Well of the Unicorn

by Fletcher Pratt

  His hand touched hers as he bent to take some of those things from the floor and in the moment it was as though poison and burning flame ran through his veins; but of that, nothing at the time and he went on to the espousal of Kry. He would not take her to drink at the Well of the Unicorn on marriage as was the custom then with the Stassian kings, holding that it would make him the less a warrior. You may think you know the story of the House, young clerk, but we here in the Isles of Gentebbi know it better, for Queen Kry came here to await her term, living in that old house behind the hill at Vagai. Like all of Uravedu blood, she had something of witchcraft. She was a short woman and few-spoken, who used to be seen on the beach at night. It was said that she talked with the fishes and certainly blue lights blazed round the place, which all thought little canny. This was after Argentarius had lain with her for the perpetuation of the House, you will understand, and she was somewhat changed; masterful still, but altogether after another fashion, so that where she once ruled Scroby in her father's name she now ruled the household at Vagai, inquiring whether two copper ainar or one had been laid out for a cabbage, and forever setting the people to beautify the house with new trees and pleasaunces. Men were happy in Gentebbi in those days; she was open-handed and kindly in spite of her weird doings, waiting for the King.

  It would be a week from the time when the last heathen were tumbled down the cliff at Lectis Maxima, not later, that King Argentarius set his feet to Stavorna again and the house of Astli. At the gate the first person he met was Lanheira, she leaning over as though she had only that moment come out from putting away the tray of wine-vessels he had spilled, even the dress the same, which was perhaps foreknowledge of his coming on her part, and shows that even a king cannot match a woman for wit when she has a desire.—You are welcome, said she; it is three years since we have seen each other.—It is too long, said he, and went in to see the syndic.

  When they were together: —Is there no day, said the King, when duty runs out? Have I escaped the one debt only by making another? Astli answered nothing for the moment, but sat musing and drinking from his cup of sweet wine till—Vagai is well situate on the Blue Sea between Stassia and Dalarna to be the capital for both; a place of much beauty where two drinkers from the Well might be at peace.

  —What manner peace? cried Argentarius as he had at the last interview. With the witchwoman there is no peace but an I give her what is no longer mine to give, which is the love of my heart. Seeing that the old man still said nothing, he cried again after a minute: —Is there alternate choice as the last time?—We grow by always solving the harder problems, said Astli, but I cannot tell you that. You can perhaps tell yourself when you have decided whether you're more king or man.—One may lay down a kingship, flashed Argentarius; Earl Mikal— and then as he saw Astli smile:—No, you are right, he would be in all things her man, and I not the only one to suffer. Is there nothing clean in the world? Astli the syndic still made no answer and he left; but when he went down to Lectis Minima he took Lanheira with him.

  Those two dwelt there in great glee and affection for the better part of a year, and she bore him a son who was called Morkar; but at the end of that time there were tidings that Permandos had fallen on a war with Baboi and the ships of both sides pirating those of the two kingdoms to furnish means for their battle. Argentarius struck fast, as always; sailing at once with such portions of his guard as were then beside him and leaving word for the Stassia barons to meet him on the sea. Lanheira was to follow, meeting him at the High House in Stassia when the campaign was over, and Queen Kry was fully aware of this, since the shipmasters of Gentebbi were to furnish bottoms to carry Mariola to the war. She gathered certain retainers of her own, mostly blue-faced men of Uravedu, and put to sea when Lanheira's ship was due. It might be by her magical arts that she discovered when to meet that ship off the skerries of Naar-mouth, and there an evil deed was done, for she let slay all in the ship save Lanheira and her son, whom they cast into the sea, then putting about, told a tale of Permandos pirates so that the matter might be blamed on them already at war with the King.

  The skerries of Naarmouth are the best of fishing grounds. It happened that certain of our Vagai men found the drifting ship with its dead men and something bright farther on, which was Lanheira, who had contrived to keep herself afloat and the babe wrapped in her cloak. It was the edge of winter and she died of it, but not before they had the full tale out of her. They say that when King Argentarius heard it, he spoke to no man save to give orders till he came to Vagai and set up a seat of justice in the square. Then he only asked the Queen why she had done so foul a thing.—You that were indifferent to my love, she said, shall not be to my hate. It is a good hate; you that would not drink at the Well with me shall have kings and emperors spring from your line, but all hollow, all drinking and drinking to a peace they never win and a glory that is not theirs. But as for these fishers that have betrayed me after my kindliness, they shall know the laughing fear at the hands of sea-demons.

  They let her arrange her hair and then they cut her throat; but to us free-fishers Argentarius confirmed forever a charter of privileges. Earl Mikal withdrew from the court and went to build him a castje at the edge of the Micton country; from him is sprung the line of Os Erigu. And this is a true and veritable tale as told to me by my own grandfather, Gyior the Grey.

  "And Morkar?" asked Airar.

  "Oh, that was a bad line. Un and a's son both were hanged entirely as pirates by the merchants of Lothai in Aurunculeius' reign. Let us go a-deck; from the shouts there Vagai must approach."

  7 The Iulia Once More: Gifts Are Given

  THE MOON was up; they were sliding through the entrance to the harbor, over which Vagai Front towered like a sphinx asleep, with its paws extended on either flank, and the water inside still almost to lack ripples, so the fishers were getting out their sweeps. The pale light fell on the fronts of the houses rising steeply behind the quay and gave them a two-dimensional aspect, or as though that drowsing sphinx were wearing a bib. "Behind the hill there," the narrator motioned. "Nobody lives in the place now."

  Airar did not answer; was beginning to feel more his own man now with the backlash of the spell wearing away, but lateness and the translation from warm cockpit to cold deck made him yawn. The sweeps rattled, the men had the crown-sails down, and on the quay he caught sight of several who waited the return of the fishers, standing perfectly immobile, not talking to each other, the tricky moonlight shortening them to figures of children.

  He pointed and turned to speak; at the same moment Rudr's eye caught them, too, and "Sea-demons!" he shouted. "Port helm, sweep out! Sweep out!"

  Airar heard the steersman grunt as he flung himself on the tiller and a babble of voices from the crew as they dropped the sail, then all those little figures were off the dock, into the water, coming toward them with heads held high and almost rippleless wakes behind. He felt for his grimoire; it was in his donkey-pack and below. A hatch banged, someone yelled frantic, "No, no, let me in," and one of the creatures came swarming right up a trailing sweep, flinging out a pair of short arms as it leaped toward the unfortunate man who had begged to be let in.

  The fellow tried to run; the shape was faster and it gripped him at the break of the forecastle, the fisher gave a great whooping yell of mad laughter that slid into a shriek and took up again. "Come," called Rudr's voice from the*cabin, but Airar snatched instead a fish-spear from the rack around the mast as the second sea-demon came over the bulwarks at him. He caught a glimpse of a long low dark wet forehead like a seal's with a pair of burning eyes, of arms outspread with webby hands at the ends of them, and drove the fish-spear at the apparition, shouting (for it was all he could remember)—"la ada; adaperdidi! Aulne begone!"

  The short arms missed their clutch and Airar drove his spear into the thing's throat, but the hands caught his elbow for a moment and he felt through every fiber of his being a rush of such deadly terror as he had never known while the muscle
s round his mouth flexed in a horrid rictus. The motion with which he dragged the barbed spear back was less than voluntary; there was a spout of cold black blood all over him and the thing collapsed.

  Airar looked around. The sea-demons seemed to be gone, no sign of them now save the little group of ships drifting masterless in the moonlight, their yards akimbo and hanging with sails half taken in. On the forecastle of the iulia that fisher was clutching the mast, his feet beating in a mad dance as he gave peal after peal of laughter which always ended in a scream of fear. From one of the other ships a similar series of shrieks was coming like an echo; Airar saw the madman over there in a high-footed prancing leap across the deck and into the water that cut short his yells. The one forward on the iulia released his hold as a freak of the fit took him, and began to caper toward the bulwark.

  Airar jumped for him, all covered with the demon's black blood as he was, hearing only with the memory part of his mind old Rudr's voice from the now half-opened hatch, "No, no, let him be, it is better so." At the very rail Airar caught the man round from behind; could feel how the fisher's muscles were all tied in heaving knots; but he was strong, so the young man had to get an arm round his neck and even then a convulsive movement jerked it into a stifling hold across nose and mouth before he suddenly went all limp and passive.—Have I strangled him? (thought Airar) and let him down to the deck.

  No; for even in the uncertain light could be made out the movement of hairs round a young mouth with an overcoating of demon's blood already beginning to stink. The eyes were closed.

  "Tis Visto," said someone behind and Airar looked up over his shoulder, crying for water in a temper thoroughly foul with these men who had so deserted a companion. Rudr's voice came from the background, ordering his people sharp to the sweeps and as the vessel turned so the moonshade fell across the little group on the deck, Airar turned to face him.

  "Little use, young master," said the chief fisher, gently. "We have tried to save those before that were fingered, and always they go numb and die . . . though it is main marvellous you have slain one of these cattle. It has not been so done in the Isles of Gentebbi since King Aurunculeius' day."

  Airar felt his anger leave him a little at the sadness in the old man's tone. "Under your permission" (not holding the bite altogether from his voice) "I will still try making him and myself a trifle clean." He sloshed water on his soiled clothes and double-cupped his hands to throw more in Visto's face. The man gave two long rasping breaths, his eyes fluttered, there were a couple of barks of laughter at the edge of hysteria that were cut off with a heave as though he were about to be sick. Airar flung an arm around him and got him to a position partly kneeling. He was sick; the iulia bumped the quay and Airar felt him relax and shiver against his arm.

  "Numb and dying?" cried the son of Alvar. "The man's merely cold. A cloak, someone." Before it was brought or anything else, Vistro lifted his two palms to his eyes, dropped them, and staggering to foot, proved Airar right with a shiver of chill unmistakable. "I— I'm sound," he said slowly, "fingered but sound," and turned, feeling himself down the flanks as though the sensation of his own body were new.

  They started up the steep cobbled streets of the town with the moon shining whitely still on the housefronts where they ran round the bay like the seats of an amphitheater. Not a window was opened nor a foot abroad save those of their own procession led by Visto, with Airar's arm around him and on the other side a black-bearded man— Airar thought it might be the same who had slammed the hatch. Behind there was a murmur of sailor's soft shoes on the stones and an occasional word. At a house Rudr stepped past the leaders and double-knocked; then after a moment's wait, again. The door creaked open to show a girl with one of those boat-lamps from the Twelve Cities in her hand, smelling of fish-oil. She had a combination of snow-blonde hair with dark lashes and black eyes below. A few moments later they were seated on stools and straw round a fireplace, to wit: Rudr, Airar, Visto, the blackbearded man and another Airar did not know with a long body and Adam's apple that ran up and down. From his size he might be Erb the Lank. The girl brought mead; she was Rudr's daughter, Gython, with whom Airar touched hands, she shy, he not less than bold, for after his victory over the sea-demon he felt strong to battle kings and giants and Rudr was praising him to the company as the warlock of the world.

  Yet something was due to mere honesty and Airar could see himself asked to repeat the feat. "No such matter of enchantment, neither," said he. "I did but put a fish-spear through its neck, and it fell down dead."

  "Yet you had not the laughing fear, nah," said Rudr. "Man! I heard you shouting words of enchantment in old heathen tongues."

  "What says I had it not when that thing gripped my arm?" flashed Airar, shuddering. "It was like all the bogies out of hell till—" He stopped suddenly, mouth open midway the word.

  "Till what, say?"

  "The enchantment! No enchantment whatever. When the blood of that monster fell on me I was cured and Visto here likewise, for I was all besmutted with it when I leaned over him. Look, Master Rudr, here's your remedy—" out of the tail of his eye Airar saw Visto's head swing agreement like an apple tree in wind—"let any who be afflicted more by the touch of these demons but use the blood of a dead one as their sovran specific, for 'tis so of all demon-dogs whatever, that the evil they work can be destroyed by their death. Such black spells are a thing so unnatural and against the order of the universe that they must be constantly upheld by those who work them. I did but cry the words of protection that are a help to those beset by witchcrafts; but now you shall tell your people that Queen Kry's curse is overcome."

  Rudr drank from his mead. "Aye; and Baron Vanette-Millepigue will send us all sugar-cossets to celebrate his birthday. You be too simple by half, younker. Who's to bleed these grimmish things for their juice, or will they give it down like a cow milk?"

  Airar burst out on him that it was a matter of captaincy and finding men who could use a bow well enough to slay one or two of the creatures from a distance—"for after you have so little of this drug none need fear them more," but Rudr snorted on that and Erb the Lank broke in to say that the free-fishers were not much given to bowshot whether for chase or defense, being born to the use of the handspear. Whereupon all began together and with so many references to this man or that even of which Alvarson knew nothing that he fell on a silence.

  Over against him the girl Gython was sitting on her heels, blue dress in a circle round her, and the flickering firelight on her pale hair gave her a likeness to a lovely flower. Mostly she was watching young Visto, and Airar thought it would be dear to have her look at him like that; but presently her eye came up to catch his own and though the glance was quick withdrawn and the dim illumination left all uncertain, he might imagine she flushed. Again, having himself turned to something said by the blackbeard man, he caught out of the corner of his eye a light movement of her head as she glanced at him again. But it was all firelight and imaginings born of weariness and the lateness of the time, whose charm would be lost if one lifted a finger. So presently it was good-night and goodnight all, and they went to rest. But when Airar woke with the day it was to find that Visto had spent all night curled in a cloak outside his door.

  There was more talk with Rudr in the morning; he would have his spell against sea-demons and naught but the spell, though Airar warned him it would protect but one ship at a time and that perhaps not permanently— "for I'm none of your strong wizards, only a kind of upland spell-caster who was taught by my father and had not thought ever to use it except against certain small trolls that vex us when we spend a night a-woods. Better your people should be taught how to draw a string or throw a twist-spear and so protect themselves."

  "Bargain's bargain enough without more chaffer," replied the old man, evenly; "for the fifty I gave you, you can teach them to draw string of bow or lute or hangman's hang for all me. You be captain; but not till work's done. Might hap too, you could teach my lads a spell or oth
er for themselves."

  The end of this, of course, was that Airar must take his book forthwith down to the iulia and make what could be made. He got them all out of the hold with some difficulty (for they were curious and pleaded Doctor Meliboe had never used them so), and set up his pentacle on the roundstone where the fire had been, night agone. As soon as the first words of power were repeated Airar could feel how the whole ship stank of old magics, stronger and more deadly than any he knew. They tore at his throat and entrails as though he had swallowed a new-born dragonpup; he was not sure he could hold them and sore tempted to dismiss—might have done so but for the half-formed thought he would never get away from here to Rogai, it was carry this through or back to Naaros and be Fabrizius' retainer.

  He lifted the spell to the second stage then and they came all round him, yammering horribly just beyond the protective figure, with faces the utmost depths of evil that flowed like soft wax from form to form and always some feature disgustingly bloated or misplaced, promising or threatening to make him cease his runes. The pentacle held tight, but it wrung him through to hear those voices with their high-pitched note like a knife on marblestone that the mind could hardly bear, and when he came to the sobrathim-spell it was all he could do to keep from the yell of anguish that would give them power and him death. Somehow he managed; could feel the protection settling round him and ship in a heavy grey opaque curtain, almost physically visible, with the displaced powers piping and muttering angrily out in the glooms beyond. Sweat came out all over. He could no longer stand, but fainted clean across his figure and must have lain long in that sad state, for when he roused himself to tap on the trap-hatch overhead (having no longer strength to win free by.himself), it was to be released on a deck where the sun was bright with nooning.