by Sean Platt
“GET UP! Meet this Army! Don’t just cower! Do your home and land mean nothing?”
Cyrus stepped in front of his brother then raised his arms and addressed the crowd himself.
“You do not have to fight,” he said. “Why fight? Look at them, then look at yourselves. You cannot win!”
A skinny woman spoke from the front. “Then what do we do? Just give up everything?”
A man beside the woman shushed her, throwing apologetic looks at the Seven Nation Army. Loud enough for the others to hear, he said, “Amelia, look at all of them. How could we fight?”
“The unicorns will help! They dug the tunnels.” She repeated herself, yelling toward Rowen and the Army. “They dug the tunnels! They wanted to help us! Anyone will tell you. They were making it possible for us to … do whatever you don’t like. How could we have done it? They’re responsible! They have to fight on our side!”
“They won’t fight for us, Amelia,” said the man. “Since when have unicorns ever fought for humans?”
“They’ll have to! Those … things are going to fight the unicorns the same as they’re going fight the rest of us!”
Fiona stepped between the humans and Rowen. She looked at one then the other.
“We do not fight for anyone,” she said to the woman. “If you fight, you fight for yourselves. If we fight, we fight for ourselves. Two sides to every coin. You chose to take without giving. You have chosen ease without suffering. Now your choice has been taken away. Now you will either suffer to lose what you have or suffer in battle, but you will suffer. You need it, if you are to mature as a species. If you are to learn to live alongside us. If you are to learn to live with anything. But that hasn’t been how you’ve lived, people of The Realm. Originally you had to fight for survival. You had to prove yourselves worthy and grow. But since the day you discovered magic, you have become an island unto yourselves. You have built fortifications and a wall. You let that wall and that island protect you. But you didn’t isolate yourself in your needs. You poked holes in the wall so you could have more ease, more magic, more joy.”
She walked closer to King William, her horn pulsing a dull red.
“Your joy is killing you! Your complacency is killing you! We would be content to let you die, but you have threatened the world with your touch. You have sundered veins. You have prodded holes in the very worlds themselves so you could be entertained and comfortable. We believe you created the imbalance that caused the Grand Cataclysm and shattered the worlds in the first place. But what are we to do, Realm? We can’t do without you. Because as much as you need strife, we do too. You are ours.”
Behind her, the thing with arms like boulders — a soldier in the nation of creatures — mumbled, “We can do without them.”
Fiona looked at the thing then at the humans. “They can. And they want to. Unless you stop your theft.”
“Speak quickly, unicorn,” said the creature. “You have helped them to steal.”
“We have attempted to guide them.”
“Toward theft.”
Cerberus stepped up beside Fiona. “What would you have us do?” he said to Rowen and the waiting creatures. “They are like colts. They cannot be trusted. Or left untended. We believe they split the worlds once. That affected us all.”
The big creature’s voice was a growl. “Then eliminate them.” He paused and added, “Guardian.”
“And the guardians know best!” Cerberus snapped at the thing. “Who are you to question us! The magic was born with us, not you! You aren’t even real! We are real; we were first, and we know best! Do not question our judgement or how we shepherd the magic! It is ours to dispense as we wish!”
Rowen tipped his head toward Cerberus. Edward felt his heart take a leap. The sorcerer was calm, but Edward could read him fine. His magic felt strong, and he was not as placid as he seemed. Over and over when they were colts, Cerberus’s pride and arrogance had landed him trouble. For the briefest of time, his pure white coat had even started to gray — not because he was intentionally allowing his pure magic to pollute, but because he wanted to show a righteous elder that he was correct and wouldn’t be swayed.
“Yours to dispense?” the sorcerer repeated.
“Ours!” Cerberus blurted. “Our kind created yours!” He made a visible effort to calm himself then continued with only slightly less animosity. “You feel you have been trespassed on. And you have — by them, which is where your quarrel lies. And you have the right to require restitution. You have the right to demand what you want … from them. You only need to look at the white color of every unicorn here to know that none of us have nefarious aims. You may not understand why we feel the need to keep the humans alive or why we chose to help them build tunnels in order to tame their wildness to means within our control. You may not understand our intentions, but you may not question our decisions regarding Wellspring magic. We were created as its guardians, and we, in turn, created everything else!”
Cerberus was treading on thin ice. Some of what he was spouting to the Army was considered true; some was either lies or arrogant supposition. Adam and Eve had told Edward that something else created the magic and unicorns, and that the same something else had used the unicorns to help create the rest of the world — or, presumably, worlds. It was not universally agreed upon that unicorns couldn’t be questioned, though most felt that way. But Cerberus was presenting it all as fact, and Edward, who wasn’t blinded by indignation, could feel how the Army was reacting.
He stepped toward Cerberus. Both Cerberus and Fiona looked at him, as did the humans and the encroaching Army’s frontline.
He looked at Cyrus, King David’s worthy descendent, and spoke to the humans.
“What do you stand to lose?”
“Nothing,” said Cyrus.
“Everything!” said the woman named Amelia. “Everything we have is powered by the vein magic. Everything we know comes from the stories delivered by courier!”
Edward resisted the urge to ask about the courier. He thought again of Saul, wondering if the piper had been permitted to move back and forth between the worlds or if he’d done so secretly.
“Stories,” Edward said. “You will lose stories. You will lose your entertainment. You will lose your amusement. That is all. Isn’t that a fair tax for the prevention of war?”
Cerberus was eyeing Edward as if he were a traitor. Until Cerberus calmed down, he’d see this as a matter of pride. Unfortunately, the humans seemed to feel the same way.
“Sure, just roll over!” said King William. “Do what they tell us, am I right? And then what? What comes next, when they want something else? You saw how they came in! In rows and rows of soldiers, as if to trample us! They did not send an emissary. They did not stop at our gate. They did not ask. They came in force. They pulled workers from the tunnel. There was no discussion. It was to be their way, from the start. They are here to intimidate us into surrender!”
He turned around, raising his hands, trying to rally anger from his people. He slapped his hand on a vendor cart beside him. Edward could see a light glow, like a mirage, at its front, and knew that magic would allow it to move without being pulled.
“This is ours! We built this place! We found magic and used it, like unicorns find grass to eat. Races before us cut trees and dug for resources to get what they needed. We did the same! We had a vein below us, and we harvested it. The worlds were open in The Realm’s earliest days, and we borrowed what we found. We opened trade with others, the same as elves, trolls … even the mighty unicorns! And when others came offering more magic of the kind we’d sampled during the Cataclysm — the kind that made it easier to think, that made us comfortable and inspired — we accepted that trade. We paid for what we received!”
The huge red beast with the horns stepped forward, breaking the Army’s ranks. Several of the unicorns turned, their horns starting to glow. To King William, he said, “We were not paid.”
“That is not our problem
!”
“We were harvested,” the red thing countered.
A man at the front of the humans stepped forward, behind King William. He said, “What we used was information. How can that harm you?”
“Information is what we are. Your stories are our lives.”
“Once a story is told, its magic belongs to everyone!” the man yelled. Edward, still in the middle, found himself remembering the Sandman, who’d asked the unicorn if he were real or merely a tale. He’d implied that it was one or the other, and that taking something from any world into the axial world meant it would be lost from its home.
“Maybe,” said the big red thing, taking a huge step toward the man, “I should remove your soul … because the energy inside of it belongs to everyone.”
Edward tried again, this time actually rearing up and kicking his forelegs to drive man and legend away from each other. They both stepped back. Edward looked over at Fiona. To his surprise, the old unicorn had stepped back as well, no longer sure. She’d tossed the flame into this pile of twigs, but it didn’t seem likely to spark and fizzle. The Army was angrier than she’d anticipated. The Realm was standing up for itself rather than learning the lesson. And the unicorns, who’d planned to make the humans’ continued reaping of other worlds possible, were caught in the middle. And as magic as they were, they were outnumbered. Even if they took to the sky, they couldn’t evade ten thousand soldiers — many of whom could fly themselves.
“STAND DOWN!” Edward bellowed, his wings subconsciously flared out at his sides. It made him look bigger, his chest seem broader. He heard his own voice and found it deeper than normal, more resonant and commanding. Then, when everyone who’d been arguing fell silent, he lowered his voice and continued. He found himself alone in the center. Fiona was beside her daughter with the rest of the group. Even Cerberus had slinked back, his blue eyes flashing with odd yellow highlights.
“You are fools,” Edward spat, speaking to the humans. “You fought to pass us in number and equal us in intelligence. Yet once you had everything you needed, your sloth betrayed you. You outsmarted yourselves. You found out how to make things easier then turned your attention toward improving that ease. You stopped trying to get better and instead spent all your time trying to become more satisfied. You have been warned about separating white from dark magic, yet you refuse to stop. Tapping a vein is not like cutting down a tree, and you dagged well know it. Tapping a vein is like splitting the world to its Core. You knew it yet did so anyway because you are addicted. We have come into your settlement three times, and you knew we would return to quell your transgressions, yet still you committed your violations. You knew that your minds were meant for touching the Wellspring, but you didn’t want to tax them. So when you found a way to soothe your lives without actually using your minds, you took it. You did not accept trade innocently. You knew the stories you received were from another place. You knew you were upsetting a balance, especially after the worlds had stitched, yet you did it anyway.”
Edward turned to face the Seven Nation Army and Rowen. Behind the sorcerer, the colored banners of the Seven Nations flapped in a light breeze. He realized something he’d missed before: They knew about men like the piper because everyone in the forest had accepted that he’d come from somewhere else and returned whenever it suited him. Interestingly, Edward was sure they didn’t know about the Sandman, who controlled it all.
“And you,” he said to Rowen, “are blind. Willfully blind. I visited your worlds — the Dark Forest was one — during the time when the other worlds were accessible. I saw stories I already knew. You belong to yourselves, but your tales belong to no one. You understand the order of things, and know that the magic of your lives filters through the Wellspring. You knew that there were leaks, and used them yourself. I knew a man whose job it was to ferry back and forth, and everyone knew of him. But that was travel and exchange that suited you, wasn’t it? A way to breach the worlds to your favor, but you pretended it couldn’t happen in the other direction. When I arrived back in this world, it was many years after the Cataclysm — many centuries after the world borders had supposedly sealed. So how could I return? You knew that unicorns could open tunnels between the worlds, too. Because I have seen your stories in the unicorn world — stories that I’ve never seen reflected in the Wellspring. What did you trade, Rowen? What did your receive from our world in exchange for the holes you permitted — as opposed to those holes where you focus your anger?”
Rowen stuttered. “We … I know of nothing … ”
Edward turned to the unicorns. “And you — and by that I mean we, myself included — are too dagged proud to understand what we can control and what we cannot. What kind of a dangerous game was this? Were we really supposed to believe it was all about helping the humans? Was this really about controlling their misuse of magic? Was it really beyond our ability to cut them off?” Edward shook his head, finally voicing the one thing he’d never been able to make fit no matter how many times he spoke to Cerberus or Fiona.
“They would have adapted, wouldn’t they? They would have learned to think for themselves. But there’s more to this, isn’t there? Another thing that the great unicorn race felt the need to keep hidden because it knew best?” He stared at Fiona, Clarence, and the other elders. “You kept it even from the rest of us, didn’t you? Because that’s how it is with unicorns. We’re superior in every way other than our sense of security in the world.” His eyes found his appies in the crowd, ruffling their wings. “I was told growing up that unicorns were proud. But we aren’t proud so much as arrogant. We dictate the way of the world. We are the keepers of the magic. And on and on. So we must keep secrets, right? Because how can we be proud unless we have something the others don’t have?”
Rowen dropped his staff. He stooped to pick it up, keeping his eyes on Edward.
“What do you have?” said the sorcerer. “What secret are they keeping?”
“I don’t know for sure,” said Edward. “But it seems to me that the worlds must stay open. I heard the old stories when I was a colt. I felt how borders meshed when I walked between them. I saw how the water drained after the flood. Where did it go? None of the worlds are big enough for all there is. My grammy and grappy told me before they died that magic had to circulate. They said that conflict was good, and that conflict came not only from anger but from difference. Variety.”
Edward turned toward the elders. “Why are the worlds so similar at root, Fiona? Everyone I met spoke our language. There are languages that differ even in this world, and there must be plenty of other languages out there. The only real way to explain it would be if the path I walked was actually a well-trodden path.”
Fiona said nothing. She didn’t move. Because Edward was right.
“What caused the Cataclysm?” Edward asked. “You know, don’t you?”
“Yar,” said Fiona. “It was your grappies.”
CHAPTER 30
EPIC FAIRY TALE BATTLE
Edward shook his head. He must have heard Fiona wrong. The unicorn elders were all staring, their equine faces expressionless. The world started to spin. Edward felt himself becoming light on his feet. It had to be a joke, but wasn’t. It could only be wrong, and it had to be, because he’d know it if his grappies had caused the biggest disaster in the history of all the worlds — the disaster that returned them to Wellspring.
Edward turned to react — how, he wasn’t sure — but didn’t have a chance before the huge red horned thing charged, suddenly wielding a mace it pulled from nowhere. It was fast, but Edward’s heart had started to flutter, and magic flew from him without conscious effort. An umbrella of sparks poured from his horn as the thing brought its mace down. The blow was intense; the stone ball at the mace’s end cracked in half on Edward’s shield and fell to the ground, leaving the legend holding only a handle.
The beast roared. The Army’s front line, keyed to strike, started forward as if shot from a canon. Edward saw Rowen try to
raise his arms and hold the Seven Nation Army back, but they were already in motion, and once the front line had engaged, the rest followed like water shot from a spigot.
Edward held his umbrella, now using conscious effort to shape it into a full, circular shield, just in time for the red thing to kick at it, jarring both Edward and the shield backward and into the city’s wall. He fell to the dirt and righted himself for the strike, but the world and his attacker both vanished in a wave of warriors, damsels, legends, creatures, and the rest. Spells began lighting the air, and shaking the umbrella around him.
He couldn’t hold it. He shouldn’t hold it. He should fight. His shield was nudged again, and again he rolled, this time coming up just inside the wall surrounding The Realm. With room around himself, he dropped the shield, knowing he couldn’t do anything in offense while shielded in defense.
The others had erupted into battle. The humans were getting knocked to dust; spells of the Seven Nation Army were striking people and turning them to smoke. They hid behind the unicorns — the closest thing they had to allies, if only through guilt by implication. The unicorns allowed it, now forming a wall of solid white.
In the middle of it all, Edward could see Fiona yelling and scrambling, taking bludgeons and healing instantly. He could see Clarence; he could see his appies. Several of the unicorns tried to take flight, but the battle was too tight, and they couldn’t spread their wings. Edward’s appy, Jack, blasted some sort of concussive spell from his horn, briefly clearing space around both him and Diane. The unicorns stood at a stagger so they could both spread their wings then were airborne as a few who’d run to the periphery did the same.
Immediately, a herd of black-clad gargoyles from the Army’s ranks tore through the sky, their ugly faces churning and changing, forming snarls and drooling. There were other things — hairy creatures with long curled tails that had wings like bats — that followed. At first the flying unicorns fired spells, but the Creature Nation’s soldiers were too fast, too agile. They dodged then returned fire with small spells of their own. Gargoyles swarmed like locusts. The unicorns couldn’t overwhelm them; there were simply too many.
