by Sean Platt
Clint opened his mouth, felt a presence fill him like the hand of a puppeteer. And he heard himself say, in the deep voice of Dharma Kold, “You expected me to mass an army in the Sands. But you didn’t expect this.”
The king’s veneer broke. He looked at Clint, bug-eyed. “Kold?” he said.
“In the flesh.” The power made Clint chuckle. “Well, in Clint’s flesh.”
“This isn’t war,” the king cried out. “We’re unarmed!”
Clint carried a small knife on his belt that the doorman hadn’t taken from him. He felt the force control his muscles, opening the knife and tossing it to the king. The king caught it. Clint felt Dharma Kold’s sadistic humor crackle through his mind as a ball of lightning made thunder in his open palm.
“Now you’re armed.”
The gunslinger raised his other hand, and blue lightning again shot toward the monarchs. The king and queen convulsed on the floor, screaming in pain. Clint tried to fight, desperate to lower his hands. But the Triangulum, with Kold behind it, was too strong. Clint couldn’t resist or hold his tongue. He couldn’t fight the force, or the cruelty, or the lightning. The bolts ended and the lightning retreated, sitting in his palms, making small, concussive booms like thunder.
They watched him with wide eyes, breath bursting from their lungs in harsh gasps. Dharma Kold’s force looked down Clint’s arms, sighting with them as if holding a rifle. The thunder boomed in his hands. Sunlight outside dimmed as if in response. Clint’s consciousness, impotent, sat back, helpless.
The king, seeing what was coming, calmed his breath, swallowed, and looked into Clint’s eyes with resolve.
“I’ll see you in UnderWorld, Dharma Kold,” he said.
The lightning in Clint’s palms crackled blue fire. Thunder boomed.
“Yar.”
Thunder erupted again as Clint’s palms delivered the final blow. The king and queen jerked and spasmed, then writhed and lay still.
Clint felt his palms lower and his face go slack. Kold was gone. The Triangulum was gone. Even Mai’s voice — for the moment, at least — was gone. He was himself again.
The guards with the tridents came sprinting down the length of the entrance chamber. They looked at Clint, then at the king and queen’s bodies.
Clint didn’t resist as they put him in shackles and led him away.
UNICORN
WESTERN 9
CHAPTER ONE:
A PLACE FOR CRIMINALS
As Clint sat on an alloy bench clean enough to eat off of, the gunslinger felt stripped of the power he’d felt while he’d watched his hands crackle with spark, as they had when he’d unwittingly assassinated The Realm’s monarchs. The lightning in his palms had gone missing when the guards came to claim him.
Not for the first time, a random thought ran through his mind:
(Catherine)
He’d had the thought — strange, disembodied, nonsensical thing that it was — six times in the past fifteen minutes. He was nervous, knowing it was only a matter of time before he’d be killt by Realm authorities. After all, The Realm couldn’t give the impression that actions such as those Dharma Kold had so recently perpetrated using Clint’s body would be tolerated, but it wasn’t his own death that had him nervous. The gunslinger had been prepared to die since the day he’d first belted two seven-shot pistols to his hips, and for the last six decades, he’d actively sought death like dessert after dinner. He was, after all, a man of one hundred and twelve years, and each year he could remember seemed far too long. He didn’t feel those years in his body thanks to the Triangulum Enchantem’s power (and in fact, he looked half his actual age), but he felt the pile of years in the whispers of his soul’s every breath. He was tired of living, tired of dealing death and trying hard not to deal with death. Tired of living alone, and seeing hardships in the worlds that his guns couldn’t solve. So yar, Clint was ready to leave and take his place wherever he was headed next — in NextWorld or UnderWorld as Providence willed it.
What made the gunslinger nervous, rather, was what would come of the others.
(Catherine)
But not Catherine, whoever that was and whatever that stray, random thought bouncing through his mind might mean. Nar, the gunslinger thought of Edward, and of Mai.
But that was absurd. Edward was a unicorn. It didn’t matter that his powers were now a mere trifle compared to those of Cerberus, Dharma Kold’s unicorn of a different color. He was still a unicorn (some sort of a special unicorn, mayhap, given how he seemed to have a secret title he’d never explained in “Edward the Brave”) and unicorns were, so far as Clint knew, essentially or entirely immortal. Besides, Edward was quite literally a world away, across the mother of all fractures, back in Meadowlands.
And Mai? There was no sense in worrying about her, either. Mai was no longer corporeal. The gunslinger had buried her beautiful body beneath the apple tree in his yard in the farback of six decades, and now if she was anything, his one time bride was simply a presence inside him, or possibly “out there” in the aether. Clint doubted she’d be harmed — if such a concept had meaning for one such as Mai — if the gunslinger were killt by a Realm executioner.
Still, Clint worried. He fretted the notion that an advanced civilization such as The Realm would have faced many tricky issues that involved magic, and hence would have developed corresponding solutions. Based on what Edward (and even that sand-rattler Kold — oh how Clint wanted anew to kill him) had said over the years, The Realm had prospered only after it had learned how to sequester and use white magic. But nature preferred entropy, so the more The Realm siphoned off white magic, the more dark magic gathered elsewhere. Clint had trifled with the Darkness. He’d lost it over the years since Mai’s death, but it had to still be out there, and The Realm must have faced it in the past. It must have developed protections against Darkness. And if The Realm could face Darkness, was it really so unreasonable to imagine that it would have developed ways of dealing with troublesome unicorns, too?
Clint worried because while he’d been in his cell, the lightning had left his palms, the power of the Triangulum (and of Dharma Kold) had left his body, and the voice and presence of Mai had left his mind. He worried because mayhap in The Realm, such things could be defeated. Maybe they could be blocked, traced, or dealt with. And if that was the case, then maybe Mai and Edward were in danger after all.
Or, he thought, mayhap it was something simpler. Mayhap the gunslinger could no longer feel the Triangulum because Dharma Kold was finished with Clint and no longer needed him now that he’d assassinated the royals. And mayhap Clint could no longer hear Mai because as it had left Clint’s body, the power of the Triangulum had snuffed her out like a flame.
(The Catherine wheel revolves slowly, rotating on an axle with no wheel on the other end, the works set out from the wall at an angle. The man is bound upon it, arms and legs wrapped back and tied on the wheel’s opposite side. A man in a black hood hefts a heavy two-handed hammer, like a sledge. A scream dies in the air as the man’s contorted face looks up and begs, “End it; use your guns and end it.”)
Clint closed his eyes, shoving the thought from his mind. It was foreign, like the dozens of other alien thoughts that had forced their way inside him since he’d entered The Realm. Mayhap the walls of his cell weren’t impregnated with anti-magic protection, but rather false memories as some form of
(Catherine)
torture. Mayhap there was a machine in the next room broadcasting images into his mind that were designed to confuse and unhinge him. The gunslinger actually hoped that was true, now that he thought on it. Because if nothing was projecting the strange, disturbing thoughts into his mind (like the image of the dying man lashed to the slowly revolving wheel), then he was losing his sanity. He had no genuine memory of the man, no genuine memory of a Catherine throughout his travels, no genuine memory of a room filled with millions upon millions of books, no genuine memory of an owl wearing a strange bejeweled mask. Yet all o
f those visions and more filled his mind as he sat and waited to learn what The Realm would do with him.
Were the thoughts projected phantoms? Were they real things happening right now that, possibly thanks to Mai’s presence in his blood and the Triangulum’s power as he’d unwittingly wielded it, he could sense? In this prison, was there a prisoner, right at this moment, lashed to a wheel and being tortured by a man wearing a black hood? It seemed unlikely. The Realm appeared to be insultingly cordial. When the guards had taken him after Kold had used his body to murder the king and queen, they’d asked if he’d mind coming with them, had warned him to take care with his footing as he’d exited the castle, and then had led him through an office of men wearing the guards’ same pink bubblegum hairdos who’d smiled and waved at his passing before placing him in the cell and bringing him a large plate of cookies. On his way through the prison, Clint was sure he could hear jumprope songs chanted in the distance.
Mayhap he was losing his mind after all.
He focused, and inside his head, he said, Mai?
But there was no answer. No comforting voice of his beloved, as he’d so recently heard her speaking to him, keeping him company, urging him forward. Clint had learned that thanks to Mai and her presence inside his body, the gunslinger himself had become the Orb of Benevolence — unlikely to Providence as that seemed. But without Mai’s presence inside of him, how “benevolent” could the gunslinger actually be? He wanted to protest, to yell at the guards that he shouldn’t be here. He’d been allowed inside The Realm because he controlled the Triangulum and because he was the Orb of Benevolence. But without Mai, he was hardly the Orb. And the Triangulum? It was clear he’d nar controlled that at all. From the beginning, Kold had controlled the Triangulum. But of course, Kold wasn’t the man in the cell. Clint was in the cell while Kold was back in Meadowlands, rallying an army that would never be able to cross the void and reach the land they planned to attack.
Nar, Clint alone would pay for the crime his body had committed and Dharma Kold’s arrogant revenge. And with that thought, Clint wondered: Does Kold still need to make war? Or was this spit in The Realm’s face enough to satisfy his bloodlust? Clint could even picture Dharma Kold laughing as the royals died, wringing his hands in victory while he stood across the fissure, safe and sound.
“Mai?” Clint said out loud.
In answer, instead of hearing Mai’s voice, Clint saw a sequence of images — another bolus of memories rich with sight and sound and smell and taste. They swallowed him entirely. He clutched his head in his hands, waiting for the false images to end.
A man with perfectly-groomed hair wears a wide, friendly smile and an expensive suit of tailored clothes. He stands before a cheering throng filled with adoration — a throng of people in multicolored shirts, all of them chanting. The chants are innocuous, like slogans, but still raise a feeling of foreboding.
Vendors’ stalls line a street fair like that in any Sands town, but with richer wares and dew-covered produce. A hand — mayhap his own — holds a fruit that seems to be called a “papaya.” From the right, a woman laughs.
A great room is filled with men with long, white beards staring into what look like gigantic viewers that ripple to the touch, like a Sands water reader dipping his fingers into a rain barrel to read the shifting of the sands.
Clint held his head, watching the images cross his mind. They were all so vivid and real, like things he himself must have seen. But he didn’t remember these memories; they felt like someone else’s.
He saw a shooting range and watched his own large hand squeezing the trigger of his very own gun. The memory of the range was unfamiliar, but in the memory — if it was indeed one — Clint could feel the weight of the iron in his hand, and knew it to be his own pistol true. He saw a group of women sitting around a horseshoe-shaped table, facing into the middle. Each had what looked like a spark device before them — silver and black, standing tall like a cobra. Some scribbled with their hands, seeming to write. Some looked sad, and some looked vengeful. He saw unicorns. Many, many unicorns. He saw a pool that was black like ink.
Images followed one after the other, all of them new and yet not new at all.
Unicorns. Black pool. Foreboding.
Then it was all gone, and Clint was again just a man in a cell.
As he continued to sit, he slowly came to realize that he wasn’t truly alone. He could tell Mai was still there, but she was deep, deep down and not speaking. He didn’t know if she could speak. He didn’t even know if she was an actual person in her current form or something less literal, like intuition with his bride’s voice. Clint shook his head. It had all seemed so clear a moment before.
After enough time passed, the confused gunslinger laid in a cot along the cell’s wall and slept.
When he awoke, he felt better. He had no idea how much time had passed, because there was no window or clock within sight, but his body told him that it had been at least an hour or two, maybe more.
He sat up, running his big hands through his hair, trying to assess his state and whereabouts. He remembered being nervous, but didn’t seem to be nervous now. He remembered something involving a woman named Catherine (he assumed) but that now seemed unimportant. He’d been nursing a memory of a bothersome dream, but it was over.
He felt nearly fine. A murderer, sure. But more or less okay otherwise.
There was a clanking noise outside his cell, past a solid door framed in a solid wall, and Clint realized that the noise was probably what had woken him. Someone was unlocking a lock, or turning a key, or sliding back a deadbolt, or doing something else that meant he’d soon have company. It had seemed, not long ago, that company would be bad, but now that he’d slept, Clint found himself almost eager for it. It was too quiet here. The gunslinger remembered passing other cells when the guards had brought him in, but all had solid walls and doors and he’d heard noises from nar a one. Either The Realm didn’t have many prisoners, or the prisoners they had were all very courteous. That wasn’t how it was in Sands prisons, where criminals were rude and riotous, banging against the bars and yelling out crude to all who passed. But things in The Realm weren’t like they were in the Sands. Where Clint was could almost be an office. The mattress on the cot was quite comfortable — more comfortable and cleaner, in fact, than any bed Clint had slept in, anywhere, ever, in his memory. The comforter was pure white and seemed to be filled with feathers — but not turkey feathers, he felt sure.
As Clint waited for the cell door to open, he felt The Realm’s courtesy and pleasantness suffuse him, and suddenly realized that there was a way out.
He didn’t feel the Triangulum’s power (which was good, since Kold controlled it) and didn’t really feel Mai (which was fine, since he’d learned to live without her for six decades anyway), but even without those ghosts inside of him, he still saw a way out. He would simply explain what had happened. Dharma Kold was the one who had killed the king and queen, not Clint. The authorities would believe him. Why wouldn’t they? The guards had welcomed Clint into Castle Spires. The king and queen had been delighted to see him return. Clint didn’t recall the specifics of his exile (yet), but everyone here seemed to expect his return. They’d actually opened a shimmer across the worlds for him! Surely, they’d be predisposed to believe that something extraordinary and terrible had happened in the castle. They’d believe him when he said it wasn’t him who had killed the king and queen, and then everything would be okay.
(Unless they take you to the Catherine wheel.)
As the door continued to clank (mayhap trouble with the lock? Clint for some reason imagined the scene outside as being slapstick and wanted to laugh for a reason he didn’t understand), Clint’s random thought of the wheel caused a kind of delusion around him to pop. When it did, his formerly rosy thoughts wisped away like smoke. As if he’d come out of a bubble of glee, the situation and the cell’s stark reality reasserted themselves with vigor. The mattress was not as pillowy as he�
�d thought it was a moment earlier. The comforter was not, in fact, pure white. He could have sworn that it was as snowy as Edward, but looking at it now, he saw that it was somewhat gray and plain — like the walls and the floor and everything else. The air, which had smelled beautiful, once again seemed ordinary, or maybe even unpleasant.
And as to his arrest and his crime? Well, clearly there would be no simple explaining. That had been an odd and uncharacteristic flight of fancy for one as hardened as Clint. The people outside would be officers of whatever law was sworn to behind the wall — mayhap even marshals — and those officers would, if they weren’t idiots, see the situation as plain and straightforward as it was.
He was going to be killt for regicide. He was going to be put on the wheel, and tortured until he was dead.
Clint looked around the cell, desperate to locate something that might be used as a weapon, but there was nothing. They’d left no belongings on him (he’d been thoroughly searched before being sent — politely and pleasantly — into his cell), and naturally a prison would be criminal-proofed.
The door finally opened. Behind it, Clint saw five guards in paladin uniforms, all but one wearing sleek black helmets with opaque face-shields. The helmetless knight — a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man with a square jaw and sandy blond hair — hung back, still fiddling with the cell door. It almost looked like he’d gotten his finger stuck in the lock. When he finally came unstuck and turned to join the others, Clint saw that he wasn’t holding a key.
Clint, now feeling sharp, wanted to make a dumb-paladin joke about mistaking fingers for keys, but he stopped when a sixth paladin entered.
Instead of a helmet, this one wore a black hood.
CHAPTER TWO:
THE PROPHETIC OWLS
“Get up,” said the square-jawed man.
“Nar.”
