Red Unicorn

by Tanith Lee

  Three

  XVII

  Tanaquil sat on a bench, her chin on her hand, gazing down the long walk where the cypresses lushly grew, to the great gleaming pond. Already ducks had flown in and found it. And sometimes, in the dusk, a wandering jackal might come there to drink, or a band of dusty peeves. The garden was overgrown, being too big for Jaive and Worabex to look after on their own. In the cold nights, the flowers had not lasted. The walk was thick with weeds. Soon it would be only an ornate oasis. But for all that, it had brought greenery and water to the desert.

  Jaive meant well. She always did.

  "And look, Mother, there's a cactus. That's come up on its own."

  "Yes, dear. I don't mind. I'm only glad you're here."

  "Thank you, Mother. It's been lovely. But remember, tomorrow. . ."

  "Tomorrow you're leaving me again."Jaive sounded disapproving. Tanaquil realized this was a mask for concern.

  "Not for ever. I explained. I have to do what I tolsd Tanakil to do. I have to find Honj again, with Lizra's army." She paused in thought. She said, "It will be winter there, now." Then she said, "I've left it a long time. And after what Worabex told me—well. I know it's possible Honj has changed his mind. Lizra would have made him Prince Consort, even emperor. It's a lot to give up."

  "Yes," said Jaive. Her eyes were dull for a moment. Of course, someone had left her to go and be the ruler of a kingdom.

  "Anyway, I have to try. I made a mistake. I should have stood up for myself, for us both. He may well say no, but if I don't ask him, I shall never find out. And I'll have to explain to Lizra, too." Lizra, snow queen in a landscape of snow. A three-hour row would be nothing to what Lizra might, probably in utter silence, put on Honj and Tanaquil.

  The light shifted in Jaive's desert garden. Above, that deep blue sky.

  This had been the strangest thing, the oddness of a blue sky after the green sky over Tablonkish.

  Dark, then light: golden. Cobalt.

  As she had opened her eyes, lying on the bed, Tanaquil had felt heavy and immovable. But she moved anyway, and so found some of the heaviness was the peeve spread on her legs. But next second the peeve rolled over, and also sat up blinking.

  "Back," said the peeve.

  Then there was something like a ball of furry fireworks, which came shooting from a corner, and Adma the peevess had landed on the peeve, washing and washing him, kissing his eyes, rubbing his nose with hers. And the peeve, stupid and soppy beyond all stupid soppiness, flopped over and was allowing all this, with small encouraging squeaks. Adma squeaked too.

  And who is here to squeak at me? thought Tanaquil, resentfully and giddily sitting up and getting out of peeveway. Certainly the camel was not here. Nor was Jaive standing crying, or Worabex, infuriatingly fatherly. Something was there, however, on the floor beyond the bed.

  It was a thing with two heads, elephant ears, elephanttrunk arms, frog eyes. It was sunk to its enormous stomach in the guest room rug. The room was now freezing cold.

  "Salutations," said Epbal Enrax, the cold demon, in its bone-rattling murmur. But a mauvish vapor trailed over it. This indicated it was pleased. "I will fetch she who is your mother."

  It wobbled like a jelly down through the floor.

  Five minutes later, after Tanaquil had washed her face and was brushing her hair, and the peeve and Adma were playing quite violently on the bed, running rippingly up the curtains, biting each other's tails and so on, the door opened and Jaive and Worabex burst in like an unkempt embroidered wave.

  "Oh, darling—Oh, Tanaquil—Oh!"

  "Hallo, Mother."

  But Jaive, for the first time since Tanaquil's childhood, seized Tanaquil in her arms. Jaive hugged her daughter, kissed her, squeezed her; yes, it was Adma all over again.

  She loves me, thought Tanaquil. She really does.

  A little cautiously, she hugged Jaive back.

  When at last they separated, Jaive wiped her eyes on one of her purple kittens, which was clinging to her sleeve. Neither of them seemed to notice. Epbal Enrax had reappeared, holding the other kitten. Probably he liked their color.

  "How long," said Tanaquil, "was I—"

  "Darling girl. Several weeks. We could do nothing. Nothing!"

  Worabex cleared his throat and spoke from the doorway. "Our demons rebelled." Tanaquil recalled the sickly sugar-pink apparitions with charming deer or cat faces and nice manners.

  "I can see why. What did they really look like?"

  "One doesn't ask. Aside from that, only Epbal Enrax remained loyal. Your glamorous old nurse is knitting him a purple tunic as a reward."

  Epbal Enrax put the kitten on to his fat coiled tail. The kitten padded about and curled up, seeming not to be put off by the cold of the demon's person.

  "It was the female peeve over there, who found you," said Worabex. "After the waterspout. She ran up here. Told your peeve. When we brought you in, your peeve went to join you. A familiar should do that, of course, and be able to. Following this, beyond a spell or two to look after you while you were unconscious, there wasn't much to be done. You're very powerful with your magic, Tanaquil. Do you understand that now?"

  "I was in another world," said Tanaquil. "But not physically. Which explains what I could do there. And yet, it was as real as here. As for the peeve, he must somehow have projected his awareness—"

  Worabex said, "The mathematics are difficult."

  She thought, delighted, He doesn't properly understand either.

  "We must have a feast, now you're here," cried Jaive, forgetting servants and demons had left.

  "Could I just have about six cups of tea?" Tanaquil had asked thirstily.

  "Even one cup of tea," said Worabex, "may be a problem."

  She found she did not mind them so much now, her mother and romantic Worabex. Love was magical, ludicrous, and everywhere. She remembered their concern for her, seen in the sorcerous mirror. Presumably that had been true, even if the camel was not present.

  She told them a little of the other world, and her conclusions. Not much. They did not seem, besides, to want to ask her a great deal. They looked awkward. It was personal.

  Finally, over the makeshift meal of biscuits, rolls and porridge—all cold, all hard—that Epbal Enrax had managed to gather, she said to them, "The place I went to was inside me, in my head, wasn't it?"

  "Yes," said Jaive. "One of the Inner Worlds."

  "There's more than one?"

  "As many as are necessary," said Worabex. She sensed he was trying not to sound lofty. There was a mousp sipping from his cup of cold, luckily not hard, tea. Tanaquil regarded it. "Oh. Yes," said Worabex. "I must make my confession. This was the fellow, the stingless one, who went with you before. It wasn't . . . myself."

  "You said—"

  "I said it to put you off balance. Forgive me. I was so selfconscious, Tanaquil, talking to you on those hills, about visiting your mother. I was trying to get the better of you. I did, however, see you all in the hell world through the eyes of the mousp. I'm mage enough for that."

  "What about the flea?"

  Worabex lowered his eyes. "It seemed I was."

  "Seemed?"

  "An illusion." He straightened up. "I do know about your adventures with Honj. I have to say, I think it was inevitable that you went into one of the Inner Worlds to find him there."

  "It was inevitable because of your experiment with water courses and gardens, which knocked me out!" retaliated Tanaquil.

  Jaive wrung her hands. "My dearest—"

  "She would have gone anyway," said Worabex. He had decided on loftiness after all. "She is invulnerable. How else did the waterspout effect her?"

  Tanaquil, instead of throwing a roll at him, said, "You may be right. But what are they, the Inner Worlds? Dreams?"

  "Not at all. Places that might be. Places where we can meet with ourselves."

  "But it was real."

  "Perhaps," said Jaive softly, "now you've made it real."

>   Tanaquil opened her mouth, closed it.

  Worabex said, "What you believe in, can come to be. The basis, of course, of all sorcery."

  "I hope it can," said Tanaquil.

  Later, again, after the peeves had run off to their nest, Jaive and Tanaquil walked out into the desert garden. Tanaquil thought about the chattering fluffed-up Adma, and how her own familiar seemed suddenly barely to remember Tanaquil. She was miffed, and also thankful, he needed to get rid of the overhumanness he had accumulated. Then too there had been that little burst of speech from him as they scrambled from the window: "Says nest flies—"

  The garden was full of pools, and rivulets, and fountains, that still, despite the flight of the demons, played. (In the fortress, evidence had been left of the rebellion. There were pink sticky messes up and down the walls, burn marks in the floors and stonework. On the stairways the wooden animals and fruits were fighting and wriggling. Now and then howls of rude, disembodied laughter raced down the passages. In the kitchen below, sat a three-foot high, worrying-looking egg. "Epbal Enrax says it's only a giant sparrow," airily explained Jaive.)

  "The sun's going down," said Tanaquil. "And then, the moon will rise. There wasn't a moon, there. But some beautiful huge stars they called the Rose."

  Jaive took Tanaquil's hand. "Must you go tomorrow? I've neglected you so. Oh, Tanaquil. You're such a powerful sorceress. All these worlds. All these unicorns."

  "Mother, you couldn't help neglecting me. It doesn't matter now. You have every right to be happy. So do I. I must go back and talk to Honj."

  Jaive dabbed two perfect diamond tears, like two little stars of the Rose. "Yes, dear."

  "That Inner World," said Tanaquil. "I'm so sure that somehow it must be real. Somewhere. Although it was quite insane. Wolf-squirrels that thieved nuts. Daffodils, Rot-Chair Races. Did I make it like that so I could deal more easily with my double there?"

  Jaive said, "Is any world quite sensible?"

  Tanaquil gazed into the sky. Across the garden, about twenty feet up, a strange bulky raft-thing was hovering. Bits of stick protruded from it, and strips of colored cloth hung over. There were glints. Over the edge peered two long snouts. Says nest flies. The peeve had stolen Jaive's magic carpet. They had torn it up and added it to the nest. The nest flew.

  Tanaquil looked down. She said quickly, "Please go on, Mother. You're helping me."

  Jaive said, "Why shouldn't the Inner Worlds be real?" She stood up.

  Tanaquil checked the sky. The flying nest was sailing calmly away behind some trees.

  "Come with me," said Jaive.

  Tanaquil followed Jaive along the cypress walk to the reed-fringed pond.

  Jaive made a pass over it.

  "My mirrors don't yet work. The demons scribbled on them with sorcerous paint. But this water should do." She spoke old arcane words, and the air parted like ribbons.

  "Tanaquil's Inner World," cried Jaive. To Tanaquilrandly she said, "Say whom or what you wish to see."

  Tanaquil said, "Show me Princess Tanakil."

  At the middle of the pond, a picture slowly formed. It was not very strong, but clear enough.

  Tanaquil saw her other self walking hand in hand with Jharn along a street of Tablonkish. They were laughing and swinging their hands, and the veepe, the veepe flew ahead of them on its little wings, with a green apple in its mouth.

  The picture melted, and a duck splashed down from the bank into the pond. Ripples changed everything into water again.

  "Well. She and he are all right. Lili didn't even send them away."

  Jaive turned. She said to Tanaquil in a small young voice Tanaquil thought she had never heard before, "You will write to me. You will come back, sometimes."

  "Yes, Mother. I promise. I want to."

  "I've done everything wrongly. Do you forgive me?"

  Tanaquil said, "You made me what I am, or you made me make myself. I don't mind being me. Mother, was the camel ever in the guest room?"

  "Of course," said Jaive. "I led it there myself, once every day. We tried to put all the things about you that you might know, to help you to get back. It was for that reason too that Worabex sent the message to Honj. Don't be angry."

  "No, no, I'm not. It's just, perhaps, perhaps he would have reached here by now. I mean, if he wanted to, he might have ridden very fast. And, well. He hasn't, has he? Worabex sent a letter, by magic too, to Honj, telling him I was lying there, senseless. And Honj doesn't seem to have taken much notice."

  "Oh, Tanaquil."

  Tanaquil thought, had Jaive ever written, by magic, to Zorander? Had she sat and waited. Waited. Waited.

  "Mother, there are a hundred reasons why he might not have been able to come to me. That's why I have to go and find him myself."

  XVIII

  She talked quite a lot with the camel as they rode. She realized she had got used to talking to the peeve. The camel did not talk back, which was a mixed blessing.

  The peeve and Adma had been busy in their nest, found back on the roofs. More of Jaive's jewelry had been stolen for it, a mirror, and a large frying pan Adma was particularly vain of. She liked to sit in it and drum her paws to make it sound.

  Tanaquil said nothing about flying. The peeve said nothing about it to her. She told him she would return in a while. She might be alone. She did not know. She might be with Honj. The peeve thumped his tail like a dog at Honj's name. Then forgot Honj and went back to polishing the frying pan for Adma to drum.

  Would he forget Tanaquil, too? Surely a witch's familiar, especially one with a flying nest, would never forget his witch? It was good for him, anyway. To be himself. Most of us need both. Ourselves, and to share with another.

  What am I to do if he has forgotten me?

  Honj might be married to Lizra anyway. It might all be too late.

  As the desert faded and the fields began, and the cold filled the days as well as the nights, Tanaquil bought a thick cloak and a flask of brandy.

  They travelled on and on.

  Snow fell, Lizra-like snow, so cold, so pale. But Lizra was not so cold as snow. She had once built a sandcastle. Somehow she had become someone else in Tanaquil's mind, icy little Lili.

  They sheltered in barns, in villages, at open hearths on white-lapped hills, when stars also blazed like fires in the sky, and the moon stood on a hilltop.

  "That's a fair old horse you've got there," said the ones who had never seen a camel.

  Will he remember me? Will he want me? Did he ever want me, or did I only imagine it?

  That morning, they took a wrong turn. She had heard by then of the place, a new place, where the great Empress Lizora Veriam had set up her court. There was to be a big winter festival there. It was, they said, in this weather, a three-week journey.

  Then, in the snow, the road vanished, they got off into a wood, all bare as if from winter vygers, and ended up at a ruined house, a few stone walls and roof, where, since the wind was blowing up, it seemed wise to have lunch.

  Not until she had got down from the camel, and was leading him along the slope to the open door, did Tanaquil make out some smoke rising from the spot, and smell a fire.

  They had better be careful. She had been warned of robbers.

  Tanaquil left the camel, and crept forward to the doorway. As she reached it, a figure filled it, swathed in black wool, that let out the glint of a knife.

  "Uh, I just be after me sheeps," said Tanaquil, witless, friendly, and ever so poor, to the perhaps-robber in the doorway. Who answered, "Tanaquil."

  And coming out into the white daylight, she saw he was Honj.

  All thought, all feeling, any warmth, went out of her. She stood there, just what she had pretended, utterly mindless.

  "Er, hallo."

  "What a greeting. No, 'Fancy meeting you.' No, 'How wonderful to see you.' I should have known better."

  She felt herself flush with old familiar rage.

  "How did you know anything anyway? I was supposed to be l
ying unconscious in my mother's fortress."

  "Yes, yes. Out of date, sweetheart. That mousp found me again, yesterday. First the dire letter about your accident. Then the cheery news you were up and out and after me."

  "Worabex, confound him! How dare he. What do you mean after you?"

  "Aren't you, then?" he asked. He was so handsome he was ridiculous. Her heart almost choked her. "You don't want me at all. I'm to dissolve in disappointed weeping, here in all this bloody snow."

  "Honj—"

  "Tanaquil. For God's sake, come inside, and let's freeze by the fire."

  In the firelight, all the coppery and blue-steel streams in his dark hair. His eyes steel blue.

  She had forgotten him. His marvel. His way of moving, of looking at her. He wore the silver ring he had taken from her on his smallest finger. He said he had got someone to make the ring larger. He just sat, holding her hands, which he had first seized, he said, to warm them. While the mulled brandy got cold at their side, and his horse and the camel nibbled ivy off the wall.

  "I never was sure," he said, "how you felt. Not really. I thought, 'Yes, she likes me.' Women do like me. But it's nothing much. Not enough to make a demand on me. And Lizra—we were both so shocked by her, weren't we? Guilty. Well, I'd better tell you the whole tale."

  She wondered if she could concentrate. She just wanted to sit here for ever, freezing by the fire, holding his hands, looking at him, listening to his voice.

  "I tried to make a go of it. I was the perfect gentleman. Lizra was the perfect empress. Everyone was saying I'd be the emperor. But there was such a lot to do. A big ceremonial wedding was the last thing anyone could cope with. Then some king from across the sea sent her word he wanted to make an alliance with her. And he was coming to see to it himself."