The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(104)

“It is a poor and fearful queen,” said Anne mildly, “to live so far from her own people.”

“She is not afraid!” cried another voice. “She has her knights; she has her sorcerers.”

“A sovereign who lives behind locked gates is afraid. And perhaps she is right. Her guards and sorcerers cannot take every head in the city and set it upon a spear. Are the people of Keris to be crushed flat under the fist of a tyrant?”

“She is a sorceress,” said another voice. “The greatest ever born. Her mother was a korrigan. The queen will do what she likes. She has always done what she likes, and her good father did not see the evil.”

Anne leaned forward, tangled her fingers in the unicorn’s mane, made her voice carry. “I do not think a queen should please herself at the expense of her people. Do you know that you are caught here with her, night after night, in an enchantment that won’t let you go? Do you know how long you’ve been in the Lost Lands?”

Did they know? Anne thought they did, with the haziness of a dreamer who has just realized he is dreaming.

Another voice said, breaking, “We are damned.”

“No one is beyond salvation,” said Anne.

“Who are you, lady?” called several voices.

She stared steadily back at them, past the torchlight shivering on the unicorn’s horn. “I am called Anne of Brittany. And I tell you now that you have been in the Lost Lands for a thousand years, every night the same. But if you help me, we can bring the dawn.”

“Help you how?” said someone.

She said, “We must go together to the palace and demand it of your sorceress-queen. Will you go with me, and not be afraid?”

Noise burst out from the crowd then, a great, growling murmur. Someone shouted, “We are afraid! There are guards. There are enchantments. She is queen of the whole world!”

Anne shouted back, “Only because she has made your world small! Bounded it to the space of a single night, and cut you all out of the living world. But the brave do not tolerate bondage forever. And it is the work of a whole nation to save itself.”

They shouted, a cresting wall of noise. The unicorn reared up in surprise, torchlight caught in her flying mane. Anne moved with her, unafraid now, and her voice cut through theirs. “Will you come with me?”

Their affirmation shook the city. The whole city began to rouse like a dragon coming out of the sea. More and more people packed the street as word carried, and some of them had weapons, and some rode very beautiful horses. “They will follow us now,” said Anne to the unicorn, with a ferocity that had nothing to do with that night and everything to do with her entire life. “This is why I am no good to anyone as a paragon of self-sacrifice!”

The unicorn slanted a listening ear, then turned at Anne’s touch, taking the rising street to the citadel and palace above.

And the city came with them. More and more people massed in the street at her back, riders and walkers pressed together. The streets were paved with slabs of marble, scored for grip, rosy under all the torches.

But the way was not unguarded.

The unicorn was the first to realize; she stopped and threw up her head. Anne saw it too, barely; a cold light leaping through the nighttime heavens, and then lightning cracked the street before them, a piece of a distant storm, flung to earth by sorcery. People cried out. Someone screamed, “That is her sorcerers’ doing; they will kill us!”

Anne saw the wrongness in the edge of the clouds, saw, briefly, the night they’d come from, the whole sea luminous with lightning, the unicorn’s horn glowing with it. Then she dragged in a harsh breath, and shoved the storm back. The unicorn’s presence seemed to ease the spike of agony in her head. She rode on.

The next trap was worse; a torrent of stones tumbling toward them, bathed in surreal daylight.

Anne called to the unicorn and they plunged together into that light, put the stones back in their own day, falling down a long-gone cliff. Again, the street lay empty before them. Her head hurt less that time. She thought the unicorn’s living mane, washing over her hands, was helping somehow.

The noise of the crowd at her back was the noise of ten thousand storms; they had seen what she had done.

She called, “Let bells be rung. The night is ending.”

A light came to their faces. All the bells in Keris began to ring.

One man, swept along with his fellows, bleated at her, “What are you doing? The queen will punish us!”

His comrades ignored him. Still they climbed.

White marble was an impractical footing for a city built in a rising spiral, but the unicorn’s cloven hooves were surer than a goat’s. Some people were singing as they went, keeping time by the cry of the bells.

The citadel and its palace crowned the rise of Keris like a great coronal, and finally, the gate of it loomed before them, glimmering white like the road. Within stood the guard: great men on still greater horses, in armor of scarlet leather, and pteruges like the ancient Romans. They watched, stony-faced, the approach of the shouting crowd.

Anne took a deep breath. This was a great gate, perhaps inviolable. They could storm it, but people would die.

Had the gates always been there?

She stared into the layers of light and shadow, and thought: No. Once the palace of Keris had been a welcoming place, open to the city, and the city open to the world.