Unicorn Western

by Sean Platt

  “You don’t get to throw a temper tantrum,” Edward said. “Not now.”

  Clint stood, brushing himself off.

  “That was a sand dragon. You’ve no idea how fortunate we are to have left when we did, or that the dragon allowed us to do so. I can only guess it didn’t stop us because it was empty of energy after taking shape.”

  “You can’t fight it?”

  “I can’t even fathom it. I’ve heard of sand dragons, of course, but only as legends. The notion that the tribe’s shaman has bent one to his will is terrifying. It’s an unspeakable amount of black magic they must control.”

  Clint sat on a rock at the depression’s edge, unholstered his right pistol, and started to reload it bullet by bullet. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Edward began pacing. “I only know rumors and fifth-hand reports, but we believe sand dragons come from the core, where white and black are at constant war. There’s always been leakage, of course. Even before the first fracture, both kinds of magic rose to the surface and seeped through. But after the fractures, both magics fell away, leaking in gushes. Sand dragons are among the forms these gushes take.”

  “I still don’t understand. Is this about the balance?”

  “In a way.” Edward turned his head to look at Clint, sidelong. “Take unicorns. We’re reasonably pure, but when we partner with humans, we’re saddled — no pun intended — with your darker natures. That’s fine in most cases, except when a unicorn gives up, which is what happens with unicorns of a different color. It was Kold’s darkness — the hatred that grew in him during your exile and wandering — that polluted Cerberus. Cerberus surrendered his magic to Kold, and something had to fill the void. The violation made him turn. Unicorns must be turned dark. Not so with sand dragons.”

  “They’re born as darkness?”

  “Worse: they are darkness. But darkness has no substance in itself, so it needs to take a shape. A sand dragon is the most common form, and one of the largest.”

  “They are darkness?”

  Edward walked over and drew a curved line in the dirt with his hoof. From where Clint sat, the line was like a letter C tipped onto its back, like an empty bucket. Edward drew a line in the bucket, indicating a layer of something on the bottom, then added a line of waves at the top, as if the bucket were filled with water on top of whatever was at the bottom.

  “The world is like this bucket of water,” he said. “The water itself is all of the layers of ground beneath your feet, between you and the core.” Then Edward tapped the line at the bucket’s bottom. “This, down here, is the dark magic from the core. When it tries to rise to the surface, it has no substance, like a gas. And so when darkness bubbles to the top and into our world, the bubble pops because there is nothing there to hold a shape. Make sense?”

  Clint nodded, slower than he would’ve liked.

  “But now, imagine that the bucket is filled with dirty oil instead of water. This time when the darkness bubbles up, it forms a bubble covered in black oil rather than a fragile bubble made of water. The oil gives it substance, see? It’s that way with shifting sand. The darkness rises through fissures, but in order to have substance and be able to act, it needs to take on a skin of sand like our imagined oil-covered bubble. Outside, it looks like sand. But inside, it’s nothing but darkness.”

  “Can you pop it?” said Clint.

  “It’s not an exact analogy,” Edward muttered, resuming his pacing.

  Clint reloaded one gun and then the other. Then he pulled the reloaders from his sides and tucked them into a pouch on his belt.

  “I should have seen it,” Edward said. “The way the sand was sinking? Sand dragons need surface magic to fuel them, and to hold their shape. Luckily for them, there’s no real downside. There’s plenty of magic in the sand if you’re able to sift it, which they are. But sifting robs the sand of cohesion and it dissolves into something finer — more like dust. When that happens, you get dust bowls, which are almost like quicksand. We got lucky and didn’t step into any of them, but the ground must have been covered with the things. When everything started to sink, I should’ve seen it coming. We could have dashed to where Cari was, grabbed her, and gone. I’d still have had to risk a folding to get away, but we’d at least have accomplished our mission.”

  Edward shook his head, looking distraught.

  “I need time,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “To rest. To recover. But mostly to think.”

  “To think about what?”

  “Its weaknesses. If it has any.”

  Clint couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You — Edward the stalwart, the curmudgeon, the selfish — want to go back?”

  “Not in the least. But I have no choice. I’m a steward of white magic, and the few unicorns I sense within reach are cowards. This dragon has been here for a while, and from what I hear on the aether, the others have slowly learned to fear it. They’ve convinced themselves that in a time of leaking, nothing can be done to prevent such things and that their best plan is to stay away. Maybe I’d feel the same if we wandered into this slowly, but I saw the thing rise in front of my eyes. Now I must deal with it, or live the rest of my life knowing I didn’t so much as try.”

  “But you said you can’t fight it,” said Clint.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “For now,” said Edward, “I’ll sleep.”

  The next morning they awoke in the belly of Edward’s protective bubble, which was faded red and perfectly spherical, extending into the sand beneath them. It wouldn’t offer any protection against the dragon, but would block the unicorn’s magic from outside parties, which meant that it would at least prevent the dragon from seeing him. It was only a precaution, since the thing couldn’t possibly know where they’d gone. When Edward had folded back at the dooner settlement, he could have taken them anywhere in such unstable sand — something Edward said he’d known all too well when he’d done it.

  The risk was acceptable because certain death was the only other option.

  Edward rolled up to his feet, walked to the bubble’s edge, and nudged its surface with the point of his horn. His horn sparked on contact, popping the bubble and covering Clint in pink goo.

  “I thought it was a magic bubble,” said Clint, wiping blush colored goo from his face.

  “It was.”

  “Looks like an actual bubble to me,” he said.

  “Magic sometimes comes in foam,” said Edward. “You should see the unicorn night clubs in The Realm. The unicorns wade waist-deep in the stuff.”

  Clint made faces, flicking foam from his face to the sand, wondering if he was desecrating magic by doing so.

  Edward didn’t seem to be done thinking when they rode out, presumably back toward the dooner camp. Clint said nothing and let him think, sitting atop his back and feeling out of his league. This was a unicorn matter, and he, as a man, was trapped in the middle. So were the dooners. He could only hope there was a way to keep the shaman in the middle, and squash him where he sat.

  “Edward,” Clint said two hours later as they crested a familiar hill. Two hills further, they should come to the top and see the dooner settlement below.

  “Yar.”

  “You think we humans are beneath you, don’t you?”

  “Not fit to polish our hooves,” said Edward.

  “And you’re beneath sand dragons.”

  “Not at all. But also yes. They have more blunt power, but we’re equal representatives from our side of the balance.”

  Clint didn’t understand, but let it go.

  “So we’re below sand dragons, obviously. Humans, I mean.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “So why was the shaman riding one?”

  “I’ve been mulling that,” Edward said.

  “And?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Edward’s hooves hit the sand with their usual hypnotic rhythm. Clint fe
lt as though he were being lulled to sleep most times when riding for long stretches, but today he felt especially tired. Maybe it was from a close brush with dark magic, but he didn’t want to ask Edward, since the unicorn clearly needed time to think.

  “I can think of two possibilities,” Edward finally said. “Either the shaman has something the dragon needs, or the shaman summoned the magic himself and can therefore command it. I’m hoping for the former.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if a human can summon that much dark magic, it’s a very bad thing. Maybe the worst. Fortunately, I doubt that’s the case.”

  “So what is?”

  “I’m guessing there’s a bargain between them.”

  “What does a sand dragon need that a shaman could give him?”

  “Might as well ask me one of The Realm’s questions without an answer.”

  Edward still hadn’t come up with a plan when they reached the final hill. Clint assumed he was planning to either ride to his death and be done with it, or scope the camp and see if it jogged any ideas. The dooner population had to be down a quarter or more after their raid, and the dragon might have vanished, making a second attack feasible. But when they reached the hill to see what they could see, they found the camp missing. Were it not for his honed gunslinger’s sense of observation, Clint would have been certain they’d arrived at the wrong spot. The sand was completely and totally barren. Everything had vanished.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  “Really?” said Edward. “That’s a sharp observation.”

  “Can you sense the dragon?”

  “No. Now that we’re aware of one another, we’ll mute each other entirely, the way a science acid neutralizes a science base. It doesn’t matter,” The unicorn shook his head. “I can see the trail in the sand, though. From Cari’s sorrow. It goes that way.” Edward nodded toward the horizon.

  “The dragon doesn’t realize they’re leaving a trail?” said Clint.

  “Sand dragons don’t understand sorrow,” Edward said, descending the hill.

  He didn’t pause at the old camp, and warned Clint to stay away because of the quicksand-like sand bowls that were everywhere at the site. Edward would see any bowls in their path now that he knew what he was looking for, but only once they were nearly close enough to fall inside.

  As the sun started its fall, they saw a shimmer in the sand ahead. An oasis. The idea of false water made Clint’s throat itchy, so he pulled one of the waterskins from his pack and took a long swig to scratch it.

  When they arrived, they saw that it wasn’t an oasis after all. The shimmer was still there and hadn’t vanished at their approach. Up close, it looked like a pool of dark gray mercury.

  “Magic sty,” Edward explained, touching the shimmer with his hoof, watching as a series of multicolored ripples spread through the pool. As the ripples passed, the shimmer behind each grew slightly whiter. Edward repeated his touch until the pool looked like highly polished silver beneath his hoof.

  “Better,” he said.

  “What did you just do?” Clint asked.

  “I cleaned it. This is what it’s supposed to look like. Some locations have these depressions, which are gathering pools of magic. Unbelievably valuable to find, but of limited practical value to anyone wishing to exploit them. It’s not as though you can bottle and carry magic. You use it here to replenish yourself, then move on. If you’re shot in the brain and half dead, a touch of this pool will heal you as good as new. But you can’t take it with you.”

  “Must they always be cleaned?” said Clint, already suspecting what was coming.

  “No. This one was polluted.” He met Clint’s eye.

  “By a sand dragon.”

  “Yar. The dragon drank from it. It will need constant infusions of magic to survive in its current form because everything leaks, including sand bodies. Deprive a sand dragon of magic for long enough, and it’ll almost evaporate. Even if they don’t leave or die, they lose their cohesion. Then they usually regroup, dive back to the core when they find a fissure, and resurface with a new skin. This one doesn’t want to dive, probably because it’s involved with the shaman. But it needed refreshment.”

  Edward touched the quicksilver surface of the sty again. A rainbow of colors again rippled through it, but this time the color was unchanged. It was as clean as it was going to get.

  “You don’t need it?”

  “I generate it,” said Edward.

  “Do I need it?”

  “You have me.”

  Edward’s head swiveled. As Clint watched, the unicorn seemed to grow increasingly agitated.

  “Climb down,” he said.

  Clint did.

  Edward circled the pool, nudging rocks and sand around its edge with his nose, smelling the air as his horn started glowing. Finally Clint walked to where he stood and asked him what he was doing.

  “Feeling,” said Edward.

  Clint grunted. “Less obtuse, please.”

  “I feel something. Like a pain in my heart.”

  Clint was about to ask what that meant when his own head snapped up to meet Edward’s left eye.

  “Kold,” he said. “And Mai.”

  Edward nodded.

  “Where are they?”

  Edward tossed his head toward a winding path leading between two dunes. “That way.”

  Clint automatically took two steps toward the dunes before his hand rose to the half-sphere of polished glass hanging from his neck on a strip of leather. Even though they hadn’t seen any sign of Kold’s trail for months and he wanted very badly to follow, he had a score to settle with the dooners.

  The gunslinger had four people to avenge, and an innocent girl to rescue.

  The unicorn had a sand dragon to kill.

  Clint’s shoulders fell. He sighed, then returned to Edward. “Where’s the blue line that will lead us to Cari and the dooners?” he asked.

  Again, Edward gestured toward the winding path between the dunes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  EPIC DRAGON FIGHT

  Clint wasn’t sure how to feel.

  The dooners and their sand dragon were heading toward the same smear of sunset as Kold’s party, after visiting the same magic sty. That was good news since it meant Clint didn’t have to decide to follow one and leave the other. But on the other hand, it was bad. Were they actually together? Edward couldn’t tell. If they were, it would be chewed tobaccy bad on several levels.

  If they were together, were they together for a reason? And if so, what could that evil plot possibly be? Clint shivered. The dark magic of a unicorn of a different color, a turned Realm marshal, and a sand dragon all in the same place? They’d be impossible to defeat.

  Edward seemed to be thinking the same thing, though he said nothing. Gunslinger and unicorn rode mostly in silence, now approaching three full years of wandering the Sands, and both bone tired — the sort of tired that rubs at the corners of a man’s soul enough to turn him around.

  “How’s your chest?” said Clint, asking Edward what lay ahead in the only way he knew how.

  “Not too bad,” said Edward. “And yet, I think we’re closing in on the dooners.”

  “You can tell by the blue in the sand?”

  “Nar,” said Edward, kicking at the ground. “Their tracks, idiot.”

  Clint looked down, feeling a kind of marrow-deep fatigue. He wasn’t spry anymore, and he was feeling his age. He hadn’t noticed the plain, obvious path of tracks cutting through the sand, but he looked down now. Every once in a while, in the middle of the tracks, there’d be a depression or a swell, indicating that the dragon was rising or diving, surely with the shaman on his back.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Edward.

  “That’s not a good idea. Was it about rainbows and leprechauns in pink foam bubbles?”

  “About the sand dragon,” Edward said. “About what it could want.”

  Clint chewed his inner cheek, then spat on the
ground.

  “I partnered with you because you have fast hands and a righteous soul,” Edward continued. “Many unicorns never pair with a human. I had to believe in your ability and determination to do things that needed doing before I could surrender my solo life. I wanted a partner to spread my kind of magic; otherwise I’d never be here. The sand dragon is here too, and it’s paired with the shaman in what feels like much the same way. So what does it want?”

  “A partner in spreading its own kind of magic, maybe.”

  “Maybe. And that troubles me. The darkness has no substance in and of itself. It must form itself into something such as a sand dragon before it can actually do anything. Even then, that ‘anything’ is almost like playing around. Oh, sure, it can cause much mayhem and killing. But to what end? Its range is limited because it’ll disintegrate near cities and away from magic sties. There’s only one thing that darkness truly wants, if it wants anything at all.”

  “What’s that?”

  “More darkness.”

  The answer bothered Clint, as much as how Edward said it. “Okay. So how would it go about getting more?”

  “By making the fractures larger; by encouraging shifting and leakage. The darkness can only leak from already-existing fissures. It cannot make changes in and of itself. Change and action require hands. Human hands, specifically.”

  This was the first Clint had heard about the fracturing being anything other than a natural phenomenon, or about it being something that could be accelerated or made worse through deliberate effort. But unicorns were guardians of a kind, and as such, they kept their secrets.

  “I’m worried that the shaman might be unduly influenced,” Edward said. “That the dragon might be using him to… to get something that only human hands could get.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not for humans to know,” said Edward. “Even you, gunslinger.”

  Clint tried to pry more information from Edward, more because he was curious than because it mattered to what they were about to do — or attempt to do. But Edward’s large equine lips were locked tight. He seemed to have crossed a line in his mind, and on the other side were matters that were for unicorns alone. And that was in character for unicorns, even if it wasn’t totally in character for Edward. Humans weren’t allowed into unicorn gatherings, and were never included in — or allowed to know about — unicorn rituals. Their culture was deeply secretive. There were no human records, anywhere, ever, of unicorns sharing what they knew.