Daughter of Regals

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  He did not try to find any others. He left the National Library, hugging the books to his broad chest like treasure.

  The careful part of him expected to have trouble with his mobile; but he did not. It took him home exactly as it always did.

  When he entered his house, he found that Sally had not been brought back. Enwell had not come home. He did not think that he would ever see them again. He was alone.

  He took off his clothes because he knew that unicorns did not wear clothes. Then he sat down in the living room and started to read his books.

  They did not make sense to him. He knew most of the words, but he could not seem to understand what they were saying. At first he was disappointed in himself He was afraid that he might not make a very good unicorn. But then he realized the truth. The books did not make sense to him because he was not ready for them. His transformation was not complete yet. When it was, he would be able to understand the books. He bobbed his horn joyfully. Then, because he was careful, he spent the rest of the day memorizing as much as he could of the first book, The Book of Imaginary Beings. Ho wanted to protect himself in case his books were lost or damaged.

  He was still memorizing after dark, and he was not tired. His horn filled him with strength. But then he began to hear a humming noise in the air. It was soft and soothing, and he could not tell how long it had been going on. It was coming from his biomitter. It found a place deep inside him that obeyed it. He lay down on the couch and went to sleep.

  But it was not the kind of sleep he was used to. It was not calm and safe. Something in him resisted it, resisted the reassuring hum. His dreams were wild. His emotions were strong, and one of them was uneasiness. His uneasiness was so strong that it must have been fear. It made him open his eyes.

  All the lights were on in the living room, and there were four men in white coats around him. Each of them carried a hypogun. All the hypoguns were pointed at him.

  “Don’t be afraid,” one of the men said. “We won’t hurt you. You’re going to be all right. Everything is going to be OK.”

  Norman did not believe him. He saw that the men were gripping their hypoguns tightly. He saw that the men were afraid. They were afraid of him.

  He flipped off the couch and jumped. His legs were immensely strong. His jump carried him over the heads of the men. As he passed, he kicked one of the men. Blood appeared on the man’s forehead and spattered his coat, and he fell down and did not move.

  The nearest man fired his hypogun. But Norman blocked the penetrating spray with the hard flat heel of his palm. His fingers curled into a hoof, and he hit the man in the chest. The man fell down.

  The other two men were trying to run away. They were afraid of him. They were running toward the door. Norman jumped after them and poked the nearest one with his horn. The man seemed to fly away from the horn. He crashed into the other man, and they both crashed against the door and fell down and did not move again. One of them had blood all over his back.

  Norman’s biomitter was blaring red: You are ill. You are ill.

  The man Norman had punched was still alive, gasping for breath. His face was white with death, but he was able to tap a message into his biomitter. Norman could read his fingers: he was saying, Seal the house. Keep him trapped. Bring nerve gas.

  Norman went to the man. “Why?” he said. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

  The man looked at Norman. He was too close to dying to be afraid anymore. “You’re dangerous,” he said. He was panting, and blood came out of his mouth. “You’re deadly.”

  “Why?” Norman said. “What’s happening to me?”

  “Transmutation,” the man said. “Atavism. Psychic throwback. You’re becoming something. Something that never existed.”

  “‘Never existed’?” Norman said.

  “You must’ve been buried,” the man said. “In the subconscious. All this time. You never existed. People made you up. A long time ago. They believed in you. Because they needed to. Because they were afraid.”

  More blood came out of his mouth. “How could it happen?” he said. His voice was very weak. “We put fear to sleep. There is no more fear. No more violence. How could it Then he stopped breathing. But his eyes stayed open, staring at the things he did not understand.

  Norman felt a deep sorrow. He did not like killing. A unicorn was not a killing beast. But he had had no choice: he had been cornered.

  His biomitter was shouting, You are ill.

  He did not intend to be cornered again. He raised his wrist and touched his biomitter with the tip of his horn. Pieces of metal were torn away, and bright blood ran down his arm.

  After that, he did not delay. He took a slipcover from the couch and used it as a sack to carry his books. Then he went to the door and tried to leave his house.

  The door did not open. It was locked with heavy steel bolts that he had never seen before. They must have been built into the house. Apparently, the men in white coats, or the medicomputers, were prepared for everything.

  They were not prepared for a unicorn. He attacked the door with his horn. His horn was as hard as steel, as hard as magnacite. It was as hard as tung-diamonds. The door burst open, and he went out into the night.

  Then he saw more ambulances coming down the road. Ambulances were converging on his house from both directions. He did not know where to run. So he galloped across the street and burst in the door of the house opposite his. The house belonged to his friend, Barto. He went to his friend for help.

  But when Barto and his wife and his two daughters saw Norman, their faces filled with fear. The daughters began to wail like sirens. Barto and his wife fell to the floor and folded up into balls.

  Norman broke down the back door and ran out into the service lane between the rows of houses.

  He travelled the lane for miles. After the sorrow at his friend’s fear came a great joy at his strength and swiftness. He was stronger than the men in white coats, faster than ambulances. And he had nothing else to be wary of. The medicomputers could not chase him themselves. With his biomitter gone, they could not even tell where he was. And they had no weapons with which to fight him except men in white coats and ambulances. He was free and strong and exhilarated for the first time in his life.

  When daylight came, he climbed up onto the roofs of the houses. He felt safe there, and when he was ready to rest he slept there alone, facing the sky.

  He spent days like that—travelling the city, reading his books and committing them to memory—waiting for his transformation to be complete. When he needed food, he raided grocery stores to get it, though the terror of the people he met filled him with sorrow. And gradually his food-need changed. Then he did not go to the grocery stores anymore. He pranced in the parks at night and cropped the grass and the flowers and ran nickering among the trees.

  And his transformation continued. His mane and tail grew thick and exuberant. His face lengthened, and his teeth became stronger. His feet became hooves, and the horny part of his hands grew. White hair the colour of moonlight spread across his body and limb, formed flaring tufts at the backs of his ankles and wrists. His horn grew long and clean and perfectly pointed.

  His joints changed also and began to flex in new ways. For a time, this gave him some pain; but soon it became natural to him. He was turning into a unicorn. He was becoming beautiful. At times, there did not seem to be enough room in his heart for the joy the change gave him.

  Yet he did not leave the city. He did not leave the people who were afraid of him, though their fear gave him pangs of a loneliness he had never felt before. He was waiting for something. There was something in him that was not complete.

  At first, he believed that he was simply waiting for the end of his transformation. But gradually he came to understand that his waiting was a kind of search. He was alone—and unicorns were not meant to be alone, not like this. He was searching the city to see if he could find other people like him, people who were changing.

&nb
sp; And at last one night he came in sight of the huge high structure of the General Hospital. He had been brought there by his search. If there were other people like him, they might have been captured by the men in white coats. They might be prisoners in the Emergency Division of the Hospital. They might be lying helpless while the medicomputers studied them, plotting their destruction.

  His nostrils flared angrily at the thought. He stamped his foreleg. He knew what he had to do. He put his sack of books in a place of safety. Then he lowered his head and charged down the road to attack the General Hospital.

  He broke down the front doors with his horn and pounded into the corridors. People fled from him in terror. Men and women grabbed hypoguns and tried to fire at him; but he flicked them with the power of his horn, and they fell down. He rampaged on in search of the Emergency Division.

  The General Hospital was designed just like the Medical Building and the National Library. He was able to find his way without trouble. Soon he was among the many rooms of the Emergency Division. He kicked open the doors, checked the rooms checked room after room. They were full of patients. The Emergency Division was a busy place. He had not expected to find that so many people were ill and dangerous. But none of them were what he was looking for. They were not being transformed. They were dying from physical or mental sickness. If any people like him had been brought here, they had already been destroyed.

  Red rage filled his heart. He charged on through the halls.

  Then suddenly he came to the great room where the medicomputers lived. Rank on rank, they stood before him. Their displays glared evilly at him, and their voices shouted. He heard several of them shout together, “Absolute emergency! Atmospheric control, activate all nerve gas’ Saturation gassing, all floors!”

  They were trying to kill him. They were going to kill everybody in the Hospital.

  The medicomputers were made of magnacite and plasmium. Their circuits were fireproof. But they were not proof against the power of his horn. When he attacked them, they began to burn in white fire, as incandescent as the sun.

  He could hear gas hissing into the air. He took a deep breath and ran.

  The gas was hissing into all the corridors of the Hospital. Patients began to die. Men and women in white coats began to die. Norman began to think that he would not be able to get out of the Hospital before he had to breathe.

  A moment later, the fire in the medicomputers ignited the gas. The gas burned. Oxygen tanks began to explode. Dispensaries went up in flames. The fire extinguishers could not stop the intense heat of burning magnacite and plasmium. When the cylinders of nerve gas burst, they had enough force to shatter the floors and walls.

  Norman flashed through the doors and galloped into the road with the General Hospital raging behind him like a furnace.

  He breathed the night air deep into his chest and skittered to a stop on the far side of the road to shake the sparks out of his mane. Then he turned to watch the Hospital burn.

  At first he was alone in the road. The people who lived nearby did not come to watch the blaze. They were afraid of it. They did not try to help the people who escaped the flames.

  But then he saw a young girl come out from between the houses. She went into the road to look at the fire.

  Norman pranced over to her. He reared in front of her.

  She did not run away.

  She had a lump on her forehead like the base of a horn or the nub of a new antler. There was a smile on her lips, as if she were looking at something beautiful.

  And there was no fear in her eyes at all.

  I AM A SENSIBLE MAN. I HAVE BEEN BLACKSMITH, wheelwright and ironmonger for this village for seven years; and I have not seen the need to believe in magic, no matter what that loon, mad Festil my brother, says. I have not had need of magic. I am a man who does what he wills without such things—without such nonsense, I might once have said. This village is small, it’s true, but not so small that Mardik the blacksmith does not stand as tail as any man here, fletcher or stonemason or vintner. I have all the work I choose to do, and my asking is fair because I have no need to ask for more. There is no woman here, widow or maid, who scorns the touch of my hands, though it’s true my hands have the grime of the smithy in them and are not like to look clean again. Men listen when I speak; and if they do not hear me well, they can hear my fist well enough, and better than most. For my sake they treat mad Festil with respect.

  Yet that respect is less than his desert. Loon that he is, he is wise in his way, though the village does not see it. He is younger than I, and less of stature by a span of my hand; but when he smiles the look in his face is stronger than fists, and many are the angers he has brought to an end by gazing upon them with his blind eyes. For this I esteem him more than our village can understand. And for one thing more. Mad Festil my brother came to me when I was in need, brought close to death by the magic of the Lady in White.

  Magic I call it, lacking another name for the thing I do not understand. Fools speak of magic with glib tongues that have no knowledge; they seek a respect that they cannot win with their own hands. Children prate of magic when they have taken fright in the Deep Forest. Well, the Deep Forest is strange, it’s true. The trees are tall beyond tallness, and the gloom under them is cunning, and men lose their way easily. Our village sits with its back to the mighty trees like a man known for bravery; but oftimes tales are heard of things which befall those who venture into the Deep Forest; and in storms even the priests gaze upon that tall darkness with fear. And fools, too, are not always what they seem.

  But fools and children speak only of what they hear from others, who themselves only speak of what they hear from others. Even the priests can put no face to their fear without consulting Scripture. I am neither fool nor child. I am not a priest, to shudder at tales of Lucifer. I am Mardik the blacksmith, wheelwright and ironmonger; and I make what I will, do what I will, have what I will. I fear not Satan nor storms nor black trees.

  I speak only of what I have seen with my own eyes; and I was not struck blind by what I saw, as Festil was. I have kissed the lips of the thing I do not understand and have been left to die in the vastness of the Deep Forest.

  I say I do not believe in magic; and I hold to what I say. Mayhap for a time I became ill in my mind. Mayhap all unknowing I ate of the mushroom of madness which grows at night under the ferns far in the Deep Forest. Mayhap many things, none of them magical. I do not say them because I cannot say them and be sure. This I do say: for a time under the spell of the Lady in White, I had need of a thing that was not in me; and because I had it not, I was left to die. If that thing has another name than magic, mad Festil knows it, not I. He smiles it to himself in his blindness and does not speak.

  He was fey from his earliest youth, like a boy who knew that when he became a man he would lose his sight. My remembering of him goes back to the sound of his voice in the darkness of our loftroom. Though sleep was upon me, he would remain awake, sitting upright in the straw bed we shared, speaking of things that were exciting to him—of dragons and quests and arcane endeavors, things mysterious and wonderful. He spoke of them as if they were present to him in the darkness; and the power of his speaking kept me awake as well. I cuffed him more than once, it’s true, to make him silent; but more often I listened and let him speak and laughed to myself.

  At times when the excitement was strong, he would say, “Do you believe in magic, my brother? Do you not believe in magic?” Then I would laugh aloud. And if the excitement was very strong, he would become stubborn. “Surely,” he would say, “surely you believe that there is some witchery in the Deep Forest?” Then I would say, “A tree is a tree, and paths are few. It does not need magic to explain how fools and children lose their way. And if they come back to the village with strange tales to excuse their fear and foolishness, that also does not need magic.” And then if he pressed me further, I would cuff him and go to sleep.

  For this reason, I did not esteem Festil my br
other as we grew to manhood. And for other reasons, also. I have no wife because I have no need of wife. No woman scorns me, and I take what I will. It pleases me to live my life without the bonds of a wife. But Festil has no wife because no woman in the village, be she ripe and maidenly enough to make a man grind his teeth—no woman pleases him. I believe he is a virgin to this day.

  And when our father the blacksmith before me died, I did not learn to esteem my brother more. He was a dreamer and a loon and understood less than nothing of the workings of the smithy. So all the labor came to me, and until I grew strong enough to bear it I did not take pleasure in it.

  Also his speaking of our father’s death was worse than anile. Our father died from the kick of a horse whose hooves he was trimming. A placid plowbeast that never gave its master a moment’s trouble suddenly conceived a desire to see the color of our father’s brains. To this Festil cried, “Bewitchment!” He took a dagger and spent long hours in the Deep Forest, seeking to find and slay the caster of the spell. But I looked upon the beast when it grew calm again and found that our father’s trimming blade had slipped in his hands and had cut the frog of the hoof. Bewitchment, forsooth! I saw no need to treat mad Festil with respect.

  Yet he was my brother, kind and gentle, and willing in his way to help me at the forge, though it’s true his help was often less than a help. And at times he fought the fools in the village for my sake when he would not tight for his own. I grew to be glad of his company and tolerant of his talk. And I knew that a matter to be taken seriously had arisen when he came to me and said that he had seen the Lady in White.

  “The Lady in White!” he said softly, and his eyes shone, and his face was full of light. I would have laughed to see any other man act such a calf. But this was Festil my brother, who had not so much as touched his lips to the breasts of any woman but his mother. And in past days I had heard talk of this Lady in White—as who had not? The men who had seen her had told their tales until no ear in the village was empty of their prattle. For three nights now, every tankard of ale I took at the Red Horse was flavored with talk of the Lady in White. I cannot say that I was partial to the taste.