Black Unicorn, Tanith Lee [famous ebook reader txt] 📗

animal preyed on another. Even those who got by througheating herbage destroyed the living fruits and seeds. In the perfect world there was a perfect food which all there ate. It was notalive, did not have to be attacked or slaughtered.

“Just look, there’s the sea,” said Tanaquil to the peeve.

She lay down on the sand with the green cloth over her face.She was aware of a faint extra shade. She realized the peeve hadsat by her head, and the sun as it turned from the zenith began to cast the shadow of the peeve’s body onto her.

Tanaquil thought Jaive was combing her hair. She was roughwith the comb, and Tanaquil protested. They were in a boat on alake. The boat bobbed violently, and Tanaquil was slammed upand down against the cushions. The peeve landed on her chest. It looked up past her head, snarling at Jaive, who was still rakingTanaquil’s hair with the comb.

“Ow. Mother, please,” said Tanaquil.

She raised her heavy gritty lids, and the sun lashed at hereyes. Something was pulling her by the hair. She was bouncingover the dunes, and the peeve was scrambling about on her, spitting and hiccuping in wrath.

Tanaquil squinted. Without surprise, she saw the night-black shape, the day-flame of the horn pointing exactly over her.

The unicorn dragged her by the hair.

This was a dream.

“What are you?” said Tanaquil to the unicorn. “I mean really what are you? Where do you come from? What do youwant?”

She was hauled up a hill of sand, behind which the sun flickered away. And then the sun burst out again, and she wastumbling and cascading through a river of grains and particles, the dusts of the desert’s centuries. Choking and coughing, sheplummeted twenty-five feet into a hard gray bruise. The peeverevolved past her and fetched up, head down, in a sand drift.From this it emerged without dignity and in great noise.

Tanaquil smiled. Although the bruise she had hit had dulybruised her, she now lay in a long blue bar of shade that seemed cold and lovely as a river.

For some while she let it console her. Then she watched the sun, divided by a tree, making gold among great fans.

Then she rolled over. The bruise was a stone, marking a vertical tunnel in the sand. It was a well-head, with a well

beneath. The well had a leather bucket. It had deep, cold, blackwater in it.

The blue bar of shade stretched from a single palm tree ofimpressive height. The peeve, recovered, had already climbed thetrunk and was bumping about in the coppery leaves. A shower ofdates pattered into Tanaquil’s lap.

The peace of the oasis was wonderful. It gave no warning that night must return, the well freeze, and the snow come down.At the oasis afternoon stretched out forever.

Tanaquil was not thinking at all. She had given it up. Every thing was nonsensical anyway.The sun swung lower, and the sky congealed in darker light. The shadow of the palm seemed to go on for a mile.

Tanaquil looked along the shadow and saw another mirage.This time it was of a jogging movement of the land. The sandwent up in a burnished cloud. Forms like beasts began to appearout of the cloud, and riders and carts. The mirage was not likethe others. It had a sound, too, a rumble and mutter and the clean singing of small bells.

Tanaquil watched the mirage benignly. It came closer andclearer, and grew louder. Tanaquil saw five cream camels, withcolored tassels and men up on their hilly backs, swaying forwardout of the dust, and then the big wheels of three carts with sixmules walking before each one. She saw men in tunics, trousers, and boots, with cloth swathing their heads, and next three morecamels of brick red, with rocking silk cages perched on their tops.

She got up. She would have to start thinking again.

“Peeve, listen to me. It’s a caravan—it truly is. Of course,this is an oasis. They may be—must be—going to the city. Now,we have to be clever. No mention of my mother—they very sensibly won’t trust sorcery. And peeve—don’t talk.”

“What talk?” said the peeve. It was part of the way up thepalm trunk again, staring at the approaching caravan.

Tanaquil stood, dizzy and stunned, never having knownbefore such elation. For these were strangers—people—and theywere going to a city.

“Good evening, girl,” called out the man with the goadwalking beside the first cream camel. “What are you selling?”

Tanaquil blinked. “Nothing.”

It occurred to her that persons from villages might gather at

an oasis where a caravan was due, in order to offer produce to thetravelers.

“Then why are you loitering here?”

Tanaquil was affronted. “I’m here to join your caravan.You’re going to the city, presumably?”

The man glanced up at the three riders on the nearest camels.All four men laughed. It was not proper laughter, but more of asort of threat.

“Yes, we’re going to the Sea City. You’ll have to ask the caravan leader if you can join us. We don’t take any old riffraff,you know. There’s the fee, as well. Can you pay it?”

Tanaquil had not thought of this. She spurred her brain. Justas it was no use boasting of a sorceress mother, so it was no use expecting strangers to offer her care.

“I’m from the village of Um,” said Tanaquil.

“Never heard of it.”

“Few have. It’s a very small village. I saved up to buy a placein a caravan, but as I was coming here I was set on and robbed.They took everything, my money, my donkey. I almost never got here. Now I’m afraid I’ll have to throw myself on your kindness.”

The men regarded her. She was only really used to thesoldiers, drunk most of the time, and easygoing, who actuallyhad treated Tanaquil more like a wise elder sister. Now Tanaquilsaw how most of the men of the world looked at most females. It irritated her, but she concealed this. She smiled humbly up at them. There was a code in the desert, she knew. You could not leave the lost or needy to perish.

“All right,” said the man on the ground,