The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(107)

“I don’t want it,” said Ahèz, crossing her arms. “It is impossible. This night is well enough; I will stay here.”

Anne held the unicorn’s mane and looked into the complexity of lights and shadows, saw the infinity caught within. “Will you?” she whispered. “But your will is not that of your people.” To the crowded room she whispered, “Remember the dawn, and the living world.”

They remembered. They believed in her. They wanted the same thing, and in that moment she was the instrument of their will. With that thought like a blazon in her heart, Anne let her mind fill with the light of day and of the summer sea.

The unicorn’s neck was warm under her hand, there was the dragon’s blood upon her again, and somewhere, just a glimpse, she saw a man of terrible beauty, neither mortal nor korrigan, come unseen to that hall and watch her with cold eyes, the color of a sea-drake’s scales.

She did not think any sorcery could have done this thing. Certainly not hers, all untrained. But these people were wild for their own freedom.

With a strength she did not possess, Anne dragged Keris back to where it had begun, into the lands of men, upon the great bay of Douarnenez. She screamed as the pain of it tore through her, as the dawn light struck the high spire of its palace.

She fell from the unicorn’s back. But there were hands on her now, the strength of others holding her up, helping her stand. When she looked for the strange figure, he had disappeared.

Dawn shone redly through the high upper windows.

Anne felt the unicorn’s horn hot against her face, the agony of healing. She swayed on her feet, sweating and sick, her will bent on Ahèz once more. She said, “Come and be a queen in the light and not the shadows.”

Ahèz just looked at the hard faces of the people, the knights with their swords, the unicorn at Anne’s shoulder. Her face crumpled suddenly. “Why did you do that? I was happy. The night was perfect.” Her face turned raw with hatred as she stared at the unicorn. “I hunted over all the fields of the world and you never came to me. My father gave me the keys to the seawalls anyway, but I knew I was not the true queen, for I had never touched a unicorn. I hated my place all the more since it was not mine. I suppose it is yours, vagabond,” she said bitterly to Anne, “and you have come to take it.”

Anne said nothing.

The old knight said, “This lady has the ring and the unicorn’s blessing; Keris is rightly ruled by someone blessed by the creature who walks in two worlds.”

“It is mine!” Ahèz cried out. “I inherited it! My father gave it me.”

With a wild motion, she snatched up the golden mask that lay upon the table and threw herself at Anne. The knight’s sword hissed free, but he was too slow. It was the unicorn who moved quicker; the horn pierced Ahèz’s shoulder and she fell back with a spreading stain on her robe.

The unicorn was still. Gentleness in that dark eye, but no mercy.

“I am queen,” said Ahèz. She held the gold mask between her hands. The smothering-mask. “I am queen,” she said again, and put the mask to her face.

“No!” cried Anne. But the old knight said only, “It is just.”



* * *





Outside, the birds were calling. Anne fell suddenly to her knees. She wondered if she was dying. But it was only weariness. The blood and the sorcery had not killed her, for she had all the people of that city with her, making her will a conduit for theirs, holding her up. The knight put out his arm and she struggled to her feet.

She met the unicorn’s eye.

And Anne, still dazed, put her hand on the horn, and whispered, “Thank you.”

The unicorn laid her ears back and ran. Like a deer or a mote of light she ran away into the darkness of the Lost Lands. Her hooves tapped on stone and then unseen moss. And then nothing at all.

Anne was alone with the churning crowd. “The queen is dead,” she said. “And the sun is rising. The long feast is over. Go to bed.”

They did not move. The knight said, “What is it you desire, lady?”

Anne said, “I desire that the people of Keris may live as men and not empty ghosts of the Lost Lands, which was never meant for the habitation of unwilling mortals.”

“And what else?”

“To be your queen,” said Anne quietly. “The unicorn came to me in the hunt, according to your custom.” She could almost feel her answer being passed along, out past the doors, past the wall, and down the packed and squinting streets, full of sunlight and exhausted people.

The silence held and held.

“Majesty,” said the old knight. And he knelt at her feet.





Chapter


35

    Anne knew she must begin to shove the machinery of the castle and city and realm back into motion. But, she conceded, perhaps better to do it while sitting down. So clean linen was found for her, and cold water and wine. She knew naught of the city’s governance, neither its councils nor its guilds, and she suspected that many of these shocked and clamorous people might try to claim authority they had not.

Some might murmur that she was a stranger and a foreigner. She must grapple with them all, but her senses were swimming, her strength nearly at an end.

To the old knight, whose name was Matelin, she said, “Can you keep the ambitious from my door for half a day?”