Well of the Unicorn

by Fletcher Pratt

  "That they will give full life to none but those of the Vulking blood? It is the thing we war against; I have been taxed out of my heritage."

  "Nay, let me have my little say. Does it not hit you strangely—you, who were taxed out and are despised, at war to bloody death with them—that in their system of the voice of the general you can find no flaw?"

  "I place myself in your hands by so saying—but not I."

  "Think on this—perhaps their plan has none . . . . I mind when I was child in Scroby. They taught us to spin, but threads would twist, and twisting, break; and I cry to Mother Valana to know what was amiss, whereat she, setting all right, would say that naught was wrong but the temper in which I had done it. So I think it is with these: that Carrhoene or the Vulking heritage, if their rules were changed, would be still the same, for it's the inner spirit, not—"

  "Argyra," said a voice loud and clear, and it was Aurea the other princess, who looked on Airar coldly, as he could see even under the dark. "I have heard," said she, "of nobler deeds that nobles did than try to take the prize without the price. Sir clerk, can you find no better target for your drawing spells than a poor silly child who purrs when stroked, like a kitten? Ha! Try them on my lord Vulk, when he comes with the fleets of the Twelve Cities."

  Not a word for a moment said Airar of Trangsted, then he saw Argyra hang expectant and realized in a clear desperate thought, though without words, that here it was, the crisis; if he spoke not now for his love the chance might never come again. "No spells!" he cried from the pit of his agony. "And what so wrong, bright lady, in us two speaking here? Nay, more; I'll dare declare my love for her, though empires fall. Would you make me recreant to that love because I will not be to Dalarna, and so strike down our happiness?"

  Argyra spoke: "I have drunk from the Well, and magics have no more bite on me, not ever."

  The tall princess merely sniffed. "A fine gesture, Master Airar. I'll certify you a part in any company of mummers you desire. But here's the Empire's daughter; barns will burn and people die if she choose not wisely, whether in love or out. What's the happiness of two beside a thousand? Nay, do not try to halt me. I know what you would say—to give all up. She cannot change her birth, the blood is there in spite of all renunciations. How would you like to see her broken on a wheel to clear some other's path to a throne, and all because she played at love with a foolish lad that captained twenty vagabonds instead of twenty thousand?"

  Airar was left, and to cruel reflection. He had not dreamed the proud Aurea could clip so close. Why, so even Aurareus, the pretty-boy of the Earl, might have in him some dash of the iron blood of old Argimenes. So thinking, so avoiding Aurea's thought (there must be a flaw in that, could he but trace it), he sought across the castle-court to Meliboe's dwelling and the comfort that could be had from his philosophy—though that might be somewhat small.

  By no means; the enchanter was just speaking to Poe the Witless at the door, he welcomed young Airar as with delight, and led him to where a pair of candles shone across a scroll opened, waiting for the junior to speak. This was less easy to do than might have been thought; Airar for a time could but gaze, and 'twas the old magician broke silence with: "I do not believe you came to look at my beautiful eyes, young master; or if you did, there are better to be seen in the dancing girls' pavilion."

  "Nay, I . . ." The voice stuck.

  "Truce. I'll not sport. You look forth as a soldier come from a defeat. Is't not that you sought the love of this high lady, but she's proved harsh, as with the Lord of Permandos? Or nay—your sorrow would stem from her sister, that would have won you to the Vulking alliance."

  "She said I dare not think on one of the House, lest there be a battle of succession, and all that destroyed which I would most preserve," said Airar miserably.

  "Therefore you'd give up hope, let her and the world and all go by default, so that the onus of these future wars rest on some other who'll lead her to the bridal bed. Yet you will not do that neither, till you've come to make me see and say how high-minded you be. Not I; Master Airar, you speak like a priest, that is, selfishly. While you have that priest's small self-content in avoiding answerableness, you do not care what happens else. Is that not it?"

  "Oh, nay." But he felt himself flush. "Aurea the princess said it was but selfishness to think on her sister, when so much of what will come to other peope of Dalarna and the Empire lies on how she weds." He checked. "And besides, I am not sure she'd have me if she were free."

  A smile played across the crest of Meliboe's beard. "Touching the last point, which is the first of your importance, I'll go warranty for you. But as to the first, which is the body of the argument, what duty do you owe to the Empire or Dalarna, or she either, for that matter? When you wear a crown imperial, with its power and glory, then you have a duty; that is the price you pay for baubles. But till such time you have only the same duty as any other man, that is to find what happiness you can and she, like any other woman, only the duty of being Redded by a youth who'll beget lusty sons upon her body."

  Said Airar: "Owe we nothing then to others?"

  "Aye, if you'll take the way of Briella, and be a grain of wheat in the sack. No man's born to duty. Has only those assumed, in change for some value—as now there is a duty from you to those fishers whom you have led so far from home that they might cry your cat-cry and further your projects. Duty, duty carries with it the surety of knowing always what's best to do for another. Look—are you God? Can you tell always what another needs? A count rode by and saw an old woman digging in a field. Thinking her lot hard, he gave her a silver aina to relieve her poverty. So she ceased digging and missed a great treasure that lay beneath the ground; but when she had gone to the city with her aina in her hand, was soon reduced to lower beggary than before."

  Airar drew a breath. "Then you'd advise I made flat contest with the Princess Aurea on this?"

  "I advise you nothing, having learned that you take little advice, young sir. You can look for advice only inside yourself, from which point the world is other than through these eyes. . . . There's another answer on your duty, duty, among the rest. Duty to whom? Not to those you think; you have only the report of eyes and ears on them, which say nothing of the heart, where lies the true man. For that, duty why, Master Airar? Would I could teach you from that idea; for duty to those you have never seen is paying obligation not to men that are ponderable, but to some principle and loose idea—as honesty, or what you will."

  "Why, yes, and wherefore not?" asked bewildered Airar. "I had hoped to be honest."

  "Ah, bah, young master." Meliboe reached over and began to roll up the reading scroll. "Honesty's but agreement with the common thought of where one dwells. I was an honest man when I made enchantments at the lyceum of Briella till the decree forbade. Suppose that decree had been passed at the moment I was in the sobrathim spell. Before it's ended I'm a villain, so have my choice of bringing it to a halt and being torn by demons or of turning contrary to law."

  "I do not think so, sir, not by what you lately said. Is that not disallegiance to a law merely, not honesty or any other thing that lies beneath the law? Why, I break Vulking law myself, and hope to see it overthrown."

  Meliboe smiled with one side of his face. "What, then, do you live by, Master Airar? Say principle, and I'll laugh. You have no test if principle be true or false, save that some man has thought to put it into law for others to live by. Even your true religion—which I doubt not you believe in without thinking on't, as the young ever—it's but a kind of law, is it not? To wit, you must accept another's word that it's right to believe thus, and wrong to believe so; and all the rest flows from that, including your very principles, to which all lesser arguments return, as kittens finding the world in the tips or their tails."

  "Sir," said Airar very earnestly, "you may talk wonderful logic from the schools and put me down, but—"

  "But I'll do so no more this night," said Meliboe, rising. "I'd not confound you, s
ure. Do but wish to make you see that you must do as you please and not think too much on that gold-haired princess, whose true metal has not a little brass."

  This was good speech-strengthening, surely; but Airar thought as he left across the dark courtyard, how could he bring it to the market where sale would be of most avail, with Argyra, Princess of Stassia? Time proved him right in this doubt; the next day she was not to be seen, nor the next, nor did any message sent bring return. It seemed clear she had fallen in with her sister's view, while in the castle men lived easy except the Carrhoene sergeants, always at it in the tilt-yard under Evimenes' glowering brows, whom Airar found a keen man with either lance or sword. Ashore the Vulkings toiled at some mysterious concern, it seemed half-heartedly renewing their causeway a little. It would be some sight of this, mingling with his effort to review the past for what else could or should have been said, that brought Airar up short—some effort to fix clearly a thought nagging at the back of his mind. Once again he saw the scene and heard the elder sister cry—"My lord Vulk, when he comes with the fleets of the Twelve Cities."

  "What's here?" he asked himself and sought Alsander. The Carrhoene was not less struck than himself and the two went at once to beg Earl Mikalegon for a full leaders' council, though it were barely noon. They were assembled after much shouting and scuttling round the court. Airar told his tale of the chance phrase while Pleiander picked his lower lip and the black brows of the Earl drew in to frown. All tried to speak at once; Mikalegon brought down his fist:

  "What's there in't, Bag-of-Bones?" he said to Alsander. "Could and would the whole Dodekapolis rise on us? I am half ready to believe it. There's a sort of friendship between myself and the lords of Phyladea, which you will not like. It is in my mind that the ship I sent there to buy for our needs after we broke the damned Vulkings is not returned and may be held."

  "It could be," said Alsander slowly. "Though I doubt the trouble lies in Phyladea, where they have little love for the People's Party, and so for the Empire. More: Phyladea would hesitate herself to oppose Os Erigu; she's not a power maritime. Or Berbixana leads this, or Sthenophon of Permandos—"

  Airar gave so vocal a start that all heads turned on him. "What's it, young Eyebright?" demanded the Earl, twisting his fingers in his beard.

  "Sthenophon of Permandos—he is just the lord whom the lady Argyra refused in marriage, and I have heard he took it ill."

  "Ho! Then I can smell a rat as large as a fox," quothEvimenes. "Vulk and Sthenophon, each searching an Imperial bride within these walls."

  "And I can smell another," cried Evadne's husky voice, cracking high. "Brothers, think on this: if what's said here be true, why, there's communion clear between our enemies without and within this place, so those within have tidings before ourselves. I cry with that hatchet-faced Mariolan, 'Treachery, treachery, dirty treachery!' —and know where it lies."

  She halted for effect, and "Where, then?" the Earl shot into the gap, peering round as though to spy a red wool bogie in every corner.

  "It starts and grows with these Imperials, the women, that need a little breast-dangling with the red-hot tongs. Hah, shudder, you eunuchs, you farting men, that look on Argimenes' House as holy and live in yesterday's world. If you're too awed of shadows, have those wenches in, and I'll get a tale from them before your eyes."

  She had come slowly to her feet; her eyes rolled and Airar wondered how he had ever thought her pleasing to the gaze as he stood himself, hand on the jewelled dag, crying confusedly that before they put Argyra to any Carrhoene tortures they must strike a rap at him; but—

  "One word."

  It was Meliboe the enchanter; he held a finger up and a little blue flame danced on its tip as his voice rolled out like oil on water, so that everyone gazed.

  "This: young master Airar has said it—the tidings came from the Princess Aurea, and you may put me to the question as well if you get aught from her. Proud, aye, and no more heart than a rotting oak; but she has the iron blood of old King Argimenes, that won a kingdom from the heathen with nothing more than a broken sword he found in the ground, and he a slave then. The cadette knows nothing; if she did we'd have clearer tidings from this young sir, who is her lover. Put these women to the question, you have the round world against you, not Vulk alone, and what of the Twelve

  Cities he has seduced, but even Dzik. Irredeemable war and a hard, dirty death for all is the end of it, for these are under the protection of the Well. And in the end it is less like that the treason lies with them than with the brother."

  "Not he," croaked Pleiander, and now all began to babble, but the moment of Evadne's fierceness had passed, and the end of this stormy council was that Earl Mikalegon would send out the ships to buy provision and to see what was toward—tall ships that could turn in the wind of those northern tides and hold free from the row-galleys they use among the Twelve Cities.

  30 Bear Fjord: The Brand Is Aloft

  THE TRUMPET on the Shore-Hill blew double, there was movement and new standards, the laborers of Briella toiled at the mole to make it wider than before. Poe said the signal meant that Vulk himself had come; within Os Erigu, men were now somewhat less willing to miss labor on the demilune and Pleiander's great trebuchet, though neither moved forward at speed, since the best of the Earl's own people were abroad with the ships and the news of a treason had leaked down till man looked on man over shoulder and under brows where dark suspicion reigned.

  The Carrhoene captains were somewhat grim with Airar in those days and even lank Erb had little to say; Trangsted's heir could guess why, seeing the tall man from distance now and again walking with Evadne. Airar found himself much alone but for Poe, with whom (as himself said) it was not so much that he was still out of favor with the Earl as that the latter had fallen on a habit of giving him little notice and found it as hard to break as any custom well-established. Yet this Poe was not a man with much to offer and young Airar found the hours somewhat heavy on his hands till a day when heat made it uneasy to bear armor.

  The sun shone; across the blue Northern Sea white-caps danced to the breeze, and a sail showed bright white against the bright blue skyline far away. It was twilight when she laid her anchor beside Os Erigu's mole and her captain under the sea-eagle standard came to the hall of council. All were sober enough there for once and this captain not less, a burly man with red hair and a nosebreaking sword-scar, called Minsæ Dark-Thought for his confused speech. So far as one could make out from his sayings, in truth obscure, he had tidings and not small— entrance refused him at Damaria, the same being a port of the Empire, and Earl Mikalegon currently under its ban, so he had sailed north and west. Midway the seas he found a ship of Lectis that said the lords of the Twelve Cities were indeed decided to make alliance with Vulk against the pirate hold that had so often racked them. Yet not all of them, neither; the fleet of the alliance was said to be in no small part manned by people from the Dalarna factories, and Berbixana city would not send her ships at all unless she had the high command, subject to none; the contingent of Xiphon had sailed with the rest but then gone off to Uravedu on the plea they must make a gold-raid to pay their men.

  "In fine, Sthenophon leads," interjected Alsander here.

  "He leads I do not know; is spadarion and had the heads off a pair of Thaskoi captains; but the Lectis Minima adventurer says he's a small spark to crawl from his hole and fire so great a flow of blood. It may be that they have made him scullery-boy."

  Someone laughed; Minaee the captain looked round puzzle-faced for the cause, which not finding, he continued with a tale of having borne up to get more tidings from the fishers of Gentebbi, which is the world's market of news. But near the islands there were no proper fishing craft, only a parade of hulls that shifted "like sands in the sea," gaily painted and with oars. There was so much wind on the water that the Erigan craft slipped them, though they came close enough to throw a crack or two with their ballistas; he marked how the sails raised in pursuit bore the wis
e woodrat that is emblem of Permandos.

  No other way about it, then; here was Sthenophon coming, and none could think of a sure resource against him, though the question was battered till purple twilight fell beyond the windows. Carrhoene Pleiander said that from his experience in siege it was now a matter of patience, they should gather provision and stand till these new invaders went hungry home. The southerners must draw food from the Micton country and would find little, while Os Erigu's tall ships could vex them on the sea. A good device; but it was clear enough time would want for the first step, and the thing would hardly be done before Vulk the Unreasonable's causeway, with now two towers on it, came to the walls. Meet them by sea? The council broke up, all feeling unsatisfied; another pair of dawns and they learned the answer to whether this might be done.

  Sthenophon and his ships. All eyes were at the sea-face to watch how under the candid late-summer sun they hove up out of the south in a line, like bugs along a floor-joint, and came crawling in. Their sails were raised; but coming near the castle on its cape, the Lord of Permandos would vaunt himself; set the oars out and all ships in order, while flute and drum sounded the sharp irregular beat that few not born in the south could follow. The Earl was at the battlement; he ordered a catapult loose and tried a cast, which fell well short as the ships went past majestically, their musics louder and more derisive, white foam curling beneath their toothed ram bows.

  As though for show the formation shifted and changed; sails came down, more oars out, and Airar's glance followed the line where men pointed, shouting. There was to point at; luck or the lack of it had brought another of Os Erigu's vessels home, rising beyond the sea-rim to full view. The Permandene galleys swept round in a long curve whose grace Airar could not but admire, hate them though he did. "Go back!" bellowed Earl Mikalegon, as though his voice would carry. It was a show in the cruel arenas of Dzik, but distant and soundless. They saw the tall ship's crown-sails glint as she turned suspicious to fly, but the galleys were faster in that light air. They spread to catch her in their net, while on the castle wall all held as it were breathless.