Black Unicorn (Dragonflight) (5 page)

Tanaquil was not thinking at all. She had given it up. Everything 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 sand went up in a burnished cloud. Forms like beasts began to appear out of the cloud, and riders and carts. The mirage was not like the 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 and clearer, and grew louder. Tanaquil saw five cream camels, with colored tassels and men up on their hilly backs, swaying forward out of the dust, and then the big wheels of three carts with six mules walking before each one. She saw men in tunics, trousers, and boots, with cloth swathing their heads, and next three more camels 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 the palm trunk again, staring at the approaching caravan.

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

"Good evening, girl," called out the man with the goad walking 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 the travelers.

"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 a sort 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. Just as 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 place in 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 the soldiers, drunk most of the time, and easygoing, who actually had treated Tanaquil more like a wise elder sister. Now Tanaquil saw 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, striking the goad against his boot, which was hung with small silver discs. "You'd better see the leader." He turned and raised his arm, calling loudly back into the dust and trample of the arriving caravan: "Night's rest! All stop here!"

The caravan sprawled about the oasis in the sunset. In all, there were seven covered carts, and these had been drawn up to make a wall against the desert. In the gap between each pair of carts burned a fire. Jackals had approached, and howled to each other in the near distance. The palm tree and the well were the center of the camp. Here water was drawn continuously, and dates—and incidentally the peeve—had been shaken down.

"What's that?" the man with the goad said, pointing at the peeve. "Funny-looking thing."

"My animal," said Tanaquil.

The peeve growled, and Tanaquil tapped its head. "Ssh."

"
Bad,
" said the peeve.

"Eh?" said the man with the goad, glaring at the peeve.

"Oh," said Tanaquil, "it's just barking."

The man with the goad was called Gork. His head cloth was secured by a silver band, his dark clothes were sprinkled with ornaments, and across his chest hung a large gold pocket watch. He constantly ticked and clinked, and when he felt he was not making enough noise, he rapped the goad on his boots and whistled.

"This way. The leader's awning is going up over there."

Under his awning, the leader of the caravan sat on a chair in the sand. He had been journeying in one of the silken cages on top of one of the three pinkish camels that had brought up the rear. He was a fat man with a beard.

Gork explained the situation in his special manner. "This bit of a girl's come after us, but let herself get robbed on the way. She hasn't a penny, and expects us to take her on."

"I'm afraid we couldn't do that," said the leader, not bothering to look at either of them, only into a box of candied grapes. "You must pay your way. Food alone is expensive, not to mention our protection."

"'You can't," said Tanaquil firmly, "leave me in the desert to die."

"Well of course that would, technically, be against the law," said the leader. He beamed upon the grapes. He said nothing else.

The peeve stirred restively at Tanaquil's side.

Tanaquil said quickly, "My three brothers at Um know I meant to join this caravan. Eventually, if they don't get word from me from the city, they might seek out the caravan's leader."

"She's a nuisance, isn't she?" said the leader to Gork. "Give her that lame mule on Wobbol's cart. And a snack to tide her over. Then she can bundle back to her village."

"I don't want to go back to Um," said Tanaquil. She clawed at her wits and said, "Isn't there something I can do to earn a passage with you?"

"What on earth
could
you do?" asked the leader, looking at her for the first time, as if she were a rotten grape found in the candy box.

There was a spluttering crash and chorus of yells and oaths. Up on the dunes, the watching jackals cackled.

The leader, Gork, Tanaquil, and the peeve all turned to see. Displayed in the firelight, one of the carts had thrown a wheel. The cart now listed, and the man who had been at the wheels, cleaning them of sand and oiling them, lay feebly struggling under several large bags and sacks that had fallen out. Men ran to rescue him—or the bags and sacks.

"Useless," said the leader. He ate another grape. "Deprive that fellow of rations tomorrow."

"Trouble is, leader," said Gork, beating on his boot, "Wobbol was the only one who was any good at repairing wheels and stuff. And as you remember, Wobbol went off in a huff when you bought his cart and load off him at quarter price—"

"Yes, yes," said the leader. "The goods will have to be put onto the mules."

"The mules won't be able to take it, leader, not for all those miles."

Tanaquil felt light-headed. What had happened to her was crazy, but also it must have been right. For now everything conspired to help her. Surely she would never see the unicorn again, and she would come to disbelieve in it, with time. But still a kind of magic was working about her, because she had taken the risk.

"Don't worry," she said, "I can fix your wheel."

"You?" said Gork.

The leader only grimaced; he had sly, flat eyes.

"Don't mock, Gork. Let's see if she can.
If
she can," he added, "she can travel with us, eat with us, no charge. On the other hand, if she
can't,
I'll throw her to those jackals."

Tanaquil shrugged. It was on her tongue to say the jackals would be preferable company anyway to the leader, but she did not. Instead she walked over to the spilled cart, the bristling peeve on her heels.

"Clear these sacks out of the way," said Tanaquil, in the imperious tones of her mother. "Are there any tools?"

Presently she was kneeling by the cart. Since it
was
Wobbol's, she suspected he had engineered the faulty wheel out of revenge. The wheel shaft was set crooked, and the pin in the wheel had snapped. Tanaquil organized one of the fires into a forge. She sent the caravan servants running about to fetch and carry. Herself, she hammered out the new pin from a brooch she was handed. It did not take great strength. Even Gork came to watch the stupid village female who could mend wheels.

When the wheel was soundly back in place, Tanaquil stood up.

"That's a fair job," said Gork grudgingly. "Where'd a girl learn that?"

"My brothers taught me," said Tanaquil prudently, "at Um."

5

For almost three weeks Tanaquil traveled in the caravan. Every hour she was excited. Every hour she lived with a sense of insecurity and danger she had never known before. She was out in the world.

At least once a day, they would pass some marker in the sand, indicating the route to the city. Most of these were plain stone posts about ten or eleven feet in height, often looking much shorter where the sand had washed against them. But as they came nearer to the city, there began to be occasional stone pylons stretched up at the sky, carved with prayers or quotations. On the ninth day they reached another waterhole. On the sixteenth day, near sunset, there was a large oasis of palms, acacias, and fig trees, with a village at its edge. Tanaquil was nervous; they might put her off here. Nothing else had had to be mended, and she added weight to the cart in which she traveled. The peeve, too, had caused problems. Although she had still been able to convince listeners that its grumblings and exclamations were an odd type of barking, she had seen various people, including the merchants who rode in the silk cages, making superstitious signs against the peeve. Twice it had gone among these merchants' shelters at night and used someone's costly rug as a bathroom. The previous night had been the worst. The peeve had laid its dung near the head of sleeping Gork, then, in covering it, nearly buried the man alive. However, no sooner were they in the oasis, than frowning Gork's gold pocket watch ceased ticking. Having shaken it, cursed it, and hurled it in the sand, Gork found Tanaquil at his elbow. He gave her the watch with awful threats, but she repaired it in half an hour. Not even a hint was made after this that Tanaquil should leave the caravan.

The leader she seldom saw. He rode by day as the merchants did, in a bulb of silk pulled over a wicker frame, on a camel. The other men in charge of the caravan gave orders, shouted, laid down the law on every topic, discussed chariot races, and played violent gambling games. The male servants treated Tanaquil much as one of themselves, although she was a girl and therefore inferior. She had been given their castoffs to replace her gaudy dress. As far as she could tell from splits in the sacks, smells, and accidents, the caravan carried cakes of soap, sugar, conifer incense, and paper, from a city to the east. Tanaquil had never heard of this city. Her mother, who had given her lessons, had only ever spoken of the city to the west. Was this significant?

Mostly Tanaquil tried not to think of her mother at all.

Also, she tried not to think of the unicorn.

The unicorn was something so bizarre that it could only happen once. If that. Perhaps it had assisted her in the desert, or perhaps she had only made that up. Maybe the bush had caught alight in the cold cave naturally. Maybe she had only crawled by herself towards the well.

It seemed to her now that it was possible she and the peeve had not found anything under the rock hill. That nothing had gone wrong at Jaive's feast except that Tanaquil herself had flung open a door and run away.

One morning she actually said to the peeve, "Do you recall the starry bone you found?"

"Bone?" said the peeve gladly, "where?"

And a merchant going by, fanning himself, glared at the peeve and made the sign against evil spirits.

It was the nineteenth day of Tanaquil's journey with the caravan, and a wonderful sunset inflamed the sky, glowing vermilion and amber, with clouds in the west like furled magenta wings. The general opinion was that they would reach the city the following evening. Everyone was pleased, and the servants had all day given Tanaquil tales of the city that were plainly quite absurd. The city's prince was supposed, for example, to have a palace of white marble fifteen stories high. Tanaquil nodded politely.

In the afternoon they had passed a great obelisk with a brass arrow at its top pointing west. The prayer on the obelisk read:
We give thanks to God, who brings us to Sea City.

The desert changed. Low rocky cliffs drew up out of the dunes, and then the cliffs had dry brown shrubs on them, and here and there a warped, wild tree. As the light blushed, they came into round hills with stands of green cedar. Flocks were pastured, and little villages lay in every direction, one after another, with their fires and lamps burning up like bits of the red sky.

The leader came down from his cage and mounted a mule. He rode at the head of the caravan, with Gork walking beside him. "We'll spend the night at Horn Spring," said the leader in a ritualistic, syrupy voice.

Tanaquil felt something like a twitch of a curtain inside her mind.

She turned to one of the servants, Foot.

"Why is it called Horn Spring?"

"A sacred legend of the city," said Foot.

"An ignorant villager like me," said Tanaquil, "hasn't heard of it."

"No," sneered Foot. He decided to be nice to her. "They say a prince from the city came there. It was a very sandy year, and he was parched with thirst. He asked the God for water, and a beast with a horn ran up out of the desert and cleft a rock with this horn, and out burst the water."

"How convenient," said Tanaquil. The hair had risen on her scalp.

"Watch it, your funny animal's in the soap again," said Foot.

The sky was wine-red, fading. The caravan wound up a dusty trail and they were on a bare dark hill. Above, the top of the hill ended in a big rock, like a chimney. Under the rock was a grove of trees and another well with a stone curb, which was not spectacular. The leader got off his mule and, going to the well, thanked God for the caravan's safe arrival.

The camp was made below the grove, and water drawn from the well. Foot advised Tanaquil to drink some, as it was very health-giving and said to grant wishes. Tanaquil, though, did not go to look at the well; it was dark now, and growing cold, the thin snow whipping out on a buffeting wind that rose soon after the sun set.

Tanaquil sat near one of the fires and ate her rations, sharing them with the peeve. "What shall we do in Sea City?" she said to it, then hastily, "Don't say anything, here's Gork."

"Nasty," said the peeve.

"That animal really does have an odd bark," said Gork. The peeve snarled and went under a cart with a salted biscuit. "What will you do in the city?" Gork asked Tanaquil with unknowing repetition.

"Oh, this and that."

Gork studied his pocket watch, tapped his boots and whistled. Next he said quietly, "Are you courting?"

Tanaquil was amazed. Should she be flattered or laugh? Very seriously 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, and Gork straightened and whistled up at the snow. Without another word he went off. Presumably, thought Tanaquil, he had seen the value 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. It seemed everywhere around, ebbing and flowing.

She thought, idly, still accustomed to the supernatural things of 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 had been descending from the well, had stuck in their tracks, letting fall 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 awnings with whinnying cries, and one sank to his knees, reminding God he wanted protection. The camels, too, were stamping at their pickets, 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 than the night. It seemed to have no form, yet there was a flicker over it like foamy fire. And out of it burned two crimson stars beneath a sword of light.

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

"You exist," said Tanaquil. And before she knew what she did—again—she held her hands out into the air, as if to touch that creature on the rock some fifty feet above her.

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

"Just look at her, the witch. Can't be trusted. She calls up demons."

Tanaquil left the sky. All the men had moved up around her. They stood on the hill glaring at her. The knives and sticks made a 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, I said. 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 have seemed.

"I didn't conjure it. And it wasn't a demon—" She almost blurted that she knew a demon when she saw one, and just stopped herself in time. "Don't you know what it was? It was a unicorn—"

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 only one method with a witch. She must be stoned."

"Sounds reasonable to me," agreed the leader. Then he was yodelling, 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 teeth with an annoyed growl, sprang instead at the merchant Pudit. It bit him several times, while Pudit's servants, trying to strike the peeve with their bludgeons, thwacked the merchant on the arms and chest.

Tanaquil was not sure if the peeve had meant to create a diversion 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, the peeve in any case let go and fled. It dashed between legs and flailing sticks and vanished down the hill faster than a falling boulder.

"Bitten to the bone," announced the leader. "The animal's her familiar."

Tanaquil noticed there were plenty of stones on the hill, and some 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 clinking and 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 amalgamated assent. 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. He cried: "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 the tinder-box she had bartered away from Foot, in exchange for the torn silk of her dinner dress. She thought Gork had probably saved her life. And that the unicorn, which had saved her in the desert, had somehow played a trick on her tonight, stirring up from the peaceful dark danger and uncertainty.

Tanaquil sheltered that night in a cave of the hills, with as much space as she could manage put between her and the caravan. Bushes shielded the cave mouth, and the fire she lit. Sometimes she would stab the fire with a branch and describe aloud the leader, Pudit, Foot and certain others, in vivid terms. To her muttering and firelight the peeve was guided in the early hours of the morning. It had killed a small rodent, and this she apologetically roasted for them. The peeve seemed indifferent to its own loyalty.