by Karen Frost
~*~
Jack did not recognize where they were in what had always seemed to him like an endless, featureless forest, but Mirrin did.
"Here," she announced, stopping.
Her halt was so sudden that Jack, who had not been paying attention to how closely he had been following her, almost toppled into her. He looked up to see Mirrin standing in front of a wide tree, out of which came a familiar rope of multicolored pieces of clothing tied together and wrapped around a branch. In the dimming light of day, it could almost have gone unnoticed by anyone who didn't know to look for it. Mirrin's long white hand followed the rope to where it emerged from the tree and caressed the tree's rough bark. Unlike when the children touched it, the tree was solid; her hand did not pass through.
"Boy…" she started to command Jack, but the rest of her words were lost, caught up and carried away by hundreds, possibly thousands, of birds of all shapes and sizes that appeared in the sky in an instant and fell screaming upon Mirrin and the two harpies.
The unexpected appearance of the birds was accompanied by a similarly surprising torrent of dozens upon dozens of small woodland creatures ranging from squirrels to rabbits to chipmunks, who added to the confusion of the scene by creating a sea of living creatures that covered the green forest floor. In seconds, there were so many winged and furred animals all occupying the same small space that it was impossible for the children to see anything but blurs of color and movement. They couldn't see each other, much less Mirrin or the harpies. Jack regained his senses first. He grabbed his sisters' hands and pulled hard.
"Run for the tree!" He yelled.
He recognized that they could use the cover of the attack to escape. While Mirrin battled the small creatures, they could slip through the mirror and be out of her clutches forever. He and Mary Jane began to run, batting birds away from their faces and jumping over animals that scurried at their feet, but they had to stop when Maude did not follow. Her hand slipped from Jack's purposefully.
"Come on, Maude!" Jack cried.
Maude shook her head. Calmly, she removed from the leather pouch at her side the white horn that she carried. In all that had happened since the Hall of Heroes, Jack and Mary Jane had forgotten it entirely. Now, amid the vortex of swiftly diving birds swirling all around her, Maude held the horn of Duhaim to her lips and blew.
The horn sounded a long, pure note that cut through the sound and chaos around them. Its effect was like a wave breaking upon the shore, smothering the sand beneath it. The grappling animals, human, and harpies were all stilled for a minute, like figures forever caught in a moment of action by the paintbrush of an artist. Then the birds that had been harrying Mirrin and her companions scattered and were gone in an instant, leaving in their wake a perfectly blue, clear sky. The woodland animals, too, melted away into the trees, although their glowing eyes peered out like tiny stars just as dusk settles, watching. The harpies, able to move now, pulled free their swords, one in each hand, and held them out before their bodies defensively, their mangy black wings spread wide. The forest pulsed with an electric anticipation.
The wait was not long. An explosion of soundless light appeared between the children and their adversaries so bright that they had to close their eyes against it and still it burned against their eyelids. When they opened their eyes again, a brilliant white horse stood where the light had been. Its coat, lightly dappled on the haunches, glowed with a soft white light, setting off the perfect black of its eyes. Out of the center of its broad forehead grew a spiraling horn a foot and a half long that ended in a deadly point. The unicorn reared, stretching to its full height and lashing out in the direction of Mirrin and the harpies with its large yellow hooves.
"Oh!" Maude squeaked in surprise.
"Why have I been summoned back to Devorian?" The unicorn demanded.
Its voice was deep, melodious, raw. Surprise bound the tongues of the humans into silence. Maude, who had not known what to expect, certainly hadn't expected a unicorn to appear. The unicorn shook its head, its silken mane flying.
"Well?" It demanded again, falling to all four feet.
"I called you, I suppose," Maude said at last.
She added timidly, "Only, I don't know who you are. Are you a magical beast?"
"I am Ragnar," the unicorn said impatiently.
Then his nostrils flared and he said suspiciously, "Why is there so much magic in this place? What is going on here?"
When no one answered, his head snaked toward Mirrin, his ears pinned flat to his head. He said accusingly, "You. The magic is coming from you, human witch."
"Be gone, beast, this matter does not concern you," Mirrin snarled.
She tried to sound commanding, but her voice was smaller and less certain than it had been when she faced only the children. She could sense the unicorn was very powerful, although she could not remember which of the magical beasts he was. Unconsciously, her hands balled into fists at her sides and her long nails dug into her palms until they drew red blood against white flesh.
"I sense fear," Ragnar said. "The children. Why? What evil do you work here, witch?"
"It is none of your concern," Mirrin repeated.
Her black eyes blazed. The unicorn growled, "Where innocents are threatened, I am always concerned. Why do you seek to bring harm to these children?"
"You magical beasts!" Mirrin roared angrily. "I have had enough of your meddling in my affairs. If you will not leave, I will make you leave. None of the other beasts could stop me, and you are no better. I am going through that portal!"
"You may try, and you will fail. I was thousands of years old long before the first human was born. You are just another street magician to me," Ragnar replied, his tail swishing angrily behind him. "There is no creature in Devorian, living or dead, more powerful than I, for I am the Monsters' Bane, the strongest of Devorian's magical beasts."
Ragnar placed himself protectively between the children and the sorceress, arching his neck proudly. Scowling, Mirrin raised her hands before her, and around them a smokeless green fire flickered and grew. The flames licked at her long fingers and glowed almost white hot at the point where they seemed to spring from her palms. With a feral shout, Mirrin turned her hands toward the unicorn and the flames leapt toward him as a long column of fire. Ragnar was immediately engulfed by the magical fire, covered from the point of his horn to his hooves in green. Mary Jane screamed and clutched Jack's hand so tightly he winced. Although the fire produced no heat that the children could feel, the flames nevertheless set the grass around Ragnar's hooves on fire, creating a thin black smoke that swirled around the unicorn.
Ragnar stood calmly within the spellfire. He did not appear to feel the effects of the fire, for he neither showed distress nor tried to flee. Mirrin growled in frustration when she saw that her spell had no effect and threw all of her energy into the fire. Now true heat radiated out from the flames and filled the forest with so much hot air that the children felt as though they were standing inside of an oven. Sweat poured from Mirrin's brow, but still Ragnar unblinkingly withstood her assault upon him. A full minute passed.
Finally, Mirrin's strength was sapped. She had thrown all of her energy into the spell and had burned through it quickly. Too exhausted to conjure any more magic, her arms fell limply to her sides. She panted heavily, struggling to catch her breath. Her white hair was matted to her forehead or falling limply to her shoulders. Her face was pale, with light purple rings beneath her eyes. Silence expanded like a balloon to fill the spaces between the unicorn, the humans, and the harpies. The small animals that had been watching them through the trees had fled while Mirrin began casting the spellfire, leaving them totally alone.
Now Ragnar, unhurt, shook his head and the last green remnants of the spell fell from him like snowflakes. He stepped toward the sorceress. Mirrin was too tired to move, and too fearful, as well. Even the swords in the hands of the fearsome harpies at her sides trembled and were not raised in a challenge to th
e advancing unicorn. Ragnar's horn began to glow with a pulsing, soft white light that became brighter the closer he moved to Mirrin.
He stopped three feet away from her and, stretching out his neck, touched his horn to her forehead. Mirrin did not resist. She closed her eyes with a sigh of relief and her body relaxed completely, all the tension melting out of it. As unicorn and human stood intimately connected in this way, a faint white mist rose from Mirrin's body and was drawn into Ragnar's horn. When no more mist came, Ragnar stepped away. His horn immediately dimmed and Mirrin opened her eyes. They were dazed and unfocused.
"Power is a gift," Ragnar said in a voice that was almost soft. "It does not come without responsibility. If you cannot bear that responsibility, then you deserve no power. For the good of all Devorian, I strip you of your power."
Mirrin blinked as though waking from a long sleep. She raised her hands palms up to her face and stared at them without understanding. Her confusion quickly turned to rage. Her face twisted with horror and anger, she screamed, "What have you done?"
She threw her hands at the unicorn once more to renew her assault upon him, but nothing happened. Not a single green flame appeared. Fear and panic now made her desperate. She grabbed the sword from the harpy to her right and ran toward Ragnar, raising it over her head to cleave at him. The unicorn easily knocked it out of her hands with a sweep of his long horn. Then, to stop her from advancing further, he leveled his horn so that its deadly tip pointed straight at her heart, mere inches away.
"Enough," he commanded, his voice no longer soft. "Go now and live as others do; neither weaker nor stronger than any other animal. Whoever you are, or whoever you imagine you are, may you learn humility from the experience."
"This is not over," Mirrin snarled back, her face a faint purple. "Whatever you have done, I will reverse it. Then I will return with my armies and see you destroyed. You and all the arrogant beasts who challenge me."
"What is done cannot be undone," Ragnar replied. "Not by any living creature in Devorian. Moreover, I think you will find that armies are held together only with great difficulty. Without your magic to help you, how long do you think it will be before this army of yours falls to pieces?"
Mirrin glanced unconsciously behind her, eyeing the two harpies that now looked at her with cold, hungry eyes. The life seemed to rush from her. Her flashing black eyes became dull, and her shoulders slumped. She held her hands before her pitifully, still willing them to spark with magic, but they never would again. She sank to her knees, her red cloak spreading like pooled blood around her.
"It's…over," she whispered hoarsely.
"Yes."
Mary Jane saw the scared girl Mirrin once was. The girl she still was, for she was young even now. Mirrin no longer saw what was around her, lost in her own despair, but Ragnar had no sympathy for her. Turning to the children, he said, "You do not belong in this place. You are not of Devorian. Wherever you are from, you must return there."
"What about the monsters?" Maude asked.
Her question encompassed not only the fearsome harpies standing before them, still with their swords drawn, but all of the creatures in Mirrin's army that would be let loose upon Devorian once they realized that the sorceress no longer could control them.
"Centuries ago, the magical beasts chased the monsters from Devorian. We will do it again," the unicorn replied. "We will restore peace in this land."
Maude suddenly remembered the other name Ragnar had given himself: Monsters' Bane. Jack pulled on her hand. He urged softly, "Let's go."
He looked at Mirrin slumped upon the ground, broken, the two monsters shifting uneasily before Ragnar, and Ragnar himself, powerful and bold. The unicorn was right: the children did not belong to this world. It was time to go home. Jack led his sisters to the tree and tested the passage by putting his hand through it. When he encountered no resistance, he nodded to his youngest sister. Maude stepped through the tree without looking back. She was followed by Mary Jane. Jack was the last to go. He stepped through the tree and that was the last they saw of Devorian.