“I hate grass,” said the unicorn moodily.
“Then why are you eating it?” asked Rupert, buckling on his sword belt.
“I’m hungry,” said the unicorn, chewing disgustedly. “And since we ran out of civilised fodder weeks ago …”
“What’s wrong with grass?” Rupert enquired mildly. “Horses eat it all the time.”
“I am not a horse!”
“Never said you were …”
“I’m a unicorn, a thoroughbred, and I’m entitled to proper care and attention. Like oats and barley and …”
“In the Tanglewood?”
“Hate grass,” muttered the unicorn. “Makes me feel all bloated.”
“Try a few thistles,” suggested Rupert.
The unicorn gave him a hard look. “Do I even faintly resemble a donkey?” he enquired menacingly.
Rupert looked away to hide a grin, and discovered a dozen goblins had moved silently out of the shadows to block the trail. Ranging from three to four feet in height, depending on the bandiness of their legs and the length of their long pointed ears, they were armed with rusty short swords and jagged-edged meat cleavers. Their ill-fitting bronze and silver armour had obviously been looted from human travellers, and the pointed teeth flashing from their unpleasant grins suggested what had happened to the armour’s previous occupants. Furious at being caught off guard, Rupert drew his sword and glared at them all. The goblins stopped dead in their tracks and glanced unhappily at each other.
“Don’t just stand there,” growled a deep voice from the shadows. “Get him, lads.”
The goblins shifted uncertainly from foot to foot.
“He’s got a sword,” pointed out the smallest goblin.
“A big sword,” clarified another goblin.
“And look at those scars on his face, and there was all that dried blood on his armour,” whispered a third, respectfully. “He must have slaughtered hundreds of people …”
“Chopped them into chutney,” elaborated the smallest goblin mournfully.
Rupert swung his sword casually back and forth before him, light flashing the length of the blade. The goblins gave ground furiously, all but trampling one other underfoot.
“At least get his horse,” suggested the voice from the shadows.
“Horse?” The unicorn threw up his head, rage blazing from his blood-red eyes. “Horse? What do you think this is on my head? An ornament? I’m a unicorn, you moron!”
“Horse, unicorn; what’s the difference?”
The unicorn pawed the ground, and lowered his head so that light glistened on his wickedly pointed horn.
“Right. That does it. One at a time or all at once—you’re all getting it!”
“Nice one, leader,” muttered the smallest goblin.
Rupert shot an amused glance at the unicorn. “I thought you were a sensible, logical coward?”
“I’m too busy being angry,” growled the unicorn. “I’ll be afraid later, when there’s time. Line these creeps up for me, and I’ll skewer the lot. I’ll show them a shish kebab they won’t forget in a hurry.”
The goblins huddled together for comfort and retreated even further down the trail.
“Will you stop messing about and kill the traveller!” roared the voice from the shadows.
“You want him dead, you kill him!” snapped the smallest goblin, looking busily around for the nearest escape route. “This is all your fault, anyway. We should have ambushed him while he was distracted, like we usually do.”
There was a deep sigh, and then the goblin leader stepped majestically out of the shadows. Broad-shouldered, impressively muscled, and very nearly five feet tall, he was the biggest goblin Rupert had ever seen. The goblin leader stubbed out a vile-looking cigar on his verdigrised bronze breastplate, and marched over to glare at the tightly packed goblins cowering together in the middle of the trail. He sighed again, and shook his head disgustedly.
“Look at you. How am I supposed to make fighters out of you if you won’t fight? I mean, what’s the problem? He’s only one man!”
“And a unicorn,” pointed out the smallest goblin helpfully.
“All right, one man and a unicorn. So what? We’re supposed to be footpads, remember? It’s our job to waylay defenceless travellers and take their valuables.”
“He don’t look defenceless to me,” muttered the smallest goblin. “Look at that dirty big sword he’s carrying.”
The goblins stared at it with a morbid fascination as Rupert tried a few practice cuts and lunges. The unicorn moved back and forth behind him, sighting his horn at various goblins, which did absolutely nothing to improve their confidence.
“Come on, lads,” said the goblin leader desperately. “How can you be frightened of someone who rides a unicorn?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” asked the smallest goblin. The leader murmured something, of which only the word ‘Virgin’ was clearly audible. All the goblins peered at Rupert and sniggered meaningfully.
“It’s not easy being a prince,” said Rupert, blushing bright red despite himself. “You want to make something of it?”
He took a firm grip on his sword and sheared clean through an overhanging branch. The severed end hit the ground with an ominous-sounding thud.
“Don’t get him angry,” muttered the smallest goblin.
“Will you shut up,” snarled the goblin leader. “Look, there’s thirteen of us and only one of him. If we all rush him at once, we’re bound to get him.”
“Want to bet?” said an anonymous voice from the back.
“Shut up! When I give the word, charge. Charge!”
He started forward, brandishing his sword, and the other goblins reluctantly followed him. Rupert braced himself, took careful aim, and flattened the goblin leader with a single blow to the head from the flat of his sword. The other goblins skidded to a halt, took one look at their fallen leader, and promptly threw down their weapons. Rupert herded them together, well away from their discarded weapons, and then leaned against a convenient tree while he tried to figure out what to do next. The goblin leader got slowly to his feet, shook his aching head to clear it, and then wished he hadn’t. He glared at Rupert, and tried to look defiant. He wasn’t particularly successful.
“I told you thirteen was unlucky,” muttered the smallest goblin.
“All right,” said Rupert. “Everyone pay attention, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You agree to get the hell out of here and stop bothering me, and I won’t turn you over to the unicorn in small meaty chunks. How’s that?”
“Do we get our weapons back?” asked the goblin leader.
Rupert smiled. “Do I look crazy?”
The goblin leader shrugged. “Worth a try. All right, sir hero, you got yourself a deal.”
“And you won’t try to follow me?”
The goblin leader gave him a hard stare. “Do I look crazy? Personally speaking, sir hero, I for one will be extremely content if I never see you again.”
He led the goblins off the trail, and they vanished quickly into the trees. Rupert grinned widely, and sheathed his sword. He was finally getting the hang of this quest business.
An hour later, the light faded quickly away as Rupert left the Tanglewood and crossed into the Darkwood. Far above him rotting trees leaned together, their leafless interlocking branches blocking out the sun, and in the space of a few moments Rupert passed from mid-afternoon to darkest night. He reined the unicorn to halt and looked back over his shoulder, but daylight couldn’t follow him into the Darkwood. Rupert turned back, patted the unicorn’s neck comfortingly, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
A faint silver glow of phosphorescent fungi limned the decaying tree trunks, and far off in the distance he thought he saw a brief flash of light, as though someone had opened a door and then quickly closed it for fear light would attract unwelcome attention. Rupert glanced about him nervously, ears straining for the slightest sound, but the darkness seemed
silent as the tomb. The air was thick with the sickly sweet stench of death and corruption.
His eyes finally adjusted enough to show him the narrow trail that led into the heart of the Darkwood, and he signalled the unicorn to move on. The slow, steady hoofbeats sounded dangerously loud in the quiet. There was only one trail through the endless night: a single straight path that crossed the darkness from one boundary to the other, cut so long ago that no one now remembered who had done it, or why. The Darkwood was very old, and kept its secrets to itself. Rupert peered constantly about him, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He remembered the demon he’d fought in the Tanglewood, and shuddered suddenly. Entering the Darkwood was a calculated risk, but if anyone knew where to find a dragon, it was the Night Witch.
Assuming she was still alive, after all these years. Before Rupert set out on his journey, the Court Astrologer had helped him delve into the castle archives in search of any map that might lead to a dragon’s lair. They didn’t find one, which pleased Rupert no end, but they did stumble across the official record of Grandfather Eduard’s encounter with the Night Witch. The surprisingly brief tale (surprising in that the most recent song on the subject lasted for 137 interminable verses), included a passing reference to a dragon, and a suggestion that the exiled Witch might still be found at her cottage in the Darkwood, not far from the Tanglewood boundary.
“Even assuming that I am daft enough to go looking for a woman whose main interest in life is forcibly separating people from their blood,” said Rupert, dubiously, “give me one good reason why she should agree to help me.”
“Apparently,” said the Astrologer, cryptically, “she was rather fond of your grandfather.”
Rupert studied the Astrologer suspiciously and pressed him for more details, but he refused to be drawn. Rupert trusted the Astrologer about as far as he could spit into the wind, but since he hadn’t a clue of how else to find a dragon …
Gnarled, misshapen trees loomed menacingly out of the gloom as Rupert rode deeper into the endless night. The only sound was the steady rhythm of the unicorn’s hooves, and even that seemed somehow muffled by the unrelenting dark. More than once Rupert reined the unicorn to a sudden halt and stared about him, eyes straining against the darkness, convinced that something awful lurked just beyond the range of his vision. But always there was only the dark, and the silence. He had no lantern, and when he broke a bough from one of the dead trees to make a torch, the rotten wood crumbled in his hand. With no light to guide him, he lost all track of time, but eventually the closely packed trees fell suddenly away on either side, and Rupert signalled to the unicorn to stop. Ahead of them lay a small clearing, its boundaries marked by the glowing fungi. In the middle of the clearing stood a single dark shape that had to be the Night Witch’s cottage. Rupert glanced up at the night sky, but there was no moon or stars to give him light, only an empty darkness that seemed to go on for ever.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” whispered the unicorn.
“No,” said Rupert. “But it’s our best chance to find a dragon.”
“Frankly, that doesn’t strike me as such a hot idea either,” muttered the unicorn.
Rupert grinned, and swung down out of the saddle. “You stay here, while I check out the cottage.”
“You’re not leaving me here on my own,” said the unicorn determinedly.
“Would you rather meet the Night Witch?” asked Rupert.
The unicorn moved quickly off the trail and hid behind the nearest tree.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Rupert promised. “Don’t go wandering off.”
“That has to be the most redundant piece of advice I’ve ever been offered,” said the unicorn.
Rupert drew his sword, took a deep breath, and moved cautiously out into the clearing. His soft footsteps seemed horribly loud in the quiet and he broke into a run, his back crawling in anticipation of the attack he’d probably never feel anyway. The Witch’s cottage crouched before him like a sleeping predator, a dull crimson glow outlining the door and shuttered windows. Rupert skidded to a halt at the cottage and set his back against the rough wooden wall, his eyes darting wildly round as he checked he hadn’t been followed. Nothing moved in the ebony gloom, and the only sound in the endless night was his own harsh breathing. He swallowed dryly, stood quietly a moment to get his breath back, and then moved over to knock, very politely, at the cottage’s door. A bright crimson glare filled his eyes as the door swung suddenly open, and a huge bony hand with long curving fingernails shot out and grasped him by the throat. Rupert kicked and struggled helplessly as he was hauled into the Witch’s cottage.
The bent old woman kicked the door shut behind her, and dropped Rupert unceremoniously on to the filthy carpet. He sat up and massaged his sore throat as the Night Witch cackled fiendishly, rubbing her gnarled hands together.
“Sorry about that,” she grinned, “all part of the image, you know. I have to do something fairly nasty every now and again, or they’ll think I’ve got soft. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Thought you might be able to help me,” husked the Prince.
“Help?” said the Night Witch, raising a crooked eyebrow. “Are you sure you’ve come to the right cottage?” The black cat crouched on her shoulder hissed angrily, and rubbed its shoulder against the Witch’s long grey hair. She reached up and patted the animal absent-mindedly. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t turn you into a frog,” she demanded.
Rupert showed her his sword. The Witch grinned nastily.
“Sheath it, or I’ll tie it in a knot.”
Rupert thought about it a moment, and then slipped the sword into its scabbard. “I believe you knew my grandfather,” he said carefully.
“Possibly,” said the Night Witch airily. “I’ve known many men in nine. What was his name?”
“Eduard, of the Forest Kingdom.”
The Night Witch stared at him blankly, and then all the fire seemed to go out of her eyes. She turned slowly away, and moved over and sank into a battered old rocking chair by the fireplace.
“Yes,” she said finally, almost to herself. “I remember Eduard.”
She sat quietly in the rocking chair, staring at nothing, and Rupert took the opportunity to get to his feet and take a quick look around him. The cottage was filled with a dull, unfocused light that seemed to come from everywhere at once, though there was no lamp to be seen. The walls leaned away from the floor at different angles, and bats squealed up in the high rafters. A cat’s shadow swayed across a wall without a cat to cast it, and something dark and shapeless with glowing eyes peered out from the empty, smoke-blackened fireplace.
Rupert studied the Night Witch curiously. Somehow she didn’t seem quite so impressive when she wasn’t actually threatening him. Rocking quietly in her chair, with her cat in her lap, she looked like anybody’s grandmother, a shrunken grey-haired old lady with a back bent by the years. She was painfully thin, and suffering had etched deep lines into her face. This wasn’t the Night Witch of legend, the raven-haired tempter of men, the terrible creature of the dark. She was just a tired old woman, lost in memories of better times. She looked up, and caught Rupert’s eyes on her.
“Aye, look at me,” she said quietly. “I was beautiful, once. So beautiful men travelled hundreds of miles just to pay me compliments. Kings, emperors, heroes—I could have had my pick of any of them. But I didn’t want them. It was enough that I was … beautiful.”
“How many young girls died to keep you beautiful?” said Rupert harshly.
“I lost count,” said the Witch. “It didn’t seem important, then. I was young and glorious and men loved me; nothing else mattered. What’s your name, boy?”
“Rupert.”
“You should have seen me then, Rupert. I was so lovely. So very lovely.”
She smiled gently and rocked her chair, eyes fixed on yesterday.
“I was young and powerful and I bent the darkness to my will. I raised a
palace of ice and diamond in a single night, and Lords and Ladies from a dozen Courts came to pay homage to me. They never noticed if a few peasant girls went missing from the villages. They wouldn’t have cared if they had.
“And then Eduard came to kill me. Somehow he’d found out the truth, and he came to rid the Forest Land of my evil.” She chuckled quietly. “Many the nights he spent in my cold halls, of his own free will. He was tall and brave and handsome and he never once bowed to me. I showed him wonders and terrors and I couldn’t break him. We used to dance in my ballroom, just the two of us, in a great echoing hall of glistening ice, each chandelier fashioned from a single stalactite. Slowly, I came to love him, and he loved me. I was young and foolish, and I thought our love would last for ever.
“It lasted a month.
“I needed fresh blood, and Eduard couldn’t allow that. He loved me, but he was King, and he had a responsibility to his people. He couldn’t kill me, but I couldn’t change what I was. So I waited till he slept, and then I left my palace, and the Forest Land, and came here to live in the darkness, where there’s no one to see that I’m not beautiful any more.
“I could have killed him and kept my secret safe. I could have stayed young and lovely and powerful. But I loved him. My Eduard. The only man I ever loved. I suppose he’s dead now.”
“More than thirty years ago,” said Rupert.
“So many years,” whispered the Witch. Her shoulders slumped, and her crooked, twisted hands writhed together. She took a deep breath and let it go shakily, then looked up at Rupert and smiled tiredly. “So, you’re Eduard’s kin. You have some of his looks, boy. What do you want from me?”
Blue Moon Rising Page 2