Lee, John.

Unicorn Saga.

The Unicorn Peace.

chaptep 1

he was alone in darkness. Around him were the sounds of rustling and sighing. Not darkness, he real- ized; utter blackness. No nightmoon; not even a dusting of stars. He stood stock still; did not dare to move as the p.r.i.c.klings of alarm coursed up his spine. He reached out with his senses. The sounds seemed to come from everywhere at once, an omnipresent and suggestive sib- ilance. There was a strong odor of loam and growing things, but nothing more. Something brushed against his face and he shied violently, would have cried out, but no sound came. I'm dreaming, he thought. This is nothing but a dream. It didn't help. He was afraid.

He forced himself to reach out. His hand encountered stalks, or what he surmised were stalks. Moving up, he felt leaves and then something fuzzy. It was well above his head and he was a shade over eight feet tall. He took a deep breath; only a dream. It reminded him of the jungle area on the Island at the Center. Could the Guardian have pulled him back, all these years later, to punish him for his destruction of the Outlanders? The Guardian was capable of it, but he knew, instinctively, that he had not. With that came the realization of what this place must be. He was out on the Alien Plain. With the knowledge came light. Not centered, like a dawn, or spilling down, like the sudden unveiling of the night- moon, but a seeping in from all quarters.

He was mewed up in gra.s.ses, tall and seemingly im- penetrable. Good hunting country for wild warcats, he thought, and shivered. There was menace in the air, its source, in part, the feeling of being closed in. That, at ieast, he could do something about. He nailed around him, breaking the thick stalks, seeing the tops sag abruptly. The amorphous light grew stronger. He started forward, striking with his arms as if they were reversed sickles. He noticed that he was wearing his habitual blue robe. Could be worse, he thought with a flash of grim humor; I've been naked in some dreams.

He ploughed ahead, arms swinging unnaturally slowly and his sandals sticking to the ground. He glanced over his shoulder and the vague feeling of dread became con- centrated in that direction. Worse, the gra.s.ses be had swept aside and trampled down had sprung up again.

He pushed on, heart thumping painfully, breath whis- tling in and out. Logic dictated that he stop and take stock of the situation, but logic had no place in this dream. Fear drove him and the slug's pace, which was the best that he could do, added to the dread.

It went on forever and yet it was over in moments.

He stood at the base of a mountain range that sloped gently at first and then soared up. He knew it instantly even though he had only seen it once before and then from above. This was the range that formed the north- ern border of the Alien Plain. Beyond it was a sea or an ocean. His glimpse of the coastline had been brief and he had been very tired.

The fear that had driven him was ebbing and he gazed at the slopes with something akin to relief. The spur of fear might be gone, but he was wary still. He turned slowly and looked at the way he had come. A towering wall of green crowded behind him. Upward then. As he turned back and glanced up, a building flickered into view and disappeared. That couldn't be. No man had ever set foot in these mountains. He took a deep breath 3.

and peered upslope. The building, large, turreted and shining, appeared and then vanished.

He stood, waiting for it to reappear, but nothing hap- pened. He braced his shoulders. No sense waiting here while the G.o.ds knew what crept up behind him. He set off again. The slope was gentle at first, but soon became steeper. Ma.s.sive boulders blocked his path, forcing him to detour. He stopped from time to time to look for the building. There was a glow, he was certain of that, and once he thought he saw a tower with a conical top. To reach it became a compulsion, but, hard as he climbed, he seemed to be getting no closer. The path turned treacherous with loose scree denying him puchase. He clung to the rocks, hauling himself up, desperate to reach the security of the insubstantial refuge. Then he lost his footing altogether and tumbled back, stomach dropping in sudden terror.

Jarred Courtak woke with a start. His mouth was dry and his hands were clenched. His heart was pounding.

He lay there for a while calming himself. The dream was still vivid in his mind and he tried to make sense of it. There were those, usually men or women in whom the Talent was weak, who made a living from the inter- pretation of dreams, but he had never been a believer.

It was true that the Archmage had once seen the future, but that had been as a result of Magic, properly ap- plied. He shrugged mentally and rolled out of bed. It would soon be time for the ritual of Making the Day.

He breakfasted in the Outpost's Hall with the rest of the Magicians and then returned to his rooms to pre- pare for the morning's meeting of the Commission for the Outland. The Commission, together with the re- search he had been doing for a history of Strand, had dominated his life for years now. He had been on the Commission since its founding thirteen years ago. Its deliberations had meandered on ever since. There had

4 been no sense of urgency in the early days. Jarrod had been alone in his conviction that the soil was safe, free of whatever had caused mutations in the past, but the barren expanse had greened since then and become a vast, flat savanna. Pressure for colonization was grow- ing.

He wondered if the past night's dream had any con- nection with the coming meeting. A vote on part.i.tion was a possibility. A draft of the proposal had been cir- culated. There was nothing in it for the Discipline. He had fought hard for territory in the beginning and had been told, politely but firmly, that the Discipline was not a sovereign state and thus had no role to play in matters territorial. He had persisted and a move had been made to oust him. He had appealed to the Arch- mage.

He smiled at the memory of what had come next.

Archmage Ragnor had descended on Stronta like the specter of death, breathing anathema. In a speech be- fore the Royal Council of Paladine, the Commissioners and the diplomatic corps, he had declared that the en- tire Outland belonged to the Discipline by right of con- quest. The resulting furor dominated conversation in the capitals of Strand for many sennights. The printed broadsheets that had sprung up since the war had had a field day. Thereafter Jarrod had not pressed the Dis- cipline's claim, but no one had challenged his right to sit on the Commission.

In the intervening years he had learned that there was little logic where matters of national interest were con- cerned and that his colleagues, intelligent, secure in their positions, often humorous in private, became rigid and inflexible when they got to the conference table. Only Qtorin of Lissen, who represented Queen Arabella of Arundel (Queen now because she had married), re- tained his skeptical sense of humor. Everyone paid lip 5.

service to the idea of a new beginning, but they clung fiercely to the old order.

At one stage, Jarrod had suggested that the Outland be developed without boundaries, under international control, an idea he still felt offered the best solution. It had caused another uproar. The growing body of schol- ars and men of letters had endorsed it enthusiastically, but even the Isphardis, who of all people should have been international in outlook, had rejected the notion.

Borr Sarad, the grizzled former Thane of Talisman, had been the only sympathetic ear.

Now, fifteen years after the war had ended, matters were coming to a head and none of the old problems had been solved. There was no agreed-upon formula for the apportionment of land. Should it be based on the size of the individual countries? Their contribution to the war effort? How then to deal with Songuard, which had done nothing during the war, or Isphardel, which had never committed a single man but had provided a vast amount of money? What of Talisman, smallest of all the nations, whose cloudsteed wings and warcat bat- talions had fought so valiantly and suffered such losses?

There had been no formal agreement on any of these points, but Phalastra of Estragoth, the elderly Umbrian Elector who was President of the Commission, was pushing for a conclusion, motivated, in Jarrod' opinion, more by the growing civil unrest in the Empire that by conviction. For himself, he could not for the life of him see how they were to come to an equitable decision. He sighed. His own idea was still the only just solution, but, after all these years of argument, he could hold out no real hope for it,

He changed out of his blue robe and donned lay at- tire. With his height he could not pa.s.s for anything but a Magician, but he had found that it was more politic not to remind people of his status. He went down to

6 the stables where his horse was saddled and waiting and took the long route to Stronta's western gate. He mar- veled anew as he rode at the difference the years had made.

The clean lines of the star fort were obscured by the wooden houses and shops that had sprung up outside the walls. The capital was almost surrounded now by a tangle of narrow streets replete with inns and bawdy houses. Only the well-founded fear of the Great Maze kept the area around Northgate clear. It now took far longer to get into the city than it had in the old days.

With all the new mouths to feed, the roads were clogged with wagons and carts bringing produce to market. So much had changed since the war, he reflected as he kicked his mount into a trot. On this day, of all days, it would not do to be late for the meeting.

chaipreR 2

C.

^^/onneian Malum, Lord Quern, sharpened his quills slowly and methodically. Taking notes at these sessions was rough. He had long since become accustomed to the various accents, but the Commission members talked fast when they were arguing, which was most of the time; they interrupted one another constantly. All the positions were so well known by now that members seldom got a chance to finish their set pieces. Once the session got going, there would be no time to sharpen a nib.

He sat at the scribes' table, his chair set somewhat apart from the others. He was an official member of the Umbrian delegation, but his patron, the Elector of Es- tragoth, wanted his own account of the proceedings, and it was Malum's job to provide it. He'd been doing it since he first came to Stronta at the age of eighteen.

The job itself was fascinating for alt it rigors. The Elec- tor divided his time between Angorn and Stronta and was a key personage in both capitals. As the Elector's private secretary, Malum followed his master every- where, and, because of his access to Phalastra, he was often courted by powerful men. While the pay was rather meager, he would never have been able to live at Court on the revenues from his estate, let alone travel to foreign lands.

Estragoth himself was a remarkable old bird. He had been well advanced in years when Malum was first taken

8 t JOHN LEE

into his household, and he must be pushing eighty now.

That in itself was no mean feat, but the remarkable thing was that the old boy was still active. He no longer hunted and he was somewhat hard of hearing, but his mind was still sharp. He walked with the aid of a stout cane on those days when the gout or the rheumatism was bad, but Malum had seen him belabor a would-be Causeway bandit with it and drive the fellow off.

He put away his knife and lined the quills up in a row. He moved the inkwell closer to him. The water clock was approaching the tenth hour and the Com- missioners would be coming in soon. They were an in- teresting lot, all except the Chamberlain who nominally represented Paladine. He was a fussy little man preoc- cupied with protocol and details, but everyone knew that the real decisions were taken by the Queen or her Arundelian paramour. There was noise from the ante- room and he looked up as the three regular scribes came in. Polite greetings were exchanged.

Borr Sarad, the former Thane of Talisman, was the first of the Commissioners to arrive. He was a compact man with an outdoor face and iron grey hair. He was always on time, usually early, and Malum could predict the opening words. Sure enough:

"Beat me to it again, eh Quern? One of these days . . . one of these days."

Malum stood and ducked his head. "May the best of the day be before us. Thane," he said, and smiled. Borr Sarad had been voted out of office by his people in the first election after the war, but everyone still used the old t.i.tle.

"Selah to that, young man," Sarad replied as he ad- vanced down the room to the desk- "Greetings, gentle- men," he said to the scribes as he pa.s.sed them. "Well, what do you think will happen today?" he asked.

"Think we'll be able to get this thing wrapped up? I 9.

certainly hope so. I've no wish to spend the summer here. It's too d.a.m.ned hot."

"At least it's dry heat here. You should try summer in the south, where I come from."

"I thank you, but no. I'll take my mountains any time of year. Seriously though, what's your opinion of how things stand?"

"Truth?" Malum asked.

Sarad grinned. "Of course not. Educated guess."

"Well then, the idea of the Outland as an interna- tional territory without boundaries doesn't stand a chance, no matter what kind of authority or combina- tion of authorities govern it. The only thing that has kept it alive this long is the Mage's reputation."

"I have to agree," Sarad admitted. "If it had come to a vote any time in the first five years, it might have stood a chance, but not now." The Thane paused and looked at Malum speculatively.

"D'you have an opinion, one that you're prepared to divulge, about the draft proposal?"

"The part.i.tion would seem to address most of the problems," Malum said Judiciously. "The Songeans are provided for, the Isphardis get an equitable share and, with all due respect, Talisman would do very well out of the settlement."