The Black Unicorn (25 page)

Ben looked up, past the frozen gnomes, at the tall, black shape that had materialized behind them as if by magic and found himself face to face with Nightshade.

Ben stared voicelessly into the cold green eyes of the witch and, if there had been some place to run, he would have been halfway there already. But there was no running away from Nightshade. She held him fast simply by the force of her presence. She was a wall that he could neither scale nor get around. She was his prison.

Her voice was a whisper. “I never believed it possible that you would be so foolish as to come back here.”

Foolish, indeed, he agreed silently. He forced himself to reach out to the terrified gnomes and draw them to him, away from the witch. They fell into him like rag dolls, shaking with relief, burying their furry faces in his tunic.

“Please help us, High Lord!” was the best Fillip could manage, his own voice a whisper.

“Yes, please!” echoed Sot.

“It’s all right,” Ben lied.

Nightshade laughed softly. She was just as Ben remembered her—tall and sharp-featured, her skin as pale and smooth as marble, her hair jet black, save for a single streak of white down its center, her lean, angular frame cloaked all in black. She was beautiful in her way, ageless in appearance, a creature who had somehow come to terms with her mortality. Yet her face failed to reflect the
emotions that would have made her complete. Her eyes were depthless and empty. They looked ready to swallow him.

Well, I asked for this, he thought.

Nightshade’s laughter died away then, and there was the barest hint of uncertainty in her eyes. She came forward a step, peering at him. “What is this?” she asked softly. “You are not the same …” She trailed off, confused. “But you must be; the gnomes have named you High Lord … Here, let me see your face in the light.”

She reached out. Ben was powerless to resist. Fingers as cold as icicles fastened on his chin and tilted his head to the moonlight. She held him there a moment, muttering. “You
are
different—yet the same, too. What has been done to you, play-King? Or is this some new game you seek to play with me? Are you not Holiday?” Ben could feel Fillip and Sot shivering against his body, tiny hands digging into him. “Ah, there is
magic
at work here,” Nightshade whispered harshly, fingers releasing his face with a twist. “Whose magic is it? Tell me, now—quickly!”

Ben fought back an urge to scream, fought to keep his voice steady. “Meeks. He’s come back. He’s made himself King and changed me into … this.”

“Meeks?” The green eyes narrowed. “That pathetic charlatan? How has he found magic enough to accomplish this?” Her mouth twisted with disdain. “He lacks the means to tie his own shoes! How could he manage to do this to you?”

Ben said nothing. He didn’t have an answer to give her.

There was a long moment of silence as the witch studied him. Finally, she said, “Where is the medallion? Let me see it!”

When he didn’t immediately respond, she made a quick motion with her fingers. Despite his resolve, he found himself withdrawing the tarnished emblem from his tunic for her inspection. She stared at it a moment, then stared
again at his face, then slowly smiled the smile of a predator eyeing dinner.

“So,” she whispered.

That was all she said. It was enough. Ben knew instantly that she had figured out what had been done to him. He knew that she understood the nature of the magic that had changed him. Her realization of it was infuriating to him. It was worse than being held like this. He wanted to scream. He
had
to know what she had learned, and there was no way in the world that she was going to tell him.

“You are pathetic, play-King,” she went on, her voice still soft but insinuating now as well. “You have always been lucky, but never smart. Your luck has run out. I am almost tempted to leave you as you are. Almost. But I cannot forget what you did to me. I want to be the one to make you suffer for that! Are you surprised to see me again? I think perhaps you are. You thought me gone forever, I imagine—gone into the world of fairy to perish. How foolish of you.”

She knelt down before him so that her eyes were level with his. There was such hate that he flinched from it. “I flew into the mists, play-King—just as you commanded that I must, just as I was bidden. The Io Dust held me bound to your command, and I could not refuse. How I despised you then! But I could do nothing. So I flew into the mists—but I flew slowly, play-King, slowly! I fought to break the spell of the Io Dust as I flew; I fought with all the power that I could summon!”

The smile returned again, slow and hard. “And I
did
break the spell finally. I shattered it and turned back again. Too late, though, play-King, much too late—for I was already within the fairy mists and there was damage done to me! I hurt as never before; I was scarred by the pain of it! I escaped with my life and little else. It took me months to regain even the smallest part of my magic. I lay within the swamp, a creature in hiding, as helpless
as the smallest reptile! I was broken! But I would not give in to the pain and the fear; I thought only of you. I thought only of what I would do to you once I had you in my hands again. And I knew that one day I would find a way to bring you back to me …”

She paused. “But I never dreamed it would happen so soon, my foolish High Lord. What great good fortune! It was the change that brought you to me, wasn’t it? Something about the change—but what? Tell me, play-King. I will have it from you anyway.”

Ben knew this was so. There was no sense in trying to keep anything from the witch. He could see in the empty green eyes what was in store for him. Talking was the only thing that was keeping him alive, and as long as he was alive he had a chance. Chances at this point were not to be tossed aside lightly.

“I came looking for Willow,” he answered, pushing the gnomes behind him now. He wanted them out of the way—just in case. He had to keep his eyes open for the right opportunity. The gnomes, however, continued to cling to him like Velcro.

“The River Master’s daughter? The sylph?” Nightshade’s look was questioning. “Why would she come here?”

“You haven’t seen her?” Ben asked, surprised.

Nightshade smiled unpleasantly. “No, play-King. I have seen no one but you—you and your foolish burrow people. What would the sylph want with me?”

He hesitated, then took a deep breath. “The golden bridle.”

There, it was out. Better to tell her and see if he could learn anything than to play it cute. Fencing with Nightshade was too dangerous.

Nightshade looked genuinely surprised. “The bridle? But why?”

“Because Meeks wants it. Because he sent Willow a dream about the bridle and a black unicorn.” Quickly he
told the witch the story of Willow’s dream and of the sylph’s decision to try to learn what she could of the bridle. “She was told that the bridle was here in the Deep Fell.” He paused. “She should have arrived here ahead of me.”

“A pity she didn’t,” Nightshade replied. “I like her little better than I like you. Destroying her would have given me almost as much satisfaction as destroying you.” She paused, thinking. “The black unicorn, is it? Back again? How interesting. And the bridle can hold it fast, the dream says? Yes, that could be possible. After all, it was created by wizard magic. And it was a wizard I stole it from years back …”

Nightshade laughed. She studied him, a cunning look creeping into her eyes. “These pathetic burrow people who belong to you—were they sent to steal the bridle from me?”

Fillip and Sot were trying to crawl inside Ben’s skin, but Ben was barely aware of them. He was thinking of something else altogether. If Meeks had once possessed the bridle, then that meant the wizard probably once used it—might even have used it to hold captive the black unicorn. Had the unicorn somehow escaped then? Was the dream Meeks had sent to Willow designed to regain possession of the bridle so that the unicorn could be recaptured? If so, what did the unicorns in the missing books of magic have to do with …

“Do not bother answering, play-King,” Nightshade interrupted his thoughts. “The answer is in your eyes. These foolish rodents crept into the Deep Fell for just that reason, didn’t they? Crept into my home like the thieves they are? Crept down on their little cat’s paws?”

The mention of cat’s paws reminded him suddenly of Edgewood Dirk. Where was the prism cat? He glanced around before he could think better of it, but Dirk was nowhere to be seen.

“Looking for someone?” Nightshade demanded at
once. Her eyes swept the darkened forest behind Ben like knives. “I see no one,” she muttered after a moment. “Whoever it is you look for must have abandoned you.”

Nevertheless, she took a moment to make certain that she was right before turning back to him. “Your thieves are as pathetic as you, play-King,” she resumed her attack. “They think themselves invisible, but they remain unseen only when I do not
wish
to see them. They were so obvious in their efforts on this misadventure that I could not fail to see them. The minute they were mine, they called for you. ‘Great High Lord; mighty High Lord!’ How foolish! They gave you up without my even having to ask!”

Fillip and Sot were shaking so hard Ben was in danger of being toppled. He put a hand on each to try to offer some sort of reassurance. He felt genuinely sorry for the little fellows. After all, they were in this mess because of him.

“Since you have me, why not let the gnomes go?” he asked the witch suddenly. “They’re foolish creatures, as you say. I tricked them into helping me. They really didn’t have a choice. They don’t even know why they’re here.”

“Worse luck for them.” Nightshade dismissed the plea out of hand. “No one goes free who stands with you, play-King.” Her face lifted, black hair sweeping back. Her eyes scanned the darkness once more. “I no longer like it here. Come.”

She rose, a black shadow that gained in size as she spread her arms. Her robes billowed out like sailcloth. There was a sudden wind through the trees, cold and sharp, and mist from the Deep Fell lifted to wrap them all. Moons and stars vanished into its murk, and there was a sudden sense of lifting free, of floating. The G’home Gnomes clutched Ben tighter than ever, and he in turn held them for lack of something better to hold. There was a
whoosh
ing sound and then silence.

Ben blinked against the cold and the mist, and slowly
the light returned. Nightshade stood before him, smiling coldly. The smells of swamp and mist hung thick on the air. Torchlight revealed a row of stanchions and the bones of tables and benches scattered across an empty court.

They were somewhere within the Deep Fell, down in Nightshade’s home.

“Do you know what is to happen to you now, play-King?” she asked softly.

He had a pretty good idea. His imagination was working overtime on the possibilities despite his efforts to restrain it. His chances appeared to have run out. He wondered fleetingly why it was that Willow hadn’t gotten here before him. Wasn’t this where the Earth Mother had told her to go? If she wasn’t here, where was she?

He wondered what had become of Edgewood Dirk.

Nightshade’s sudden hiss jarred him free of his thoughts. “Shall I hang you to dry like a piece of old meat? Or shall I play games with you awhile first? We must take our time with this, mustn’t we?”

She started to say something more, then paused as a new thought struck her. “But, no—I have a much better idea! I have a much grander and more fitting demise in mind for you!”

She bent into him. “Do you know that I no longer have the golden bridle, play-King? No? I thought not. It was stolen from me. It was stolen while I was too weak to prevent it, still recovering from the hurt that
you
caused me! Do you know who has the bridle now? Strabo, play-King! The dragon has the fairy bridle, the bridle that rightfully belongs to me. How ironic! You come to the Deep Fell in search of something that isn’t even here! You come to your doom pointlessly!”

Her face was only inches from his own, skin drawn tight against the bones, the streak in her black hair a silver slash. “Ah, but you give me a chance to do something I could not otherwise do! Strabo dotes on things made of gold, though he has no use for them except as baubles!
He has no true appreciation of their worth—especially the bridle with its magic! He would never give it back to me, and I cannot take it from him while he keeps it hidden within the Fire Springs. But he would trade it, play-King. He most certainly would trade it for something he values more.”

Her smile was ferocious. “And what does he value more in all the world than a chance to gain his revenge against you?”

Ben couldn’t imagine. Strabo had been a victim of the Io Dust as well, and he had left Ben with the promise that one day he would repay him. Ben felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. This was like being
pushed
from the frying pan into the fire. He tried to keep the witch from seeing what he was feeling and failed.

Nightshade’s smile broadened in satisfaction. “Yes, play-King—I will be most content to leave the means of your destruction to the dragon!”