The Outsorcerer's Apprentice

by Tom Holt

  He marched down to the stables and gave the assembled beaters and whippers-in their orders for the day. There were raised eyebrows and audible grumbles when he told them they’d be catching the unicorn alive; he didn’t say anything, because he knew exactly how they felt. That done, he went back to round up the gentry, gently prise their stirrup cups out of their hands, and finally get things moving. Daft way to make a living, he thought—

  And stopped dead, in the narrow paved alley between the stables and the tack shed, and asked himself; where the hell did that come from? I’m a huntsman. My father was a huntsman, so was his dad before him, it’s what we do. And if the boss wants the unicorn caught alive, or he wants to go hunting wearing nothing but a full-face helmet and a quart of fruit salad, that’s really none of my concern. Damn it, a thought like the ones I’ve just been having would never have entered Dad’s head, it wouldn’t have fitted in there, and if it had somehow managed to squeeze its way in, it’d have been stoned to death by the mob in two seconds flat. What’s going on around here? What’s happening to me?

  He made himself walk on, though he was having a bit of trouble steering and bumped into a gatepost and the corner of a barn before he made it into the main courtyard. It’s not just me, he reflected; he called to mind what people had been saying about his sister’s girl, that Buttercup; she was always going around saying daft things these days, so maybe it was catching. Of course, it didn’t help that the prince was, well, you know, sort of—But come on, think about it, we’ve had some real lulus on the throne over the years and people haven’t suddenly started thinking thoughts. Must be more to it than that.

  A little voice in his head said, I blame the goblins, and he felt a little better. Of course; pound to a penny the goblins were involved, if something wasn’t right. Pretty well everything in that line turned out to be because of the goblins, when you got right down to it. Probably they’d been digging in some new place and something nasty was seeping out into the drinking water, turning everyone funny. The thought made him feel hot with anger; it’s time we did something about those buggers, he snarled to himself, sorted them out once and for all.

  “There you are.” The prince was looking stressed out. “Where the hell did you wander off to? I said ten sharp, and it’s five past already.”

  “Sorry, Your Highness. All ready now, you just give the word, and—”

  “Yes, all right, whatever. Can we please get on with it?”

  “Your Highness.” John bobbed a little noddy bow and dashed back the way he’d just come. When he reached the stable yard, he yelled, “Come on, you useless bloody lot, they’re all waiting,” even though he knew he’d told them to wait there till he came for them, and sprinted off again before they could say anything. Not right, he was thinking, not right at all. Usually stuff just gets done at its own pace, and nobody gets worked up about it. If we all start carrying on like this, we’ll be at each other’s throats in no time.

  The whole place is falling apart, he thought wildly. Damn those goblins!

  After that, things just kept getting worse. The hounds went dashing off after what turned out to be a little old lady living alone in a cottage; by the time the hunting party caught up with them, they’d got the house surrounded and were baying and scrabbling at the door; terrifying, no doubt, for the poor old woman and really bad for the hunt’s reputation. It had taken him an hour to get the stupid animals back under control, by which time it had started to rain, and John had hoped that the prince might call it a day and let them all go home. No chance. They drove the rest of the east end of the forest, but no unicorns–deer, wild boar, hares, bears, all manner of warrantable game, but His Highness plainly wasn’t interested and got quite upset when John suggested they might try and salvage something from the day by changing tack. So they plodded on, across the middle and over into the west end, where the hounds stumbled across a sleeping dragon and nearly got them all fried. Fortunately, something must’ve been wrong with it, indigestion maybe, because after taking a long, calculating look at the members of the hunting party, it simply spread its wings and flew away. By this point most of the attendant nobles had had enough and were dropping hints like falling meteorites about going home now, but they glanced off His Highness, who just looked bleakly at them and gave the order to carry on. Eventually, mid-afternoon, with the hounds and horses worn out and the beaters limping and moaning about having missed lunch, they struck unicorn tracks.

  John was proud of the way the hounds worked the scent in spite of their obvious fatigue. But it soon became obvious that there was something wrong about the unicorn. Thinking about it later, it was pretty clear what had happened; the unicorn must’ve been drinking from the river, which flowed down off the mountain into the town aqueduct, so whatever the goblins had done to the water had turned it funny, too. How else could you account for the fact that it had taken one look at Rosebud and run like hell? After that, they’d had the devil’s own job finding it again. By the time they picked up the scent, it was getting dark, and any sensible hunter would’ve given it up as a bad job and gone home. Not Prince Florizel. He’d been determined to carry on, even though he didn’t seem to have enjoyed the day one little bit, John had seen merrier faces in the stocks, with a buy-one-get-one-free offer on frost-damaged turnips down at the feed store.

  So, what with Rosebud quietly sobbing, the dogs whinnetting, the beaters muttering about time and a half and the prince snarling haven’t-you-found-it-yet every two minutes, it hadn’t been a cheerful last hour, and he’d been mightily relieved when, finally, they’d caught sight of a milk-white tail vanishing into a clump of briars at the overgrown mouth of what John knew for a fact was a blind canyon; no way out unless you could scale cliffs, for which purpose a unicorn is woefully overlegged. Gotcha, John whispered under his breath, and started placing the beaters for the final drive.

  And then, just to put the gilded and intricately niello-inlaid tin lid on it, the prince had come stomping across with a map in his hand, and said, “Right, you and your bunch of jokers just clear off and leave it to me, you’ve done enough damage for one day”–which, coupled with the extremely nasty look he’d given poor Rosebud, had almost been enough to convert John to republicanism on the spot.

  Still, what can you do? “Right you are, sir,” he’d chirped through gritted teeth. “All right, lads, you heard the gentleman, last one down the Blue Boar gets them in.” And, with that in mind, he’d taken the long way back into town, hoping against hope that he’d be able to reclaim the cost of the round from petty cash at some point in a pretty bleak future.

  When he was sure they’d all gone, Benny walked into the mouth of the canyon.

  At first he did his best not to make any noise, but by the time he was five yards in, he was so hopelessly tangled up in briars and brambles that he gave up stealth entirely and concentrated his efforts on trying to force his way through, which meant that, a minute or so later, he was wedged solid, and the only part of his body he could move with any degree of freedom was his eyelids.

  Sod this, he thought. “Help!” he yelled.

  After a long interval, he saw something moving in front of him; something white. He could also hear a sound, something like a blend of distant train noises and an old man sucking a boiled sweet. “Hello?” he said.

  The white shape kept on coming, slowly, relentlessly, until what he could see of it through the very narrow gaps between swatches of bramble gradually began to suggest the shape of a horse. The sound grew clearer; munching. At this point, Benny remembered that he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast.

  “Unicorn?” he said. “Is that you?”

  More munching sounds, and the creak of bramble stems under pressure. “I’m here,” Benny said. “Just in case you hadn’t noticed, I mean. Hello?”

  A silver horn slid through the briar tangle about a foot to the left of his head. It was about two feet long and very sharp. Then a head, equine but distinctly different from your ordin
ary workaday horse, smaller and with a pointier nose. Its jaws were chewing a monstrous portion of bramble. “You clown,” it said.

  “I’m stuck.”

  “Yes,” said the unicorn, “aren’t you? Hold still, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Slowly and methodically, the unicorn gnawed him free. “You’re so lucky,” it said with its mouth full, “that I happen to like brambles. If you’d got yourself stuck in thistles, you’d be on your own.”

  “Thank you.” Benny tugged his sleeves free of the last residual thorns. He felt like one enormous consolidated scratch. “I came looking for you.”

  “I sort of gathered that,” the unicorn said. “You and your nasty friends. Gave me the fright of my life, till I saw you there.”

  Benny blushed. “I didn’t know how else to find you,” he said.

  “Fine. That’s like saying, how do I go about defrosting a chicken? I know, I’ll burn the house down. There’s ways and ways, you know.”

  Defrosting? “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, well. You’re here now. Next time, just hang around in a clearing somewhere, and I’ll find you.”

  He had to ask. “Defrosting a chicken?”

  The unicorn nodded. “That’s right.”

  “As in frozen—?”

  “Well, yes. Highly recommended, unless you want to break teeth.”

  “You know about—”

  “Ah, right, I see. Yes, I know about defrosting frozen chickens and other similar concepts, alien to this environment but familiar in the one you originally came from. Me, too, actually.”

  Benny waited, then asked, “You too what?”

  The unicorn swished its tail. “I too am not from around here. Originally. I, however, have made some sort of an effort to blend in, which you palpably haven’t. Did you see the way those people were looking at you? They think you’re weird.”

  That, from a talking unicorn. “I don’t give a damn,” Benny said. “I just want to get out of here and never come back. And you—”He hesitated. “You’re the same unicorn I saw the other day, right?”

  He’d said the wrong thing. “Because of course we all look the same to you, I suppose.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t—”

  The unicorn gave him a look. “You’re sorry. And now you’re going to tell me you’re not a bigot, some of your best friends are unicorns. Fine. You know, I think you’re right. The sooner you go back where you came from, the better.” Its lips curved in what, in human terms, would’ve been a grin. “We don’t need your sort round here.”

  “Fine, we’re agreed. And you know how I can get back.”

  The unicorn fluttered its ridiculously long eyelashes. “Yes,” it said, “I do.”

  “Doughnuts.”

  The unicorn shied, as though someone had just prodded it with a stick. “Keep your voice down, for God’s sake,” it hissed. “Haven’t you got it into your thick skull yet? We don’t use the D-word.”

  “They don’t know what it means.”

  “Don’t you believe it.” The unicorn’s voice was low and urgent. “Oh, most of them don’t, granted; not the woodcutters and the peasants and the rest of those idiots. But he knows. His people know, just fine. And you never know who might be listening.”

  “Right, sorry, sorry,” Benny said quickly. “Out of interest, who’s he?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.”

  “Sorry. Look, forget all that, it really doesn’t matter. Just tell me where I can get a you-know-what, and I’ll be out of here so fast I’ll just be a blur. OK?”

  The unicorn chewed at him for a moment. “It’s not as simple as that,” it said.

  Benny made a whimpering noise; quiet, restrained, almost dignified. “Oh come on,” the unicorn said. “Don’t be such a girl. You weren’t honestly expecting to be handed the way home on a plate, were you?”

  “Well, yes. Literally.”

  The unicorn’s upper lip curled slightly, and it nipped off a tender young bramble shoot with its front teeth. “You should know by now,” it said, “things just don’t work like that here. You need to remember who and where you are.”

  “Oh, but I do. I’m Benny Gulbenkian, third-year physics student from Orpington, Kent. I’ve got my final exams in just under a week. I need to get out of here and revise.”

  “No.” The unicorn shook its head, narrowly avoiding inscribing the mark of Zorro on Benny’s forehead with its needle-sharp horn tip. “You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re Prince Florizel, and this is your kingdom. Things are expected of you, and you have as much free will as a cue ball. If you want the D-thing, you’re going to have to play by the local rules. Sorry, but that’s how it is.”

  Benny sagged a little, then said, “All right, if you insist. What have I got to do?”

  “Ah.” The unicorn tossed its mane. No doubt there was a mirror hidden somewhere in the forest where it practised for hours on end. “In order to fulfil your quest—”

  “Would you please not use that word? It’s so Robert E. Howard.”

  “Fine. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel to the far ends of the Earth…”

  “What? In these shoes? You must be joking.”

  “Crossing arid deserts and steaming jungles,” the unicorn continued grimly, “fording mighty rivers and climbing snow-capped mountains—”

  “I take it scheduled public transport isn’t an option.”

  “Until you reach the Cradle of All Goblins, interrupt just once more and I wash my hooves of you, where you will encounter three trials. You must uncover the great truth that was hidden, you must right the ancestral wrong, and you must throw the fire into the ring of power. Only when you have done that—”

  “Excuse me—”

  “I warned you. Only when you have done that will you—”

  “Excuse me,” Benny said firmly, “but I think you may have got the last one a bit turned round. Surely it should be throw the ring—”

  “Right,” the unicorn snapped, “that does it. If you insist on interrupting all the damn time—”

  “Sorry,” Benny shouted. “But this is all too much. I can’t possibly do all this hero stuff. Look, all I want is a dough—a one-of-those. There’s got to be another way.”

  “Well.” The unicorn gave him a look that turned his blood to sorbet. “Yes, there is.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes. Just find your phone, Google a recipe and make one yourself. Piece of, no pun intended—”

  “And that’d work, would it?”

  “Sure.” The unicorn pawed gently at the ground. “Why not?”

  “And my phone still exists, and it’s working?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And that’d do just as well as finding the Goblins’ Cradle—”

  “Cradle of All Goblins. The Goblins’ Cradle is a wool shop in Num Casamar. Yes, it would. But I thought you’d prefer to do this the easy way.” The unicorn took a step back. “Still, if you relish a challenge, by all means go the phone route. After all, glorious failure does have a certain picaresque charm.”

  “Oh, come on. Finding my phone—”

  But the unicorn was backing away. “Your choice,” it said. “I’ve told you everything I can, and now it’s up to you. I strongly advise you not to come looking for me again. Oh, and if I were you, I’d find myself a girlfriend. As a matter of urgency. Go in peace, Benny Gulbenkian. I hope you make your way home. Who knows, one day we may meet there, on the far side. But not,” it added, “if I see you first. Farewell.”

  “Hey,” Benny yelled, but it was too late; the unicorn had gone, and there was no way through the brambles that he could follow. “Bugger,” he wailed, and sank down on the ground.

  Thirty-four thousand eyes in the heads of twenty thousand goblins followed him as he walked slowly up the long, porphyry-paved aisle of the Grand Chamber of the Big Shouting Place. Mordak wasn’t easily intimidated. He’d won the throne in single combat with his predecessor, a mighty wa
rrior who’d devoted his life to disproving the old saying that the quickest way to a goblin’s heart is through his stomach. He’d fought dwarves, Elves, humans, cave-trolls, dragons and his first wife’s cousins. He prided himself on his brash confidence. If there’s one thing goblins admire more than a leader who wears his heart on his sleeve, it’s a leader who wears his enemies’ livers on his epaulettes, and who do you think started that fashion? But that walk from the door to the rostrum was the closest he’d ever come to feeling overawed, and for his money it was plenty close enough. Apart from the click of his claws on the polished floor, there was no sound whatsoever. On the rare occasions when goblins do solemn, they do it well.

  Why am I doing this? he asked himself, not for the first time. The answer, etched into his brain, was curiously hollow and alien, as though it had been put there: to improve the lot of goblinkind, to raise the sun on a glorious new dawn and to strike a blow for a new tomorrow. He thought; I don’t talk like that, so why should I suddenly go all pompous and shitfaced when I think? This just so isn’t me.

  He caught sight of his reflection in the polished breastplate of a deputy chamberlain. Yes it bloody well is me, he told himself. That’s the problem.

  Directly ahead of him was the podium and the royal throne, flanked by the royal arms (goblins came late and distressingly literal-minded to heraldry), and he saw two incongruous figures among the cordon of palace guards; two humans, one short and old, one young, tall, thin, eating a chicken sandwich. If things got really bad, at least he had someone he could rely on. He looked at them again and thought, oh God.

  Seven trumpeters blew a fanfare. The echoes bounced around in the roof space for what seemed like a very long time, then died away. Absolute silence. Oh well, Mordak thought, here goes nothing. He turned, faced his assembled people and cleared his throat.

  “My fellow goblins—”

  His tongue appeared to have seized up. Though as a rule goblins aren’t the quickest on the uptake of the Three Races, they seemed to have sensed that what they were about to hear wasn’t going to be the usual run-of-the-mill State of the Pandemonium message, full of comfortable stuff about war victories, increased mine output, foiled conspiracies and the relentless drive towards perfect orthodoxy in political thought. They knew something was coming, the way rats can smell stormy weather. For the first time ever, they were listening.