Unicorns

by Jack Dann

  Barbara's face was set. "You weren't to know," she choked. "You weren't ever to know . . . I was so glad you were blind, because I thought you'd never know."

  He fell on his knees beside her. And when he did, the unicorn touched her face with his satin nose, and all the girl's pent-up beauty flooded outward. The unicorn rose from his kneeling, and whickered softly. Del looked at her, and only the unicorn was more beautiful. He put out his hand to the shining neck, and for a moment felt the incredible silk of the mane flowing across his fingers. The unicorn reared then, and wheeled, and in a great leap was across the bog, and in two more was on the crest of the farther ridge. He paused there briefly, with the sun on him, and then was gone.

  Barbara said, "For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful pool."

  And Del said, "He will get another. He must." With difficulty he added, "He couldn't be . . . punished . . . for being so gloriously Fair."

  Introduction to L. Sprague de Camp's "Eudoric's Unicorn":

  Like Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp is a seminal figure, one whose career spans almost the entire development of modern fantasy and SF. Much of the luster of the "Golden Age" of Astounding during the late thirties and the forties is due to the presence in those pages of de Camp, along with his great contemporaries Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and A. E. Van Vogt. Important as de Camp was to Astounding, though, he was indispensable to Unknown, Astounding's sister fantasy magazine—it was in Unknown that de Camp's talent really blossomed, and it was there that much of his best work saw print. In fact, great as de Camp's impact on SF was, his impact on the development of fantasy was incalculably greater, and it is impossible to imagine the shape of modern fantasy without him. De Camp's stories for Unknown are among the best short fantasies ever written, and include such classics as "The Wheels of If" (one of the first alternate worlds stories), "Divide and Rule," "The Gnarly Man," "None but Lucifer" (with Horace L. Gold), as well as novels such as Solomon's Stone and the brilliant Lest Darkness Fall, (another alternate worlds story, and one of the three or four best novels ever written on that subject). It would be the "Harold Shea" stories, though, written in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt (the first of which was "The Roaring Trumpet" in 1939) that would have the greatest effect on subsequent work. Collected into book form in 1940 as The Incomplete Enchanter, and followed a year later by a sequel, The Castle of Iron, the two Harold Shea novels (they were collected in an omnibus volume, The Compleat Enchanter in 1975) are truly landmarks of modern fantasy. (It is also interesting to note that the magazine stories that would make up The Incomplete Enchanter were published almost simultaneously with T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone, the first section of The Once and Future King, and that both works were charming, intelligent, and highly literate fantasies that depended heavily for their effect on whimsy and deliberate—and very funny—anachronism; obviously some special kind of muse was in the air that particular year.)

  De Camp is also in large part responsible for the current flourishing popularity of "sword and sorcery" or "heroic fantasy": in 1963 he edited an anthology called Swords and Sorcery in an attempt to preserve and revive a long-forgotten and "endangered" sub-genre of heroic fantasy, and in so doing exposed modern readers for the first time to some of the older giants of fantasy, some of whom had been out-of-print entirely since before World War II; de Camp also helped to start the big Conan boom of the sixties and seventies, and has himself converted a number of uncompleted Robert E. Howard manuscripts into Conan stories and novels. He has also published some of the major critical books about fantasy, notably Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers and the definitive Lovecraft: A Biography. De Camp's other books include Rogue Queen, The Tower of Zanid, The Search for Zei/The Hand of Zei, Land of Unreason (with Fletcher Pratt), The Glory That Was. His most recent books are The Great Fetish, and the collections The Purple Pterodactyls and The Best of L. Sprague de Camp.

  Wry humor mixed with fast-paced and vividly colored adventure has always been de Camp's forte, and the story that follows is no exception, as he turns his sharp satirist's eye toward the unicorn legend . . .

  EUDORIC'S UNICORN

  L. Sprague de Camp

  When Sir Eudoric Dambertson's stagecoach line was running smoothly, Eudoric thought of expansion. He would extend the line from Kromnitch to Sogambrium, the capital of the New Napolitanian Empire. He would order a second coach. He would hire a scrivener to relieve him of the bookkeeping . . .

  The initial step would be to look over the Sogambrian end of the route. So he posted notices in Zurgau and Kromnitch that, on a certain day, he would instead of turning around at Kromnitch to come back to Zurgau, continue on to Sogambrium, carrying those who wished to pay the extra fare.

  Eudoric got a letter of introduction from his silent partner, Baron Emmerhard of Zurgau, who once had almost become Eudoric's father-in-law. The letter presented Eudoric to the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Rolgang.

  "For a gift," said Emmerhard, fingering his graying beard, "I'll send one of my best hounds with thee. Nought is done at court without presents."

  "Very kind of you, sir," said Eudoric.

  "Not so kind as all that. Be sure to debit the cost of the bitch to operating expenses."

  "At what value?"

  "Klea should fetch at least fifty marks—"

  "Fifty! Good my lord, that's absurd. I can pick up—"

  "Be not impertinent with me, puppy! Thou knowest nought of dogs . . ."

  After an argument, Eudoric got Klea's value down to thirty marks, which he still thought much too high. A few days later, he set out with a cage, containing Klea, lashed to the back of the coach. In seven days the coach, with Eudoric's helper Jillo driving, rolled into Sogambrium.

  Save once when he was an infant, Eudoric had never seen the imperial capital. By comparison, Kromnitch was but a small town and Zurgau, a village. The slated gables seemed to stretch away forever, like the waves of the sea.

  The hordes who seethed through the flumelike streets made Eudoric uneasy. They wore fashions never seen in rural parts. Men flaunted shoes with long, turned-up toes, attached by laces to the wearer's legs below the knee; women, yard-high conical hats. Everyone seemed in a hurry. Eudoric had trouble understanding the metropolitan dialect. The Sogambrians slurred their words, dropped whole syllables, and seldom used the old-fashioned, familiar "thou " and "thee."

  Having taken quarters at an inn of middling grade, Eudoric left Jillo to care for the coach and team. Leading Klea, he made his way through a gray drizzle to the archducal palace. He tried on one hand to take in all the sights but, on the other, not conspicuously to stare, gape, and crane his neck.

  The palace, sheathed in stonework carved in fantastic curlicues, in the ornate modern style, rose adjacent to the Cathedral of the Divine Pair. Eudoric had had enough to do with the court of his own sovran, King Valdhelm III of Locania, to know what to expect at the palace: endless delays, to be shortened only by generous tipping of flunkies. Thanks to this strategy, Eudoric got his audience with the Archduke on the second day.

  "A bonny beast," said Rolgang, stroking Klea's head. Clad in gold-and-purple Serican silks, the Archduke was a fat man with beady, piercing little eyes. "Tell me, Sir Eudoric, about this coach-wagon enterprise."

  Eudoric told of encountering regular coach service, unknown in the Empire, on his journey to Pathenia. He recounted bringing the concept back to his home in Arduen, Barony of Zurgau, County of Treveria, Kingdom of Locania, and of having a coach of Pathenian style constructed by local wainwrights.

  "This bears thinking on," said the Archduke. "I can foresee some effects adverse to good government. Miscreants could use your coach to flee from justice. Bankrupts could leave the site of their indebtedness and set up in business elsewhere. Subversive agitators could travel 'bout, spreading discontent and rousing the rabble 'gainst their betters."

  "On the other hand, Your Highness," said Eudoric, "if the business prosper, you may be able to tax it some day."

/>   The beady eyes lit up. "Aha, young sir! Ye've a shrewd instinct for the jugular vein! With that consideration in mind, I'm sure his Imperial Majesty will impose no obstacle to your enterprise. I'll tell you. His Imperial Majesty holds a levee at ten tomorrow. Be there with this pass, and I'll present you to my 'perial brother."

  Leaving the palace cheered by this unexpected stroke of good fortune, Eudoric thought of buying a fashionable new suit, although his thrifty nature winced at the thought of spending capital on another such garment before his present best had begun to show wear. He cheered up at the thought that he might well make a better impression as an honest rustic, clean and decent if not stylish, than as an inept imitation of a metropolitan dandy.

  Next morning Eudoric, stocky, dark, square-jawed, and of serious mien, stood in plain russet and black, in line with half a hundred other gentry of the Empire. Emperor Thorar IX and his brother passed slowly down the line, while an official, introduced each man:

  "Your Imperial Majesty, let me present Baron Gutholf of Drin, who fought in the Imperial forces to put down the late rebellion in Aiona. Now he doth busy himself with the reconstruction of his holding, dyking and draining a new polder."

  "Good, my lord of Drin!" said the Emperor. "We must needs show our deluded subjects, stirred to rebellion by base-born agitators, that we love 'em in spite of all." Thorar was tall, thin, and stooped, with a gray goatee, an obvious hair piece, and a creaky voice. He was clad all in black, against which blazed a couple of jeweled decorations.

  "Your Imperial Majesty," said the usher, "this is Sir Eudoric Dambertson of Arduen. He hath instituted the coach line from Zurgau to Kromnitch."

  " 'Tis he of whom I told you," said the Archduke.

  "Ah, Sir Eudoric!" creaked the Emperor. "We know of your enterprise. We'll see you anon on this matter. But—are ye not that Eudoric who slew a dragon in Pathenia and later fought the monstrous spider in the forest of Dimshaw?"

  Eudoric simpered with modesty. "Indeed, 'twas I, Your Imperial Majesty, albeit I came through more by good hap than by good management." He did not add that Jillo had killed the dragon, largely by accident, and that Eudoric, when he had the giant spider Fraka under his crossbow, had let her go on a sentimental whim.

  "Stuff, my boy!" said the Emperor. "Good luck comes to those prepared to make the most of it. Since ye've shown such adroitness with strange beasts, we have a task for you." The Emperor turned to the Archduke. "Have ye a half-hour to spare after this, Rolgang?"

  "Aye, sire."

  "Well, bring the lad to the Chamber of Privy Audience, pray. And tell Heinmar to dig Sir Eudoric's dossier out of the file." The Emperor passed on.

  In the Chamber of Privy Audience, Eudoric found the Emperor, the Archduke, the Minister of Public Works, the Emperor's secretary, and two bodyguards in silver cuirasses and crested helms. The Emperor was turning the pages of a slim folder.

  "Sit down, Sir Eudoric," said Thorar. "This bids fair to take time, and we'd not needlessly inflict sore knees 'pon loyal subjects. Ye are unwed, we see, albeit nearly thirty. Why is this?"

  Eudoric thought, the old boy might give the appearance of doddering, but there was nothing wrong with his wits. He said: "I have been betrothed, Your Imperial Majesty, but chance hath each time snatched away my promised bride. That I am single is not from lack of inclination towards the other sex."

  "Hm. We must needs 'mend this condition. Rolgang, is that youngest daughter of yours promised yet?"

  "Nay, sire."

  The Emperor turned back. "Sir Eudoric, the gist is this. Next month, the Grand Cham of the Pantorozians comes on a visit of state, bringing a young dragon to add to the 'perial menagerie. As ye may've heard, our zoological collection is, after the welfare of the empire, our greatest passion. But, for the honor of the Empire, we can't let this heathen Easterling outdo us in generosity.

  "Dragons are extinct in the Empire, unless a few still lurk in the wilder wastes. We're told, howsomever, that west of Hessel, in your region, lies the wilderness of Bricken, where dwell many curious beasts. Amongst these is the unicorn."

  Eudoric raised his eyebrows. "Your Imperial Majesty wants a unicorn to give to this Pantorozian?"

  "Aye, sir; ye've put the bolt in the gold. How 'bout it?"

  "Why—ah—sensible though I be of the great honor, Your Imperial Majesty, I know not whether I could manage it. As I told you, my previous escapes were more by luck than by skill or might. Besides, my coach line, requiring constant attention to detail, takes all my time—"

  "Oh, stuff, my boy! Ye crave a just wage for your labor, as do we all, however we bluebloods affect to be above base thought of material gain. Eh, Rolgang?"

  The Emperor winked. Eudoric found this ruler's genial cynicism refreshing after the elaborate pretence of the country gentry, among whom he lived, to care nothing for vulgar money. Thorar continued:

  "Well, at the moment we have no vacant baronies or counties to bestow, but my brother hath a nubile daughter. She's not the fairest of the fair—"

  "Petrilla's a good girl!" the Archduke broke in. "None denies it, none denies it. Neither doth anyone propose her for the Crown of Beauty at tournaments. Well, Sir Eudoric, how about it? One unicorn for the hand of Petrilla Rolgangsdaughter?"

  Eudoric took his time about answering. "The young lady would have to give her free consent. May I have the honor of meeting her?"

  "Certes. Rolgang, arrange it, if you please."

  Eudoric had been in love several times, but the outcomes of these passions had given him a cynical, practical view of the battle of the sexes. He had never found fat girls attractive, and Petrilla was fat—not grossly so yet, but give her a few years. She was dark, dumpy, blunt of feature, and given to giggles.

  Sighing, Eudoric totted up the advantages and disadvantages of being joined with this unglamorous if supremely well-connected young woman. For a career of courtier and magnate, the virtues of being the Archduke's son-in-law overbore all else. After all, Petrilla seemed healthy and good-natured. If she proved too intolerable a bore, he could doubtless find consolation elsewhere.

  Back in Arduen, Eudoric sought out his old tutor, Doctor Baldonius, now living in semi-retirement in a cabin in the woods. A wizardly scholar who eked out his pension by occasional theurgies, Baldonius got out his huge encyclopedia and unlocked its iron clasps.

  "Unicorn," he said, turning pages of crackling parchment. "Ah, here we are. "The unicorn, Dinohyus helicornus, the last surviving member of the family Entelodontidae. The spirally twisted horn, rising from the animal's forehead, is actually not one horn. This would be impossible because of the frontal suture, along the mid-line of the forehead. It is, instead, a pair of horns conjoined and twisted into a single spike. The legend that the beast can be rendered mild and tractable by a human virgin appears to have a basis in fact. According to the story . . .' But ye know the tale, Eudoric."

  "Aye," said Eudoric. "You get a virgin—if you can find one—and have her sit under a tree in a wood frequented by unicorns. The beast will come up and lay its head in her lap, and the hunters can rush out and spear the quarry with impunity. How could that be?"

  Baldonius: "My colleague Doctor Bobras hath published a monograph—let me look—ah, here 'tis." Baldonius pulled a scroll out of a cabinet of pigeonholes. "His theory, whereon he hath worked since we were students at Saalingen together, is that the unicorn is unwontedly sensitive to odors. With that great snout, it could well be. Bobras deduces that a virgin hath a smell different from that of a non-virgin human female, and that this effluvium nullifies the brute's ferocious instincts. Fieri potest."

  "Very well," said Eudoric. "Assuming I can find me a virgin willing to take part in this experiment, what next? It's one thing to rush upon the comatose beast and plunge a boar spear into its vitals and quite another to capture it alive and unharmed and get it to Sogambrium."

  "Alas! I fear I have no experience in such things. As a vegetarian, I have avoided all matters of chase and venery.
I use the latter word in its hunting sense; albeit, scilicet, the other meaning were also apt for an adept like myself."

  "Then who could advise me in this matter?"

  Baldonius pondered, then smiled through his waterfall of beard. "There's an unlikely expert dwelling nigh unto Baron Rainmar's demesne, namely and to wit: my cousin Svanhalla."

  "The witch of Hesselbourn?"

  "The same, but don't let her hear you call her that. A witch, she insists, is a practitioner, of either sex, of black, illegal goëtics, whereas she's a respectable she-wizard or enchantress, whose magics are all beneficient and lawful. My encyclopedia traces the derivation of these words—"

  "Never mind," said Eudoric hastily, as Baldonius began to turn the pages. "I've not met her, but I've heard. She's a crankly old puzzle, they say. What would she know of the techniques of hunting?"

  "She knows surprising things. 'Twas always said in the fraternity, if ye wish some utterly useless bit of odd information, which nobody on earth could rightly be expected to have—say, for example, what Count Holmer the pretender had for breakfast the day they cut off's head—go ask Svanhalla. I'll give you a letter to her. I haven't seen her for years, for fear of her raspy tongue."

  "So ye be a knight now?" said Svanhalla, sitting with Eudoric in the gloom of her hut. "Not by any feats of chivalry, ta-rah! ta-rah! But by shrewdly taking advantage of what luck hath brought you, heh? I know the tale of how ye slew that Pathenian dragon—how ye missed clean with the Serican thunder-tube and ran for your life, and how Jillo by chance touched off the sack of fire-powder just as the beast waddled o'er it."

  Silently cursing Jillo's loose tongue, Eudoric kept his temper. "Had I been twice as brave and thrice as adept with the thunder weapon, Madam, 'twould have availed us nought had luck been against us. We should have made but toothsome morsels for the reptile. But let's to business. Baldonius says you can advise me on the capture of unicorns in Bricken."