by Kay Hooper
Soon is a relative term.
They looked up, seeing Storm gazing down on them from the rocks where the waterfall began its downward plunge.
“You always jump into conversations,” Hunter chided. He and Siri had discovered that it was much less confusing for them to speak aloud to the Unicorns whenever possible, and had adopted the practice.
Shall I leave? Storm inquired politely.
“No. You’re here.” Hunter looked at Siri. “Do you think he’d condescend to answer a few questions?”
Siri moved to join him. “We can but try.”
Hunter stared up at the Unicorn, then muttered under his breath to Siri, “There’s something very undignified about questioning a myth with no clothes on.”
I don’t need clothes.
Siri giggled.
“Very funny.” Hunter frowned at the Leader. “We have questions.”
I’ve never known a time when you didn’t.
Hunter sighed. “We’re wondering about the other Gates.”
What about them?
“Well…they exist?”
They exist.
“And there are other Keepers?”
There are other…devices to guard the Gates. Not necessarily Keepers.
“But there are other Keepers?” Siri asked.
Storm rubbed his bearded chin absently against a rock.
“He’s ignoring us,” Hunter observed.
“Isn’t he.” Siri narrowed her eyes at the Unicorn. “Storm, if there are things you don’t want to tell us, just say so.”
There are things I don’t want to tell you, the Leader said blandly.
“Why?” Hunter demanded.
Because.
“I wonder what Unicorn stew tastes like,” Hunter said reflectively.
Terrible.
“We won’t know unless we try,” Siri said severely.
Humans don’t understand humor.
“Neither do Unicorns,” Hunter said threateningly.
Has it occurred to you two that there are some answers I’m forbidden to provide for you?
Somewhat mollified, Hunter said, “And that’s one of them, I suppose.”
No.
Hunter ran his fingers through his hair.
Siri choked on a laugh, and tried to sound stern. “Storm, just tell us if there are other Keepers.”
Not at the moment.
“No other Keepers at the moment? Then I really am the last?” she wondered uncertainly.
No. The last Keeper of the Unicorns, but not the last Keeper. Another will be last.
“Storm—”
The last of the silver-haired, black-eyed Keepers will guard the Unicorns, Storm said in the curious tone of a litany. But another will seek and keep creatures of the gods. And that other will be the final Gatekeeper, for there is one myth that will be the last to rejoin man’s world.
Hunter sighed. “I’m sorry we asked.”
“I don’t suppose he’d explain—”
Storm left the rocks to vanish into the forest.
“Obviously not,” Hunter said.
—
Summer waned.
—
They had decided that as soon as the Unicorns left the valley, they would begin the trip to Rubicon. Hunter’s ship was fast; it would take only a few months. He thought that the Council and people of Rubicon would accept a king who required a year or so each ten years in which to return to his wife’s world.
And with their history returned to them, perhaps Rubicon would be healed. Perhaps. It was enough that Hunter would return to his world a richer man in many ways, enough that he had found much more than a myth in his Quest. He doubted the Council would be disappointed that he offered no proof either way of Unicorns’ existence.
Unicorns would remain dreams.
—
Summer waned.
—
Siri slept peacefully, her head in Hunter’s lap, beneath their favorite tree near the cabin. The sun was at its peak in the sky, shining down on another lazy day. She had napped often these last days, reclining in the sun or shade like a lazy cat. And she slept more deeply at night than she had in days past, curling up to him contentedly, reveling in the embrace that never loosened, even when he slept deeply.
Hunter, a bit drowsy himself, didn’t realize at first that something was happening. But when he finally saw, he made no sound aloud. Beloved? There’s something…
She stirred, the violet eyes opening slowly. “What, love?” she murmured.
“Look.”
She sat up slowly, gazing in puzzlement as Storm and Fancy stood before them, obviously waiting. Fancy dropped a triangular bit of white before the two humans.
From Bundy. He regrets being unable to make his way through the woods.
They stared in bewilderment, both recognizing the smooth, unmarked ivory of a dragon’s tooth.
Fancy dropped a second object. From the Merpeople. It was a necklace made of colorful coral. And then something dropped from Storm’s mouth, a delicate circlet of gleaming gold even more finely made than their rings. A bracelet.
From the Unicorns, Storm said. Made as your rings were made.
“Why?” Siri at last found her voice.
Gifts. The Leader was placid.
Bewildered, Hunter asked, “Because Summer is nearly over?”
No, blind one.
“Then why?” Siri asked.
Both blind, Fancy observed merrily.
And ignorant, Storm added dryly. The Unicorn chuckles died into silence as the two white creatures moved gracefully back to their meadow.
Then, chidingly, two voices dropped into their minds. It was clearly a conversation between Tork and Shauna, and very clearly aimed at the humans.
Ignorant children! Tork scoffed.
They just haven’t realized.
They never will, at this rate!
Siri frowned fiercely. Mother! What does this mean?
You know, child. The instincts are ancient, and buried deeply within you. Feel. Be aware of your own body.
Abruptly, Hunter began to realize what the gifts meant. And he could see dawning realization on Siri’s expressive face.
You see? Shauna was speaking to her mate. They do understand.
About time, Tork grumbled.
Then the mind-voices were gone.
Siri’s slender hands folded instinctively, protectively, over her still-flat middle. “Hunter…”
“A child?” He stared, feeling ridiculously dazed, into her wide, startled eyes.
“A child. Our child!” She rose to her knees, her arms sliding around his neck, her face alight.
Hunter held her tightly, the dazed feeling exploding into delight, into wonder. “Our child,” he murmured huskily, kissing her with deep tenderness. And crowding into his mind were also new realizations of responsibilities and the awesome weight of parental hopes and fears. It was terrifying. And he looked at her in sudden anxiety, the dangers of giving birth uppermost in his mind. “To put you through that, beloved…”
“I’ll be fine,” she said serenely.
“It scares the life out of me,” he confessed raspingly.
She framed his face in gentle hands. “I’ll never leave you,” she said softly, utter certainty firm in her tone. “I love you too much to leave this life without you.”
For that moment, it was enough. The fear would trouble him again, he knew. In the dark predawn hours as he held her in his arms. In the sudden, frightening moments of understood mortality. In the naked time of nightmares. In the deepest part of his soul.
But for that moment, it was enough. She carried a living result of their love, and not even fear for her could taint that.
—
Days passed.
Fall crept nearer on soundless feet.
—
Child, the cards.
—
Siri whirled from the doorway where she and Hunter stood gazing out over the valley, her face
ashen. She raced to get the cards from their shelf where they lay alongside the two horns reclaimed from Boran’s pack, realizing in sudden anguished guilt that she had not read them for too many days now. Preoccupied with the peaceful serenity of their life, she had forgotten the threat of danger.
Summer wasn’t over yet.
And Hunter, tensely silent, didn’t question as he watched her rapid actions. She’d been somehow alerted, warned, he realized. Perhaps by Shauna; he had long ago grasped that there was some communication, deeper than the mental, between Siri and her mother. She’d been warned, and foreboding gripped him now with icy fingers.
Siri’s fingers were unnaturally steady as they laid out the cards in the familiar pattern on the table. But her face was white, her eyes stricken. She stared down at the cards, blind for a moment in fear, her eyes clearing slowly. She forced her mind to see, to interpret and understand. To absorb cryptic symbols.
“No!” she moaned almost soundlessly, frantic eyes racing over the pattern again and again.
Huntmen. And a familiar blankness.
Already in the valley.
“Hunter!” She left the cards where they lay, spinning to face her love. “They’re already in the valley. And—”
“What?” he asked, an icy chill skipping down his spine, because her face had gone impossibly whiter, her eyes unfocused as if all her senses were turned desperately inward.
“It’s—blank again,” she whispered. “Wrong.”
Hunter felt so cold he thought he’d splinter if he even breathed. “He’s dead. I felt his neck snap in my hands. He couldn’t have survived that.”
“I can feel him now.” Siri looked blindly at Hunter. “His mind. As twisted and scarred as his face. He’s alive, Hunter! Somehow, he’s alive.”
They stared at each other, both grappling with the impossible and finally accepting it, because it was Boran, because his hate had been so alive it could not be killed.
“The Unicorns—” Hunter’s voice was hoarse.
Instantly, his mind joined hers in sending a frantic warning winging toward their charges. And they looked at each other in horror as both absorbed Storm’s taut, warning reply.
Maya foals in the glade.
“We can’t move her to the cave?” Hunter questioned tensely, reaching for and strapping on the knife he’d not worn for so long.
“No.” Siri was collecting weapons also, a pitiful few weapons recovered from Huntmen. The bow that replaced her own splintered one. Arrows. One spear. A crossbow and three lone shafts. Her own knife. “No, she won’t leave the glade now until the birth. Storm’s taking the others to the cave; he’ll do the best he can to hide the opening.”
“We have to protect the glade,” Hunter said, his tone grim.
“Yes. We can spare no energy for searching them out; we have to wait near the glade and protect it at all costs.”
Hunter accepted the spear and crossbow from her, his green eyes dropping anxiously to watch her hand move with unconscious protectiveness over her flat belly. A cry of protest against endangering her or their child rose in his throat, blocked there, unsaid.
Their eyes met.
“We have no choice,” she whispered, understanding, sharing his fear. This time, Boran would not be distracted by thoughts of possessing Siri or even of watching Hunter suffer emotionally. This time, only blood would satisfy his insane hatred.
“I know.” He looked down abstractedly, a part of his mind noting that they were hardly dressed for battle in their comfortable white tunics. They were, at least, both wearing boots. His warrior-trained mind examined the possibility of any loss of movement or flexibility caused by the tunics. There was none. If anything, the garments offered them increased freedom.
He looked at her again, needing to say so much, having learned from the last time that the end could come too suddenly for final words. He hauled her against his side, ignoring the prodding of knife hafts and arrows and spear, holding her with a desperate fear.
“I love you,” he said intensely, claiming her lips.
She held him with her own supple strength, flame meeting flame in their kiss, murmuring when she could, “I love you. We won’t lose. We won’t!”
Hunter hesitated, then turned quickly away from her. When he returned to her side, the talisman ring of his ancestors lay in the palm of his hand. “If there’s any power in this,” he said roughly, “we need it now.”
Siri drew out one of the spare laces she kept for her clothing and quickly knotted it to fashion a necklace. In a moment the ring lay hidden inside Hunter’s tunic, nestled against his chest.
And then they were out of the cabin and in the forest, racing with fleet speed lent by fear toward the glade where a Unicorn mare was giving birth alone. There was no more talk. No time for talk. No breath for talk. They separated at the glade, both circling the bramble-protected, almost impenetrable haven, moving watchfully, alertly, making certain no enemy had yet reached the precious spot.
The forest was utterly still, tense in waiting. No bird sang out in melodic happiness. No breeze disturbed the hot breathlessness of the valley. In the sun-dappled quiet surrounding the glade, the two humans paced warily.
Summer was nearly over.
Hunter searched the woods, his ears straining to catch the faintest betraying sound. He moved with sure instinct, never pausing for more than a moment in one place, his booted feet silent. His awareness of Siri, of the quicksilver coolness of her thoughts, was an ever-present thing, ingrained by love to become a part of him. Neither was he distracted by that sharing of awareness; it had become as natural to him as breathing.
It was his own thoughts that tormented him, taunted him, this grinding anxiety for the safety of his wife and child. Though Boran had been obsessed by Siri, perhaps was even now obsessed, her pregnancy made her a deadly threat to his hopes of ruling Rubicon. He could never rest as long as Hunter’s heir lived.
Given a choice, Hunter might well have hidden Siri away, guarding her as fiercely as they now guarded the impending Unicorn birth. Given that choice, and disregarding her own nature and upbringing…but he couldn’t do that.
In times of battle, women fought beside their men.
He accepted that fact in his mind, but his heart cried out, railing against the unfairness of this testing of womanly steel. Life tested them so harshly, he thought, and even the knowledge that his own woman was far better prepared for it than most did little to comfort him.
She should not have to do this!
It was cruel enough that she be forced to brave the long, harsh Winter alone and battle for her own and the Unicorns’ lives in the brief Summer. It was cruel enough that her healing hands be stained again and again with the blood she was forced to shed. It was, the gods knew, cruel enough that she act as a gate between brutal man and the lovely myth she guarded.
But it was unpardonably, unthinkably cruel that she be forced into battle while carrying the seed of new life within her body.
Siri, too, was occupied by thought. Like Hunter, she was aware of his constant presence in her mind; like him, she was not distracted by it. Even more than he, she was comfortable with the mind-touch, to the point of barely being aware of it.
But she was fully aware of her own changed body. The hand not holding her bow at the ready moved often, unbidden, to protectively touch her middle. She felt a tendency to shield that part of her, to avoid any possible blow that would have, weeks before, been unthinkingly cushioned by lithe muscles.
And there was fear. A deep, instinctive fear for the child she cradled within her. Her awareness did not distract her from the dangers hovering oppressively over them. Instead, there was an enhancement of all her senses, those turned inward and outward. Energy replaced the lethargy of past days, flowing into her as if from a source she had never tapped before, never needed to tap.
And she was conscious as she had never been of the life waiting to be born within the glade. Last offspring of Cloud, her beloved
friend.
—
The first two attacked alone, viciously, violently, single-minded in their determination and greedy blood lust.
There was no time for weapons other than knives, bare hands, and booted heels. No strength for anything other than forcing protesting muscles to their very limits.
Hunter spared a moment’s thought for the thankful realization that these Huntmen were unused to prey that met them in fierce defense and fought violently, unused to their quarry’s skill. They should have rushed the glade, overwhelmed their targets with two-to-one superiority. But they had not. Thankfully, they had not.
And they had no weapons other than knives.
Boran had a knife as well—the knife of his powerful, maddened mind. He was an expert tactician, and Hunter knew he was out there somewhere. Waiting. Waiting for his henchmen to wear them down, exhaust them.
Life struggled over death in the shaded forest, only soft scuffles and panting curses marking the battle. Muscles shrieked silently in inhuman effort, forced by need to unknown strength. Agile skill and sheer raw power fought mightily for victory.
And then it was over.
Siri? He couldn’t see her.
Unhurt. And you?
Fine. He brushed absently at the blood of a deep slash across his ribs, not even feeling the wound. There would, hopefully, be time later for pain. If Boran allowed them any time at all. If they were able to defeat him. Hunter knew he was too tense, too tightly wound for a confrontation such as the coming one promised to be. But there was nothing he could do about that; his tension sprang from animal instinct as well as knowledge.
Boran would come. In a hatred so violently powerful it had defied death, he would attack his enemies, driven by the bestial desire to tear limb from limb.
Hunter knew that.
He picked up his fallen weapons, moved once again, prowling, his senses alert. Then a sudden thought. The Unicorns?
We’re safe. Take care.
He thought, idly, that Storm had turned out to be a good Leader. He realized that his emotions had numbed in battle, perhaps a safeguard meant to focus all energies on his enemy, on survival. He prowled steadily, silently. His warrior instincts told him that he and Siri moved at the same pace around the glade, keeping it between them, leaving as little as possible unprotected by at least one of them.
