The Secret Of The Unicorn Queen - Swept Away

by Josephena Sherman

  “Mardock?” The emperor’s voice was high-pitched and nasal. “Why do you disturb me? Why have you brought these two dirty females to me?”

  Mardock moved smoothly to his master’s side, murmuring. Sheila caught the words unicorns, and thieves, and thought, Uh-oh.

  Dynasian’s face darkened.

  “So! You would try to steal my unicorns, would you?”

  “They aren’t your unicorns.” Illyria’s voice was calm. “They belong to no one.”

  “Impudent wench,” Dynasian spat.

  “You don’t understand. Haven’t you noticed the signs of dawning disaster on the land? The scanty rains? The diseases?”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s truth, Dynasian. The unicorns aren’t merely pretty beasts. They’re living symbols of Light. Let them wander free as they will, and Campora will prosper. Keep them prisoner, and this city and all your kingdom will die.”

  The emperor frowned. “Do you dare to lecture me, woman? The beasts are mine, and I shall do with them as I will!”

  “Sacrifice them, you mean? Dynasian, if you sacrifice the unicorns to the Dark Gods, you won’t be gaining something as simple as a military alliance!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sacrifice symbols of Light to the Dark Gods, and you open a path for them into Campora!” Illyria’s voice broke. “Oh, don’t you see? Dynasian, think! Kumuru’s Dark Gods are demons! You’ll be laying Campora open to evil beyond mortal comprehension!”

  “Enough!” The single word was sharp as the crack of a whip. The emperor looked Illyria and Sheila up and down through his crystal. “Skinny things.” His voice was as calm as though Illyria had never spoken. “Hardly worth the thought.” He gave a casual wave of his hand. “Take them away, Mardock. Throw them into prison.”

  The sorcerer murmured something in his master’s ear, and the fat man smiled coldly. “Why, yes. I agree. They will make fine participants in the games. Take them away!”

  How nice of them to give us a moonlight tour of Campora, thought Sheila dryly, staring up at a grim, dark, ugly building that looked like some crouching monster in the night.

  “Dynasian’s prison,” said Illyria shortly, and was slapped by one of the guards.

  “No talking!”

  “Gently,” purred Mardock. “Don’t hurt them. Yet.” Illyria and Sheila were forced down a dark, dank stairway, bare stone walls oozing moisture on either side. The sorcerer followed, picking his way delicately, holding his elegant black robes tightly around him to keep them from being soiled on the filthy steps. He watched, a smug smile on his saturnine face, as his prisoners were thrown into a smelly cell.

  “Foolish little would-be sorceress,” he sneered at Sheila, “and you, warrior-woman, do you see now how stupid it was to challenge my might?”

  “Your might?” taunted Illyria. “You are nothing more than Dynasian’s pet dog, sorcerer.”

  For a moment his eyes blazed with insulted rage. Don’t get him mad Sheila pleaded silently with Illyria. I don’t want to end up as a cockroach!

  But then the anger faded from Mardock’s eyes.

  “Did you think to enrage me enough to receive a swift death? Oh, no. You must wait your turn to die. Don’t worry,” he added mockingly. “You won’t be here for long. The games start tomorrow. And you haven’t a chance of winning. I shall see to that.”

  With that, he turned and swept out of the dungeon, followed by the guards. As Mardock’s footsteps faded away, Illyria and Sheila were left alone in the heavy silence. Sheila looked about and shivered. There was nothing in the cell but a pile of moldy, foul-smelling straw. The door was of heavy iron, locked and bolted. The one window was little more than a crack in the thick wall. And the stray beam of moonlight that found its way into the cell only made it seem even more dark and damp.

  They were trapped.

  13

  The Ghost

  As soon as she was sure they were alone in the cell. And the jailor had wandered far enough away down the hall, Illyria sprang to her feet. As Sheila watched in bewilderment, the woman began going over every inch of their prison.

  “No one could get through that crack of a window,” she muttered. “No one in human form, that is.” Illyria stopped, giving Sheila a speculative glance. “I don’t suppose you know how to shape-shift?”

  Sheila shook her head. “Sorry.”

  Illyria sighed. “I thought that might be too advanced a spell for a mere apprentice. Oh, I don’t mean that as an insult! You just need a few more years of training, that’s all, with the master sorcerer, Dr. Reit.”

  “Dr. Reit,” murmured Sheila. All at once it hit her. They were trapped in this awful place. And tomorrow they were going to die! Sheila wrapped her arms tightly about herself, trying to hide her trembling, and bit her lip as hard as she could to keep from bursting into tears. She was never going to see Dr. Reit again, or her family and friends, or-

  “Don’t look so sad, Sheila! We’re not lost yet.” Illyria went back to searching the cell. “That was a brave thing you did back there, standing up to Mardock like that.” She hesitated. “You weren’t really thinking of joining him, were you?”

  “No!”

  “I thought not. After all, evil sorcerers have a tendency to sacrifice young apprentices who show too much ambition.”

  Sheila gulped. “I-I didn’t know that.”

  “Mm-hmm. Don’t want those apprentices getting too uppity, you see, making dangerous pacts with demons, threatening their master—but you wouldn’t know about things like that, since Dr. Reit’s magic is good, not evil.”

  “Well, it’s science, not sorcery, “ began Sheila, then hastily added, seeing Illyria raise an eyebrow, “but it’s good.”

  The woman nodded and calmly continued her search. “Stone walls . . . good mortar between the blocks stone floor . . . good mortar there, too. Too bad.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Illyria gave her a quick, rueful grin. “If the mortar were old and crumbling, we could lift one up and dig our way out.”

  “Dig? With what? They disarmed us.”

  Illyria grinned again. “Not quite,” she said, and drew a thin little dagger from her boot. Letting the knife slide back into the hidden sheath, she shrugged. “It’s better than nothing. But, curse it all, the door’s solid, too, and well bolted. The hinges are on the outside, where we can’t get at them.”

  She sank to the floor beside Sheila, tapping an impatient finger on the stone. “What about you, girl? Do you think you could work some manner of spell to get us out of here?”

  “My-uh-magic backpack is out there with the guard,” Sheila reminded her sadly.

  “Ah.” Illyria let out her breath in a long sigh. “At least Myno got away. And the others are free, too. They’ll be able to help the unicorns. Even if we—Sheila, if it comes down to this, that we must enter the games, we still have a chance to help Campora, even if we die. Don’t flinch, girl. I know it’s a cruel choice for you to have to make, but hear me out.

  “If we do enter the games, Dynasian is going to have to give us some sort of weapons. When he does, I mean to leap up to Dynasian’s box and put an end to him. Do you think you can do the same to Mardock?”

  “I-I don’t know,” said Sheila frankly. “I’ll try.”

  “Brave girl! Then, even if we die, we die cleanly under the swords of the guards, knowing we’ve rid the land of two tyrants. Agreed?”

  Sheila shuddered and nodded.

  Silence fell. Sheila thought about the games and shud­dered again. What if Illyria was wrong? What if she and Sheila couldn’t reach Dynasian? They would have to take part in the games. There wouldn’t be a choice. Would those games be anything like the ones she had read about in school, the ones the ancient Romans held? Was she going to have to fight trained warriors? Or beasts? Or…

  Mardock had promised she and Illyria wouldn’t survive. Did that mean they were going to have to face something worse?

&
nbsp; Something that Mardock might summon from the Darkness just for this purpose?

  “We aren’t going to get out of this, are we?” she asked Illyria faintly.

  “What’s this, girl? Fear? Hey now, I’ve been in worse places than this!”

  “How?” asked Sheila faintly.

  “Ha, once I was in a situation where I didn’t have a chance. Listen to this: I was climbing a mountain, looking for some lost sheep. Halfway up, it got really steep. I slipped and I slid, and I nearly fell all the long way down to my death. I was so high up that mountain that the clouds were below me. But the sheep were somewhere up above me, so up I went, watching each handhold carefully. All at once I heard this horrible roar above me and glanced up to see a Lyros—Do you know what that is? No? It’s a sort of mountain wolf, as big as a pony, with fangs as long as my arm. And it’s always, always hungry.

  “Well, this ravening lyros was standing right there on the ledge where I was just about to climb, just waiting for its dinner to come into its gaping jaws. And there I was, hanging on by one arm, wondering if I hadn’t better forget the whole thing and go back down. But then I heard a hideous roar from just below. I glanced down and there, on the ledge below me, was a huge, ugly, mean-as-a-winter-storm cave bear, taller than a man and hungrier than anything but a lyros.”

  Illyria paused reflectively. “Picture that. There I was, hanging from one arm from the side of a mountain. I couldn’t go up, because the lyros was waiting. I couldn’t go down, because the bear was in the way. Now, have you ever heard of a worse predicament?”

  “No!” Sheila waited eagerly for Ilyria to continue. But the woman merely set about sorting through the moldy straw.

  “Ah-Illyria?”

  “Smelly stuff. But some of it isn’t too filthy. At least it should be better than sleeping on bare stone.”

  “Illyria!”

  “Yes?”

  “The story! Finish the story How did you get out of that mess?”

  “Oh, I didn’t,” the woman said blandly. “The bear ate me.”

  Sheila stared at her for a moment, then burst helplessly into laughter.

  “That’s better,” Illyria said with a gentle smile. “Never give up, girl. Remember that. Now, come, let’s try to get some sleep.”

  Sleep! thought Sheila in amazement. How could I possibly ever fall asleep? But she obediently closed her eyes. She could at least rest, or try to rest. Even if she couldn’t sleep. Sleep ...

  * * *

  “Sheila…”

  Sheila frowned. Here she was, having such a lovely dream, all about riding Morning Star through a flowery meadow. Why was this ghostly voice trying to intrude?

  “Sheila . ..”

  Go away, she told it, leave me alone. “Sheila . . where are you . . .

  The voice wasn’t going to go away. In fact, it was getting stronger and stronger—Sheila came awake with a start, to find Illyria staring at her. “You hear it, too,” said the woman. “You mean, the voice is real? I wasn’t just dreaming?

  “And-and it wasn’t you calling me?” Illyria shook her head. “Then who ...?” began Sheila uneasily.

  “Sheila…” came the faint voice again. “Can you hear me?”

  The girl tensed. “Wait a minute,” she said slowly. “I know that voice . . . Dr. Reit! It sounds like Dr. Reit!”

  “The sorcerer!” gasped Illyria.

  “Can you hear me?” the voice repeated, more loudly this time.

  “Yes!” Sheila cried joyfully. “I do! Dr. Reit, I hear you, but I can’t see you.”

  There was a faint whirring sound, a crackling of electricity. Dr. Reit’s voice muttered something that sounded like “. . . turning up the voltage . . . wait . . . ahal”

  Illyria cried out in shock and shrank back against a wall, gasping, “Sorcery! High sorcery!”

  A figure, shimmering and ghostly, was forming in the cell . . . a man’s tall figure, dressed in a white laboratory apron and crowned by a mop of wild white hair. Sheila gave a soft laugh of relief.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered to Illyria. “It’s Dr. Reit!”

  “Sheila?” The scientist ran a hand through his hair, staring about her in bewilderment. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, but-“

  “Where is this place?”

  “Shh! The guards will hear you!”

  “Guards?” Dr. Reit looked about once more. “Why, Sheila, what have you been doing? This seems to be some sort of prison cell!”

  “That’s because it is a prison cell!” Sheila whispered. “Oh-don’t go!”

  “I’m trying not to go,” he said apologetically. “But the power surge I’ve been able to create just isn’t stable.” He sighed. “Look at this. It’s wavering all over again. I can’t seem to get enough of a charge stabilized to let me materialize fully, and . . Oh, dear. Here I go again. Wait a minute now. . . . Let me try . .”

  For an instant he disappeared completely. Sheila waited, chewing on her lower lip, hardly daring to breathe. He couldn’t just vanish, not now, not when she’d started to hope!

  There was a flicker of light, a faint crackling of electricity. And suddenly the ghostly figure of Dr. Reit was there in the cell with them once more. “I’m afraid the charge isn’t going to last much longer, no matter what I do. I’ll have to work on it some more. Quickly, now: Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yes!” Sheila whispered frantically. “Get us out of here!”

  “Oh, my dear girl, I wish I could! But the power surge is already starting to fade. . . . I don’t know how much longer I can hold it before…”

  His ghostly figure was starting to flicker and dissolve.

  “Dr. Reit!” cried Sheila. “Please, don’t leave us here!”

  In her misery she had forgotten all about whispering. “Hey, what’s all the fuss?” came the jailor’s rough voice.

  And a sudden idea struck Sheila. “Help!” she screamed. “This-this cell is haunted!”

  “Now, what sorta garbage are you trying to-“

  “Come here! Look for yourself!”

  The man peered into the cell, and his dirty face paled. He gasped in honor at the sight of Dr. Reit’s slowly dissolving, shimmery, eerie figure. “Gods! You-you’re right! I’m not hangin’ around here!”

  “Hey! You can’t just run away!”

  “No, no. I’m gonna go get help.”

  “No! Wait!” If he ran off now, she and Illyria might never have another chance. “You can’t leave us here!”

  “That’s right,” cut in Illyria. “Mardock will be furious if something happens to us. Do you want to be the one to tell him his precious prisoners were slain by a ghost?”

  He hesitated, shaking. “Don’t want a sorcerer mad at me,” the man muttered, “Not Mardock. The way he looks at you with those cold eyes, like he’s figurin’ which demons would like to eat you . . . Gods! He’s worse than any ghost!”

  Just then the last shimmer of Dr. Reit’s figure winked out, trailing a haunting cry of: “I’ll be back, Sheila, I promise!”

  “You heard him!” Sheila cried to the jailor. Wait a minute! Dr. Reit had been speaking English, of course, and the jailer couldn’t have understood him. The girl translated hastily, “He said he’s coming back for me! Hurry! Get us out of here before it’s too late!”

  “Yeah.” The jailer fumbled with his keys, dropping them, mixing them up. “Right. Here we go. No tricks now!”

  “Of course not,” said Sheila innocently. She stepped meekly out of the cell, then froze, eyes wide, staring down the corridor. “Oh, no! Look! The-the ghost!”

  The man whirled with a cry of terror. And Illyria calmly hit him on the back of the head with her clenched fists. As he fell limply to the floor, the woman and Sheila exchanged a fierce grin. Together they dragged the unconscious jailer into the cell and locked the door. “Come on!” Illyria whispered. “Let’s get out of here before someone notices he’s missing.”

  Sheila scooped up her b
ackpack and hastily shouldered it, then followed Illyria warily up the narrow stairway. The moon had set, and. it was so dark in the dungeon that they had to carefully feel their way up every stair.

  What if someone’s at the top? What if Mardock’s just waiting for us and—No! I’m not going to start scaring myself!

  Just the same, she was glad when they reached a level floor once more. There was some light here, from flickering torches, and Sheila starred forward, only to be dragged aside by Illyria.

  “What-“

  Illyria held a finger to her lips and pointed. There, in a small antechamber, amid a pile of other weapons, lay their swords.

  “But there are two guards in there!” whispered Sheila.

  They were seated at a small table, engrossed in a hot game of cards, but there was something about their hard-eyed faces that made the girl suspect they would leap to their feet, spears ready, at the first move she or Illyria made.

  “I don’t suppose you just want to forget about the swords?” asked Sheila hopefully.

  “No! We’ll need them.”

  “Yes, but-“

  “Hush. Listen.”

  Hurriedly, Illyria whispered a plan in Sheila’s ear, And after a moment Sheila grinned.

  Wait till I tell Cookie about this, thought Sheila.

  She moved forward so that the guards could see her. Neither one so much as glanced in her direction.

  “Ahem.”

  No reaction.

  “I said: Ahem!”

  Both guards jumped. The cards went flying as the men snatched for their weapons, staring up in surprise.

  “A girl!”

  “Help me,” Sheila wailed piteously. “Oh, please, help me….”

  “What are you doing here?” asked one man roughly.

  “Please . . .” she repeated faintly, swaying gracefully. ‘Help me—“

  “Hey, that’s one of Mardock’s prisoners!” cried the other guard. “How did she—Get her!”

  Quickly Sheila gave a melodramatic groan, raised her hand to her head, and crumpled slowly to the floor. Peeking from under her lashes, she saw the guards hesitate uncertain. She heard one of them mutter, “Well, we can’t just leave her lying there!” He came out to kneel at her side . . . and Illyria sprang into action. With one catlike pounce, she struck down the other guard with two quick blows to stomach and head. As the first guard got to his feet, whirling, Illyria was on him, too, knocking him out before he could even yell. As he crumpled, Sheila hurriedly helped Illyria cushion his fall so that his armor didn’t clash loudly against the stone floor.