Black Unicorn (Dragonflight) (6 page)

They fell asleep, and were woken by sunrise.

When she walked out of the cave, Tanaquil saw that the hills slipped gently down westward to a great plain. Lit by the rising sun, a golden crescent glittered on the plain's farthest edge, and in the curve of it the sky had swum in on the land.

"It's the city," Tanaquil told the peeve. The peeve groomed itself, not sparing a glance. "And beyond, there's the sea."

She was very impressed. She had a second of wanting to jump up and down and shout, but she controlled it.

Very likely it would take some days to cross the plain, but Tanaquil was reassured by the landscape as she descended into it. The sand had given way to thin grass, in places to tracts of wild red and purple flowers. Palms and acacias grew, and later there were orchards of palm and fig, olive trees and lemon trees, behind low walls. Villages lay along the plain like stepping stones to the city. Tanaquil entered one boldly, and asked for fruit. They took her for a boy with very long hair, gave her the fruit, and were astonished at the "tame" peeve.

Tanaquil and the peeve walked all day, and Tanaquil had words with her ill-fitting cast-off boots. At sunset the wind rose eagerly. Men appeared in the orchards to cover the younger trees against the cold. Since there was another village in front of her, Tanaquil went into it and inquired of a woman on the street if she might have shelter for the night. "I can mend things," Tanaquil added, enticingly.

The woman gave her use of the barn, and presently the village music box was brought her in pieces. Tanaquil sat on the straw, bootless, working on the box, while the peeve chased real and imaginary mice, and the thinnest snow painted in the rims of the village. When she was finished, they gave her a supper of peppery porridge and olives, and took the music box away. She heard it playing from house to house until midnight.

In the night,
night
passed down the street.

Waking, Tanaquil saw under the barn door four black stems with flags of lighted ocean. She heard the shell of the horn scrape along the door. She felt the terror of it, the magic, and the impossibility that it should be there or that she should go to it.

"What do you
want?"

But the unicorn only moved through the village like the wind, silent, without music.

Just before dawn, four or five women were staring at pink glass hoof-pocks in the rime by the well.

"What's this?" they said.

"Oh, whatever can it be?" agreed Tanaquil.

The peeve laid seven slain mice, subject to the laws of the cruel, badly made world, at the feet of their hostess.

So Tanaquil, daughter of Jaive the sorceress, finally reached the city she had been vaguely hearing of for nearly sixteen years.

She felt so elated that day at having got there, it was almost as if she had invented and built the city herself.

First of all, coming out of some trees, Tanaquil found one of the stone obelisks. This marked the start of a paved road. It was quite a narrow road, however, and empty; looking to either side over the plain, Tanaquil could see in the distance evidence of much dust and traffic obviously going along wider roadways to the city.

The narrow road, which would have taken a light cart and mule, ambled through groves of lemon trees and lilacs, and in one place there was a stone basin with water and an iron cup connected to it by a chain. The chain settled for Tanaquil an idea that had been bothering her.

"Peeve, do you mind if I put you on a leash?"

The peeve had found a lemon and was trying to eat it. She peeled the lemon for it and, while it investigated the pith, Tanaquil tied 'round its neck the long sash that had secured her headcloth. The leash was rather clumsy, but it would serve for now, and might prevent comment from the city people.

The peeve spat out the lemon and clawed at its neck.

"No, no. I'm sorry, but you must put up with it."

"Off," said the peeve, "off! Off!"

"No.
Please.
Just till we get—wherever we're going."

"Wurr," said the peeve.

It rolled about and became entangled with the leash. Tanaquil patiently disentangled it before it strangled. "Half an hour?"

The peeve sulked as they walked along the road. Every so often it would sit down, and Tanaquil would find herself hauling it over the paving on its bottom. The peeve swore. It had learnt some of the soldiers' oaths.

"Or you can stay outside."

The city was surrounded by houses that had grown up under the wall. There were gardens with cypresses and banks of flowers, blue and white, yellow and mauve and red. The houses had roofs of dragon-colored tiles. The wall stood over them, and it had, as reported, tiled pictures on it of chariots drawn by racing horses, of lions, trees of fruit, and so on. The narrow road ended at a narrow gate, where two soldiers stood to perfect attention, like dolls.

Out of the city came an enormous noise. There seemed to be every sound on earth taking place at once. Tanaquil heard wheels rumbling, engines that toiled, buckets that rattled, and water that swilled; she detected cattle lowing and dogs barking, while trumpets crowed, doors slammed, birds flew, men and women quarrelled and laughed and sang. She was taken aback.
Well, what did you expect?

The peeve was gazing at the city's noises in disbelief, attempting to snuff out all its smells, including that of the sea.

"Lots of bones and meat and biscuits here," said Tanaquil.

She sauntered toward the gateway, and all at once the two soldiers came alive.

They clashed over the entrance to the city their crossed spears.

"Halt."

Tanaquil halted. What now?

"State your business in Sea City."

"I'm visiting my aunt."

"You will produce her letter inviting you."

"I don't have it."

"Without such a letter or other confirmation, you can't enter the city."

"My aunt will be furious," said Tanaquil.

The soldiers did not seem distressed by this news. They said nothing, their faces were blank, and the spears remained locked.

"What are the grounds for entering?" said Tanaquil.

"An invitation in writing from a citizen. A summons by the Prince or other dignitary. The bringing of merchandise into the city. The desire to practice a legitimate business there. One word of warning," added the soldier.
"Don't
say you
mend things.
We hear that feeble excuse about twice a day."

"I see. I didn't understand." It seemed to her she had never made a plan so swiftly. "I'm an entertainer. I do magic tricks."

"This may be allowable. The bazaar supports entertainers. But you'll have to give proof."

"You mean you want to watch me perform? That's rather awkward. You see, I was robbed in the desert. They took everything——my donkey, my bag of tricks—"

"How can you carry on your business in the city then?"

"I do have one thing left," said Tanaquil. "You see this peeve? Just an ordinary desert creature. But by a clever illusion, I can make it appear to
talk."

The soldiers turned their mask-like faces on her.

Tanaquil abruptly tugged the peeve's lead.

The peeve kicked. It parted its jaws. "Rrr!" it went.

Tanaquil coughed. "Sorry. Dust in my throat. Try again— "

She toed the peeve quite mildly in the side.

It spat. "
Bad,
" said the peeve. "Won't. Don't like it. Go desert." And spinning in the sash it managed a short dash and pulled Tanaquil over. As she and the peeve tumbled on the hard paving, she heard the soldiers split their masks, giving off guffaws.

"That's a riot," one choked. "Can you do it again?"

"Once is enough for now," said Tanaquil.

"Bite!" cried the peeve, chomping on the sash. "Wup!"

"Yes, that's really terrific!"

The peeve swore, and the soldiers almost had a fit. They uncrossed their spears and clapped Tanaquil much too heartily on the back as she dragged the squalling peeve into the city. "Good luck, boy. That's a marvelous turn you've got there. We'll tell all the lads."

6

Every exaggerated fantasy Tanaquil had ever had of the city was outstripped by the facts. Even Jaive had never demonstrated, in the magic mirror, anything like this. It was like being inside an enormous clock of countless parts and pieces. It seemed at once jumbled and precise, random and ordained. Just like the sound it made, which was a mix of a thousand sounds, so its shape was formed out of all shapes imaginable—lines, angles, bumps, cones, rounds—and its basic colors of brown, yellow and white, were also fired by the noon sun into blooms of paint, fierce blinks of metal, and cracked indigo shadows.

Tanaquil did not try to take it in, she simply marched in
to
it, staring about her wildly, overwhelmed. While the peeve accompanied her in noisy bewilderment—the million scents of the city had entirely taken up its attention, it growled and whined, snuffled, grunted, and sometimes squeaked. Now and then it ran sideways after something or other, and Tanaquil, her concentration scattered, was tugged against the brickwork or into the mouths of lean alleyways. She thought of undoing the leash and allowing the peeve to rush off on its own. Perhaps she would never see it again—something dreadful might happen to it. It knew the desert and was as surprised here as she was.

At first, near the gate, there had been few people, only the small groups you might come on in a village, women in doorways or at a well, or some men going by with spades over their shoulders. Then the streets, winding into and around each other between the walls and under the arches, opened on a broad white avenue. Palm trees of great height grew along the avenue, and there were marble troughs of water, to one of which three polished-looking horses had been led to drink. The sides of the avenue swarmed with people of every description, and at the windows and doorways and on the balconies of the buildings along the road, were crowds thick as grapes on a bunch. Flights of steps went up too high to see, from the avenue, what was at the top, and up and down them strode and ran the citizens, sometimes colliding. Tree branches curled against the sky from gardens on rooftops. Stained-glass windows flashed as they were constantly pushed wide or closed. The road boomed with voices, and with the vehicles that went both ways along it, chariots and carts, silken boxes carried on the shoulders of trotting men, and one stately camel under a burden of green bananas.

Tanaquil stalked up the road, pushing through the human swarm as she had noted everybody else was doing. The peeve, on a very short leash, kept close to her now, its muttering lost in the general uproar.

Soon wonderful shops began to open in the buildings. She saw shelves of cakes like jewels and trays of jewels like flowers and sheaves of flowers like lances and, in an armorer's, lances like nothing but themselves.

She wanted to look at everything, to laugh and to shout. She felt taller than anyone in the crowd. Also she was dizzy. There was too much, and she was drunk on it, as the peeve had got sozzled on smells.

The end of the avenue was an even further astonishment. It expanded into a marketplace, a bazaar, where every single public activity known to the world seemed to go on.

Two pink marble lions guarded the entrance, and Tanaquil and the peeve rested against the plinth of one of these while porters, carts, and the banana camel trundled by.

Tanaquil attempted to view the things of the market individually, but it was impossible. Her eyes slid from the baskets of peaches to the bales of wool to the pen of curly sheep, to the juggler with his fire-work knives and the fortune-teller's tent with the wrong sorcerous signs embroidered over it, and on.

The market went downhill and was terraced to prevent everything tipping over. But Tanaquil's gaze tipped all the way down, and there below, in a rainbow frill of objects and actions, bluer than the sky, bluer than anything, was the sea. Contrasted to the flurry of the shore, slender ships glided slowly across the water, on russet and melon triangles of sail. The fishy, salty scent sparkled like glass in the air, stronger than perfume, sheep, and peaches.

"Oh, Mother," said Tanaquil, "we salute the
fish!"

"Now then, move along for God's sake," said a beefy man in an apron. He shouldered past.

"Be good," said Tanaquil to the peeve, "and I'll—" she hesitated. She had been going to promise to get the peeve some cooked meat from one of the stalls. But of course, she had no money. Indeed, she had never
seen
money except in Jaive's coffer, and more recently at the dice games of the caravan. "Er, we'll see," said Tanaquil. They would not starve. She had, did she not, her fabulous magic "trick"? Instead of gawping at the bazaar, she should find a pitch and thrill the unsuspecting populace with the talking peeve.

They went into the market, and walked down the terraces through flares of blood-red silk and garlands of woven baskets.

The juggler was encouragingly earning a large pile of coins, tossed by the crowd. In another place a girl danced with bells on her wrists and ankles, and elsewhere boys made a living pyramid, and fire was eaten.

Tanaquil and the peeve came against a side of ox in which the peeve was rather interested. As she tried to separate them, Tanaquil beheld another marble lion ahead. Seated between its feet was a man playing a pipe. As he played, he swayed, and out of the wooden bowl before him rose a swaying snake, itself with a skin like a plait of bright money.

"Just look," said Tanaquil to the peeve, prizing it off the ox carcass. The peeve looked, for once obliging. Tanaquil realized she had made a mistake. "No—"

The leash burned through her fingers and was gone.

Like a flung brown snowball, the peeve demolished the distance between itself and the marble lion. The crowd about the statue's base parted with cries. The peeve skirled through. It rose steeply. It landed.

There was a kind of explosion of tails, paws, bowl, pipe, snake. Fur and scales sprayed up in the air.

The piper stood baying and waving his arms, obviously afraid to intervene in this cyclone. The unsympathetic crowd laughed and jeered.

An awful clattering rebounded on the marble. The snake was gone, instead, a heap of scales and wobbling springs lay on the lion's feet. The peeve, with a silver spine and head in its mouth, galloped at Tanaquil.

She caught it.
"Bad,
" said Tanaquil, inadequately. "You fool, it's not even real—"

The peeve crouched at her feet, worrying the silver backbone of the mechanical snake and growling. It seemed slightly embarrassed.

"I'm so sorry—" Tanaquil hurried to the statue and looked up at the snake charmer, who was picking over the shattered bits of his act.

"Seventy-five weights of copper and three pence this cost me," he moaned. "Made by the finest craftsmen in the city. Now see."

The peeve had followed Tanaquil, trailing its leash. "Give me
that."
She got the spine and head from its teeth, and it seemed glad to forget them in a thorough wash. The head had faceted green glass eyes, and hinged jaws of ivory fangs. Tanaquil began to try the springs back against their slots. "I think I can mend this."

"No, no, just my rotten luck. Ruined."

"Really, I think I can. I
can
mend things."

The snake-charmer glared at her with tearful eyes.

"You're
an artisan?"

"Well—I suppose so."

"All right.
Do
it then."

"I'll need some tools—"

"An artisan and no tools," scoffed the embittered snake-charmer. He sat on the lion and refused to glance at Tanaquil, the peeve, the crowd, or the snake.

"Over there, Bindat's stall—he'll lend you a few artisan things," said a man who had come across from the meat rack. "Meanwhile, you can pay me for the bite your dog's taken out of my ox."

"I haven't a penny," said Tanaquil.

The man surprisingly answered, "Have it free then. It was worth it for the laugh."

All afternoon, Tanaquil sat under the marble lion and repaired the mechanical snake.

It was quite a difficult job, but the further she went with it the more she got the hang of what needed doing. The scales, which she had feared might be the worst task, merely linked into one another with tiny hooks.

As she worked, people stopped to watch. Ignoring the peeve tied to a post and the snake charmer lurking on the lion, a few inquired what Tanaquil would charge for mending a toy, a clock, a small watering device. Tanaquil said, "I charge half the going rate."

This meant that by the time the sun westered, various items had been left in her care. The bazaar did not shut up shop with sunset; already lamps and torches were being lit.

"Here you are," said Tanaquil raising the renewed snake in the reddening light. "See if it will go."

"Of course it won't. Hair-fine mechanisms—"

"Just
see."

The snake charmer snatched the snake and cast it in the bowl as if he loathed it. But he blew a trill on the pipe. The snake stirred. To swaying melody, the snake flowed upward from the bowl and danced at the sunset.

The snake charmer took the pipe from his mouth, and the snake hovered upright, gleaming.

"I won't thank you. Your dog broke it in the first place."

"No,
please
don't thank me," said Tanaquil. "After all, it might become a nasty habit."

She flexed her fingers, swallowed her hunger and thirst, and, taking up the two halves of a doll soldier, began again to work.

Four hours later all the left items had been collected, and a pocketful of coins sat gleaming like the snake under the torches.

Somewhere a bell sounded. It was midnight. Looking up, Tanaquil found a ragged man in front of her. An iron cap was over his head and covered his eyes. He probed an invisible void with his stick. A blind beggar.

"Clink, clink," he said. "I heard the coins fall. Spare me a coin."

Tanaquil put a coin into his thin searching hand.

She remembered the unicorn with a shock of the heart. This imperfect world—

Bindat's wife, Cuckoo, suggested that for the payment of three pennies, Tanaquil might spend the night in their outhouse. Tanaquil was exhausted and accepted. They had a long walk, however, to Bindat's house, which lay behind the great market and far from the beautiful avenue, in an area of slums. Here the dwellings leaned on each other to stay up, and rickety wooden bridges went over the streets, and washing-lines, from which, even as they passed, thieves were stealing the washing. Bindat and Cuckoo even greeted one of these thieves warmly. They crunched through open drains, frozen by night, and came to Bindat's house. The outhouse was a hut with holes, white with frost. Wood was stacked there, and it was busy with beetles. The peeve, leash off, spent all night chasing and eating these beetles, despite the bowl of thin soup it had shared with Tanaquil. In the morning, very early, Tanaquil learned that, in addition to the three pennies, she must pay for her lovely night by sweeping the yard and milking the goat. As a child, for a treat, she had sometimes milked the goats at her mother's fortress. This was harder, as the goat and the peeve had declared war on each other.

After a breakfast of burnt crusts, Tanaquil and the peeve returned with Bindat and Cuckoo through the hot and reeking drains, and lamenting owners of stolen washing, to the bazaar. Tanaquil was delighted to find a queue of people waiting for her under the marble lion: Word had got around.

At noon, Bindat came over to Tanaquil and told her in a friendly way that he would have half her earnings, as he and Cuckoo had personally sent all her customers to her. As he spoke, Cuckoo might be seen cleaning a large knife at their stall.

Tanaquil did not argue. She gave Bindat half her coins. When he was gone, she told her next customer she would be moving to the tents of the spice-sellers, whose smell had already attracted her.

Once she had returned all the previously mended things to their guardians, she slipped away, and descended the terraces out of Bindat's sight. Among the spice jars, at an obelisk with a stone fish on it, she sat down again with the peeve, and as she resumed her work, she watched the fish market below, and the blue sea that was greener against the harbor.

Once or twice during the night in the outhouse she had dozed. Then she had believed the unicorn poised outside the door, clean as black snow in the slum. But waking as the peeve scampered over her in its hunting, she knew the unicorn could not be there.

Now she felt she was working in a set of condiments—the pepper and ginger, cinnamon and hyssop and anise, with the fishy salt of the sea.

The peeve sneezed and ate the baked joint she had bought it. Then it slept on her foot after its hard night, and her foot also went to sleep.

A shadow fell across Tanaquil as she was fastening the frame of a mechanical board game involving a lot of small porcelain animals. She glanced up. Her new customers were three large men. The central figure wore black and red clothing, and the buckle of his belt was a gilded hammer crossed by a brass chisel.