Just like your typical cat, Ben thought.
Except that Edgewood Dirk was anything but a typical cat, of course, and it didn’t matter how long or how hard he protested otherwise. The real question was, what was Ben going to do about him? Traveling with Dirk was like traveling with that older person who always made you feel like a child and kept telling you not to be one. Dirk was obviously there for a reason, but Ben was beginning to wonder if it was a reason that would serve any useful purpose.
The hardwood trees of the high forest began to give way to swamp as they approached the far north boundary of Elderew. The land began to slope away, and mist to appear in long, winding trailers. The gloom thickened and the chill dampness turned to a clinging warmth. Ben was not comforted.
The mud puppy continued on without slowing.
“Do these creatures do this sort of thing often?” Ben whispered at last to Dirk. “Ask you to follow them, I mean?”
“Never,” Dirk responded and sneezed.
Ben scowled back at the cat. I hope you catch pneumonia, he thought darkly.
They passed down into the murk, into stands of cypress and willow and thickets of swamp growth that defied description or identification. Mud sucked at his boots and water oozed into the impressions they left. The rain abated completely, and there was a sullen stillness. Ben wondered what it felt like to be dry. His clothing felt as if it were weighted with lead. The mist was quite heavy now, and his vision was reduced to a distance of no more than a few feet. Maybe we’ve been brought here to die, he decided. Maybe this is it.
But it wasn’t “it” or anything else of immediate concern; it was simply a trek through the swamp that ended at a vast mudhole. The mud puppy brought Ben and Dirk to the mudhole, waited until they were at its edge, and then disappeared into the dark. The mudhole stretched away into the mist and dark for better than fifty feet, a vast, placid sinkhole that belched air bubbles from time to time and evidenced no interest in much else. Ben stared out at the mudhole, glanced down at Dirk, and wondered what was supposed to happen next.
He found out a moment later. The mudhole seemed to heave upward at its centermost point, and a woman rose from the depths to stand upon its surface.
“Good morning, High Lord,” she greeted.
She was naked, it appeared, although it was hard to be certain because she was plastered from head to foot with mud, and it clung to her as if it were a covering. There was a glimmer of light from her eyes as they fastened on him; but, except for the eyes, there was only the shape of her beneath the mud. She rested on the surface of the sinkhole as if weightless, relaxed and quite at home.
“Good morning,” he replied uncertainly.
“I see that you have a prism cat traveling with you,” she said, her voice oddly flat and resonant. “Quite a stroke of good fortune. A prism cat can be a very valuable companion.”
Ben was not sure he agreed with that assessment, but held his tongue. Dirk said nothing.
“I am known as the Earth Mother, High Lord,” the woman continued. “The name was given to me some centuries ago by the people of the lake country. Like them, I am a fairy creature bound to this world. Unlike them, the choice to come was mine, and it was made at the time of the beginning of the land when there was need for me. I am the soul and spirit of the earth. I am Landover’s gardener, you might say. I keep watch over her soil and the things that grow upon it. The province of protection and care of the land is not mine alone, because those who live upon its surface must share responsibility for its care—but I am an integral part of the process. I give possibility from beneath and others see that possibility to fruition.” She paused. “Do you understand, High Lord?”
Ben nodded. “I think I do.”
“Well, some understanding is necessary. The earth and I are inseparable; it is part of my composition, and I am one with it. Because we are joined, most of what happens within Landover is known to me. I know of you especially, because your magic is also a part of me. There is a bond between Landover’s High Lord and the land that is inseparable. You understand that as well, don’t you?”
Ben nodded again. “I have learned as much. Is that how you know me now, even with my appearance altered?”
“I know you as the prism cat knows you, High Lord; I never rely on appearances.” There was the vaguest hint of laughter, not unkind. “I watched you arrive in Landover and I have followed you since. You possess courage and determination; you lack only knowledge. But knowledge will come in time. This is a land not easily understood.”
“It is a bit confusing just now,” Ben agreed. Already he liked the Earth Mother a whole lot better than he liked Edgewood Dirk.
“Confusing, yes. But less so than you believe.” She shifted slightly within the swirl of mist, her opaque form featureless and immutable. Her eyes glistened wetly. “I had the mud puppy bring you to me so that I could give you some information about Willow.”
“You’ve seen her?” Ben demanded.
“I have. Her mother brought her to me. Her mother and I are close in the manner of true fairy creatures and the earth. We share the magic. Her mother is ill-used by the River Master, who thinks only to possess her and not to accept her for what she is. The River Master seeks to dominate in the manner of humans, High Lord—a great failing that I hope he will come to recognize in time. Possession of the land and her gifts is not meant to be. The land is a trust to be shared by all of finite lives and never to be taken for private use. But that has never been the way of things—not in Landover, not in all the worlds beyond. The higher orders seek to dominate the lower; all seek to dominate the land. An Earth Mother’s heart is often broken in that way.”
She paused. “The River Master tries, and he is better than some. Still, he, too, seeks domination in other, less obvious ways. He would use his magic to turn the land pure without understanding that his vision is not necessarily true. Healing is needed, High Lord, but not all healing is advisable. Sometimes the process of dying and regeneration is intrinsic to development. A recycling of life is a part of being. No one can predict the whole of the cycle, and a tampering with any period can be harmful. The River Master fails to see this—just as he fails to see why Willow’s mother cannot belong to him. He only sees what needs are immediately before him.”
“Such as his need for the black unicorn?” Ben interjected impulsively.
The Earth Mother studied him closely. “Yes, High Lord—the black unicorn. There is a need that none can resist—not even you, perhaps.” She was silent a moment. “I digress. I brought you here to tell you of Willow. I have felt you with her, and the feeling is good. There is a special bond between you that promises something I have long waited for. I wish to do what I may to preserve that bond.”
One dark arm lifted. “Listen, then, High Lord. Willow’s mother brought her to me two days ago at dawn. Willow would not go to her father for help, and her mother could not give her what she needed. She hoped that I could. Willow has dreamed twice now of the black unicorn—once when she was with you, once after. The dreams are a mix of truth and lies, and she cannot separate the one from the other. I could not help her with that; dreams are not a province of the earth. Dreams live in the air and in the mind. She asked then if I knew whether the black unicorn was a thing of good or evil. I told her that it would be both until the truth of it was clearly understood. She asked if I could show her that truth. I told her that truth was not mine to give. She asked me then if I knew of a bridle of spun gold. I told her that I did. She has gone to find it.”
“Where?” Ben asked at once.
The Earth Mother was silent again for a moment, as if debating something with herself. “High Lord, you must promise me something,” she said finally. “I know you are troubled. I know you are afraid. Perhaps you will even become desperate. The road you travel now is a difficult one. But you must promise me that whatever befalls you and however overwhelming your feelings because of it, your first concern will always be for Willow. You
must promise that you will do whatever it lies within your power to do to keep her safe.”
Ben hesitated a moment before replying, puzzled. “I don’t understand. Why do you ask this?”
The Earth Mother’s arms folded into her body. “Because I must, High Lord. Because of who I am. That has to be answer enough for you.”
Ben frowned. “What if I cannot keep this promise? What if I choose not to keep it?”
“Once the promise is given, it must be kept. You will keep it because you have no choice.” The Earth Mother’s eyes blinked once. “You give it to me, remember, and a promise given to me by you cannot be broken. The magic binds us in that way.”
Ben weighed the matter carefully for several long moments, undecided. It wasn’t so much the idea of committing himself to Willow that bothered him; it was the fact of the promise itself. It was a foreclosure of all other options without knowing yet what those options might be, a blind vow that lacked future sight.
But then again, that was how life often worked. You didn’t always get the choices offered to you up front. “I promise,” he said, and the lawyer part of him winced.
“Willow has gone north,” the Earth Mother said. “Probably to the Deep Fell.”
Ben stiffened. “The Deep Fell? Probably?”
“The bridle was a fairy magic woven long, long ago by the land’s wizards. It has passed through many hands over the years and been all but forgotten. In the recent past, it has been the possession of the witch Nightshade. The witch stole it and hid it with her other treasures. She hordes the things she finds beautiful and brings them out to view when she wishes. But Nightshade has had the bridle stolen from her several times by the dragon Strabo, who also covets such treasures. The theft of the bridle has become something of a contest between the two. It was last in the possession of the witch.”
A lot of unpleasant memories surged to the fore at the mention of Nightshade and the Deep Fell. There were a good many places that Ben did not care to visit again soon in the Kingdom of Landover, but the home of the witch was right at the top of the list.
But, then, Nightshade was gone, wasn’t she, into the fairy world …?
“Willow left when I told her of the golden bridle, High Lord,” the Earth Mother interrupted his thoughts. “That was two days ago. You must hurry if you are to catch her.”
Ben nodded absently, already aware of a lightening of the sky beyond the swamp’s unchanging murk. Dawn was almost upon them.
“I wish you well, High Lord,” the Earth Mother called. She had begun to sink back into the swamp, her shape changing rapidly as she descended. “Find Willow and help her. Remember your promise.”
Ben started to call back to her, a dozen unanswered questions on his lips, but she was gone almost at once. She simply sank back into the mudhole and disappeared. Ben was left staring at the empty, placid surface.
“Well, at least I know which way Willow’s gone,” he said to himself. “Now all I have to do is find my way out of this swamp.”
As if by magic, the mud puppy reappeared, slipping from beneath a gathering of fronds. It regarded him solemnly, started away, turned back again, and waited.
Ben sighed. Too bad all of his wishes weren’t granted so readily. He glanced down at Dirk. Dirk stared back at him.
“Want to walk north for a while?” he asked the cat.
The cat, predictably, said nothing.
They were four days gone from Elderew, east and slightly south of Rhyndweir in the heart of the Greensward, when they came upon the hunter.
“Black it was, like the coal brought down out of the north mines, like some shadow that hasn’t ever seen the daylight. Sweet mother! It came right past me, so close that it seemed I might reach out and touch it. It was all grace and beauty, leaping as if the earth couldn’t hold it to her, speeding past us all like a bit of wind that you can feel and sometimes see, but never touch. Oh, I didn’t want to touch it, mind. I didn’t want to touch something that … pure. It was like watching fire—clean, but it burns you if you come too close. I didn’t want to come too close.”
The hunter’s voice was quick and husky with emotions that lay all too close to the surface of the man. He sat with Ben and Dirk in the early evening hours about a small campfire built in the shelter of an oak grove and a ridgeline. Sunset scattered red and purple across the western horizon, and blue-gray dusk hovered east. The close of the day was still and warm, the rain clouds of four nights past a memory. Birds sang their evening songs in the trees, and the smell of flowers was in the air.
Ben watched the hunter closely. The hunter was a big, rawboned man with sun-browned, weathered skin and calloused hands. He wore woodsman’s garb with high leather boots softened by hand for comfort and stealth, and he carried a crossbow and bolts, long bow and arrows, a bolo, and a skinning knife. His face was long and high-boned, a mask of angles and flat planes with the skin stretched tightly across and the features strained by the tension. He had the look of a dangerous man; in other times, he might have been.
But not this night. This night he was something less.
“I’m getting ahead of myself,” the man muttered suddenly, an admonishment as much as a declaration. He wiped at his forehead with one big hand and hunkered down closer to the flames of the campfire as if to draw their warmth. “I almost wasn’t there at all, you know. I was almost gone to the Melchor hunting bighorn. Had my gear all packed and ready when Dain found me. He caught up with me at the crossroads out, running like his woman had found out the worst, calling after me like some fool. I slowed and waited, and that made me the real fool. ‘There’s a hunt being organized,’ he said. ‘The King himself has called it. His people are out everywhere, drawing the best and the quickest to net something you won’t believe. A black unicorn! Yea, it’s so,’ he says. ‘A black unicorn that’s to be hunted down if it takes all month, and we have to chase the beast from valley’s end to valley’s end. You got to come,’ he says. ‘They’re giving each man twenty pieces a day and food and, if you’re the one who snares him, another five thousand!’ ”
The hunter laughed sullenly. “Five thousand pieces. Seemed like the best chance I’d ever get at the time—more money than I’d see in ten years work any other way. I looked at Dain and wondered if he’d lost his mind, then saw the way his eyes were lit and knew if was all real, that there was a hunt, that there was a bounty of five thousand, that some fool—King or otherwise—believed there was a black unicorn out there to be caught.”
Ben glanced momentarily at Dirk. The cat sat a few feet from him, eyes fixed intently on the speaker, paws curled up underneath so that they didn’t show. He hadn’t moved or spoken since the hunter had come across their tiny camp and asked if he might share their meal. Dirk was to all outward appearances a normal cat. Ben couldn’t help wondering what he might be thinking.
“So we went, Dain and me—us and another two thousand of the same mind. We went to Rhyndweir where the hunt was to begin. The whole plain between the split in the rivers was packed tight with hunters camped and waiting. There was beaters and drivers, there was the Lord Kallendbor and all the other high-and-mighty landsmen with all their knights in armor and foot soldiers. There was horses and mules, wagons loaded down with provisions, carriers and retainers, a whole sea of moving parts and sounds that would have frightened any other prey from ten miles distant! Mother’s blood, it was a mess! But I stayed on anyway, still thinking about the money, but thinking about something else now, too—thinking about that black unicorn. There wasn’t any such creature, I knew—but what if there was? What if it was out there? I might not catch it, but, Lord, just to see it!
“That same evening we were all called before the castle gates. The King wasn’t there; his wizard was—the one they call Questor Thews. He was a sight! Patchwork robe and sashes made him look like a scarecrow! And there was this dog with him that dressed like you and me and walked on his hind legs. Some said he could talk, but I never heard it. They stood up there w
ith the Lord Kallendbor and whispered to him things no one else could hear. The wizard had a face like chalk—looked scared to death. Not Kallendbor, though—not him. He never looks afraid of anything, that one! Sure as death itself and ready to pronounce judgment. He called out to us in that big, booming voice you could hear for a mile on those plains. He called out and told us that this unicorn was a real live beast and it could be tracked and caught like any other beast. There were enough of us and we would have it or know the reason why! He gave us our places and the line of sweep and sent us off to sleep. The hunt was to begin at dawn.”
The hunter paused, remembering. His eyes looked past Ben in the growing darkness to some point distant in time and place from where they sat now. “It was exciting, you know. All those men gathered together like that—a hunt greater than any I had ever heard tell. There were to be Trolls north along the Melchor and a number of the fairy tribes south above the lake country. They didn’t seem to think the unicorn would be south of there—don’t know why. But the plan was to start on the eastern border and drive west, closing the ends north and south like a huge net. Beaters and horsemen would work from the east; hunters and snares would set up west in moving pockets. It was a good plan.”
He smiled faintly. “It started right on schedule. The line east began to move west, clearing out everything in its path. Hunters like myself set up in the hill country where we could see everything that moved in the grasslands and beyond. Some rode chaser all along the front and ends, flushing whatever was hidden there. It was something, all those men, all that equipment. Looked like the whole valley was gathered in that one huge hunt. Looked like the whole world. The line came west all that day from the wastelands to Rhyndweir and beyond—beaters and chasers, horsemen and foot soldiers, wagon-loads of provisions going back and forth from castles and towns. Don’t know how they got it organized so fast and still made it work—but they did. Never saw a thing, though. Camped that night in a line that stretched from the Melchor down to Sterling Silver. Campfires burned north to south like a big, winding snake. You could see it from the hills where Dain and I were set up with the other hunters. We stayed out of the main camps. We’re more at home up there anyway—can see as well at night as in day and had to keep watch so that nothing sneaked past in the dark.