Unicorn Western

by Sean Platt

  The doctor seemed quite interested in Mai. Clint wondered at this and even felt his own hand twitching near his gun, but the doctor’s motives seemed true, and Edward had vouched for him on the trip out to retrieve Mai. Clint had asked Edward how he could vouch for a man he didn’t know. Edward gave him a stern look and said that once upon a time, he’d partnered with an ugly man he’d never met before — and that partnership, founded immediately and based solely on a probing of the man’s honor — had been bound by magic and had done quite well so far.

  “How much did you get?” the doctor asked Mai, sitting with his knees very near hers.

  Mai looked confused. “Get?”

  “Edward asked for an elixir of repression. I know you have the consumption. It’s all right. I have enough elixir to keep it down, and I can make more.”

  Mai shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Magic consumption,” Barlowe said to Mai. Then he turned to the unicorn. “Did she touch a vein?”

  “Nar,” said Edward.

  “Too near a stitcher? Did she catch a spray?” His eyes darkened. “The railroad. You were at Diamante’s railroad.”

  “It’s not consumption,” Edward said.

  Clint looked from the doctor to the unicorn and back. Edward was still disguised as the gray horse. He wouldn’t be able to extend his horn until they confronted Kold, and by then it probably wouldn’t make a difference. Edward had already warned Clint that if Kold had the Triangulum, which he almost certainly did, they’d be outmatched. Accordingly, Edward claimed to be working on a plan to thwart Kold and Cerberus without facing the dark rider and his unicorn of a different color. Clint kept asking how it was going. Edward kept refusing to answer.

  “What is magic consumption?” asked Clint.

  The gray horse turned to look at him, sidelong. “You remember outside of Nazareth Shiloh, when I stitched the magic vein?”

  “Yar.”

  “And afterward, do you remember how I lost my memory of who I was and what I could do?”

  “Yar,” said Clint. Edward had forgotten how to use his magic and had believed himself a horse. Clint refrained from mentioning that right now, Edward was a horse. It would only infuriate him.

  “That kind of thing comes from an overabundance of magic. I got a kind of feedback when I stitched the vein, but unicorns can withstand such a thing… apparently. But the same amount of magic would have killt you, had it struck you directly.”

  “It’s like cancer,” said Barlowe. “You know cancer?”

  “Yar.”

  “It’s like that. Magic consumption spreads and suffocates the natural energies of the people it affects. There was once magic everywhere in the sand, but now it’s concentrated in veins. The magic veins aren’t supposed to be exposed, but when Realm operations open them, they’re not just breaking earth. You can’t dig to find a magic vein. It takes magic to open them, and magic to stitch them back. So when they’re exposed to the world after a fracture — or a willful cutting — they’re dangerous. More and more, men are coming to me with exposure. Usually those working on stitching rigs or on top-secret projects that seem somehow related to Diamante’s railroad. It’s fatal if allowed to spread. Elixirs will keep it at bay, halting its scatter by suppressing the magic from expression. I assumed that was what it was with you.” He touched Mai’s hand.

  “She hasn’t been exposed,” said Edward in a “and that’s all I have to say” tone of voice. Clint noticed the unicorn didn’t say that Mai wasn’t infected in some way, though, and thought back to the drink she’d taken from the Rio Verde back in Baracho Gulch. Edward had described it like a magic kickstart — a hard reset of her nature. But what was Mai’s nature?

  They sat outside for a long while, until the doctor finally headed for bed. Once gone, Edward nodded to Clint and Mai and led them a short way away from the house. Clint carried a lantern, and they made palaver in the doctor’s backyard, well away from the porch. The unicorn’s intent was clear. He’d told Clint and Mai how much he believed in the doctor’s soul, but added that what he wanted to discuss was too delicate to entrust with anyone beyond the three of them.

  “Mai,” said the disguised unicorn as they sat around the lantern, wrapped in blankets. “It’s time you tell us what happened when you rode with Kold.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember. I told you.”

  “Try.”

  “I can’t.”

  Edward sighed, then stared at her. “Try harder. I can’t use magic and you can’t use magic. So be as human as you can be. Look back. After Solace, what do you remember?”

  After a moment, she whispered, “Nightmares.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s vague. I remember a house so large that at times, I’d be running down hallways unable to touch the walls. A great space, with a spiral staircase wrapping downward toward forever. Something was behind me. I remember a maze. Or a game. It’s… it’s vague.”

  “You’re doing fine.” The unicorn’s nod said to continue.

  “You told me that I rode with Kold for years, but to me, it felt like one night. One long dream. You know how time stretches in dreams. One moment I was in Solace, and the next we were in Baracho Gulch. I came back so fast, I might not have believed you about the years you swear passed if I couldn’t see it in your face and eyes. You are a different man than you were on the day we nearly hitched. A different man, even, than the hard piece of leather you were when we met. Then, you were battered. Now, it’s like something in you has died. Like parts of your soul have been tortured to death.”

  Something squirmed in Clint’s gut, but he pushed it down. It was nar for a man of sand and iron to feel.

  “But that’s all I have. One dream, one night, barely remembered. Every so often I come across a kind of vague recollection, something new I’d forgotten, but it’s like a daze inside a dream. Beyond forgotten. Like a memory from another life. I see things that I know I’ve never witnessed. And I remember Kold as you must have fought him. I remember the dark unicorn as if…”

  “Yar?” Clint prompted.

  “I don’t know. I remember fighting him.”

  But she’d never fought Cerberus. She’d been magicked onto the dark unicorn’s back, where he’d plundered her soul.

  “Maybe it’s part of the dream, but I remember fighting him. Fighting him like I can fight now. With magic. I seem to remember a battle. Like maybe he was the beast stalking my dreams.”

  “And you won?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Clint looked at Edward. In the lamplight, his face looked long and hollowed-out, like the man in the moon.

  “What is this, Edward?” he said.

  Edward kicked at the dirt around the lantern.

  “I’ve been trying to make sense of what I know to be true and what I suspect,” he said. “Kold has the Triangulum; I can feel it. He has the third Orb. So why hasn’t he breached the wall?”

  “Mayhap he’s building an army,” said Clint. “The people of this town seem to think he’s up to something. We know he’s building a railroad. He could be gathering numbers, waiting until he can storm inside in force.”

  “Mayhap,” said Edward. “All I know is that I feel the Darkness more than ever.” He turned to Clint. “But do you remember what I said the Darkness wanted?”

  “More Darkness,” said Clint.

  “Right. It wants to release more of the dark Core magic. It wants to upset the balance. We know it’s working with Kold. We saw it in Independence Lee’s birds and I suspect it was also at work, indirectly, through El Feo and his drones. The Darkness doesn’t care about getting into The Realm, but it does care about opening cracks. That’s most possible at the fractures, and the largest fracture is where The Realm broke away.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  “I think that one reason — not the whole reason, but one reason — that Kold hasn’t breached the wall yet
is because he wants to let his partner have its play. The Triangulum, even at partial power, would work like jamming a pry bar in a crack and splitting it further. Darkness escapes, joins the Darkness that’s already here. It powers the city, but while it does, it secretly pries at the cracks, leaking dark magic that goes into birds, bandits, maybe archetypes. Parson Jarmusch clones; I have no idea. But why? And all I can conclude is that if Kold controls the Triangulum and the Darkness is with Kold, the two are working toward something that Kold believes will serve them both. Something that will release Darkness, and build soldiers, and upset the dark/light balance on this plane, and allow Kold to return to The Realm to do whatever it is that he wants to do. Mass the power at the fracture, and only then turn it up and rip down the wall. Darkness storms in. The cracks widen.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “I could be wrong,” said Edward.

  “But you don’t think you are.”

  Edward looked at Clint and Mai across the light of the lantern. “Nar.”

  “So now what?”

  “We have to find him. We have to find the Triangulum. We have to see what he’s doing. Until then, it’s all just guesswork.”

  “And then what?”

  Edward looked at them for a long time. “I don’t expect you to understand this, but magic cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be converted from one form to another, and can really only be moved around. It’s like a game of Risk. Each team starts with equal forces, but in this game, none of the armies can be removed from the board. Magic Risk is a game of misdirection and gathering of forces. Incidences of light and dark — an individual unicorn or an individual sand dragon, say — can be destroyed. But the amount of magic itself remains constant. In the end, neither force can win, and neither can lose. But just as a storm gathers when there is too much warmth meeting too much cold, so is there turbulence when magic clumps and congeals.”

  Clint couldn’t follow any of it, and based on what he could see of Mai’s face, neither could she.

  “Are you saying that Kold is preparing for the apocalypse? Why would he do that?”

  “Kold is out for Kold. But he’s toying with powers he nar understands. No man can understand it. If he plays his game well, he’ll use the Darkness for his own purposes without shearing the world wide open and creating such an imbalance that it will bring about your apocalypse. But I don’t think that’s likely.”

  “And then the worlds will end,” said Mai.

  “Life will end. The societies we’ve built will end. The beings that represent clumps of dark and light in mortal bodies will end. Everything you know and see and remember and believe and touch and smell and taste. All of that — every last bit of it — that is what will end. But the worlds? The magic? Nar. Those things will be just fine long after all we’ve built is dust.”

  CHAPTER SIX:

  ONE COWBOY AND

  ONE HORSE

  Clint missed Sly Stone.

  Stone, with his giant orange hair and twin magic shotguns, would have been upbeat as they left Barlowe’s house. He would have narrated tales of chili and times on the trail, making days a few months distant sound like polished memories from his childhood. He would have looked forward to their task, simultaneously seeing it as hopeless and eagerly anticipating a challenge. He would have said things like, “This is where we separate the men from the boys” and “Time to see if you have hair in your pits.” Then, because he was Sly, he would have looked at Mai and added a feminine version of both aphorisms, stepping all over his words with two left feet and making himself look foolish.

  As they rode into town with their daunting mission, Stone would have been cheery. He would have fingered the grips of his guns and said that it was about time they did something difficult for a change. Even today, if Clint were to say to Stone’s ghost, Do you mean more difficult than the fight in which you were killt?, Stone would have smiled his wide, pale-skinned smile and said Yar, harder than that milk run.

  In case there was any doubt, Edward spelled out the situation’s reality as they approached Percy’s livery:

  We can’t use magic. If we use any magic, Kold will see us.

  Then:

  If Kold sees us and comes to us, we will die because he possesses the Triangulum and we do not.

  Clint, feeling the single six-shooter on his belt as light and benign as a child’s pop gun, nodded. Edward, still disguised as the gray horse, couldn’t see him nod, but that was par for the course. It mattered nar to Edward if Clint agreed, so long as he obeyed. Whenever Clint bothered to concur, he did so knowing it was only for himself. And as they rode, Clint found it fitting — if not futile — that after years of trials and terrors, in the end it had come down to one cowboy and one horse against the world.

  Edward wouldn’t let Mai go with them. She put up a fight, but because she was still suppressed by Barlowe’s elixir and wouldn’t be able to use her magic anyway for fear of giving them up, her protests were easy to ignore. Edward said that she was too unpredictable. Despite the elixir, she kept falling into trances, and Barlowe had to keep upping her dosage. She couldn’t even trust her own abilities. What if she fell into a trance in the middle of a battle? What if she got herself killt — seeing as she’d just be one more unmagical woman, untrained with a gun and with no protection? None of this sat well with Mai. She yelled at Clint as she’d done back in Solace, but it hadn’t worked in Solace and it didn’t work now. So Mai tried to hurt him. She told him that the last time he’d left her, she’d been carried off. But Clint kept his face straight, walking off before she could turn his mind, pointing out that Kold had discarded her and wouldn’t carry her off again. Kold had taken from her what he needed, and she had nothing left that he wanted.

  Still, Mai caught up with Clint before he could escape. She grabbed him by both upper arms and shook him, her eyes wet with tears as she told him that she couldn’t stand to lose him and that it wasn’t fair. She spoke of her dream, about the beast in the dark and massive house. She said that in a new dream, she’d seen the gunslinger die. But Clint couldn’t listen. He blocked her out, forcing himself to think about what might lie ahead instead.

  They left, leaving Mai as she broke into Barlowe’s stock of Fanta and began drinking.

  One man, with a single six-shot iron and conventional bullets.

  One horse, with hooves and speed as his only weapons.

  And to this, Sly Stone would have said, “How can you know your true mettle if you always fight with an advantage?”

  Clint and Edward had always had an advantage. Today they would not. Today, in fact, they would have a distinct disadvantage. And Clint, who seldom showed emotion, felt his hands beginning to shake. His voice was higher-pitched than normal. He would have to shoot mortal lead. And if he were shot himself, he would have to die. There would be no magic healing. As long as one of them lived, that survivor would have to continue on in secret. Edward would watch Clint take a bullet in the neck and die in the dust. He’d have to. Worlds were at stake.

  They walked to Percy Noodle’s barn, summoned the wild-haired old-timer, and asked him if they could stash some guns and supplies. Noodle said yes, of course, and promised to help with his rifle where he could. Clint set Stone’s shotguns — now mere lead-shooters — in a corner of the barn with a box of plain old shells and a handful of illegal pistols they’d scavenged from the archetypes back when they’d battled El Feo. Clint wondered if the sinking sensation in his gut was what his foes felt. What was it like to face a man whose bullets never wavered or shanked from their trajectory? What was it like to face a man who, if shot, could never die so long as his equine partner were nearby? What was it like to face a man who could hide behind shields, fold from one place to another, and attack with magic?

  Clint looked at the plain lead shells with their copper casings and wondered if wishing he still had that advantage made him a coward.

  “You are still fast,” said Edward. “And that gun? It
was El Feo’s. It shoots true. He subdued a village for years with that iron.”

  “Yar,” said Clint, feeling heavy and slow.

  “You know,” Edward said, “Stone would have loved this.”

  “I was just thinking that. I wish he were here.”

  “His guns are,” said the unicorn.

  It wouldn’t mean much to most men, but to a gunslinger, it had tremendous import. A man’s guns were like his soul. Clint looked down at Stone’s guns. Then he picked them up, still in their long holsters, and decided to strap them to his back instead of leaving them at Noodle’s livery. The sawed-off butts protruded above each of his shoulders like an angel’s wings.

  “It’s illegal for a commoner to carry more than one gun,” said Edward.

  “About as illegal as plotting to kill a land baron,” Clint replied, snugging the big holsters tight.

  Edward walked outside and stood by a hitching post outside of Fat Ziggy’s station. There was little he’d be able to do, owing to his lack of thumbs and trigger fingers, so he offered himself as a lookout. This assuaged Clint’s fears not at all. Then Edward walked away from the gunslinger and circled the building, then returned and reported a moment later.

  “I looked through the back window. It’s just Ziggy in there, plus a pair of matching deputies. Teedawges. I don’t see the giants.”

  “Three shots,” said Clint for no reason. He realized he was whistling in the dark, trying to make himself feel more confident than he was. With his old seven-shooters and the promise of shields and healing, he would have felt perfectly confident even if the Teedawges had numbered to twenty, but now it was as if he were walking on a narrow board between two skyscrapers. Sure, he could walk that board. But the fact that there would be no do-overs in case he fell from it made his mortal heart beat like a war drum.

  So Clint crossed the dusty street toward the station, suddenly wishing he’d at least taken some target practice with the rinky-dink six-cylinder gun. He felt woefully underprepared, and as if he were walking to his own execution. But hadn’t Stone been a plain old bandit before he’d moved on to magic theft? Of course he had; he’d told Clint and the others his many stories over and over and over again. It was as if Stone had been speaking of old family memories. Good times of mortal peril, firing simple lead without a safety net.