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

angrily smeared the childish tears from their eyes, cursing worse than the soldiers.

They were alone on the platform in the rain.

Debris scattered the carpet. Arrow-bolts, bracelets, cloaks,and Counselor Gasb’s sea eagle hat. One chariot stood aban doned and horseless.

Below, the shattered crowd still struggled through the square,but the chariots had cleaved a passage and were gone. There was no unicorn. No unicorn at all.

“My father was afraid,” said Lizra. “And he left me here.”“Yes,” Tanaquil said. She recalled how Jaive had left her todie in the desert. But Jaive had had some excuse. They stood up. All the sky was now purple as the carpet.Thunder beat its drums, and the rain thickened like oil.

“It was real?” said Lizra.

“It was real.”

“Not another horse with a silver horn tied to its head.” Tanaquil said nothing. “And the arrow-bolts didn’t hurt it. Per haps the men fired wide—how could they dare to shoot at the Sacred Beast?”

“You saw what happened,” said Tanaquil.

Lizra said, “Then it’s true we’ve wronged it. It has a score tosettle. Did it go after the chariots?”“Maybe.”But Tanaquil visualized the unicorn moving like smoke through

the dark of the day, through the torrential rain. The flying peopleglimpsed their Beast and cowered in terror. In the highest wallthere must be a door. Soldiers would shoot and run away. Thepoint of the horn could burst timbers like glass. Then up thepalace ramps, across the mountain of dragon-tiled roofs. Light ning and unicorn together dancing atop Zorander’s palace.

“Look at this idiot hat,” said Lizra, and kicked the sea eagle.

The tableaux stayed stupidly in the square as the last of thecrowd ran round them. The nodding white beast had fallen over.

After a while, when the square was empty, the two girls leftthe platform. Incongruous as they were in their drowned jewelryand silk, no one bothered with them, noticed them. The rain and thunder made nonsense of everything. People on the avenues wererunning, or sheltering under porticos. They heard wailing. Presently,on Lynx Street, a party of soldiers met them and made them out.“It’s the two princesses!” Then they had an escort to the palace.

Had the knocking been less loud, they might have taken itfor thunder. But then also, they had heard the clank of swords,the thump of spears along the corridor.

They had been sitting in the rose room by the cinnabarfireplace, which had been lit for warmth and cheerfulness. The

miserable tension had to be fractured by some ominous act. Hereit was.

“Only Gasb would bring a guard with him.”

“It will be for me.”

“Why?”

“This witch thing. It follows me around. And the unicorn—somehow the unicorn is linked to me.” The peeve, in Tanaquil’s lap, dropped a piece of cake from its mouth and growled.

Lizra got up. “Stay here. I’ll make him go away.”

Tanaquil doubted this, but she did not protest. Lizra wentout and shut the door. Tanaquil shifted the peeve, went to thedoor, and listened at the panels. She heard the outer door opened. “Ah,” said Gasb’s unmistakably foul voice, “your pardon. I’m looking for the girl from, er, Erm.”

“Princess Tanaquil,” said Lizra in her public voice, “isn’t here. What do you mean, anyway, by coming here like this with—three, four, five, six soldiers?”

“Tanapattle, or whatever she’s called, is a sorceress. She’s a danger to us all, yourself, madam, included. Which, of course,you are too young to realize. Her trick of conjuring an illusoryunicorn has reduced the city to havoc—”

“I’ve told you, Counselor,” snapped Lizra, “Tanaquil isn’t here. Go and bother someone else.” There was a pause. Lizrasaid: “Oh no you d—” and then: “How dare you?”

Soldiers’ boots marched into the great painted bedroom, andGasb’s slippers lisped after.

“In there?” said Gasb.

“My father will be very angry,” said Lizra.

“Your father agrees that the witch should be apprehended.”

Tanaquil stepped back, so that the soldiers, when they threw open her door, did not knock her over again. She stationed herself near the fireplace, and the peeve crouched before her like asnarling, back-combed mop.

The door was thrown wide, and six soldiers rushed in, their spears leveled at her heart. Tanaquil’s head swam. She thought: If they knew what they looked like, they’d never ever do it.

Gasb slithered in behind them. He did not wear a hat. He was quite bald, and his features were still those of a bird of prey.

“Courage, men,” he said.

Tanaquil gently toed the peeve. “I’ll unfasten the window. Jump out to the lower roof and run.”

“Stay and bite,” said the peeve.

“Proof of her sorcery,” said Gasb to the nervous soldiers. “You heard the animal talk. A familiar. We must take her now, before she can summon demons to her assistance.”

Lizra said in her put-on, penetrating regal tone, “Before youlay a finger on her, remember she’s the princess of a foreign town. Do we want a war with them?”

“Princess.” Gasb smiled. “She’s no more a princess than that road-sweeper slut.”

Tanaquil had been edging from the fire towards the window,the peeve wriggling along beside her. Then there was a soldier infront of her. “No, lady,” he said, crossly.

“Don’t trouble with calling her lady. Surround her. We’ll take her somewhere more . . . quiet.”

Tanaquil stared at Gasb’s bald malevolence. She was afraid ofhim and felt demeaned to be so. The soldiers had swords; she grabbed the rocking peeve. And in that instant a lawless and unearthly cry, like nothing she had heard in her life, piercedthrough the arteries of the palace, down through every floor. She knew what it was even as she knew that to hear it in this waycould not be possible.

“The Prince!” The soldiers were transfixed. Even Gasb gaped. Lizra said,“Has it killed my father?”

And Tanaquil saw, somehow, somewhere in her mind, Zorander in his library above the snows, where the clockworkbutterflies alighted on the unread books. She saw him turned tothe stone of terror. And on the threshold, come from the rain and thunder and lightning country of the roof, black night and mur derous horn and eyes like molten lava.

“Seize the witch; she must die at once!” shrilled Gasb. The soldiers started forward again.

There came