by Kay Hooper
But Maggie would say no more. She sat there in silence, an old woman with old, wise eyes, gazing into the dregs of coffee brought to her by pirates. She said nothing, not even good-bye, and that disturbed Hunter more than he wanted to admit to himself.
He left the library with a strong feeling of disquiet, his mind toying with the enigma of its guardian. There was something about the old woman that was almost frightening. That odd, elusive power. And she knew…too much. She knew about a crownless prince half a galaxy away from his own world. She knew about a Keeper of unicorns she’d never met—or had she? Hunter wondered suddenly. Was that why she seemed to know so much about the woman who guarded the unicorns? Because she had been to the valley?
Hunter unconsciously grasped that possible answer with some relief. That answer was understandable, believable. Not impossible.
That answer made sense.
It was the other, elusive answer that was unnerving. Hunter didn’t believe in magic. He didn’t believe in killer mountains vested with human emotions. He didn’t believe in ten-thousand-year-old women with the power to drive men mad. He didn’t believe that an old librarian could gaze into the past or the future with stark clarity.
He didn’t, in fact, really believe in unicorns. Not really. Not anymore.
So a crownless prince named Hunter threaded his way through the drunken, stoned, or just plain mad inhabitants of the Huntmen’s city, his mind wholly occupied with the possibility of finding a myth that he thought now he didn’t really believe in. He retrieved his pack from the hiding place he’d found earlier, checking its contents carefully. It was all there. The threadbare clothing he never bothered to replace until it was completely worn out. He traveled lightly. And the ring was there. The ring he’d never worn.
He shouldered the pack and stood for a moment, gazing up at The Reaper that towered balefully above the city.
Killer mountains!
Indestructible Keepers destroyed by love!
It wouldn’t take long, he thought, to discover if there was indeed a valley beyond that mountain. And a Keeper. And unicorns. Not long at all. Then he could shake the filthy dust of this place from his booted heels. Travel back overland to the coast, where he’d hidden his ship. Follow the next elusive trail to myth.
Because, of course, there was nothing but more war-blasted desert beyond that black mountain.
Nothing at all.
Especially unicorns.
Hunter shifted the pack more comfortably on his strong back and set out purposefully for the appointed meeting with a shifty-eyed vendor, and with a Huntman who had…perhaps…captured a myth.
—
King was a man with secrets in his eyes. He sat in an overstuffed chair by a cold and empty fireplace, the only light in the room coming faintly through dirty, uncurtained windowpanes. He ignored Hunter, as he’d ignored his entrance hours before and his persistent questions since.
Ignored him as one would ignore a buzzing insect.
Hunter had literally forced the monkeylike vendor to bring him here after the little man had arrived, terrified, at their meeting to whisper that King wanted no visitors. The vendor had led him to this small, unkempt house and then scuttled away, vanishing into the depths of the city. And Hunter, one hand guardedly on his knife, had walked boldly in.
As hours passed and his voice hoarsened by repeated questions, Hunter tried to gain some sense of his unwilling host. But there was nothing. King exuded no life-force, no sense of personality. He seemed a slate wiped clean, a flat, one-dimensional image without animation. No question won so much as a flicker of response from him.
But there were secrets and horrors in his eyes. Of that Hunter was sure.
He was a big man, nearly as large as Hunter, with a full red beard shadowing his craggy face and gray eyes as dim and impenetrable as dense fog. He seemed oddly unreal, the innate power of his muscular body held captive by utter stillness.
And Hunter wondered if the legendary Keeper of the unicorns had done this to him. And if so, how.
Finally, in desperation, Hunter stood between King and the cold fireplace which seemed to hold his entire attention, and quietly, clearly, told the Huntman a story about a world with an empty throne and two princes. And of a man who had discovered, in his quest for that throne, the vital necessity of myth, the need of his world for dreams. He told of the years since and a long search, sparing nothing of himself in his need to get through to King and learn how to reach that valley. He talked of the need of protection for the unicorns and of his desire to prove that they existed so that they could be granted that protection.
If there was myth…he had to find it.
Especially this particular myth, dreamed of in boyhood and revered on so many worlds…this myth that was the cost of a throne.
So immersed was he in the telling that Hunter didn’t realize for quite a while that he had finally won King’s attention. The Huntman was looking up at him, gray eyes still impenetrable but fixed on his face nonetheless. No emotion stirred the craggy face, but King was listening.
Stressing his intention to prove the unicorns’ existence and disclaiming any desire to harm them, Hunter asked one last time for the secret to finding the valley.
The Huntman was still, his eyes watchful. Then, abruptly, he gestured in simple sign language for Hunter to come back in the morning.
Hunter hesitated for an instant, finally inclining his head in reluctant acceptance. He had said all that he could to convince King. Halting briefly at the door, he quietly reminded the Huntman of one important fact.
“Only a few weeks of Summer are left. I don’t have very much time.”
No sound or gesture answered him, and Hunter turned away from the man whose haunted eyes were like the broken window of an empty house.
—
Restraining impatience, tightly leashing hope, Hunter passed the night restlessly. He was back at King’s house the next morning when dawn had barely lightened the sky and found the older man on his feet but still coldly withdrawn. Before Hunter could ask, King pointed to a roughly drawn map lying on an otherwise bare table.
Eagerly studying the map for long moments, Hunter looked up to ask suddenly, “Does she exist? The Keeper?”
Something very like pain tightened the big Huntman’s features for a brief moment. He turned away abruptly, seemingly gazing out a dingy window and once again ignoring Hunter’s very presence.
Hunter looked down at the map, seeing suddenly something he had missed in his first perusal. In the upper-right-hand corner of the yellowed paper was shakily drawn the universal symbol of danger: a skull and crossbones.
He sent a sharp stare toward the immobile man. “Danger? From the Keeper?”
King made no move, no sound.
After a moment, realizing he’d get nothing more from the man, Hunter quietly unfastened his money pouch, laying it on the table before turning for the door. He sent a last look at the still, silent figure of the older man, unable to voice his thanks because of something he sensed rather than saw. And what he sensed was a man on the rack. Silently, he left.
Long minutes passed after the soft sound of the closing door, then King turned from the window. He went to a shelf, barren save for a small, cracked mirror. Lifting the mirror, he stared for a moment into eyes with ghosts in them. Ghosts of pain. Terror. Regret.
He swallowed hard and slowly opened his mouth, gazing into the dark cavern where a gaping wound could be seen.
King had no tongue.
He dropped the mirror to the floor and crushed the shards beneath his boots.
—
Mother?
Daughter?
A man comes.
Men have come before, daughter.
But this man…
Is different?
Yes. He comes alone. He comes.
Out of greed?
No. Yes. A different kind of greed.
He searches?
Yes. For truth.
&nbs
p; He hungers?
For truth.
Such men are dangerous, daughter. Take care.
Mother?
Daughter?
He has green eyes.
Take care, daughter.
—
He looked at the men with him, the Huntmen lured here by promises of wealth beyond description. He was, dimly, surprised that they had survived the journey into the valley but supposed that greed could lend strength. They were hardly a prepossessing lot. Still, he only needed tools, and they would do.
“The sorceress knows we’re here!” one of them hissed fearfully. “She always knows.”
“Not this time.” Boran smiled faintly as he recalled a plundered laboratory on a distant world and the secrets he had found there. The amulet he wore around his neck was one such device, designed to amplify his own considerable psi abilities; the sorceress would not be able to sense his presence, nor that of anyone near him. At best, she would only sense a darkness, a blank spot in her valley.
Until he was ready to confront her.
The Huntmen looked at one another, and then at him. Cautiously, one ventured, “She won’t know?”
“If you remain near me, no,” Boran answered, his soft voice even and emotionless.
The Huntman who had asked the question felt a chill crawl over his flesh. Boran wore a smile often, and spoke softly, but there was something quietly horrible in that smile and that voice. And he had not even seemed to notice when one of the Huntmen had lost his grip on the rope during their journey and had fallen, screaming dreadfully, to bounce and tumble down the black slope of The Reaper.
“Hand me the glass,” Boran ordered.
The Huntman fished it from his pack and handed it over, taking care not to touch the twisted, constantly beckoning hand. His flesh crawled again, and he wished suddenly that he had remained in the city.
He thought it was safer down there….
Boran studied the valley below, measuring with a warrior’s eye, seeking places of concealment and ambush.
First the Triad. Age. Strength. Youth.
He had the Strength, taken from King; only a tiny portion of it was gone, but even that slight loss was a loss.
He wanted it all.
Fury reddened his mind for a moment until he caught the scarlet wisps and dragged them behind mental doors. No time for that now. He could bide his time until the moment for fury came.
He needed power if his plans were to succeed; the Triad was that power. As the possessor of the Triad, he would be invincible. The craving for power surged within him, hot and violent and pleasing. It traveled the twisted corridors of his mind and spread a hellish glow.
Power. To take a throne and rule a world.
Power. To settle debts and even scores.
His right hand lifted to touch the side of his face. Sensitive fingertips felt skin of a dead-wood hardness, furrowed and pitted; his cheek felt nothing of the fingers’ touch. The left hand, curved stiffly around the glass, was as dead as half his face. Dead. Murdered. He didn’t curse aloud, but oaths too bitterly felt for simple words coiled and writhed within him.
Power to settle debts. Power to even scores.
Chapter 2
Hunter slowly climbed the almost vertical side of The Reaper. He tried to use outcroppings of rock and sparse bushes as handholds, rather than depending on the rope anchored precariously far above him, because a cautious—and perhaps superstitious—voice within warned him that although The Reaper was not alive, of course, it was nonetheless malevolent. He had used a large rock to scratch curiously into the black surface of the mountain, oddly chilled to discover that the soil beneath was bloodred, as if with a deadly stain.
Shoving the eerie observation aside, Hunter paused for a moment in the long, hard climb, wedging himself into an unwelcoming niche to ease the strain in his arms. He rested there, gazing over the land spread out below him. The Huntmen’s city appeared even more squalid, not even distance able to elevate it to something near beauty. Smoke from innumerable cooking fires rose like a dirty gray banner above the jagged tops of shorn-off buildings and hung listlessly in the air, defeated.
All around the bleak and barren city sprawled a landscape pitted and scarred after thousands of years of too much misuse, neglect, and war. A more ugly, inhospitable land Hunter had never seen.
Briefly and objectively, he wondered how in hell he expected to find a fragile and elusive myth just beyond these mountains. It was not only an unrealistic expectation, it was a ludicrous one. But Hunter had followed fainter trails in his quest, and since impossible had been his watchword from the beginning, he could hardly complain now.
Sighing, he took a firmer grip on his rope and pried himself from the niche, swinging free for a heart-stopping minute before his scrabbling boots found an almost invisible crack. Sweat trickled into his eyes, blinding him with a stinging haze. Sacrificing a moment of time and a bit of balance, he managed to wipe his eyes on the rough material covering his arm; the movement caused him to bang painfully against the rock and nearly lose his grip on the rope. Hanging there with his aching shoulder pressed against the unyielding stone, Hunter quietly and fluently cursed The Reaper.
But he kept going.
He was some sixty feet from his goal when a sudden gust of wind yanked him away from the cliff, pounded him against it twice, and then swept him sideways in a pendulum motion. Hunter cursed breathlessly, riding out the punishment with gritted teeth. He listened to the wind as it began howling all around him and remembered the vendor’s comparison of the sound to a “soulless devil.”
He fought the wind, fought it fiercely with every ounce of strength and determination he possessed. It seemed a living thing, snatching at him and taunting him shrilly as he climbed. It shrieked in his ears, first pulling him away from the cliff and then slamming him against it.
Then, abruptly, it was gone. Bruised, battered, his breath rasping harshly in his raw throat, Hunter climbed blindly for a few moments without realizing that the wind had abandoned him. It was only when his gloved hands reached the knot holding his rope around the peculiarly shaped jutting rock that he realized dimly he had won. He hauled his aching body the last foot, bracing his back against the rock and sitting astride the saddlelike doorway into the valley.
Automatically flexing his stiff fingers, he rested his forehead on an upraised knee for a moment, eyes wearily closed. Only when he had regained his breath did Hunter raise his head and look—with an inner warning to himself not to be disappointed—down into the valley.
Dizzily, crazily, time and space shifted. He was momentarily straddling two worlds and didn’t know which was real. There was nothing gradual to acclimate the mind and spare the senses. No warning at all. Below on his right lay a barren wasteland. Below on his left lay paradise.
The Reaper itself was nearly as inhospitable on the valley side—but not quite. The jagged, blackened rock remained true for roughly half its height, the bottom becoming rolling hills dotted with flowering plants and covered with a carpet of brilliant emerald. A sparkling stream flowed lazily among the hills and out into the valley, forming a small lake.
Without realizing he was doing so, Hunter held his breath as he looked out over the valley itself and thought that if unicorns did exist, this surely must be the sort of place where they would be found.
There was an abundance of flowers and flowering plants, grasses waving gently in the clean-smelling breeze, and the happy sounds of birds chirping in contentment. Completely ringed by mountains, the valley was huge and beautiful and as rare in its setting as a diamond among dirty lumps of coal.
Squinting against the hot sun he was only vaguely aware of, Hunter searched all within his range of vision with the hungry eyes of a man obsessed. His gaze quartered the valley methodically, his first elation dimming when he saw no sign of movement other than plants and birds. Then he concentrated on the forest covering nearly half the valley, the far half, and the little lake which marked its begi
nning.
Around the lake were tall and stately hardwood trees, their leaves the varied summer shades of green. Beneath the trees and bathed in patterns of sunlight and shadow was a small cabin.
Hunter focused on the cabin, his pent-up breath escaping in a soft sigh. His goal, he decided, was the cabin. And if a dark-eyed, silver-haired woman met him there with weapon or magic…
Briskly putting the incomplete thought from his mind, Hunter pulled his rope up, neatly coiled it, and then dropped it down on the valley side of The Reaper. Only then did he look down at what would be his path of descent, and the blood chilled in his veins.
A single glance around the valley had told him that this saddlelike doorway was, indeed, its only entrance, all else being sheer, concave cliffs far too high for any human being even to begin a descent by rope. But the sheer rock face below him was also concave, cut raggedly into The Reaper’s base as if water had swirled angrily around and around the valley for aeons and then allowed lightning to blast narrow ridges and bottomless canyons in the rock.
Hunter realized wryly that he had let his first elation blind him to the hazards still ahead. He rested on his haunches for long moments, hanging on to his rope and leaning suicidally far out over the cliff edge. He could easily see the bottom sloping out, with wicked ridges boasting what looked like jagged shards of granite gradually turning into the gently rolling hills his eyes had first seen. His rope dangled just above one of those jagged ridges and far above the safety of the hills; he would have to traverse the last killing feet without the aid of the rope.
Assuming he got that far.
Leaning still farther out, he noted idly that the stream winding through the valley began as a wellspring pumped apparently from deep within The Reaper. He tried to get some idea of what awaited him between the top of the concave cliff and its bottom, but found that there was no way of knowing until he actually went over the edge.
So he did.
And as soon as he was hanging twenty feet from the top of the cliff, Hunter knew he was in trouble. Wasting no breath or energy for panting or swearing, he kept his eyes fastened on the razor-sharp rock that was even now cutting into his rope with vicious speed. The unpredictable wind that had dogged his ascent had returned, swinging his body inward toward the rock wall and pinning it there; jagged stone immediately began shredding the material covering his knees and elbows, and he felt the muscles of his legs and back protest in agony as he somehow managed to place his booted feet firmly enough to push away from the cliff. The wind fought him for every inch, and every movement he made caused the rope above him to fray from its contact with cutting granite.
