by Jack Dann
Dumont said, "You'd better let me go in front," and hurried past them with the tranquilizer gun. The doors closed with a hollow boom; suddenly the air seemed stale.
"Isn't there a watchman?" Anderson asked.
Julie nodded. She was near enough for Anderson to smell her faint perfume. "You said Ed was a friend of mine. I don't have a lot, but I suppose Bailey—he's the watchman—is a friend too. I'm the only one who never calls him Beetle. I told you Nick was in the Sloan Fantasy Collection. Have you heard of it?"
"Vaguely. My field is classical literature."
Behind them, Ed said, "That's what fantasy is—classical lit that's still alive. When the people who wrote those stories did it, their books were called fantasy."
"Ed!" Julie protested.
"No." Anderson said. "He's right."
Anyway," Julie continued, "the Sloan Collection isn't the best in the country, or even a famous collection. But it's a jolly good one. It's got James Branch Cabell in first editions, for example, and a lot of his letters. And there's some wonderful John Gardner material. So that's where I put Nick."
Stamping among the books, Anderson thought to himself. Couchant at the frontiers of Overworld and Oz.
Pity the Unicorn,
Pity the Hippogriff,
Souls that were never born
Out of the land of If!
Somewhere ahead, Dumont called, "He's dead!" and suddenly all three of them were running, staggering, stumbling down a dark and narrow corridor, guided by the flame of Dumont's lighter.
Anderson heard Julie whisper, "Nick! Oh, God, Nick!" Then she was quiet. The thing on the floor was no white unicorn.
Dumont rasped. "Hasn't anybody got a light?"
"Just matches," Anderson said. He lit one.
Ed told them, "I've got one," and from the pocket of his denim shirt produced a little, disposable pen light.
Julie was bending over the dead man, trying not to step in his blood. There was a great deal of it, and Dumont had stepped in it already, leaving a footprint. Ed played his light upon the dead man's face—cleanshaven; about sixty, Anderson guessed. He had worn a leather windbreaker. There was a hole in it now, a big hole that welled blood.
"It's Bailey," Julie said. And Dumont, thinking that she spoke to him (as perhaps she did), answered, "Is that his name? Everybody called him Beetle."
Bailey had been gored in the middle of the chest, very near the heart, Anderson decided. No doubt he had died instantly, or almost instantly. His face was not peaceful or frightened or anything else; only twisted in the terrible rictus of death. The match burned Anderson 's fingers; he shook it and dropped it.
"Nick . . ." Julie whispered. "Nick did this?"
"I'm afraid so," Dumont told her.
She looked around, first at Dumont, then at Anderson, "He's dangerous . . . I suppose I always knew it, but I didn't like to think about it. We'll have to let the police . . ."
Dumont nodded solemnly.
"Like hell," Anderson said, and Julie stared at him. "You put him here, in this room—" Anderson glanced at the half open door, "—and went away and left him. Is that right?"
"Mr. Bailey was with us. He heard us as soon as I brought Nick inside. Nick's hooves made a lot of noise on the terrazzo floor. We took him to this room, and Mr. Bailey locked it for me."
Ed asked, "Hold this, will you, Dr. Dumont?" and handed Dumont the pen light, then took three steps, stooped, and straightened up with a much larger flashlight. After the near darkness, its illumination teemed almost a glare. Dumont let his lighter go out and dropped it into his pocket.
Ed was grinning weakly. "This must be the old man's flash," he said. "I thought I saw something shine over here."
"Yes." Anderson nodded. "He would have had it in his hand. After Julie left he came here to take another look at the unicorn. He opened the door and turned on his flashlight."
Julie shivered. "It could have been me."
"I doubt it. Even if Nick doesn't have human or almost human intelligence—and I suspect he does—he would have winded the watchman and known it wasn't your smell. No matter what kind of brain his creator gave him, his sensory setup must be basically the one that came with his equine DNA. Am I right, Dumont?"
"Right." The biologist glanced at his wrist. "I wish we I had more information about the time Beetle died."
Ed asked, "Can't you tell from the clotting of the blood?"
"Not close enough," Dumont said. "Maybe a forensic technician could, but that's not my field. If this were one of those mysteries on TV, we could tell from the time his watch broke. It didn't, and it's still running. Anybody want to guess how far that unicorn's gone since he did this?"
"I will," Anderson told him. "Not more than about two hundred and fifty feet."
They stared at him.
"The front doors were locked when we came in—Julie had to open them for us. I'd bet the side door is locked too, and this building has practically no windows."
"You mean he's still in here?"
"If he's not, how did he get out?"
Julie said, "We'd hear him, wouldn't we? I told you—his hooves made a racket when I led him in."
"He heard them too," Anderson told her. "He wouldn't have to be a tenth as intelligent as he probably is to keep quiet. Almost any animal will do that by instinct. If it can't run—or doesn't think running's a good idea—it freezes."
Ed cleared his throat. "Dr. Anderson, you said he could tell by the smell that Beetle wasn't Julie. He'll know we aren't Julie too."
"Conversely, he'll know that she is. But if we separate to look for him and the wrong party finds him, there could be trouble."
Dumont nodded. "What do you think we ought to do?"
"To start with, give Ed here the keys to your van so he can bring it around front. If we find Nick, we're going to have to have some way to get him out of town. We'll leave the front doors open—"
"And let him get away?"
"No. But we need unicorn bait, and freedom's about as good a bait as anybody's ever found. Nick's probably hungry by now, and he's almost certainly thirsty. My mind runs to quotations anyway, so how about:
'One by one in the moonlight there,
Neighing far off on the haunted air,
The unicorns come down to the sea.'
Do you know that one?"
All three looked blank.
"It 's Conrad Aiken, and of course he never saw a unicorn. But there may be some truth in it—in the feeling of it just the same. We'll prop the doors wide. Dumont, you hide in the darkest shadow you can find there; the open doors should let in enough light for you to shoot by, particularly since you'll be shooting at a white animal, Julie and I will go through the building, turning on lights and looking for Nick. If we find him and he's docile with her, we can just lead him out and put him in the truck. If he runs, you should get him on the way out."
Dumont nodded.
When the two of them were alone, Julie asked, "That gun of Dr. Dumont's won't really hurt Nick, will it?"
"No more than a shot in the arm would hurt you. Less."
The beam of the dead watchman's flashlight probed the corridor, seeming to leave a deeper twilight where it had passed. A few moments before, Anderson had talked of turning on more lights, but thus far they had failed to find the switches. He asked Julie if it were always this dim when she came to do research after the library had closed.
"Bailey used to take care of the lights for me," she said. "But I don't know where. I'd begin setting up my things on one of the tables, my notebooks and so forth, and the lights would come on." Her voice caught on lights.
She sniffled, and Anderson realized she was crying. He put his arm about her shoulders.
"Oh, rot! Why is it that one can—can try to do something fine, and have—have it end . . ."
He chanted softly:
"Twist ye, twine ye! Even so,
Mingled shades of joy and woe,
Hope and fear, and peace,
and strife,
In the thread of human life."
"That's b—beautiful, but what does it mean? That the good and bad are mixed together so we can't pull them apart?"
"And that this isn't the end. Not for men or women or unicorns. Probably not even for poor old Bailey. Threads are long."
She put her arms about his neck and kissed him, and he was so busy pressing those soft, fragrant lips in return that he hardly heard the sudden thunder of the unshod hooves.
He pushed her away just in time. The spiraled horn raked his belly like a talon; the beast's shoulder hit him like a football player's, sending him crashing into a high bookcase.
Julie screamed, "No, Nick! Don't!" and he tried to stand.
The unicorn was rearing to turn in the narrow aisle, tall as a giant on his hind legs. Anderson clawed at the shelves, bringing down an avalanche of books. He found himself somehow grasping the horn, holding on desperately. A hoof struck his thigh like a hammer and he was careening down some dark passage, half carried, half dragged.
Abruptly, there was light ahead. He tried to shout for Dumont to shoot, but he had no breath, grasping the horn, grappling the tossing white head like a bulldogger. If the soft pluff of the gun ever came, it was lost in the clattering hoofbeats, in the roar of the blood in his ears. And if it came, the dart surely missed.
They nearly fell on the steps. Reeling they reached the bottom like kittens tossed from a sack. Anderson managed then to get his right leg under him, and with the unicorn nearly sprawling, he tried to get his left across the broad, white back and found that leg was broken.
He must have shrieked when the ends of splintered bone grated together, and he must have lost his hold. He lay upon his back, on grass, and heard the gallop of approaching death. Saw Death, white as bone.
Stallions fight, he thought. Fight for mares, kicking and biting. Only men kill other men for a woman.
He lay without moving, his left leg twisted like a broken doll's. Stallions don't kill—not if the other lies down, surrenders.
The white head was silhouetted against the twinkling constellations now, the colors seemingly reversed as in a negative, the longsword horn both new and ancient to the sky of earth.
Later, when he told Julie and Dumont about it, Dumont said, "So he was only a horse after all. He spared you."
"A super horse. A horse armed, with size, strength, grace and intelligence all augmented." They had wanted to carry him somewhere (he doubted if they themselves knew where) but he had stopped them. Now, after Dumont had phoned for an ambulance, they sat beside him on the grass. His leg hurt terribly.
"Which way did he go? The park again?"
"No. the lake shore. 'The unicorns come down to the sea,' remember? You'll have to drum up a group and go after him in the morning."
Julie said, "I'll come, and I'm sure Ed will too."
Anderson managed to nod. "We've got a couple of dozen others. Some here, some in town. Dumont has the phone numbers."
She forced a smile. "Andy—can I call you Andy? You like poems. Do you recall this one?
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
And sent him out of town.
Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown.
Some gave them plum-cake,
And drummed them out of town.
We've just had it come true, all except for that bit about the plum-cake."
"And the lion," Anderson said.
Introduction to Bev Evans' "The Forsaken":
In the story "On the Last Afternoon," James Tiptree, Jr. says "Man is an animal whose dreams come true and kill him."
Here Beverly G. Evans, a fine new writer whose stories have appeared in Horrors, Nightmares, Shadows, and Terrors, takes us back to a time when the voices of the gods arc becoming silent and the creatures of legend seem to have disappeared, a time when belief itself is a two-edged thing, and dreams are becoming lethal. . . .
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an original story written expressly for this volume.
THE FORSAKEN
Bev Evans
Finmole lay still on his pallet and waited for dawn, making his heartbeat as shallow and soft as a whisper so that not even that would keep him from hearing the morning-song of god-voices in the forest behind his hut. The druid listened in rigid silence until the pain in his chest became more than he could bear; then rolled stiffly onto his side, and stirred the embers on the hearth pit with the end of his walking stick. Again, he thought; again I did not hear them.
Moving slowly, Finmole got to his feet and hobbled about the hut, leaning heavily on the cedar walking-stick that had been worn smooth by time and the constant caressing of his fingers. His back was stooped, so that his sparse grey beard trailed below his girtle, and the weary lid-folds of age nearly covered his pale blue eyes. He opened the door of his hut and looked out over the mountain's flank to where dawn had feathered the sky with crimson and gold. A cool damp breeze came up the slope and stirred his whispy hair.
Below him, the small hamlet of Cannock still smouldered from the midnight raid, and the sunrise was veiled by the soot and ash that rose with the light breeze. The berserkers had come out of the night, their hair stiff with lime, clad only in torque and bracelets, swinging their yard-long swords and screaming death in voices as shrill and pitiless as the crying of sea birds. Now, one by one, the survivors of the raid were coming down from the woods and hills; some weeping, some wounded, most of them silent as they collected their dead and set about salvaging what they could of their hamlet. The berserkers had come before; they would come again. Now was the time to damp out the still-smouldering buildings, to bank the cooking pits with coals so that they would not go out only later would there be time to mourn.
Finmole sat in the doorway of his hut, casting the onyx stones. The old rituals could not be ignored, even though the inner god-voice that once guided each man now mumbled their wisdom, maundered, laughed madly, or did nothing at all. Throughout his life, the god-voices had been fading; the voices that spoke within each person's mind, guiding, warning, or chiding, as each new situation warranted. Some in Cannock believed that the voices ceased because people had turned from the old ways, leaving them defenseless against berserker raids; all were lost amid the confusion, and turned to the druid. Soon the men from the hamlet would climb the rocky path to his door once again, asking for signs and seeking advice. Finmole coughed, and blood-tinged spittle edged his lips.
Finmole saw the men approaching, their heads bobbing above the low-lying mists as if in time to some dark elfin dance. He blinked and shook his head, taken by the image of the disembodied skulls. The heads seemed to swirl around each other and rise into the air, forming and re-forming into first one shape and then another, none lasting longer than the moment it took to recognize each one. There were sprites and laughing faces and grotesque wraiths of death and misfortune. Then they became a full-chested steed surging through the mists . . . the horse with only one leg, impaled on a chariot pole of twisted, burnished oak. On its back was the Earth Mother, and together they raced up the hill as swiftly as the first rush of flame around a bundle of dry straw. The hot breath of the steed warmed the druid's cheeks, and the chariot pole turned so that it seemed to protrude from the beast's forehead. In the last instant, Finmole saw two things: the steed's chilling blue eyes, and the face of the rider. It had not been the Earth Mother's, but that of Leandra, a child of Cannock.
Finmole flushed with heat, and for several moments could see nothing at all. His head felt light, and there was a curious high-pitched ringing in his ears. He had never felt like this after a vision before. What manner of fever-dream is this, he wondered, that walks during the daylight and plays tricks with me?
Finmole rubbed his eyes, and saw four men standing a respectful distance down the path. He stared at them, almost waiting for their heads to dance once again, but realized he was making them
uncomfortable. He motioned them to come the rest of the way up the hill, and watched their faces brighten with interest, for more often than not, since Samhain, he had waved them away.
The men, blood-flecked and exhausted, sat in a half circle near the druid. Emer waited with obvious impatience, his thick fingers tugging at a loose end of the goat skin thong that wrapped his boot leggings tightly against his calf. His eyes darted from Finmole to the woods behind the hut and back to Finmole again, as if he expected to see a vision himself. Next to him sat Jone, cradling his bow in his lap, waiting with the calm quiet that made him the hamlet's finest hunter. His hair was dark blond, his beard a rusty brown; his cheeks were always red with windburn and sun, and his thin, well-muscled body spoke of energy even in repose. Kern puffed and wheezed as he labored to lower his huge frame to the ground. For a man as broad and strong as an ox, Kern did not have the endurance of the animal that he had almost come to resemble. Keegan, the youngest, shook his mane of red hair and eyed the others with distrust.
"The morning song was sweet," Finmole lied.
"And your vision?" Emer asked, leaning forward with childlike anticipation, his fingers temporarily still.
"I saw no vision."
"There are traces of it in your eyes," Jone said.
Finmole sighed, and silently cursed the man for his powers of observation.
"I have seen the goddess Dana, riding the magic steed."
Three men drew in a breath as one; only Keegan remained unmoved, his eyes fixed squarely on the druid.
"She came riding through the morning mists as you were coming up the path."
All four men involuntarily looked up and around themselves, as if expecting to find the beast's hoofs pawing the air above their heads. It chilled them to think that they had been walking through a dream-vision.
"Is this the vision we've waited for, Finmole?" Jone asked softly.