by Terry Brooks
He touched his index finger to his lips. “But—in the meantime—there was a problem with the unicorns. Every so often, they escaped. Something would happen, the wizards would relax their vigilance, and the unicorns would break free. It didn’t happen often, of course, because the wizards kept close watch over the books. But now and again, it did. Each time, it was the spirit part of the imprisoned unicorns that managed to escape—the magic of the spirit always being stronger than that of the body. The spirit would burn its way free of the pages of the book of magic that bound it and escape. But it lacked a true physical presence. It was only a shadow formed of need and will, a silhouette given momentary substance and life—and not much more.” He glanced quickly at Willow for confirmation, and she nodded. “And because it was black in color, being only a shadow, it was generally assumed to be something evil rather than something good. After all, whoever heard of a black unicorn? The wizards, I am certain, spread the story that the black unicorn was an aberration—a dangerous thing, perhaps even a demon. They probably set a few examples to reinforce the belief. That kept everyone away from it while the wizards worked at getting it back again.”
“The bridle of spun gold was used for that purpose,” Willow interjected, picking up the story. “The wizards employed their magic to create the bridle after the first escape. The bridle was a magic that could draw and hold the black unicorn, giving the wizards time to imprison it anew. It was always caught quickly; it was never free for long. It was sent back again into the books of magic, the burned pages were restored, and all was as it had been. The wizards took no chances. The books were their greatest magic, and they could not risk damage to or loss of them.”
She turned to Ben. “That was why the black unicorn was so frightened of me at first. Even in its need, it was terrified. I felt its fear each time I came close and again, later, when I touched it. It believed me to be a tool of the wizards that had imprisoned it. It couldn’t know the truth. It was not until the very end that it seemed to understand that I was not in service to Meeks.”
“Which brings us to the present,” Ben announced, straightening. “Meeks had gained possession of the books of magic in his turn and had used them as had all the wizards before him. But then the old King died and everything started to fall into ruin. The black unicorn hadn’t escaped for a very long time—perhaps centuries—and there hadn’t been any need for the golden bridle in all those years. I don’t think even the wizards before Meeks had paid a whole lot of attention to it for a while because it was apparently before Meeks’ time that it was stolen for the first time by Nightshade. Later it was stolen by Strabo and then went back and forth between the two after that. Meeks knew where it was, I suppose, but the books of magic were safely under his control, and the witch and the dragon didn’t know the real purpose of the bridle in any case. The trouble started when Meeks went over to my world to recruit a new King for Landover and hid the books of magic in his absence. I suppose he thought he wouldn’t be gone long enough for anything to happen to them, but things didn’t work out that way. When I didn’t come crawling back to give up the medallion and the Iron Mark didn’t finish me off, Meeks suddenly found himself trapped over there with the books of magic still hidden over here. The magic that imprisoned the unicorns weakened once more in his absence, and the spirit part—the black unicorn—burned free of the pages of its book and escaped.”
“So that was why my half-brother sent the dreams!” Questor exclaimed, new understanding beginning to reflect on his owlish face. “He had to get back across into Landover, recover the missing books, and find the golden bridle—and quickly! If he didn’t, the black unicorn might find a way to free all the white unicorns—its physical selves—and the magic would be lost!”
“And that is exactly what it tried to do,” Willow confirmed. “Not only this time, but every time it managed to break free. It tried to find the one magic it believed stronger than the magic of the wizards—the Paladin! Always before, it was caught so quickly that it never had any real chance. It knew the Paladin was the King’s champion, but it would never even manage to reach the King. This time it was certain it could—except that there was no King to be found. Meeks was quick to act, once he discovered the unicorn had escaped. A dream was used to lure Ben out of Landover before the unicorn could reach him. Then Meeks crossed back with him and altered his appearance so that no one—including the black unicorn—could recognize him.”
“I think it might have recognized me if it hadn’t been imprisoned for so long,” Ben interjected. “The older fairy creatures such as Nightshade and Strabo could recognize me. But the unicorn had forgotten much of its magic while it was bound.”
“It might have lost much as well through the wizards’ use of it,” Willow added.
“Meeks told me that night in my bedchamber, when he used his magic to change me, that I messed up his plans in some way,” Ben went on, returning to the matter of his lost identity. “Of course, I didn’t have any idea what it was that I had done. I didn’t know what he was talking about. The truth was that everything I had done was inadvertent. I didn’t know that the books contained stolen magic and that, if he weren’t within Landover, the magic might be lost. I was just trying to stay alive.”
“A moment, High Lord.” Abernathy was shaking his head in confusion. “Meeks sent three dreams—yours to provide him a way back into Landover, Questor Thews’ to give him possession of the missing books of magic, and Willow’s to regain for him the stolen bridle. The dreams worked as they were intended except for Willow’s. She found the bridle, but she failed to bring it back to you as the dream had told her she must. Why so?”
“The fairies,” Willow said.
“The fairies,” Ben echoed.
“I said that first morning that my dream seemed incomplete, that I felt I was to be shown more,” Willow explained. “There were other dreams after that; in each, the unicorn appeared to be less a demon, more a victim. The fairies sent those dreams to guide me in my search and to teach me that my fears were false ones. Gradually, I came to realize that the first dream was somehow a lie, that the black unicorn was not my enemy, that it needed help, and that I must provide that help. After the dragon gave the bridle of spun gold to me, I was persuaded further—by dreams and visions—that I must go in search of the unicorn myself if I were ever to discover the truth of matters.”
“The fairies sent Edgewood Dirk to me.” Ben sighed. “They wouldn’t intervene to help me directly, of course—they never do that for anyone. Answers to our difficulties must always come from within; they expect us to solve our own problems. But Dirk was the catalyst that helped me to do that. Dirk helped me to discover the truth about the medallion. Meeks had instigated the deception that led me to believe I had lost it. Dirk helped me see that I was the one fostering that deception, and that if I could recognize the truth of things, others could as well—which is exactly what happened.”
“Which is why the Paladin was able to reach us in time, apparently,” Questor said.
“And why the books of magic were finally destroyed and the unicorns freed,” Willow added.
“And why Meeks was defeated,” Abernathy finished.
“That’s about it,” Ben agreed.
“Great High Lord!” exclaimed Fillip fervently.
“Mighty High Lord!” echoed Sot.
Ben groaned. “Please! Enough already!”
He looked imploringly at the others, but they all just grinned.
It was time to leave. No one much cared for the idea of spending another night in the Melchor. It was agreed they would be better off setting up camp in the foothills below.
So they trudged wearily down out of the mountains through the fading daylight, the sun sinking behind the western rim of the valley in a haze of scarlet and gray. As they walked, Willow dropped back next to Ben, and her arm locked gently about his.
“What do you think will become of the unicorns?” she asked after a moment.
Ben shrugged. “They’ll probably go back into the mists, and no one will ever see them again.”
“You do not think they will go on to the worlds to which they were sent?”
“Out of Landover?” Ben shook his head. “No, not after all they’ve been through. Not now. They’ll go back home where it’s safe.”
“It isn’t safe in your world, is it?”
“Hardly.”
“It isn’t very safe in Landover, either.”
“No.”
“Do you think it is any safer in the mists?”
Ben thought about that a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
Willow nodded. “Your world has need of unicorns, doesn’t it? The magic is forgotten?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then maybe it doesn’t matter that it isn’t safe there. Maybe the need outweighs the danger. Maybe at least one unicorn will decide to go anyway.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it.”
Willow’s head lifted slightly. “You say it, but you do not mean it.”
He smiled and did not reply.
They reached the foothills, passed through a broad meadow of red-spotted wildflowers to a stretch of fir, and the kobolds began scouting ahead for a campsite. The air had gone cool, and the approaching twilight gave the land a muted, silvery sheen. Crickets had begun to chirp, and geese flew low across a distant lake. Ben was thinking about home, about Sterling Silver, and the warmth of the life that waited there for him.
“I love you,” Willow said suddenly. She didn’t look at him, facing straight ahead as she spoke the words.
Ben nodded. He was quiet a moment. “I’ve been meaning to say something to you about that. You tell me you love me all the time, and I can never say it back to you. I’ve been thinking lately about why that is, and I guess it’s because I’m afraid. It’s like taking a chance you don’t have to take. It’s easier to pass it by.”
He paused. “But I don’t feel that way right now, right here. I feel altogether different. When you say you love me, I find I want to say it back to you. So I guess I will. I love you, too, Willow. I think I always did.”
They walked on, not speaking. He was aware of the increased pressure of her arm about his. The day was still and restful, and everything was at peace.
“The Earth Mother made me promise to look after you, you know,” Ben said finally. “That’s part of what started me thinking about us. She made me promise to keep you safe. She was most insistent.”
He could feel Willow’s smile more than see it. “That is because the Earth Mother knows,” she said.
He waited for her to say something more, then glanced down. “Knows what?”
“That one day I shall bear your child, High Lord.”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Oh.”
EPILOGUE
It was two days before Christmas.
Southside Chicago was chill and dreary, the snowfall of the previous night turned gray and mushy on walks and streets, the squarish highrise projects and tenements vague shadows in a haze of smoke and mist. Steam rose out of sewer grates in sudden clouds as sleet pelted down. Not much of anything was moving. Cars crawled by like prehistoric beetles, headlights shining their luminous yellow eyes. Pedestrians ducked their heads against the cold, their chins buried in scarves and collars, their hands jammed into coat pockets. Late afternoon watched an early evening’s approach in gloomy silence.
The corner of Division and Elm was almost deserted. Two boys with leather jackets, a commuting businessman, and a carefully dressed woman headed home from shopping, stepped from a bus, and started walking in different directions. A shop owner paused to check the locks on the front door of his plumbing business as he prepared to close up for the day. A factory worker on the seven-to-three shift ducked out of Barney’s Pub after two beers and an hour of unwinding to begin the trudge two blocks home to his ailing mother. An old man carrying a load of groceries shuffled along a sidewalk path left in the snow by a trail of icy footprints. A small child engulfed by her snow-suit played with a sled by the steps of her apartment home.
They ignored each other with casual indifference, lost in their own private thoughts.
The white unicorn flew past them like a bit of strayed light. It sped by as if its sole purpose in being was to circle the whole of the world in a single day. It never seemed to touch the ground, its graceful, delicate body gathering and extending in a single fluid motion as it passed. All the beauty in the world—all that was or could ever be—was captured by its movement. It was there and gone in an instant. The watchers caught their breath, blinked once, and the unicorn had disappeared.
There followed a moment of uncertainty. The old man’s mouth dropped open. The child put down her sled and stared. The two boys ducked their heads and muttered urgently. The businessman looked at the shop owner and the shop owner looked back. The carefully dressed woman remembered all those magical stories of fairies she still enjoyed reading. The factory worker thought suddenly of Christmas as a child.
Then the moment passed, and they all moved on. Some walked more quickly, some more slowly. They glanced over at the misted, empty street. What was it they had seen? Had it really been a unicorn? No, it couldn’t have been. There were no such things as unicorns—not really. And not in cities. Unicorns lived in forests. But they had seen something. Hadn’t they seen something? Hadn’t they? They walked on, silent, and there was a warmth within each of them at the memory of what they had experienced. There was a feeling of having been a part of something magical.
They took that feeling home with them. Some of them kept it for a time. Some of them passed it on.
WIZARD AT LARGE
For Alex
Who is something of a wizard at large himself…
At that word the young man let his glass slip through his fingers, and looked upon Keawe like a ghost.
‘The price,’ says he; ‘the price! You do not know the price?’
‘It is for that I am asking you,’ returned Keawe. ‘But why are you so much concerned? Is there something wrong about the price?’
‘It has dropped a great deal in value since your time, Mr. Keawe,’ said the young man, stammering.
‘Well, well, I shall have the less to pay for it,’ says Keawe. ‘How much did it cost you?’
The young man was white as a sheet. ‘Two cents,’ said he.
‘What?’ cried Keawe, ‘two cents? Why, then, you can only sell it for one. And he who buys it—’ The words died upon Keawe’s tongue; he who bought it could never sell it again, the bottle and the bottle imp must abide with him until he died, and when he died must carry him to the red end of hell.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Bottle Imp
CONTENTS
Sneeze
Bottle
Graum Wythe
Darkling
Spellbound
Michel Ard Rhi
Slight Miscalculation
One-Way Ticket
Castles and Cages
Charades
Button, Button
Jericho
Show Time
Love Song
Lost and Found
Gambit
Snatch
Itch
Halloween Crazies
Dragon at the Bar
Stopper
Homecomings
SNEEZE
Ben Holiday sighed wearily and wished he were somewhere else besides where he was. He wished he were anywhere else.
He was in the garden room at Sterling Silver. The garden room was probably Ben Holiday’s favorite of all the many rooms at the castle. It was bright and airy. Flower boxes crisscrossed the tiled floor in dazzling swatches of color. Sunshine streamed through floor-length windows that ran the length of its southern wall, tiny motes of pollen dancing on the broad bands of light. The windows stood open and fragrant smells wafted in. The room looked out on the gardens proper, a maze of flower beds and bushes th
at spread their way downward to the lake on which the island castle rested, mixing and mingling their colors like paints run together on a rain-soaked canvas. The flowers bloomed year-round, reseeding themselves with commendable regularity. A horticulturist from Ben’s old world would have killed to study such treasures—species that grew only in the Kingdom of Landover and nowhere else.
Just at the moment, Ben would have killed to escape them.
“… Great High Lord …”
“… Mighty High Lord …”
The familiar calls of supplication grated on him like rough stones and reminded him anew of the cause of his disgruntlement. His eyes rolled skyward momentarily. Please! His gaze shifted furiously from flower box to flower bed and back again, as if somewhere among all those tiny petals the escape he so desperately sought might be found. It wasn’t, of course, and he sagged back further in his cushioned chair and contemplated the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t that he was trying to shirk his duty. It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about these things. But this was his refuge, for Pete’s sake! This was supposed to be his place for time away!
“… and took all of our hard-earned berry stores.”
“And all of our ale kegs as well.”
“When all we did was to borrow a few laying hens, High Lord.”
“We would have replaced those that were lost, High Lord.”
“We intended to be fair.”
“We did.”
“You must see that our possessions are returned …”
“Yes, you must …”
They went on, barely pausing for breath.
Ben studied Fillip and Sot the way his gardener studied weeds in the flower beds. The G’home Gnomes rambled on unself-consciously and endlessly, and he thought about the vagaries of life that permitted misfortunes such as this to be visited on him. The G’home Gnomes were a pitiful bunch—small, ferretlike burrow people who begged, borrowed, and mostly stole everything with which they came in contact. They migrated periodically and, once settled, could not be dislodged. They were regarded in general as a blight upon the earth. On the other hand, they had proven unswervingly loyal to Ben. When he had purchased the Kingdom of Landover from Rosen’s Department Store Christmas Wishbook and come into the valley—almost two years ago now—Fillip and Sot, on behalf of all of the G’home Gnomes, had been the first to pledge their loyalty. They had aided him in his efforts to establish his kingship. They had helped him again when Meeks, the former Court Wizard, had slipped back into Landover and stolen his identity and his throne. They had been his friends when there were precious few friends to be had.