Sheila came awake with a jolt, staring blankly up into the night sky ablaze with stars.
What. . Was I dreaming?
She thought she heard a voice calling plaintively.
Silence.
It must have been a dream.
Sheila closed her eyes, only to open them again at the sound of a groan. Now, that was no dream. Or, rather, it wasn’t her dream. Illyria, asleep beside her, was moaning, tossing restlessly about. She murmured a name, “Egael,” and Sheila was shocked to see tears glint on her face.
She’s having a nightmare.. Guess I’d better wake her up.
“Illyria?” Sheila said softly, not wanting to wake up everybody else. “Illyria.”
When the woman didn’t stir, Sheila reached out gingerly to give her a gentle shake. And that woke Illyria up, all right! ‘The woman came springing up with a warrior’s trained reactions, flinging Sheila aside. The next thing the girl knew, she was lying flat on her back, Illyria’s knife at her throat!
“Hey. It’s only me, Sheila.”
After a tense second recognition flooded Illyria’s eyes. Fully awake, she slid the knife back into its sheath.
“Don’t ever, ever do that again, Sheila,” she said softly. “I might have killed you.”
“Sorry. It’s just . . . you seemed to be having such a bad dream, I thought you would want to get out of it.”
Illyria sagged wearily. Her braids had come loose during the night, and sitting there as she was, surrounded by the long, silvery-blond waves, she looked much younger than the fierce warrior-woman of the daytime. Why, she can’t be more than . . . oh, maybe nineteen or twenty! Sheila realized in surprise.
“Yes,” said Illyria after a moment, “it was a foul dream. Thank you. Go back to sleep now, Sheila.”
She pulled her cloak about her, looking so unhappy that Sheila couldn’t obey. “You called out a name,” she began hesitantly. “Egael.”
Illyria flinched but said nothing, and Sheila continued: “Isn’t Egael the name of the man you once helped?”
Illyria glared, as though angry at her for prying. But as fast as it had come, the anger faded. Head drooping, Illyria sighed and nodded, “I see Pelu told you part of my story,” she said slowly. “Now let me tell you the rest and get it over with. It began simply enough, a pleasant spring day, Dadan and I out riding for our pleasure.
When we first found the injured man, he lay so still I felt certain he was dead. And a part of me wept inside at that thought because, even with the bruises of his beating on him, he was still so young and handsome that my heart sang. But then Darian cried:
“He’s still alive! I saw his chest move!”
The two of us struggled to bring him safely down to my father’s house. It . . . was a fair, comfortable home in those days, clean and neat and smelling sweetly of hay and herbs. A fine place to tend a wounded stranger.
He woke soon after I had bathed him and tended his injuries, his eyes the piercing eyes of some wild thing. “Don’t be afraid,” I told him. “You’re among friends.”
“You must know-I must warn you-“ he gasped, then fell back into an exhausted sleep, leaving me full of sudden unease.
Nor was I any more at ease when the stranger woke again after a time and told me his story:
“I am… call me Egael,” he said. “And, as I see you have guessed from my accent, I am not from these mountain lands. I am a wanderer, seeing something of the world. But I made a mistake, a bad one: I insulted the soldiers of Dynasian. Ha, your reaction tells me that you’ve heard of him even up here in the countryside.”
Egael’s tone was light, but his eyes were ablaze with a fierce, barely controlled rage. Just then, they weren’t the eyes of a common wanderer at all.
“And what did I do that was so terribly insulting,” Egael continued, “me, a man afoot, while they were tiding so proud and fine up there on their steeds? I didn’t step aside quickly enough to suit them. I didn’t grovel deeply enough in apology. So they beat me and left me for dead.” Those fierce, handsome eyes burned into mine. “And dead I would have been, lady, alone and wounded as I was, after a night without shelter out there in the chill of the mountain air, if it hadn’t been for you. All my gratitude to you.”
“Hush,” I told him. “Enough talking for now. Rest.”
But when he closed his eyes once more, I was more troubled than before. A man who had drawn down the wrath of Dynasian’s soldiers on himself might draw it down on us, too! Our village was isolated enough to have had little to do with the emperor or his men, and after hearing some of the horrible tales of Dynasian’s cruelty that were filtering out of distant Campora, I wanted to keep it that way.
And I doubt that he’s just a simple wanderer, I told myself. His way of speaking is too fine for that.
Egael. What manner of name was that? I had rescued a mystery man, indeed. Surely I should turn him out and be done with him
And yet . . . Egael was so handsome .
More practically, to throw him out now, before he was strong enough to take care of himself, would almost certainly mean his death.
So Egael stayed, and healed with great speed that was almost supernatural. And a miracle blossomed between us. I’m not even sure when I first realized the truth of it, but—though our time together was all too brief, though I knew nothing about him, and he knew little about me, Egael and I fell in love.
But then one night I awoke to the sound of a door slamming. I knew in an instant that he had left, as suddenly and mysteriously as he had appeared. “Egael?” I called, then again, “Egael! Where are you?”
I ran outside into the night, searching wildly, calling his name—Fruitlessly. Egael was gone, gone as totally as if he had never existed. And only the wild, lonely cry of an eagle answered my call.
And as I stood in the moonlight crying for my lost love ... Quiet Storm appeared. Almost as if he had been sent to comfort and help me.
Illyria stirred restlessly and the spell of her words was broken. Sheila knew the rest of the story.
“And the giant eagles?”
“As I’ve told you. They’ve been following us at a distance ever since we set out to free the unicorns that Dynasian has imprisoned.”
Illyria turned away abruptly. Sheila stared at her shaken. Sheila had felt the stirrings of romance already; she had enjoyed being held by handsome Darian, for one thing. And once, pretty much by accident, she and a boy at school, tall, shy Steve, had kissed. But Illyria’s continuing love for Egael was stronger, finer, more romantic than anything Sheila had ever dreamed.
She’s still looking for him, the girl realized. She’s still seeking him everywhere she goes. “I hope you find each other,” she told Illyria softly.
“What’s that, Sheila?”
“Oh, nothing.”
But to herself she added silently, I hope you and Egael get to live happily ever after.
11
Campora at Last
As the troop of warrior-women rode on, the scent of the sea grew ever stronger. If Sheila listened carefully and the wind was right, she was sure she could make out the distant sound of waves. And surely those birds soaring by overhead were gulls, just like the ones at home.
Home. With a pang of guilt, Sheila realized she hadn’t thought about her own world for days. This was the real world now; that other one of homework and softball games, that place without magic where she was only Sheila McCarthy, schoolgirl, seemed more and more like a dream.
But just then Morning Star gave a nervous little buck jarring Sheila out of her bewildered thoughts. “Hey, easy, girl! Nothing to be afraid of.”
Morning Star wasn’t alone. All the unicorns were growing more and more uneasy with every step they took.
“They’ve caught the scent of their captive friends,” said Nanine. “And of Mardock and his evil sorcery, I think.”
Illyria nodded. “Even Quiet Storm is nervous. I doubt the unicorns will let us ride them much farther.”
“Well, we’re not that far from the city now, are we?” asked Sheila.
“Not far at all.” Myno’s eyes were dark with memory. “I should know,” she added under her breath. ”I escaped from Campora over these hills.”
Sheila winced at the bitterness on the ex-slave’s face. Poor Myno! How she must have suffered! “Well,” Sheila said with forced cheerfulness, “we could hardly ride the unicorns right down Campora’s main street, anyhow.”
Myno only grunted. Sheila tried to think of something else to say to rouse the woman out of her unhappy memories. But just then Morning Star reached the top of one particularly steep hill, and everything Sheila was going to say went flying out of her mind. All she could do was sit her unicorn and stare.
The land fell sharply away from where they paused, sweeping away to the rolling sea which glittered sapphire blue in the sunlight, a blue sea dotted with ships bearing wide sails of bright white, and yellow, and red. At one point the land curved in to form a wide harbor. And there, where sea met shore, stood a city that could only be Campora.
Sheila gasped. Maybe the capital of the empire wasn’t as large as New York or Chicago, but—oh, how beautiful it was! Campora was a confusing mixture of sweeping walls and elegant palaces, graceful towers, domed pavilions and buildings with so many columns that they reminded her of pictures of Greek temples she had seen. All the city seemed to be made of marble, or at least of some type of smooth, sleek stone that gleamed white in the sunlight. Ornamental traceries of gold reflected the bright light back again, till Sheila, dazzled, had to blink and look away.
“It-it’s like something out of a fairy tale!” she breathed.
Muttered Myno grimly, “From up here. Down there, thanks to Dynasian the usurper, that pretty fairy tale turns into a horror story.
Sheila stared at her. “What do you mean?”
Myno shrugged. “Where do I start? Only those with a lot of gold live comfortably there. And even they, the nose-in-the-air aristocrats, can’t relax altogether. They never know when Dynasian may decide one or the other of them is a traitor, fit only for the executioner’s ax. As for the poor—well, it’s not difficult to wind up poor in Campora, because even those with only a few copper coins to rub together still are taxed heavily by Dynasian. He has to find some way to pay for his pretty games.”
“Games?” asked Sheila warily.
“Why, gladiatorial games, girl! Man against man, man against beast, to the death, all for the amusement of the emperor. And those who can’t pay his taxes wind up sold on the market block as slaves.”
Something in Myno’s eyes told Sheila that that had been her fate. Sheila shivered. “I-I see.”
Myno grunted. “The only people who wander Campora’s streets freely are robbers and beggars—until Dynasian’s soldiers round them up, too—for the games.”
And we’re going in there? Sheila thought wildly. To get the unicorns away from Dynasian?
Heart racing, she fought a fierce battle with the panic that was screaming to her to drop everything and run for her life. But running wasn’t going to solve anything!
Sheila braced herself and calmly took stock of her condition. Her jeans were still in pretty good shape, although they were ragged in some places and patched in others. Her shirt, though, was so shabby and stained that even a punk rocker would have scorned it, She glanced around at the others.
They didn’t look much better. Only Illyria and the elegant Nanine had ever had anything like full armor. The others wore whatever unmatched bits and pieces they had been able to pick up along the way, though Kara had managed to add some turquoise ornaments, and Myno did wear a few pieces of bright copper. There were a few other brave attempts at beautification. But beneath those weather-beaten leather scraps of armor and ragged cloaks, nobody seemed to be wearing anything that didn’t have at least five patches. Even Illyria’s once-elegant red tunic had been mended to the point where the sleeves were now barely long enough to cover her shoulders. They looked like beggars themselves.
That’s it! Sheila thought. “Robbers and beggars, eh? Well, we may not be robbers, but we’re certainly dressed like beggars! We shouldn’t have any trouble getting into the city.”
“Some of us,” Illyria corrected. “’The smaller the group, the less attention we’re likely to attract. We’ll split up. Yes,” she said over the chorus of nervous comments, “we will split up. Myno, I’ll need you with me; you know where to find the royal stables.
And Sheila, you will be coming with me, too. I know you’re still an apprentice sorceress, but if we have the misfortune to run into any of Mardock’s spells, you just may know how to cancel them.”
Sheila almost choked. “But I don’t-I can’t-“
“I might have known you’d be afraid,” said Dian contemptuously. “Illyria, take me with you instead. I’m not afraid!”
“Then you’re foolish,” Illyria told her shortly. As Dian stared, openmouthed with shock, the woman continued. “I want you and Pelu to stay with the unicorns. Try to get them down to the beach if you can; if we’re cut off on land, we still may be able to make a break for it by sea.”
“Assuming, of course, that we can convince a herd of frightened unicorns to board a ship,” murmured Pelu wryly.
“As for you, Kara and Nanine,” said Illyria, “and-yes, Darian, you, too, I haven’t forgotten you-you’re to wait.”
Darian frowned, disappointed. “Wait? Just wait? How long?”
Illyria stared hard at the city. “It should take us a day to get into Campora, another day to find the captive Unicorns. . . .
Give us three days’ grace. If you haven’t heard from us by then, I want you to forget about us,”
“No!”
“Yes, brother. Forget about us and try to rescue the unicorns.”
She looked at them all. “Any questions? No? So be it. Remember this, my friends, for the sake of the land and everyone on it: Whatever else happens, those unicorns must be freed!”
As Sheila went off with Illyria and Myno, her thoughts were fixed on Campora and the dangers of their mission. She did not look back at Darian and the others who waited with the unicorns.
“I still don’t like this,” Darian said as he watched Pelu and Dian prepare to drive the unicorn herd to the sea.
Pelu sighed, sitting her unicorn comfortably. “I know you don’t. I don’t either. But your sister usually knows what she’s doing. And with any luck at all, we’ll all be back together again—with the unicorns—soon enough. Till then, good luck to you, Darian, Kara, Nanine. Dian, let’s go.”
Pelu and Dian hadn’t ridden very far before Dian gasped. “Pelu, look! The eagles!”
“You’ve seen them before, Dian.”
“Not this close!”
Pelu glanced up and gasped in spite of herself. The great birds did seem to be diving right toward them. “They’re curious, that’s all. Come now, Dian, you’ve seen them at fairly close range before.”
But Dian was staring up into the heavens. “Look out!” she screamed, and whipped out her sword.
Deadly beaks gaping open, sharp talons outstretched, the eagles were attacking! Pelu hastily drew her own sword, wondering how two swordswomen were going to be able to beat back so many winged attackers. Their fierce screams rang in her ears, the wind from their wings buffeted her, but every time she tried to strike at an eagle, it managed to fly up, just out of her reach.
It-it’s almost as though they’re trying to keep us from leaving, the woman realized, almost as though they’re herding us!
Just as she thought this, the leader of the eagles, a magnificent, fierce-eyed bird, shrieked out a sharp cry.
Now, that sounded like a command! thought Pelu, wondering.
It was. All the unicorns, including those she and Dian were riding, turned as obediently as trained ponies, despite the warriors’ frantic protests, and trotted nicely back to where Kara, Nanine, and Darian stood stunned, their mouths open. Kara grabbed her bow, hastily fitti
ng an arrow to the string. She drew the bow— And a unicorn gently pushed the weapon aside with his horn.
“I-I don’t believe it!” the archer gasped.
“Believe it,” Pelu told her dryly. “Come on, Dian. Better dismount. I don’t think we’re going anywhere just yet.”
The eagles continued to circle, skimming so low that the wind they raised stirred the manes of the unicorns. But now there seemed to be a definite pattern to the way they were moving.
“It looks almost as though they were trying to tell us something!” exclaimed Nanine.
“Campora!” cried Darian suddenly. “That’s it! They want us to go to Campora!”
“We don’t know that for certain,” said Pelu. “What about Illyria’s orders?”
“These eagles, or whatever magical birds they might be, have followed us all along to be sure we accomplished the mission. They know something about what’s happening in the city and they’re trying to tell us. They’re telling us to go to Campora and help Illyria rescue the unicorns!”
To the women’s surprise, the eagles all screamed in unison at that, as though they were trying to say, Yes! That’s it!
“I ... think I’m beginning to believe this,” said Kara slowly.
Pelu nodded. “The eagles have been mixed up in this from the beginning. And I can’t believe they’re creatures of evil.” She sighed. “Well, are we all in agreement? Yes? Then, Campora it is.” Half in jest, she turned to the unicorns who had been following them. “Here’s where we say goodbye, my friends. We can hardly take you into the city with us.”
To her astonishment, the unicorns snorted, nodded their heads as though they understood exactly what she was saying, and galloped happily off into the hills. Only Quiet Storm and the other unicorns the warriors had been riding remained, prancing nervously.
“Ah, it’s kind of you to stay,” Pelu told them uncertainly, wondering just how much human speech unicorns did understand. “But what are we going to do with you? Any unicorns who enter the city are going to be in danger.”
The Secret Of The Unicorn Queen - Swept Away Page 6
