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

“How do you find the fault? How do you know which toolwill correct it? Who, Tanaquil, taught you?”“No one. I can just do it, mother.” “When I was ten,” said Jaive, “I summoned a small sprite

out of a kettle. They said: ‘How did you do it, who taught you?’

I said, ‘No one. I just can.’ ”

“Mother—”

“Enough time’s been wasted,” said Jaive. “The unicorn cameto you because it scented your magic and how it would serve. It came as a bone, a broken skeleton, and you mended it, and madeit go. It was my own thoughtless blow that fully revived it—amiraculous accident. Or did the unicorn also use me? I’d re joice to think so. Nothing can destroy a unicorn, Tanaquil, andonly despair can kill it. Once it did despair—yet even then its

bones remained, and the life in them. Now it waits. For your help.”

“My help. What can I do?”

Jaive smiled again. Warmer than her fiery hair, her smile.

“Do you think unicorns can ever really have lived on thisearth? No, their country is the perfect world. The world for which this one was a model that failed. For some reason the unicorn strayed, or was enticed, out of a breach in the wall of its world. And then the gate was closed behind it. It couldn’t return.It lived here and it pined. It died the only death it could, sleepingin the desert. Until you found it.”

“Actually, a peeve found it.”

“The peeve has given itself to you, as your familiar.”

Exasperated, believing, Tanaquil said again, “Yes, mother.”

“Doubtless,” said Jaive, “the one who worked the crime against the unicorn, bringing it from its perfect home, shuttingthe door on it, was the first ruler of the city. To correct the balance, his descendant must set it free. And you, Tanaquil, arethe Prince’s daughter.” Jaive bridled. Anger and pain went over her face, and she crushed them away while Tanaquil watched.Jaive said,” Accomplish your task.”

“I think you mean that the archway in the rock is the gate tothe other world—that it’s broken, so nothing can go back throughit. But I can repair the gate. Yes?”

“Yes, Tanaquil.” “But, mother, there’s just air and rock—it isn’t bronze andiron. There aren’t any pins or cogs or springs or hinges—”“There are. Only a sorceress of your particular powers couldfind them.”

“Oh, Mother—”

“Don’t dare contradict me. I was terrified of the unicorn. I. But you have never been. And now, look and see.” Jaive pointedalong the beach. Another new expression was on her face. Nolonger terror, certainly. It was awe, it was youth and laughingdelight. “Look and see and don’t make it wait any longer!”

The unicorn was on the beach below the rock. Its blackness shamed the shadows, its horn brought back the light. The rain had ended and the sea was growing still.

Torn ribbons . . .

Did you feel that?. . . It was strange . . . Just for a moment— something . . .

This time Tanaquil did not shriek, or run. She was alone.The murky milk of the foam swilled through beneath the arch, and she walked up to her ankles in water. The storm was over,but the day was dying quickly in thick cloud. In an hour it wouldbe night.

She had looked back once, and the flame of Jaive was still there on the darkling sea. It raised its arm and waved to her, asonce or twice when she was a child the form of Jaive had waved to her from the high windows of the fortress. But the projectedimage was faltering, and like the daylight, going out. Epbal Enraxhad already vanished. The peeve had hidden in the sand. Tanaquildid not know what she felt or thought of what had happened. Lizraand Zorander and Gasb also had faded. It was the Gate that counted. The unicorn.

The unicorn had drawn away as she approached. Not shy,but precautionary, as if testing her again. She remembered how ithad chased the artisans, the moment when it reared upwards onthe platform. The unicorn could kill her far more efficiently thanGasb. But it had poised, away up the line of the cliffs, as she entered in under the arch.

Tanaquil moved forward one slow step at a time. The senseof the abyss below the sand was strong. She picked her path,searching after the indescribable sensation that had assailed her,like falling asleep for three heartbeats or five . . . For that had been when she had passed across the gate, a gate that led now to nowhere because it was broken.

Going so alertly, so slowly, she touched the rim of its weirdness and jumped back at once. There. Unmistakable.

But—what now?

There was nothing to see, save the dim rocks going up from thewater, and, the other side of the arch, sand and gathering darkness. Torn ribbons. She had felt them fluttering round her as sheand Lizra ran, going through, coming back.With enormous care, as if not to snap a spider’s web, Tanaquilpushed her arms forward into empty air .

And something brushed her, like a ghost.

She did not like it. She pulled back her arms.

She thought: Jaive is still a sorceress before she’s my mother. She put the unicorn first. She thought: I can help a unicorn.

Tanaquil slid her arms back into the invisible something thatstretched between the rocks. The brushing came, and she reachedin turn and took hold of it.

Her fingers tingled, but not uncomfortably. The elementsinside the air were not like anything she had ever touched or handled.

That doesn’t matter. She tried to think what happened whenshe looked into the workings of a lock, a music box, the caravan’scartwheel, the dismembered snake in the bazaar. Then she gave itup. Still holding on to the first unnamable strangeness, she gropedafter another along the net of the air. She closed her eyes, and behind her lids she saw a shape like a silver rod, and she swung itdeftly over and hung it from a golden ring.

Her hands moved with trance-like symmetry. Objects, orillusions, floated toward her, and she plucked them and gavethem