The Black Unicorn (6 page)

The sense of exhilaration vanished. Somewhere in the night, there was a frightening scream. He realized as he fell that the scream was his own.

The dreams left him after that, but he slept poorly for the remainder of the night anyway. He rose shortly after dawn, showered, called room service for breakfast, ate, dressed in the clothes he had bought yesterday, and caught a cab out front of the hotel shortly after nine. He took his duffel bag with him. He did not think he would be returning.

The cab took him south on Michigan Avenue. It was Saturday, but the streets were already beginning to clog with Christmas shoppers anxious to beat the weekend rush. Ben sat back in the relative seclusion of the cab and ignored them. The joys of the approaching holiday were the furthest thing from his mind.

Traces of last night’s dream still whispered darkly to him. He had been badly frightened by that dream and by the truths that it contained.

The Paladin was a reality he had not fully come to grips with. He had become the armored knight only once—and then as much by chance as by intention. It had been necessary to become the Paladin in order to survive, and he had therefore done what was necessary. But the transformation had been a frightening thing, a shedding of his own skin, a crawling into someone else’s—someone or something. The thoughts of that other being were hard and brutal, a warrior’s thoughts, a gladiator’s. There was blood and death in those thoughts, an entire history of survival that Ben could only begin to comprehend. It frankly terrified him. He could not control what this other
thing was, he sensed—not entirely. He could only
become
what it was and accept what that meant.

He was not sure he could ever do that again. He had not tried and did not wish to try.

And yet a part of him did—just as in the dream. And a part of him whispered that someday he must.

He had the cab take him to the offices of Holiday & Bennett, Ltd. The offices were closed on Saturdays, but he knew Miles Bennett would be there anyway. Miles was always there on Saturdays, working until noon, catching up on all the dictating and research that he hadn’t gotten to during the week, taking advantage of the absence of those bothersome interruptions that seemed to dog him during regular business hours.

Ben paid the cab driver to drop him at the end of the block across the street from his destination, then stepped quickly into the doorway of another building. Pedestrians passed him by, oblivious to what he was about, caught up in their own concerns. Traffic moved ahead at a rapid crawl. There were cars parked on the street, but no one seemed to be keeping watch in them.

“Doesn’t hurt to be careful,” he insisted softly.

He stepped back out of the doorway, crossed the street with the light, moved up the block, and pushed through the storm glass doors to the lobby of his building. He saw nothing out of place, nothing odd.

He hurried to an open elevator, stepped inside, punched the button to floor fifteen, and watched the doors slide closed. The elevator started up. Just a few moments more, he thought. And if Miles wasn’t there for some reason, he would simply track him down at his home.

But he hoped he wouldn’t have to do that. He sensed that he might not have the time. Maybe it was the dream, maybe it was simply the circumstances of his being here—but something definitely felt wrong.

The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors slid open, and he stepped into the hallway beyond.

His breath caught sharply in his throat. Once again, he was face to face with Meeks.

Questor Thews brushed at the screen of cobwebs that hung across the narrow stone entry of the ruins of the castle tower and pushed inside. He sneezed as dust clogged his nostrils and muttered in distaste at the damp and dark. He should have had the sense to bring a torch …

A spark of fire flared next to him, and flames leaped from a brand. Bunion passed the handle of the light to Questor.

“I was just about to use the magic to do that for myself!” the wizard snapped irritably, but the kobold just grinned.

They stood within the failing walls of Mirwouk, the ancient fortress Questor had seen in his dream of the missing books of magic. They were far north of Sterling Silver, high within the Melchor, the wind whipping about the worn stone to howl down empty corridors, the chill settling through stale air like winter’s coming. It had taken the wizard and the kobold the better part of three days to get here, and their travel had been quick. The castle had welcomed them with yawning gates and vacant windows. Its rooms and halls stood abandoned.

Questor pushed ahead, searching for something that looked familiar. The late afternoon was settling down about them, and he had no wish to be wandering about this dismal tomb after dark. He was a wizard and could sense things hidden from other folk, and this place had an evil smell about it.

He groped about for a time, then thought he recognized the passageway he had entered. He followed its twist and turn, eyes peering through the gloom. More cobwebs and dust hindered his progress, and there were spiders the size of rats and rats the size of dogs. They scurried and crawled, and he had to watch for them at every step. It
was decidedly annoying work. He was tempted to use his magic to turn the lot of them into dust bunnies and let the wind sweep them away.

The passageway took a downward turn, and the shape of its walls altered noticeably. Questor slowed, peering at the stonework. Abruptly, he straightened.

“I recognize this!” he exclaimed in an agitated whisper. “This is the tunnel I saw in my dreams!”

Bunion took the torch from his hand without comment and led the way down. Questor was too excited to argue the matter and followed quickly after. The passage broadened and cleared, free of webbing, dust, rodents, and insects. There was a new smell to the stone, a kind of sickly-fragrant musk. Bunion kept up a brisk pace, and sometimes all that Questor could see before him was the halo of the torch.

All was just as it had been in the dream!

The tunnel went on, angling deeper into the mountain rock, a coil of hollowed corridors and curving stairs. Bunion stayed in front, eyes sharp. Questor was practically breathing down his neck.

Then the tunnel ended at a stone door marked with scroll and runes. Questor was shaking with excitement by now. He felt along the markings and his hands seemed to know exactly where to go. He touched something and the door swung open with a faint grating sound.

The room beyond was massive, its floor constructed of granite blocks polished smooth. Questor led the way now, following the vision inside his head, the memory of his dream. He walked to the center of the chamber, Bunion at his side, the sound of their footfalls a hollow echo.

They stopped before a piece of granite flooring on which the sign of a unicorn had been carved.

Questor Thews stared. A unicorn? One hand tugged uneasily at his chin. Something was wrong here. He did not recall anything about a unicorn in his dream. There had been a sign cut into the stone, but had the sign been
that of a unicorn? It seemed a rather large coincidence …

For just an instant, he considered turning about, walking directly back the way he had come, and abandoning the entire project. A small voice inside whispered that he should. There was danger hidden here; he could sense it, feel it, and it frightened him.

But the lure of the missing books was too strong. He reached down, and his fingers traced the ridges of the creature’s horn—again, almost of their own volition. The block stirred and slid aside, fitting into a neatly constructed chute.

Questor Thews peered downward into the hole that was left.

There was something there.

Nightfall draped the lake country in shadows and mist, and the light of colored moons and silver stars was no more than a faint glimmer as it reflected off the still surface of the Irrylyn. Willow stood alone at the shoreline of a tiny inlet ringed in cottonwood and cedar, the waters of the lake lapping at her toes. She was naked, her clothes laid carefully upon the grass behind her. A breeze blew softly against her pale green skin, wove its careless way through the waist-length emerald hair, curled and ribboned, and ruffled the fetlocks that ran the length of her calves and forearms. She shivered with the touch. She was a creature of impossible beauty, half human, half fairy, and she might have been a descendant of the sirens of myth who had lured men to their doom on the rocks of ancient seas.

Night birds called sharply from across the lake, their cries echoing in the stillness. Willow’s whistle called back to them.

Her head lifted and she sniffed the air as an animal might. Parsnip was waiting patiently for her in the campsite fifty yards back, the light of his cooking fire screened
by the trees. She had come alone to the Irrylyn to bathe and to remember.

She stepped cautiously into the water, the lukewarm liquid sending a delicious tingle through her body. It was here that she had met Ben Holiday, that they had seen each other for the first time, naked as they bathed, stripped of all pretentions. It was here that she had known that he was the one who was meant for her.

Her smile brightened as she thought back on how it had been—the wonder of the moment. She had told him what was to be, and while he had doubted it—still doubted it, in truth—she had never faltered in her certainty. The fates of her birth, told in the fairy way by the manner of entwining of the bedded flowers of her seeding, could never lie.

Oh, but she loved the outlander Ben Holiday!

Her child’s face beamed and then clouded. She missed Ben. She worried for him. Something in the dream they had shared troubled her in a way she could not explain. There was a riddle behind these dreams that whispered of danger.

She had said nothing of it to Ben because she had read in his voice when he told her of his dream that he had already decided he would go. She knew then that she could not turn him from his purpose and should not try. He understood the risks and accepted them. The urgency of her concern paled beside the strength of his determination.

Perhaps it was for that reason that in telling him of her dream she had not told him all. Something in her dream was different than in his—or Questor Thews’. It was a subtle thing and difficult to explain, but it was there nevertheless.

She crouched in the shallows, emerald hair fanning out across her shoulders like a shawl. Her finger traced patterns on the still surface, and the memory of the dream returned. The wrong feeling was in the texture of the
dream, she thought. It was in the way it played against her mind. The visions had been vivid, the events clear. But the telling was somehow false—as if it were all something that could happen in a dream, but not in waking. It was as if the memory was a mask that hid a face beneath.

She ceased her tracing motion and rose. What face was it, she wondered, that lay concealed beneath that mask?

The frown that clouded her face deepened, and she wished suddenly she had not been so accepting of Ben’s decision. She wished she had argued his going after all or that she had insisted that he take her along.

“No, he will be well,” she whispered insistently.

Her eyes lifted skyward and she let the moonglow warm her. Tomorrow she would seek the advice of her mother, whose life was so close to that of the fairy creatures in the mists. Her mother would know of the black unicorn and the bridle of spun gold and would guide her; soon she would be back again with Ben.

She stepped further out into the darkened lake, let the waters close about her, and drifted at peace.

The second appearance of Meeks did not elicit in Ben Holiday the panic that the first had. He did not freeze; he did not experience the same sense of confusion. He was surprised, but not stunned. After all, he had a better idea of what to expect this time around. This was just another apparition of the outcast wizard—tall, stooped, cloaked in the robes of gunmetal blue, white hair grizzled, face craggy and sallow, black leather glove lifted like a claw, but an apparition nevertheless.

Wasn’t it?

Meeks started for him, and suddenly he wasn’t so sure. The pale blue eyes were alive with hatred, and the hard features seemed to twist into something not quite human. Meeks closed on him, gliding down the empty, fluorescent-lit corridor soundlessly, growing huge in the silence. Ben stood his ground with difficulty, one hand searching out the reassuring bulk of the medallion beneath his shirt. But what protection did the medallion offer him here? His mind raced. The rune stone, he thought suddenly! The stone would tell him if he was threatened! His free hand rummaged frantically in his pants pocket, fumbling for the stone as the robed figure loomed closer. Despite his resolve,
Ben took a quick step backward. He could not find the stone!

Meeks was directly in front of him, dark and menacing. Ben flinched as the wizard blocked the light …

And then he looked up and found himself alone in the deserted corridor, staring into empty space, listening to the silence.

Meeks was gone—another substanceless apparition.

He had found the rune stone, nestled in the corner of his pants pocket, and he pulled it into the light. It was blood red and burned at the touch.