“Name the gain.” The dragon-man signaled behind him. The arriving troops moved to the very
edges of the trail, not beyond, and formed twin lines, guarding each others' backs without
a word. They were well-trained for war.
The stag considered what that meant, but went ahead. “There is one who watches over this
wood.” He hesitated, then amended, “Who rules this wood. All in it, living and . . . human
and animal, serve her.” He took a deep breath and finished, “To take this wood, it is only
needed to slay her.”
Treachery neither surprised nor impressed the dragon- man. “And she is?”
“The Forestmaster. The ruler here. A white unicorn.”
Several of the company hissed involuntarily. The leader started. “A unicorn? You suggest a
blood-force of draconians could - ”
“Hunt her and slay her, yes.” The stag added drily, “It appears the moral requirements for
such a hunt were exaggerated. That seems sensible, since there is no morality to such a
hunt.” He added more plainly, “You need not be virgins.”
The dragon-man waved a claw. “We have no capacity for desire.” He made a face that could
have been a smile. “Or for love.”
“You are happier than you know,” the stag said, mainly to himself. Aloud he repeated, “I
have offered you a unicorn hunt. Will you take my offer?”
The dragon-man considered. “How would we find her?”
“You would not. I would, and you would follow. For the rest - ” The stag shrugged, his
shoulders rippling the motion up his well-muscled neck. “Surely you need not ask me how to
hunt and slay animals.” An old ache reminded him what this betrayal meant, to the lover as
well as to the loved. For one moment he had a vision of those teeth, those claws, tearing
at the shadowless white flesh of the Forestmaster.
The dragon - draconian - had not moved for some time. “We would do this for conquest, as
well as for reasons we will not share.“ He smiled, after his kind, with a great many teeth. ”Why would you do
this?”
“For reasons I will not share.” He finished more softly. “For reasons which, apparently,
would mean little to you.” More and more, the stag was wondering why scorned love and
thwarted desire meant much to himself. “I was not aware that soldiers needed excuses, or
perhaps you do not feel up to your quarry.”
The draconian answered without anger, “Look in our faces. We could hunt any creature alive
to its death.” “I see. And beyond?” the stag asked politely, but the joke was lost on them. “Follow, then. Not too closely.” As he turned and bounded away, he
heard a single command, a word or a language he did not know. Once again he was afraid - for his world,
and not for himself.
“Perhaps I grow sentimental. Next I will write bad songs and carry noisy bipeds on my
back,” he said aloud. But the joke was flat, and he realized that sarcasm and self- parody
could no longer protect him from his own feelings. Behind him he heard the rasp of strange
and wicked claws, tearing at the wood that was his whole world.
He was more than halfway to the clearing when bulky shapes, half-hidden in leaves, blocked
his way. He froze in place, hoping the draconians behind him would do the same.
A voice called, “Halt.” “Remarkably alert,” the stag observed, “if unnecessary.” “Don't be
giving rudeness to those who keep faith.” The deep voice, unbothered at the stag's sarcasm, went on, “Where does tha go?”
“I have an errand.” He spoke coldly, hoping the sentry would take offense and turn away.
“Is it habitual in this wood to question duty?”
“Not my habit, nor that of my kind.” The figure emerged from the undergrowth. It was, as
he had known from the size and voice, a centaur.
Nonetheless, he peered at it curiously.
“Ah,” he said as if in recognition. “A draft human. Tell me, how is life in harness?”
The centaur regarded him, as always, with the easy contempt that the hooved and human show
the merely human or the merely hooved.
“We are not in harness but in service - as others should be,” the centaur said heavily. He
tossed his head restlessly. "I have heard rumors and smelled scents this day, as well.
Are more strangers in Darken Wood?" The stag would not look in the centaur's large, dark eyes. “Perhaps you smell the strangers from last night. Is there any reason that their
smell would cling to you?”
“We bore them on our backs,” he said with dignity. “As all in this wood know. Are more
strangers in Darken Wood?” he repeated.
“Why ask me? Surely you think you know more than I; your breed studies stars as well as
any beast of burden could.”
“Mockery. It's all tha has.” He snorted, horselike. “Try to hide the truth from us both,
if tha wishes. I study little, but I know stars. These past nights they tell of battle,
and of life and death for a stag. It's a' there - for them as looks close.” He added,
“Maybe tha has not seen these strangers - but tha will.” He turned to go.
The stag watched him. “I have a retort,” he called, “timed and well framed, laden with
irony and literary allusion - but I refuse to favour you with it. I have my dignity.”
The centaur said nothing, and in the stag's heart he knew that was the best retort of all.
The centaur waited a moment longer, then went his way.
A moment later the lead draconian appeared, sword ready, behind the stag. “He is gone?”
“He is.” The stag was looking where the centaur had been, thinking hard. He tried to
imagine the centaurs dead and defeated, bleeding as the wood fell again to strangers. He
could not imagine that any centaurs would run, or would turn traitor, or would think at
all of themselves.
“Then we remain undiscovered.”
The stag thought over the centaur's words. “Let us say you remain unseen. Remain so a
while longer, by moving behind me again.”
The draconian looked at the stag without love and withdrew. The stag moved slowly,
thoughtfully, toward the center of Darken Wood.
He caught himself humming. “It's that damned song,” he muttered. “Crude and folkish, but
the tune sticks in the mind.”
Actually, it was the words which stuck in his mind. He found himself singing,
half-unwillingly:
THE STAG LED ON FROM NIGHT TO DAWN, FROM SUNRISE INTO MORN, AND IN THE SHADE OF SHADOW
GLADE BETRAYED THE UNICORN.
SHE SPOKE TO HIM; HER VOICE WAS GRIM: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR PRIDE? YOU KNOW AND SEE YOUR
DESTINY AND YET YOU TURN ASIDE.
YOU WOULD BETRAY ME TO MY DEATH AND QUITE FORSAKE YOUR VOW? THEN SERVICE LENT WITHOUT
CONSENT IS ALL YOU DO ME NOW."
SHE TOUCHED HIM ONCE, SHE TOUCHED HIM TWICE, AND THREE TIMES WITH HER HORN; AND THERE HE
FELL, AND WHERE HE FELL, HE ROSE A UNICORN.
He heard reptilian muttering behind him and stopped singing. If those behind him were
truly to kill the Forestmaster, all music here - perhaps, eventually, all the music in the
world - would cease, and all for the stag's petty revenge.
A winged shadow drifted overhead. He ducked automatically, but it was only one of the
pegasi, cir cling and diving above the wood.
The stag could picture something larger, something with wings like the draconians',
stooping onto the pegasi. He could hear them shrieking, flapping frantically, tumbling
from the sky -
“Not them,” he murmured. “Not by my doing, surely. But what can I do against these
invaders?”
And a moment later, he thought, startled, “And could I give up my revenge, my vengeance
for being scorned, after treasuring it for so long? In this cycle of sorrow, vengeance is
all that sustains me.”
It was something to consider on a long walk.
At mid-day the stag entered the Central Glade alone, well ahead of the draconians.
“Master!” The woods took his cry in, draining it, not echoing.
“I am here,” came the voice from the rock softly. “I am always here.” The woods echoed
ALWAYS.
“I have a question.” “You have often had questions. You may ask.” “There are many and
diverse beings who l-live - ” he stumbled over the word “ - inhabit this wood. Some hooved, some human, some both; some living, some dead, some a mix of living and dead.”
“That much is true.” She waited. “How do they think of me? Do they think of me as one of
them?” The loneliness in his own voice startled him. “You are regarded differently by different beings. Do you wish to be thought one of them?” The stag thought of those he knew and taunted, then thought of the draconians. “I had not thought so. But recently I discovered a threat which
I do not want to harm creatures here, as though they were mine and I cared for them.”
“Then by that care, they are yours and you theirs. Does that please you?”
After a long silence, the stag said quietly, “I had not thought it would.”
“I am glad.” The Forestmaster added, “But that is not why you came, this night, as you
have come all the others.”
“True.” The stag came forward to the rock. “I have come to you a final time. Will you not
have me?”
“In service, yes. In love, no.” She leapt from the rocks, landing in a cascade of light
like stars, even by day. Like the king, like the stag himself, she did not seem surprised
by events.
But she was astonished when the stag bent his forelegs and knelt awkwardly in the dust
before her. He swayed, unaccustomed to kneeling. “Then I will serve you, a final time.
This last thing I do of my own choosing.”
The unicorn stared at his lowered head. “May I ask why?”
The stag answered, not moving. “Do not think me inconstant.”
“That is the last thing I would think you.”
“Good. All that I felt, all that I wish for and desire - ” his voice wavered“ - are
unchanged. But in all the endless times that I have left here, returned here, betrayed
here, I never saw the simplest reality of this place: That the wood is larger than I am.
It is larger than my need. In the end, it will be larger, and last longer, than even my
love could. I offer that love, to it and you, freely and without asking in return - since
without asking, you and the wood itself and all in it have always given what you could. I
offer my service, and,” he finished humbly, “I hope it is well done enough to be of use.”
The unicorn looked at him for a long time, seeing every detail of him, every hair and horn and eyelash. At last she said gently, “Most well done,
beloved. And remember that I have only said that I COULD not love you - never that I DID
not. Go with the hunt.”
She touched his forehead with her horn three times.
He fell sideways, legs jerking and twitching. Terrible cries came from him, most loudly
when the antlers broke off. His coat grew paler with each moment, and where the
Forestmaster had touched him a single spiral horn emerged, blood-tipped, pulling itself
through his splintered forehead.
When the draconians emerged, they saw a rock peak and only one unicorn, tottering
unsteadily on its hooves. With shouts of triumph they leaped into the air, gliding in
pursuit of the unicorn, with their swords swinging and their fanged mouths wide.
The stag moved, stumblingly at first, into Darken Wood. One by one the draconians alit and
stalked him on foot.
Through the long afternoon, the stag learned again the old lesson: some hunters one may
outrun, but not outlast. Whenever he entered the slightest clearing, the draconians
covered more ground than he, gaining rest from the time spent gliding. He wondered if they
could fly at all, but soon he was too tired to wonder. While he stayed in the densest
forest they could not fly, but he could not run easily, either.
Moreover, in the forest he had to break his own trail, but they could follow in the way he
left behind;
he was doing their trailbreaking as well as his own. If he stopped to rest even a moment,
he heard the snap of brush and swish of branches closer behind him than they had been when
last he rested.
“I would not,” he observed to himself as he raced after one such pause, “have thought they
could be so patient. It is like being pursued by the dead, as I above all have cause to
know.”
They had swords and daggers, and perhaps other weapons as well, but the animal in the stag
thought most of those pointed teeth, the cold eyes, the hissing breath. He had been
pursued - how many times? - for sport, for the challenge, even for his antlers or for a
vow, but being chased as meat -
His heart went sick within him and pounded every beat as hard as his hooves pounded the
rock-strewn ground.
Behind him came the cold cries of the hunting draconians. To the rhythm of his own
rock-chipped hooves, he could not choose but hear the darkest verse of the song touching on himself and on King Peris:
THE GUARDS HAVE FLED; THEIR TRUSTING LAND ALL UNDEFENDED LIES; AND THROUGH THE WOOD
INVADERS RIDE WITH DARKNESS IN THEIR EYES.
WITHOUT ALARMS THEY PRACTICE CHARMS THAT DRIVE AWAY THAT LIGHT AND SHADOW INTO DARKEN WOOD
IS MADE THAT EVIL NIGHT.
AND AFTERWARD, WITH SWORD AND SPEAR AND HORSE AND HORN AND HOUND THEY HUNTED DOWN KING
PERIS'S MEN AND RAN THEM ALL TO GROUND.
THE KING WAS SLAIN, HIS BODY LAIN AMONG HIS DYING MEN, BUT THEY WERE TOLD ERE THEY WERE
COLD TO RISE AND HUNT AGAIN.
He ran over the green and sunlit hill called Huma's Breast, and found no peace there.
Within sight of Prayer's Eye Peak he raced along the river called Night, and took no sleep
by it.
He passed the Vale of Sorrow. He passed the Cliffs of Anger. He passed the Slough of
Betrayal. Always the draconians grew closer.
“I had not thought Darken Wood so large,” he thought once. “Surely I should never have
chided the king for a single lapse in guarding so large a trust.” He thought briefly of
all the scorn he had shown the king, and more fleetingly of how he had originally tempted
the king into betraying his trust, but there was little time for apology.
Twice, in the late afternoon, they encircled him and began closing. The first time, he
leaped contemptuously over a startled draconian, in full view of the company. The soldier
jerked his sword upright hastily, but barely managed to leave a furrow along the stag's
flank.