Spellfall (20 page)

~~*~~

They spent all night looking for unicorns, K’tanaqui leading with his nose to the ground, Merlin sulking in the rear. Progress was slow. This close to Oq, the only paths wound between enormous shadowy soultree roots that rose like canyon walls on either side of them, too steep and high for climbing. They had no choice but to follow their twists and turns with much doubling back when K’tanaqui decided he should have taken a different canyon, while far overhead Oq’s branches thrust black roads through the stars. Somewhere up there was the Council Chamber and at least two angry Spell Lords. Natalie fretted at the delay but there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it and she had enough problems with Merlin.

When she’d told him K’tanaqui’s plan, he’d gone pale. “U-unicorns?” he whispered. “But they gore people and eat them! And the other end kicks the bones away.”

“All the more reason to get on their backs then.”

“You mean
ride
them?” He looked really alarmed, gripped her arm. “No, Natalie! We can’t!”

“Oh, for Oq’s sake!” she snapped, shrugging him off. “I should’ve left you back at the Lodge! You’ve been no use to anyone so far.”

She’d regretted the words as soon as they were out but by then it was too late to say sorry. Merlin had a brief, muttered conversation with his mouse that put him in an even deeper sulk. Since then they had walked in rigid silence, neither of them willing to admit they were wrong.

Natalie paused to pull a thorn out of her boot, saw the boy’s miserable expression, and sighed. Maybe she had been a bit unfair. After all, Hawk was still his father.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t know how to ride a unicorn either. All I’ve ever ridden is a donkey on the beach and somehow I don’t think that qualifies me for riding a unicorn. But I have to try, otherwise I’ll never make it to the Thrallstone in time, your father will kill Oq, and my mother’s spirit won’t have anywhere to live. You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to.”

Merlin chewed his lip. He stared along the root canyon back the way they had come, then ahead to where K’tanaqui waited in the moonlight. He was silent a long while. When he spoke, his voice was small and hard. “Yes I do. I want to be there when they arrest Father, and if that means I have to ride a unicorn, then I’ll do it. I’ll probably fall off, though.”

It was more of a relief than she’d expected to learn she wouldn’t have to do this thing alone. “No you won’t, not if you hold on to the mane.” She gave him a hesitant smile. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier, you know. About you being useless.”

Merlin gave her a tiny smile in return. “That’s OK. It’s true, anyway.”

After that, they talked to keep themselves awake. Merlin told her more about what had happened to him in the Heart, and she told him about her interview with Lady Atanaqui. He went quiet at this point and she wondered if he was wishing he’d seen his own mother’s ghost in the Heart. Where did ordinary Spellmages go when they died? And what about humans? She shook her head, not at all sure she wanted to know.

K’tanaqui found the Herder village just before dawn. They smelt smoke from the cook-fires long before they spotted the lazy coils against the sky. The soultree roots weren’t so high here, more like low hills with a valley winding between. Normal-sized trees clung to the ridges and the slopes were thick with moonflowers. Natalie put a hand over her nose but the flowers were already closing, their traitorous scent lost in the cooking smells.

“Breakfast,” Merlin whispered, sniffing the air.

She gave him a disgusted look. “Don’t you ever stop thinking about your stomach? Where do you think they keep the unicorns?”

“How should I know?” His tone was sulky and she almost snapped at him again. Then she saw the fear in his eyes and bit back the words.

“C’mon,” she whispered, taking his cold hand in her sweaty one. “They can’t be that hard to ride. They’re only horses with horns, aren’t they?” All the same, her heart did strange things as K’tanaqui sniffed his way up the ridge, looking back over his shoulder to check they were following.

Horrrses with horrrns beside rrriverrr.
He sounded amused.
Pups quiet now
.
Big herrrd
.

As soon as she saw the unicorns, Natalie realized her mistake.
Horses with horns
didn’t even come close. The herd was grazing on the riverbank upwind of the village. A thin mist drifted off the water, curling around their fetlocks. In the half light, their coats glimmered liquid silver. Their tails floated on the air as lightly as dandelion seeds, their manes were clouds, and their horns flashed rainbow haloes around their finely chiselled heads. Long-legged foals rippled among the adults, the tiny horn stubs on their foreheads still covered in silver fur. Natalie tried to count them, but it was impossible to focus on the creatures. As soon as she thought she had an animal fixed in one place, it would
shimmer –
and the next time she looked, it would be grazing on the far side of the herd.

Nothing moves fasterrr than a unicorrrn,
K’tanaqui informed her, still sounding amused.
Pups wait herrre. K’tanaqui brrring gentle one.
He was gone before she could protest, wriggling on his belly to get downwind of the herd.

While they waited, Merlin fidgeted. “I don’t like this,” he whispered. “There’s a guard, look.”

The guard was asleep in a hollow about halfway up the soultree root, a spear across his knees, his forehead resting on the shaft. He didn’t react when K’tanaqui slunk past him, and Natalie breathed a little easier. Then her magehound slipped into the edge of the herd and she forgot all about the guard in her concern for K’tanaqui’s safety. All those sharp hooves—

With a sudden silver blur, the creatures parted like water around a rock. She pressed her hands to her mouth as one shot out, swerved and galloped up the slope towards them, K’tanaqui panting at its heels.

Pup grrrab horrrn
! came his faint voice.
Quick!

Natalie froze. The unicorn wasn’t as big as she’d thought, more pony than horse, but it moved so fast! Its hooves skimmed the ground, making no noise. Its eye, green as a stormy sea, sucked her down.

Merlin’s scream brought her to her senses. He started to run, tripped and fell beneath the unicorn’s flashing legs. Without thinking, she flung herself into the cloud of mane and made a grab for the horn. A wild almond scent enveloped her, her glasses were knocked askew, she couldn’t see for spinning silver. Then her fingers closed about something smooth and warm. She clung on desperately with visions of being dragged. But as soon as she touched the horn, the unicorn lowered its head and stood still, shivering very slightly. Its mane floated around her, tangling with her hair. Wonder banished the last of her fear as she stroked the fine silvery strands. So soft.

Well done.
K’tanaqui panted up the ridge.
Now jump on
.

She glanced at Merlin. “K’tanaqui says to jump on. You first.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

“Merlin! Quick, before that guard wakes up and sees us. I’ll leg you up.”

Reluctantly, Merlin approached the creature. It flared its nostrils at him and rolled its eye. He sidled to its shoulder and made a small, ineffectual jump.

The horn jerked out of Natalie’s hand as the unicorn reared. It let out a scream that split her head, and lashed the air with its hooves. She flung herself to one side. Merlin was thrown to the other. K’tanaqui growled as the creature plunged back down the slope and
shimmered
into the herd. Heads shot up in an explosion of rainbows. Then the entire herd was galloping upriver, foals in the middle, screaming as they went. The guard leapt to his feet, set a whistle to his teeth and blew a single shrill note.

Natalie flattened herself to the root, heart still pounding from the scare the unicorn had given her. Breathless Herders arrived from the village and held a rapid, arm-waving conversation with the guard. Some began to jog after the herd, while others pointed their spears at the ridge where she and Merlin crouched. She hastily retreated down the other side, K’tanaqui slithering ahead, Merlin sliding behind, one hand cupped about his mouse.

At the bottom, they pushed into the undergrowth and lay panting in the shadows while the Herders ran on past.

“What now?” Natalie said, when their cries had faded. “Can we catch another one?”

Unicorrrns not let mouse-pup rrride,
K’tanaqui said.
If daughterrr-pup want to rrride, must leave Casterrr behind.

She darted a glance at Merlin. His tunic was ripped and mud smudged one cheek. He was cradling Redeye, whispering to the mouse, promising he wouldn’t let the unicorns eat him. “I can’t just leave him,” she said firmly. “Don’t they have normal horses here?”

Horrrses without horrrns not fast enough.

Her spirits sank. Maybe she should have stayed and tried to persuade the Council. She shook the thought away. Too late now.

Then K’tanaqui said,
Therrre might be anotherrr way.

“What?” Natalie sat up straight.

The magehound blinked his amber eyes. He seemed agitated about something.
Spells burrried nearrr herrre forrr rrrecycling. K’tanaqui smell them. Pups use spells to trrransporrrt to Thrrrallstone
.

Her heart fell again. “I don’t know how to use a spell.”

Mouse-pup does.

She looked doubtfully at Merlin, who was staring from the hound to her and back again. “What’s he saying?” he demanded. “What’s all that stuff about spells?”

Natalie hesitated. She didn’t know if she could stand a repeat performance of the day they’d escaped from the Lodge, and there was something K’tanaqui wasn’t telling. She gazed at the trees, trying to think. The rising sun had transformed the soultree valley into an enchanted glade filled with birdsong and sweet woodland odours. Hardly any of the leaves had turned here, and the air in the shelter of the roots was warm. It felt more like summer than the end of October, but tonight was Hallowe’en. Lord Pveriyan’s words mocked her.
It’ll take you a week to walk to the Boundary from here.

She sighed. The herd had gone. The unicorns might have been a moonflower dream, except she had the evidence, soft as mist between her fingers. Curling her hand about the strands of unicorn mane, she told Merlin what K’tanaqui had said.

*

Despite Natalie’s claim that there were spells nearby, it took the magehound the rest of the morning to find the cache. As they followed the animal along the shady Earthaven trails, neither of them speaking, Merlin turned over and over in his mind the theory of spell casting. He was determined not to make a mess of it this time but there were so many things that could go wrong, and the longer they walked the more problems he thought of. He was actually quite relieved when K’tanaqui gave a sudden bark, plunged into the trees and began to dig furiously, spraying soil between his hind legs like a common dog after a bone.

Merlin sank on to a nearby boulder and massaged his feet. The soft Herder boots weren’t made for walking, and his toes felt as if every stone in Earthaven had bruised them. He guessed Natalie’s feet must be hurting, too, because she looked pale. She sat near him and fiddled with her handful of unicorn mane, passing the smoky hairs from hand to hand as she watched the hound dig. He wondered what she was thinking about then decided he didn’t want to know the answer. Ever since she’d come out of the Heart, she’d been acting strange. First, that mad race from the soultree, then the unicorns, and now this.

He watched the hound, his nerves growing along with the hole. What he couldn’t understand was why such delicate things as spells, which he’d been brought up to treat as gently as glass, should be buried so casually in the earth.

Redeye soon put him right.
How do you think Spell Lords recycle them, then? Eat ’em and poop ’em out the other end?

Merlin had never really thought about it before but this made him think of yet another potential problem.

“How long?” he whispered.

Before Redeye could reply, Natalie scowled at him. “K’tanaqui’s digging as fast as he can! Maybe you want to help? Go ahead – I know how much you hate being clean.”

Merlin’s cheeks burned. “That’s not fair! Anyway, I meant how long does it take to recycle the spells? ’Cause if the ones your magehound’s digging up are still half dead, I’m not going to be transporting anyone anywhere.”

She gave him a startled look, then went into the peculiar trance she assumed when talking to her familiar. The magehound paused in his digging to flip a long-suffering ear. “K’tanaqui says he wouldn’t go to all the trouble of digging up dead spells,” she reported with a smile. “He says you should worry about casting them, and let him worry about their power.”

Merlin didn’t need to be told to worry. He wet his lips. “There’s a few things I haven’t told you about being transported by a spell,” he said. He hadn’t planned to tell her but it all came out in a rush. “Remember what happened when I tried to transport Redeye? It only works if there are live spells at the other end. There’d better be at least four of ’em, since there’s four of us, and the only ones I know of are in the Lodge cellar.”

She stared at him.

“It’ll be dark down there,” he rushed on. “And it’ll probably be locked. We’ll need to get out somehow but that’s not the only problem. I might, uh, materialize us inside the walls. Then there’s the danger of transporting only half of someone. And even if it works, being transported turns you inside-out. You’ll probably be sick. I usually am. And then there’s the problem of backflash—”

“I don’t need to know the details,” Natalie said quickly. “You worry about the casting and let me worry about my stomach.” She gave him a weak grin and went back to playing with the unicorn mane, her fingers moving faster and faster.

K’tanaqui had now vanished below ground. Just as Merlin began to wonder if the stupid hound hadn’t got the wrong place after all, soil stopped spraying out. There was a short pause, then purple and bronze light burst from the hole and lanced into the sky.