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

Next he said quietly, “Are you courting?”

Tanaquil was amazed. Should she be flattered or laugh? Veryseriously she replied, “I’m afraid I am. My brothers betrothed me to someone in the city.”

“Those brothers don’t seem to look after you properly,”said Gork.

“But they’re my menfolk, so I have to do as they say.”

“Yes, quite right.”

The peeve bit down on the biscuit with a cracking noise, andGork straightened and whistled up at the snow. Without anotherword he went off. Presumably, thought Tanaquil, he had seen thevalue of a lady love who could mend his cart wheels and his watch.

And then the sound began. She took it for some purer note of the night wind, at first. Itseemed everywhere around, ebbing and flowing.She thought, idly, still accustomed to the supernatural thingsof Jaive’s fort, Perhaps there are demons on the wind.

“Aaeeh! Look! Look!”

A pot dropped and smashed. To the eerie sweetness of the wind’s tone was added the din of panic. Three servants, who hadbeen descending from the well, had stuck in their tracks, lettingfall water jars and wailing, pointing away above the grove of trees.

The whole camp was suddenly in confusion. Men drew knives and cudgels. The merchants emerged from their awningswith whinnying cries, and one sank to his knees, reminding God he wanted protection. The camels, too, were stamping at theirpickets, roaring and snorting, while the mules brayed maddeningly.

“A fiend! a monster!”

“Kill it!”

“Run!”

Tanaquil stared over the hill, up along the chimney of rock. She got to her feet as if raised by cords.

Atop the chimney was a blackness on the night blacker thanthe night. It seemed to have no form, yet there was a flicker overit like foamy fire. And out of it burned two crimson stars beneatha sword of light.

Slowly it turned, this sword, to east and west, south andnorth, catching on its spiralled ribs, its pitiless point, the blasting of the wind. And the wind played the sword, the wind mademusic. The sword of the horn sang, and now the camp, even thevocal camels and raucous mules, fell silent.

“You exist,” said Tanaquil. And before she knew what shedid—again—she held her hands out into the air, as if to touchthat creature on the rock some fifty feet above her.

But with a splash of whiteness, of black, the unicorn hadturned and bounded off into space. The music ended. And overthe wind, Tanaquil heard the voice of the praying merchant.

“Just look at her, the witch. Can’t be trusted. She calls updemons.”

Tanaquil left the sky. All the men had moved up around her.They stood on the hill glaring at her. The knives and sticks madea forest, and for a moment she could see nothing else.

Then the fat leader pushed through. He observed her distastefully.

“I took you in, girl. I let you keep that animal, which my good patron Pudit said was bewitched. Don’t trouble with her, Isaid. She means no harm.”

“I don’t,” said Tanaquil.

“Then why did you conjure a demon on the rock?”

Tanaquil recalled her raised arms, and how it must haveseemed.

“I didn’t conjure it. And it wasn’t a demon—” She almostblurted that she knew a demon when she saw one, and juststopped herself in time. “Don’t you know what it was? It was aunicorn—”

The leader gave a sour laugh. “No such thing.”She thought: He’ll believe in something supernatural and evil, but not in the glamour of a unicorn.

The merchant Pudit had approached. He said, “There’s onlyone method with a witch. She must be stoned.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” agreed the leader. Then he wasyodelling, leaping up and down, and kicking in the air his left leg,which had a brown fur trouser.

Men rushed to his assistance. The peeve, detaching its teethwith an annoyed growl, sprang instead at the merchant Pudit. Itbit him several times, while Pudit’s servants, trying to strike thepeeve with their bludgeons, thwacked the merchant on the armsand chest.

Tanaquil was not sure if the peeve had meant to create adiversion so she might escape. If so, it failed, for Foot and one of the others had grabbed her by the arms.

After a few more moments of incredible noise and flurry, thepeeve in any case let go and fled. It dashed between legs andflailing sticks and vanished down the hill faster than a fallingboulder.

“Bitten to the bone,” announced the leader. “The animal’s her familiar.” Tanaquil noticed there were plenty of stones on the hill, andsome of the men had begun to pick them up.

She watched, stunned.

Then she saw Gork thrusting through the crowd, coming over and standing before his bitten leader, clicking and clinkingand with the goad going clock-clock-clock on his boot.

“It’s no good killing her,” said Gork. “That’ll be bad luck.”

“Rubbish,” said the bitten leader. But the men with the stones had hesitated. “Now don’t you remember last year?” asked Gork. There was a long pause. Whatever had happened last year

was obviously being remembered in detail.“That was,” said the leader, cuddling his leg, “a different thing altogether.”“Well I, for one,” said Gork loudly, “won’t travel with a caravan under a witch’s dying curse. Nor my men. Eh, boys?”

There was a cluttering of dropped stones.

“All right,” said the leader sullenly.

“We’ll drive her out,” said Gork. “Let her go and talk to demons in the hills.” He was rewarded by hearty amalgamatedassent. Gork said to Foot and the other man, “I wouldn’t touch her if I were you. Who knows what the slut might do next.” Then he came over and put his face near hers. Gork winked. Hecried: “Be off, you filthy witch.” And gave her a weightless shove.

Tanaquil nodded. She turned and ran down the hill, and the men moved back from her, a few shouting names. A thrown missile burst near her heel, but it was only a clod of earth.

As she ran she thought of the useful small knife and thetinder-box she had bartered away from Foot, in exchange for thetorn silk of her dinner dress. She thought Gork had probablysaved her life. And that the unicorn, which had saved her in the

desert, had somehow played a