorn’s fur, making Kellen’s stomach rumble and causing him to think longingly of bakeshops and plates of fried sweet cakes.

  More bells—as the City he had left reckoned time—passed as they fled, and as they continued to climb, Kellen was able to look back and see the hills spread out behind them; thousands of acres of land that seemed to be completely uninhabited—at least by humans.

  Yet Shalkan said it was all City lands, and undoubtedly the unicorn was right.

  Why did the City claim so much territory? The two of them must have covered hundreds of leagues in their escape, or at least it seemed that way. They were heading almost directly west, and they still weren’t out of reach of the Outlaw Hunt.

  “Why?” Kellen said aloud.

  “Why what?” Shalkan responded, dropping back to a trot. The unicorn was looking from side to side, as it had been since midmorning, as if it were searching for something specific. A landmark?

  “Why does the City claim so much land?” Kellen asked, repeating his thoughts aloud. “The farmlands, okay, I can see that—we need the farmlands for the crops, but this isn’t farmland—”

  “Because they’re greedy idiots,” the unicorn said bluntly.

  Kellen flinched. He knew he shouldn’t care. The City had condemned him to death, after all. He was an Outlaw. But at this time yesterday he’d been heading down to the docks, with no real idea any of this was going to happen. And somehow he could not help but feel obscurely guilty that his former home was so cordially disliked as to evoke that sort of response from the unicorn. Fine, it wasn’t Kellen’s fault, but he still felt guilty, tainted by association.

  Shalkan sighed. “Kellen, I’m sorry. You deserve a better answer, and I don’t have one. Ask me something else.”

  “How long until we reach the border?” Kellen asked.

  There was a long silence, and from it, Kellen could already read the an
swer that Shalkan didn’t want to give.

  “The Hounds will reach us first, won’t they?” he said quietly.

  Shalkan stopped and looked back at him. “They’re about an hour—four chimes—behind us. The border is … farther than that. We need to find a place to make a stand. That’s what I’ve been looking for. I’m sorry, Kellen, but it’s going to come to a fight after all.”

  Shalkan turned back to the trail and put on a burst of speed then that surprised even Kellen, who dropped his makeshift rein and went back to clinging tightly to the unicorn’s neck with both arms in order to hold on.

  At last the unicorn stopped again, so suddenly that Kellen’s whole body was flung forward against his neck.

  “Here.”

  Kellen raised his head and looked around, blinking at the brightness that confronted him.

  He was facing a sheer wall of white granite. It reflected the midday sun with a bright eye-hurting intensity. A gentle slope of gravel and granite chips led up to a shallow opening in the rock, as if two blocks of granite had been eased a few feet apart by some master hand. The trail they’d been following led on around the edge of the cliff, and the path Shalkan stood on was only a few feet wide. The ground dropped off into a steep, brush-filled gully on the far side of the path, and beyond, the ground sloped sharply away in a tangle of granite outcroppings and barren sloping hills, all bathed in harsh, cloudless spring sunlight.

  “We’re running out of time, and this is the best we’ve got. They can’t get behind us there, and we’ll have room to fight. But you’ll need a weapon.” The unicorn raised his head and sniffed the air, and added, “Quickly. We probably won’t hear them coming until it’s too late.”

  Kellen slid from Shalkan’s back, his hand automatically going to his belt. But his penknife was a tiny thing, suitable for sharpening quills and cutting paper, not to doing battle with monstrous stone dogs.

  He cast a frantic look around. At the end of the path was a conifer tree, its trunk gnarled and twisted by years of exposure to the elements in this hostile place. The branches should have been covered with green needles, but instead, they were bare and stark. Dead. Maybe dry enough to break off a piece, but not so brittle the piece would be useless. Kellen ran toward it.

  When he reached it, he saw that it had been struck by lightning, shearing away most of the trunk and burning the core to charcoal. One thick smooth branch, solid and heavy as iron, the bark long polished away by the wind, came away easily in his hands. He returned, panting, with his makeshift club.

  “Good,” Shalkan said brusquely. The unicorn turned and lunged up the slope. Kellen scrambled after him, slipping and sliding on the loose rock that covered the ground. The uncertain footing would be another advantage for them when the Hounds came for them.

  Once Kellen had armed himself, the two of them climbed to the cleft in the granite wall. It was shallow and narrow—only four feet deep, narrowing to a point at the back, and a bit over a yard wide at the opening. No room for a Hound to get around them and come at them from behind. Though the mountain air had a cool bite to it, the pale walls of the pocket canyon radiated heat, as warm as living flesh to the touch.

  Kellen clutched at his wooden club tightly, aware in the sudden stillness that he could hear a scrabbling sound, like rats in a rockfall, disturbing pebbles as they ran, only much louder.

  It was the sound of rock on rock. The Hounds.

  The next thing he saw was the bright flash of sun as it struck a polished surface, and then Kellen saw his first Hound, surging up over the edge of the gully.

  It charged up the gravel slope at a dead run, as unnervingly silent as Shalkan had warned. It looked exactly like the ones outside his front door, aside from being carved from a different color of granite, and that somehow added an element of horror to the whole situation, as if this were a strange waking nightmare. It made him feel as if he and Shalkan were being attacked by the City itself.

  The Hound was the shape and size of a regular mastiff, carved all out of mirror-polished red granite, lovingly detailed by its maker-Mage down to the studded collar about its neck. Its red, blank eyes, like featureless marbles, glared unseeing in their direction; its red tongue lolled between its red teeth; its red lips were drawn back in a red snarl; and it lunged up the treacherous slope with those polished granite eyes fixed unblinkingly on Kellen’s face.

  Behind it came more—a dozen, twenty, too many to count. All identical to the first save for the color of the granite from which they’d been carved: red, white, black, grey. All silent, save for the thud of their stone feet against the ground, the clatter of stone paws on more stone, the clicking of dislodged gravel rolling downslope, or the smack of their granite flanks against each other as they jostled for position. How many were there? Two dozen? More?

  Kellen had a moment for one pang of terror—when Shalkan had first described the Hunt, he’d thought there’d be only a few Hounds, six, perhaps, or eight—before the first one reached him. Then there was no more time for thought at all, as the Hounds surged up the graveled slope, the red one in the lead, fangs bared for his throat.

  He swung his club, aiming low at the first Hound’s brittle and vulnerable legs. Once, when he was a child, he’d seen a stone golem slip and break. He knew that even though they were enchanted, the Hound golems were still as fragile as the carved stone they really were, and for all its bulk, a Hound’s legs were comparatively slender in proportion to its size.

  His club connected with a dull impact of wood against stone. With a pang of savage delight, Kellen saw the Hound’s foreleg break off with a crack, and the three-legged Hound lost its balance and rolled backward down the slope, bowling over several of the Hounds behind it with dull tombstone thuds. They milled and snapped at each other just as if they were dogs of flesh, making a sound like boulders tumbling together.

  But a moment later, they seemed to recall their task, and surged in a body up the hill—and they just kept coming.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flicker of magick. One of the Hounds had reached Shalkan. The unicorn had reached out and touched it with his horn, and the Hound had stiffened, becoming a nonmagickal stone statue once more. It tumbled down, just like any other boulder, away from the canyon opening. Bits of it cracked off and went flying in all directions as it fell.

  A flash of memory told Kellen what had happened. A unicorn’s horn could purify anything it touched, and break all magick, Kellen remembered from his studies, and felt a sudden flash of hope. Because of that, at least they had a chance.

  But as fast as Shalkan was, the Hounds were faster. If one of them got its jaws around Shalkan’s throat, the unicorn would be dead.

  Shalkan’s hooves were all-but-useless here; only his horn was going to be at all effective.

  Another Hound leaped at Kellen. This time Kellen was too slow. He missed when he swung at it, and Shalkan had too many problems of his own to come to Kellen’s rescue. Kellen found himself with his arms full of writhing, silently snarling stone Hound, heavy as granite yet horribly alive.

  Its jaws snapped inches from his throat as its clawed paws scrabbled at his arms and stomach. He dropped his club. A second Hound had darted in beneath it; he felt its jaws closing on his leg. One good snap—and his leg would be useless, broken, and it would all be over.

  With a shout of fear and pain, Kellen kicked at the stone face of the second Hound, keeping it from getting a good bite in, and shoved the first Hound away from his face. Somehow, he grabbed it by its hind legs; it tried to escape him, but this was a smaller Hound, about the size of a greyhound, and a lot lighter than its fellows. He used the Hound itself as a club, swinging it at the head of the second Hound golem until its jaws shattered and the legs in his hands snapped off. He flung and kicked them both away, screaming wordlessly. He snatched up his club and hammered at the next one as it rushed him, sweeping low with his club, then turned to protect Shalkan.

  Out of his line of sight, Kellen heard the dul
l impact of stone on stone as the Hounds now tried to rush them in a pack, and those that missed slammed against the granite walls to either side of the canyon opening. Some slid back to the bottom of the slope. Others tried to rush in from the side. Their jaws clattered as they snapped at Kellen and missed, and when he looked, he could see them barking, or at least their jaws working as if they were barking, but there was no sound other than the impact of stone on stone, and wood on stone, and the faint sizzle as Shalkan managed to disenchant another of the Hound golems.

  If the Outlaw Hunt had been smarter than the mastiffs they resembled, Kellen and Shalkan would have been dead in the first few instants of the attack. But the stone Hounds were only stronger, and faster, and tireless, and nearly invulnerable.

  Nearly, that was the key thing. Mastiffs weren’t the brightest dogs in the world, and these stone versions seemed even dimmer. They didn’t even try to protect themselves, and they didn’t learn from the mistakes of the ones that were eliminated. That was what gave him and Shalkan a chance. A slim chance, but a real one, and a far, far better one than any of the Mages would have believed, back in the City. Quickly their strategy evolved—Kellen stood in front, beating the Hounds back, breaking their legs off when he could, protecting Shalkan so that the unicorn could dart out and destroy each one permanently. Even if Kellen managed to break off two legs, or a lower jaw, the maimed-but-still-enchanted Hound would just keep on coming, crawling up the slope as long as it could still move in order to get at its prey.

  He could not kill the creatures, but he could cripple them—Shalkan couldn’t hurt them, but he could destroy them. The Hunt climbed over its weaker members, trying to get at him and Shalkan indiscriminately, not realizing that of the two of them, Shalkan was the most dangerous. The two of them took advantage of that.