The Black Unicorn

by Terry Brooks

  Ben drank in the smell, taste, sight, and feel of the valley as if sampling a fine wine. Gone was the mistiness and wintry gray blight that had marked the land when he had first come over and the magic had been dying. The magic was well now, and the land was whole. The valley and her people were at peace.

  Ben was not. He set a steady pace as he traveled, but not a quick one. The need for haste he had felt earlier had given way to a strange anxiety at the thought of actually leaving. This would be his first trip out of Landover since his arrival, and although the idea of leaving had not bothered him before, it was beginning to bother him now. A nagging concern lurked about the edges and corners of his determination—that once he left Landover he would not be able to come back again.

  It was ridiculous, of course, and he tried valiantly to beat it down, seeking to convince himself that he was experiencing the same misgivings any traveler encountered at the beginning of a trip away from home. He tried arguing that he was a victim of his friends’ repeated warnings and humming “Brigadoon” to lighten the mood.

  Nothing helped, however, and he finally gave it up. Some things you simply had to put up with until they lost their grip on you.

  It was midafternoon when his party reached the lower slopes of the valley’s western rim. He left the soldiers there with the horses and instructions to set up camp and wait for his return. He might be gone as long as a week, he told them. If he wasn’t back by then, they were to return to Sterling Silver and advise Questor. The captain of the squad gave him a funny look, but accepted the orders without argument. He was used to his King going off on strange errands without his guard—although usually he had one of the kobolds or the wizard in tow.

  Ben waited for the captain’s salute, then slung the duffel bag over one shoulder and began the hike up the valley slope.

  It was nearing sunset when he reached the summit and crossed toward the misted forest line that marked the boundaries of the fairy world. Daytime’s warmth was slipping rapidly toward evening’s cool, and his elongated shadow trailed after him like a grotesque silhouette. There was a deep, pervasive stillness in the air, and he felt a sense of something hidden.

  Ben’s hand strayed to the medallion that hung about his neck, and his fingers closed about it firmly. Questor had told him what to expect. The fairy world was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and all of its many doorways to the worlds beyond were settled within. The way back was whatever way he chose to go and it could be found at whatever point he chose to enter. All he need do was fix in his mind his destination and the medallion would see him to the proper passageway.

  That was the theory, at least. Questor had never had the opportunity to test it.

  The mist swirled and stirred within the great forest trees, its trailers twisting like snakes. The mist had the look of something alive. There’s a cheerful thought, Ben chided himself. He stopped before the mist, regarded it warily, took a deep breath to steady himself, and started in.

  The mist closed about him instantly and the way back became as uncertain as the way forward. He pushed on. A moment later, a tunnel opened before him—the same vast, empty, black hole that had brought him across from the old world a year earlier. It burrowed through mist and trees and disappeared into nothingness. There were sounds in the tunnel, distant and uncertain, and shadows dancing at its rim.

  Ben’s pace slowed. He was remembering what it had been like when he had passed through this tunnel the last time. The demon known as the Mark and his black, winged carrier had come at Ben from out of nowhere; by the time he had decided they were real, they had very nearly finished him. Then he had practically stumbled over that sleeping dragon …

  Slender shapes darted at the fringes of the darkness within the trees and mist. Fairies.

  Ben quit remembering and forced himself to walk more quickly. The fairies had helped him once, and he should have felt comfortable among them. But he did not. He felt alien and alone.

  Faces materialized and vanished again in the mists, sharp-eyed and angular with hair the consistency of willow moss. Voices whispered, but the words were indistinct. Ben was sweating. He hated being in the tunnel; he wanted out of there. Ahead, the darkness pressed on.

  Ben’s fingers still clutched the medallion in a death grip, and he thought suddenly of the Paladin.

  Then the darkness before him brightened to dusky gray, and the tunnel’s length shortened to less than fifty yards. Indefinable shapes swayed unevenly in the half-light, an interlacing of spider webs and bent poles. Voices and movement in the walls of the tunnel gave way to a sharp hissing. A sudden wind rose and howled sharply.

  Ben peered ahead into the gloom. The wind whipped at him from the edges of the tunnel’s end and carried the hissing sound into his face with a wet, stinging rush.

  And there was something else …

  He stepped from the tunnel’s shelter into a blinding rainstorm and found himself face to face with Meeks.

  Ben Holiday froze. Lightning streaked from skies leaden and packed with low-hanging clouds that shed their rain in torrents. Thunder boomed, reverberating across the emptiness, shaking the earth beneath with the force of its passing. Massive oak trees rose all about like the staked walls of some huge fortress, their trunks and leaf-bare limbs glistening blackly. Shorter pine and fir bristled in clumps through the gaps left by their taller sisters, and the rugged slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains lifted darkly against the nearly invisible horizon.

  The spectral figure of Meeks stood pinned against this backdrop. He stood without moving, tall and bent and old, white hair grizzled, craggy face as hard as iron. He looked almost nothing of the man Ben remembered. That man had been human; this man had the look of an enraged animal. Gone were the pressed woolen slacks, corduroy jacket, and loafers—the trappings of civilization that had complemented an urbane, if gruff sales representative of a highly respected department store. Those reassuringly familiar business clothes had been replaced by robes of gunmetal blue that billowed like sailcloth and seemed to absorb the light. A high collar jutted from the shoulders to frame a ghastly, pitted face twisted by fury that bordered on madness. The empty sleeve of his right arm still hung limp. The black leather glove that covered his left hand was yet a claw. But each was more noticeable somehow, as if each were a scar left bare for viewing.

  Ben’s throat constricted sharply. There was a tension in the old man that was unmistakable—the tension of an attacker poised to strike.

  My God, he has been waiting for me, Ben thought in shock. He knew I was coming!

  Then Meeks started for him. Ben took one step back, his right hand tightening frantically about the medallion. Meeks was almost on top of him. The wind shifted, and the sounds of the storm echoed through the mountains with renewed sharpness. The rain swept back against his face, forcing him to blink.

  When he looked again, Meeks was gone.

  Ben stared. Meeks had disappeared as completely as if he had been a ghost. Rain and darkness cloaked the whole of the surrounding forestland in a shroud of gray wetness. Ben glanced about hurriedly, disbelief twisting his face. There was no sign of Meeks.

  It took only a moment for Ben to regain his scattered thoughts. He caught sight of the dim outline of a pathway directly before him and started for it. He moved quickly ahead through the trees, following the pathway’s curve as it wound down the mountainside and away from the time passage that had brought him back to his old world from Landover. And he was indeed back—of that much he was certain. He was back in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, deep in the George Washington National Forest. This was the same pathway that had brought him into Landover more than a year ago. If he followed it far enough, it would take him down out of the mountains to Skyline Drive, a turn-around with the black number 13 stenciled on a green sign, a weather shelter, and—most important of all—a courtesy telephone.

  He was soaked through in moments, but he kept moving steadily ahead, the duffel clutched tightly under one arm. H
is mind worked rapidly. That wasn’t Meeks he had seen, hadn’t even looked like the old Meeks, had been barely recognizable, for Pete’s sake! Besides, Meeks wouldn’t have just disappeared like that if it had really been him, would he?

  Doubt tugged sharply at his mind. Had he simply imagined it all, then? Had it all been some sort of mirage?

  Belatedly, he thought of the rune stone that Willow had given him. Slowing, he fished through the pocket of his jacket until he found the stone and brought it out into the light. It was still milky in color and gave off no heat. That meant no magic threatened him. But what did that tell him about the phantom vision of Meeks?

  He pushed ahead, slipping on the damp, water-soaked earth, pine boughs slapping at his face and hands. He was aware suddenly of how cold it was in these mountains, the chill settling through him with an icy touch. He had forgotten that late autumn could be unpleasant, even in western Virginia. Illinois could be frigid. It might even be snowing in Chicago …

  He felt something catch in his throat. Shadows moved through the mist and rain, darting and sliding from view. Each time, he saw Meeks. Each time, he felt the wizard’s gloved hand reaching for him.

  Just keep moving, he told himself. Just get yourself to that phone.

  It seemed to take much longer, but he reached the courtesy phone some thirty minutes later, climbing down from among the trees and crossing the parkway to the weather shelter that housed it. He was soaked to the skin and freezing, but he felt none of it. The entirety of his concentration was focused on the Plexiglas-enclosed black and silver metal box.

  Please let it be working, he prayed.

  It was. Rain beat down on the shelter roof in a steady thrum, and mist and gloom closed tightly about. He thought he heard footsteps. He rummaged through his duffel for the coins and credit card he still carried in his wallet, rang information for the name of a limo service out of Waynesboro, and called for a car to come up and get him. It was all done in a matter of minutes.

  He sat down then to wait on the wooden bench fastened to the side of the shelter. He was surprised to discover that his hands were shaking.

  By the time the limo reached him and he was safely inside, he had regained his composure enough to reason through what had happened to him.

  He no longer thought that he had imagined the appearance of Meeks. What he had seen had been real enough. But it hadn’t been Meeks he had seen; it had been an image of Meeks. The image had been triggered by his crossing back through the time passage. He had been meant to see the image. It had been placed there at the tunnel’s end so that he would see it.

  The question was, why?

  He hunched down in the backseat of the limo as it sped down the parkway toward Waynesboro and considered the possibilities. He had to assume that Meeks was responsible. No other explanation made any sense. So what was Meeks trying to accomplish? Was he trying to warn Ben off—to chase him back through the time passage? That didn’t make any sense. Well, no, the warning part did. Meeks was arrogant enough to want to let Ben know that he was aware of his coming back. But there had to be more to it than that. The image must have been placed there to accomplish something else as well.

  He had his answer almost immediately. The image had not only warned Ben of Meeks; it had warned Meeks of Ben! The image was a device to alert the wizard that Ben had come back from Landover!

  It made perfect sense. It was only reasonable to expect that Meeks would employ some contrivance—magic or otherwise—to warn him when Landover’s failed Kings crossed back into their old world with the medallion. Once alerted, Meeks could then come after them …

  Or, in this case, after him.

  It was late afternoon when the driver deposited him at the front steps of a Holiday Inn in downtown Waynesboro, the rain still falling, the daylight completely gone. Ben told the fellow he was on vacation and had hiked the parkway north from Staunton until the bad weather forced him to abandon the plan and call for help. The driver looked at him as if he were nuts. The weather had been like this for better than a week, he snapped. Ben shrugged, paid him in cash, and hurried inside.

  On his way to the front desk, he paused long enough to check the date on a newspaper someone had left lying on a table in the lobby. It read Friday, December 9. It was ten days more than a year since he had first walked through the time passage from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia into Landover. Time in the two worlds did indeed pass synchronously.

  He booked a room for the night, sent out his clothes to be cleaned and dried, took a steaming-hot shower to warm himself, and ordered dinner sent in. While he waited for the meal and his clothes, he called the airport for reservations to Chicago. There was nothing until morning. He would have to fly to Washington, then transfer to Chicago. He booked the reservation, billed it to his credit card, and hung up.

  It was while he was eating dinner that it occurred to him that using a credit card to pay for his air fare wasn’t exactly the smartest thing he could have done. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in front of the TV, the tray balanced on his lap, a Holiday Inn towel wrapped about him, and the room temperature at about eighty. His clothes were still out. Tom Brokaw was giving the news, and it suddenly struck Ben that in a world of sophisticated communications a computerized credit-card trace was a relatively simple matter. If Meeks had gone to the trouble of placing that image at the opening of the time passage to warn of Ben’s return, then he would almost certainly take the matter a step further. He would know that Ben would attempt a visit to Chicago. He would know that Ben would probably elect to fly. A credit-card trace would tell him the airline flight, date of travel, and destination.

  He could be waiting when Ben stepped off the plane.

  That possibility ruined what was left of the meal. Ben put the tray aside, clicked off the TV, and began to consider more carefully what he was up against. Abernathy had been right. This was turning out to be more dangerous than he had imagined. But he really didn’t have any choice. He had to go back to Chicago and see Miles long enough to discover whether there was any truth to his dream. Meeks would probably be waiting for him somewhere along the line. The trick was to avoid bumping into him.

  He permitted himself a brief smile. No problem.

  He had his clothes back by nine o’clock and was asleep by ten. He awoke early, had breakfast, shouldered the duffel, and caught a cab to the airport. He flew to Washington on the previous night’s reservation, then canceled the balance of the ticket, walked over to another airline, booked a seat to Chicago on standby under an assumed name, paid for this ticket with cash, and was airborn before noon.

  Let’s see Meeks pick up on that one, he thought to himself.

  Eyes closed, he leaned back in his seat and reflected on the strange set of circumstances that had taken him away from his home in Chicago to Never-Never Land. The memories made him shake his head reprovingly. Maybe, like Peter Pan, he had just never grown up. He had been a lawyer then, a damn good one, one from whom great things were expected by those who were the movers and shakers in the business. He was in practice with his friend and longtime associate Miles Bennett, a shared partnership in which the two complemented each other like old shoes and work jeans—Ben the outspoken, audacious trial lawyer, Miles the steady, conservative office practitioner. Miles often deplored Ben’s judgment in taking cases, but Ben always seemed to land on his feet despite the heights from which he insisted on jumping. He had won more courtroom battles than the average bear—battles in which his corporate opponents had thought to bury him under an avalanche of money-backed rhetoric and paperwork, legal dodges, delays, and gamesmanship of all sorts. He had so surprised Miles after his victory in the Dodge City Express case that his partner had begun referring to him as Doc Holiday, courtroom gunfighter.

  He smiled. Those had been good, satisfying times.

  But the good times faded when Annie died. The satisfaction disappeared like quicksilver. His wife had died in a car accident, three months pregnant, and he
seemed to lose everything after that. He turned reclusive, shunning everyone but Miles. He had always been something of a loner and he sometimes thought that the death of his wife and baby had just reinforced what was always there. He began to drift, the days running together, their events merging indecipherably. He sensed that he was slowly slipping away from himself.

  It was difficult to know what might have happened had he not come across the bizarre offering in the Rosen’s Department Store Christmas Wishbook for the purchase of the throne of the kingdom of Landover. He had thought it ridiculous at first—a fantasy kingdom with wizards and witches, dragons and damsels, knights and knaves for sale for one million dollars. Who would be foolish enough to believe that? But the desperate dissatisfaction he was experiencing in his life had led him to take the chance that something in this impossible fantasy might be real. Any risk was worth taking if it could bring him back to himself. He had shelved his doubts, packed his bags, and flown to Rosen’s New York office to see what was what.

  He was required to undergo an interview in order to complete the sale. The interviewer had been Meeks.

  The familiar image of Meeks flashed instantly to mind—the tall, old man with the whispered voice and dead eyes, a veteran of wars Ben could only imagine. The interview was the only time they had ever met face to face. Meeks had found him an acceptable candidate to be Landover’s King—not to succeed as Ben had believed, but to fail. Meeks had convinced him to make the purchase. Meeks had charmed him like a snake its prey.

  Meeks had also underestimated him.