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by A. A. Attanasio

  "I must feel how you hurt." The wizard stands beside her pallet and leans close, touching her with his heartflow.

  The drain of energy she has suffered buckles his knees, and only his staff steadies him.

  Merlinus places his hand on the queen's wrist. He

  hears the inner wind with his fingertips, the blood-rush in the human tree, and detects a slicing whine in the wind that seems to whistle from low in her pelvis. "You bleed!" he cries in alarm.

  A subtle flex of iris tells him she knows.

  "Can we save the baby?" Merlinus asks her as a healer, taking her chill hand in his.

  "I want you to tell me, wizard." Her eyes close. "The unicorn dies. Does that mean my baby must die?"

  "I will find the unicorn—heal it," Merlinus promises.

  She shakes her weary head and watches him

  through narrow, tired eyes. "No. Let it go. It is too dangerous. Death rides the unicorn now."

  Merlinus looks to the queen, silver eyes shimmering.

  "And Theo—" She grips the wizard's forearm and pulls strongly enough on his life-force to brighten her strong eye.

  Among charcoal scrawls of pyre smoke, Uther sits in

  the mud, whole yet hollow-eyed. "He suffers."

  "I will go to him," Merlinus promises. Dizzy from the queen's tap of his strength, he removes his arm from her grip. "I will bring him to you."

  The queen lifts her head. "You can heal the

  unicorn?"

  Merlinus shrugs and stares impassively.

  Ygrane sinks back. After she gathers her strength,

  she speaks again, with some effort, "I saw Theo. He suffers."

  "Rest now, lady," Merlinus advises.

  "Morgeu—Falon—" Her drowsy face holds sad apprehension. "The unicorn's shadow is upon them, too."

  "Ethiops—" Merlinus blames. "You were right to use your magic to drive him out, after all. He would have destroyed your daughter and the unicorn together."

  The wizard turns to leave.

  "Wait—" Ygrane calls quietly. "The unicorn is yours, Myrddin," she whispers, without lifting her lids. "I will call it for you. Be careful. The pain ... It is mad with pain. Heal it if you can."

  *

  On the knoll where the unicorn lay wounded, Falon

  and Morgeu remain. They stare up at the lovely darting of birds and at fields of death on all sides. The whistle of the void threads both their hearts. They have felt the unicorn's dying, and they are changed.

  Falon, dazed speechless, mute, dreambound,

  cannot seem to focus his will long enough to talk. The fiana lead him away, shaking with joy to see him alive and

  shivering dreadfully at the sight of him so thin and leather-tanned his eyes look jeweled.

  No one will go near Morgeu, and she does not

  budge. The punctured bitch masks of her slain Y Mamau watch from the chewed mud. She remembers everything

  and feels nothing. The loss of Morrigan has deprived her of her magic and has left its hollowed imprint in her soul.

  What, for now, is emptiness will fill again, in time with new force, for Ygrane's love charm blasted the demon loose and yet left her whole.

  Can her mother love her still? Yes, she answers to herself. She accepts that now. How could she have been so blind? Morrigan relieved an atmosphere of hazard for the young woman, and in Morgeu's groveling gladness to possess the magic of the goddess, to acquire her own

  power, she ignored obvious truths.

  The goddess was too powerful and filled her with a

  wrath far more vehement than either her body or her soul could have carried much longer without damage. The

  realization stirs her numbness as she lies on that field of death. Her mother is not her enemy. Indeed, she has

  saved her from certain madness. Ygrane is still the prize, the coveted source of love and authority, not to be harmed or defied but cherished and exploited.

  Her mother, after all, is a witch-queen with the

  shadows of former lifetimes ever present. Sitting in the smashed grass with the dead for witnesses, Morgeu knows that she will never be a true witch, not in this life. She has

  neither the sight nor the glamour. If she works hard with the imprint of magic that Morrigan has left behind in her, she will again walk out of her body to visit distant places and she will discover for herself how to ensorcell with voice and presence. She will make herself an enchantress.

  The witch-queen's charm has worked. Depths of

  love open their abysses, chasms, and gulfs before Morgeu.

  Down there, in the inmost regions of her heart, a destiny awaits. She has witnessed firsthand the advantages of political power in the duke's court where she grew up, and she sees now that she can have that influence for her own.

  She is the daughter of royalty, and she will, through love and the wiles of love, claim her place in the kingdom that has been won this day.

  Darkness pools at the bottom of her heart. The

  shadow of the unicorn's dying fills her with the absent love of her father, an absence which must yet be avenged by blood.

  She ignores the fiana's guard and the handmaid that her mother has sent to collect her. She will not hear their voices or see their gestures. Before she can leave this knoll where her magic died, she will face the one who killed her father and gave her to Morrigan.

  When Merlinus arrives, looking for the unicorn,

  Morgeu stands. Where the etheric beast has bled, the

  grass has gone fluorescently green in a perfect circle four paces wide. Morgeu leaves prints as she crosses the

  transfigured ground. Her small, tight goat eyes gaze

  directly at the wizard, sharp as a curse.

  He slants his staff to protect himself, and the fiana edge closer, ready to sweep Morgeu away at Myrddin's

  nod. Bareheaded, his long, sallow skull exposed, he clearly displays aspects of the demonic in the bone-hollows of his temples and eye-pits.

  Morgeu pauses and opens her cloak of wolf pelts,

  exposing her nakedness. Blood smears her white body,

  streaked in brown spirals around her breasts and womb—

  the sigils of Morrigan.

  "Love me, Lailoken," she taunts with a sultry sway.

  "Love me for what you've made me." With the last syllable still in her mouth, she flies at the wizard, the obsidian blade angled to pierce upward, in the manner her father taught her to kill with a knife.

  Lailoken speaks love to her. The demon Ethiops'

  imprint in her is too deep, and the word sounds hollow.

  Morgeu collides against his staff, her grimace wrathful and clear-eyed. The jet blade catches in the fabric of his robe and tears his garment as the fiana seize her violent body from behind and pull her away.

  The wizard speaks sleep, and that finds ample resonance from the unicorn's shadow that stains her soul.

  She slumps unconscious in the fiana's arms, and they gratefully whisk her limp body away.

  Merlinus watches after. She cannot always sleep,

  and love will not hold forever between them. Lailoken passes a quavery hand over his numbed face. The

  stunned flesh still tingles from this woman's hateful stare, and he cannot imagine how he can undo the fatal bond

  between them.

  *

  Merlinus walks the field of aftermath. He moves

  through the stink of death and the last wisps from the murky smog of demon's blood. The battle has trampled

  thousands of corpses, crushed, and smeared them into the mud. Through the amber haze of late afternoon, he is glad to see that the fighting has ended. Horsa's minions slouch south, milling at the horizon, bearing their wounded away in weary retreat.

  Across the misty fields of strewn dead, in a dark

  archway of the forest, the unicorn shines like a star.

  Merlinus stops. The maimed hurt of the creature jolts through the wizard's heartstrings, making
him pull back.

  The unicorn has seen him and approaches. It

  hobbles down the green velvet hills where the wetlands bunch up against the primeval rootwall of the forest.

  Merlinus can see its wound, an inky gash at the base of its gazelle neck. All around it, flies hum in the fetid wind and butterflies light upon the carcasses of men and animals.

  Now that the fog has burned away, the clarity of the air gleams so crystalline he can count the flies mizzling on the blue lips of the creature's wound.

  The unicorn lies down in a muddy field littered with

  dead—rib cages hollowed of viscera by dogs, faces without eyes, purple clubs of thighbones—

  He approaches the dying animal. It rears its head

  and slashes its horn sharply, then flops in the mud,

  exhausted by pain.

  The stricken beast stares without color in its eyes—

  black gaps in its face. The deforming pain torques the unicorn's spine, and it twists in the mire. Merlinus brushes back the forelock while he mutters a chant.

  A bubble of white light expands rapidly from the

  unicorn's forehead, passing swiftly through and brightening the whole landscape. At the blinding center, the unicorn shivers with the Earth's strength coursing up its nimble legs. The inky splotch of gashed flesh bleeds away in the

  glare, taking its poisons of pain with it.

  When the wincing brightness gusts off, Merlinus

  holds the horn of the unicorn in his hand, and the black wound shows no change at all. Yet the beast rises stronger and rests its whiskered face on the wizard's shoulder. He rubs the animal's brow, and it slides its muzzle off his shoulder and hobbles back toward the trees.

  Merlinus wants to follow. He has much else to do

  and so stops and watches the white beast disappear

  among the sunny stencils of the forest.

  *

  Merlinus finds Uther sitting slumped in the muck

  among wild stones and the dead bodies of allies and

  enemies. Three times he has swung the gore-dark sword Lightning at his own men to drive them back from where he sits, trying to convince them he wants to be left alone. Flies haze his grimy body.

  "Uther!" the wizard calls, and motions the befuddled guards to stand aside.

  The king points the sword Lightning at Merlinus,

  waving him off, and the wizard speaks stillness to him.

  Merlinus has only to murmur the spell in the putrid calm, and the king begrudgingly lowers the sword and sits still.

  He seems neither dazed nor bewildered. An animal lucidity shines in his amber eyes, and Merlinus dares not speak sleep to him—or forgetfulness.

  "The queen—"

  "Sends for you. She has lost the unicorn—and she may lose your child."

  Battle fatigue holds the king's brain to this hurt.

  Something like curdled starlight in his eyes reveals tears.

  The child is the life of the alliance, the future of their kingdom. These truisms have lost all meaning for him—

  though for his queen he imagines such a death would be a black omen, and he weeps inside for her. Before he can ask if the wizard has powers to help her, Merlinus places a soothing hand on his shoulder, and he sinks back into his ruminations.

  "Grandfather Vitki died here," he says, with sad ease. "Died where my brother died, in the shadow of the city where our father died."

  Merlinus trembles to think of the significance of

  metaphor and history brought magnificently together by death—it is a demon's thought, and it feels saner for him to put it out of his mind. He drops a whistle through his beard and bends closer, hands on his knees.

  The king gazes around at the corpse fields and the

  necrotic pall under the vivid blue sky. "War is dead," he says in the stillness of the wizard's spell.

  Has the Furor's spear touched him? Dread

  memories of that narrow hell chill Merlinus, and he reaches out with his heart strength to share Uther's damage. But no—the king is whole, only enraptured by the huge stained altar of the Earth. Savage memories of the fighting drone busily in his jarred bones and torn muscles. Horror and exhaustion have fused to embracing alertness.

  Merlinus sits alongside him in the mud and whispers

  ease. Uther's shoulders unlock and slump, and his head hangs. "I have failed as king, Merlinus."

  "Failed by what standard, my lord?"

  "What standard?" He sighs and sweeps the flies from his face. "My standard is life, Merlinus. Look at the dead!" He sticks his sword in the ground, grips the hilt guards, and presses his forehead to the haft. "I can find no tears, Merlinus. All my weeping went out of me on the march. Now war is dead."

  With another curving whistle, Merlinus shoos the

  flies away and turns the king's attention back to the moment. "War is not dead." He puts his arm across Uther's shoulders and gently pulls him back from the sword's hilt.

  "But, if you wish, I can make you forget this war—all war—"

  His eyes slant angrily. "No. I don't ever want to forget." He breathes deeper. "War is dead for me, because I will never forget! Grandfather Vitki and my brother found the spirit for war. I cannot, I tell you."

  Merlinus hums a quieting spell.

  "Grandfather Vitki died this day, Merlinus," the king explains softly. "It is a fearful thing to think I am the last of the Aurelianus men he will ever serve. For as long as I live, I will never forget the killing glory he gave me." He thrusts to his feet and points at the sword. "Wray Vitki is worthy of the sword Lightning. Not me."

  He limps three paces and falls to one knee. His

  guard rush to him and hoist him upright. Then,

  straightening himself painfully, he marches from the field in locked arms, leaving his sword behind.

  *

  Merlinus removes the sword Lightning and follows

  Uther through the yellow afternoon to the ferny banks of the Tamesis. While the king bathes in the cool water, the wizard washes the war sword, cleaning it with kelp and moss. Mounted bowmen watch from onshore, and several

  cavalrymen in full armor wade in to their hips. No one speaks, because the king is silent. He floats chest up, like

  a corpse.

  Severus Syrax arrives with a parade guard of city

  soldiers in shiny brass and elegant plumes. Last into the fighting, he is eager to be the first to announce to the king the complete victory of the Britons and Celts over the north tribes around Londinium.

  Bors Bona, Lot, and the cavalry have chased down

  the family wagons of the retreating hordes and massacred whole tribes. Horsa himself has been taken, and his head has already been rushed to the city and paraded through the streets on a pike, to reassure the local citizenry.

  The king's nostrils flare, and Merlinus speaks peace.

  Uther lies back in the blond water and sinks out of sight.

  The wizard calls Severus aside. "Go at once to

  Londinium and stop all desecrations of the enemy. Prepare the way for your lord and his lady, queen of the Celts. They will have the entire governor's palace. Clear out all others and post only fiana and the king's bowmen on those grounds. We will join you there shortly."

  Uther surfaces with an angry, hurt cry, and Merlinus

  moves to chant ease over him. He chops his hand out of the water. "Stop it, Merlinus!" He plods from the river and waves aside his men, who have hurried to the baggage

  train and back with a casque of robes and tunics. "No more spells. I want to see Ygrane—alone."

  Dripping wet, he strides through ferns to the turf-cut steps in the bank. Merlinus follows, the sword Lightning in hand. The king runs faster up the grassy shore to his horse. Silently, Uther throws a crimson riding mantle over his nakedness and gallops away, leaving Merlinus, hands occupied with staff and sword, standing among cattails in the solar drift of late afternoon.

  *

 
; Across a field of carcasses, under a clear sky

  fluttering with heat lightning, the king rides to the queen's camp. Servants pull down barricades and stack wood for bonfires. A camp for the wounded bustles around the

  Wheel-Table and the pavilion tent with its blue-and-white banner of the unicorn.

  The fiana greet him somberly and escort him

  through a maze of wounded Celtic warriors lying on rush mats. The worst wounds lie closest to the queen's tent. The queen's priestesses, their sea-green camisas splattered in blood, work alongside Druids and field surgeons to tie off severed limbs and stitch ruptured abdomens. Moans and agonizing cries leak from a thousand personal hells.

  A handmaid lifts the tent flap at his approach, and

  Uther moves brusquely through the tunnel tent and veils of pendulous draperies to the dim interior of the queen's chamber. She sits in bed, her brassy hair sprawled over linen less pale than the ghost flame of her face.

  "Theo—" Her swollen lids open wider. "Is that you?"

  He kneels at the side of her bed, his face immersed

  in her hair and the forest scent of her.

  He is wet and smells of the river, and she is glad for it, because he is alive and whole. When he raises his head to look at her, she smiles strongly. "It is by your victory this day that I am made sound," she says bravely.

  "Are you bleeding?" He scans her face for signs.

  "Merlinus said the unicorn was wounded—and the child is in danger."

  Her smile fails her. The child lives in her yet, just barely. "The unicorn is gone, Theo." Her eyes glisten to say this, and Uther sags prayerfully beside her.

  Ygrane presses a thumb to the worry crease

  between his golden eyes. Her pain has gradually begun to diminish now that the unicorn's tranceful energy passes from her to Merlinus. In her last trance, she glimpsed the unicorn in a halo of blue cold, wounded but not dying—

  suffering to live, like the rest of life. It pads through the humid light shafts of the forest, carrying its black wound heavily.

  That image has faded slowly behind her swollen lids

  as the unicorn's magic passes. With her husband finally beside her again, a strange upwelling of peace

  accompanies her discovery that she is slowly becoming an ordinary woman. She is losing all her powers—her sight and her glamour—which, over the years, have bonded with the unicorn's magic. Now, the unicorn takes them away, and she gladly returns to the simplicity she knew as a child—secret and mysterious to herself again. When she closes her eyes, she sees only darkness. Her life as witch-queen has ended, and a new future waits invisibly in the shining dark.