Selected Short Stories Featuring Ghost Dust Page 6

creatures of intense beauty. But what man has forgotten is that they were creatures of immense strength, larger than any other horse, but with cunning and magic to rival the greatest sages. And their order comprised some of the bravest men of the nobility, sworn to lay their lives to protect these creatures.

  The order seized every piece of unicorn jewelry and ornamentation, and for a time the horns from whales, who had long ago slain all the sea dragons, became fashionable in their stead. The order hunted, without mercy or quarter, any poachers of unicorns. Their spies were everywhere, because everywhere people who believed that the unicorns protected us watched.

  As the number of unicorns grew smaller, the order found that the seized horns of slain unicorns could be used against dragons, too, fashioned into the tips of spears, or forged into the shaft of a sword or the point of an arrow. But still, the horns were destroyed by a dragon's blood, as their dueling magics canceled each other out.

  For several years, the order found no new unicorns, and with every dragon they encountered their horn reserves dwindled further, until the very last horn was gone. The order scoured the lands for a unicorn, but alas they found none. Hope was waning.”

  And for the first time in the story my father stopped. “Now, normally, I would embellish beyond recognition my exploits, and grow my heroism accordingly, but you have asked me an honest question, Ulwin, and I would prefer to answer it honestly. I did not join an epic quest to seek a magical creature; I was simply disobeying my mother, and swimming in the grotto, not far from here. As an addendum before I continue, don't take that to mean adventure always follows disobeying; most often you will only find yourself a beating.

  But I was swimming, my clothes hanging from a tree branch at the edge of the wood. Once before another boy from the village had stolen my clothes, and forced me to walk home without them, so I kept a weather eye at them between dunks in the cool water. And I'd just swam the breadth of the pool underwater when I glanced at my trousers and spotted something white.

  My body coiled to spring out and chase one of the other village children, but instead my eyes found him. Tall, powerful, his long, snowy mane trailing his head through the air as he shook it: a unicorn, in all his majesty- and I don't use that term lightly. I hadn't many opportunities to dine with royalty, but I know they do not understand the intention of the word, where he personified it.

  I blinked to clear the water from my eyes- I had to be seeing things- and he was gone. But I knew, somehow I knew, that I had seen him. 'Come out,' I said, but it was drowned out by the sounds of the water. I steadied myself, and prepared a breath to say, 'Come out, or I'll fetch the order for you.'

  Sheepishly he stepped out from being the brush. 'Let's not be hasty,' he said.

  'I did not expect that you could talk.'

  'Well no one's ever really spoken to me before. My name, if you'd like to call me by something, is Treven.'

  I didn't know what to say. I knew of Malleum, but his violence was still on the other edge of the realm; I didn't fear for my life, or my parents'. It was all really very abstract for me. 'So you know the order's after you? And you're hiding? I thought unicorns had to fight dragons- maybe even wanted to.'

  'We do it because we always have. And because nothing else can. But… I'll die. And I don't want to die. I'm the last of my kind, but I don't want to be the last of my kind. I've been alive a very long time, but not long enough, not yet.'

  'But- but he has a clutch of eggs,' I lied.

  'How can he have a clutch of eggs?'

  'I don't know. Do you know where more dragons come from?'

  'I thought it took two dragons to make more,” he admitted, “but even two or twenty unicorns won't make another; perhaps they're like us- which is to say not like anything else. But does he, have a clutch of eggs, I mean?'

  'He could,' I said.

  'I suppose he could. And even if he didn't, he'll raze the earth until there's nothing left but he and I. And the end will be the same. He'll kill me, and I'll kill him. And in the balance the only thing that's lost is everything else.' He paused a moment in reflection, and his posture changed. 'I need to see the order. We have an assault to plan.'

  Taking him to the order was as easy as walking into a pub in town and mentioning I'd found a unicorn. They came to us- though it was more like they kidnapped us at sword point and took us to the order's keep high in the mountains. They insisted on a collar chaining Treven to the wall.

  I tried to reason with the man in charge, Captain Daul. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Commander Croad was adamant. He said that the unicorn tried to shirk his duty once; he doesn't want to give him another chance.'

  So that night I snuck the key from a guard's ring, and led Treven outside the keep. He waited there while I took the key up to the keep's commander; Daul was also there. I do not know, now, where I found the fire in my voice, for I was very small, but I can tell you it was there as I reproached them: 'You've forgotten your way. That is a powerful and proud unicorn,' I produced the key, 'and I am a child with small and quick fingers. Mistreat him again, and we will ride against the dragon alone- but you will lose any second chances. If we fall alone, the dragon will hide the horn where you could never find it.'

  Daul smiled; Croad glared at me. He told one of the guards to have me locked away. Daul put up his hand. 'Sir, all respect, of course, but the boy has a point. It's not likely we could hold either against their will; makes more sense to come to the table with our swords put away.'

  Croad raised his eyebrows, which threatened to swallow his whole forehead. 'Hrmph, very well,' he said. 'Once they're outside the keep they're your problem anyway.'

  Daul's men had been following Malleum, at least as best as the falconers could, and had found his nesting ground. It was a day's ride from the keep, and reports had the dragon on the reaches of the realm, a day and a half's flight, at least.

  The scouts had been cautious about getting close; if Malleum smelt humans, he would have abandoned the nest and perched elsewhere, but now we needed to surveille, and to plan. The nest was half of a shield volcano, one side blown out by its final explosion. This meant a rock wall against the dragon's back, so it couldn't be surrounded, but enough space in its front to take quickly to the skies.

  Daul's men pored over the volcano. One grabbed Daul, and told him to bring Treven to one of the caves near the back of the volcano. I led Treven in.

  'He did have a clutch of eggs,' Treven said. 'Presuming of course that he's a he. Though it's hard to tell, as I've never seen a pair of eggs swinging behind him, or any other dragon, come to think of it. Assuming they're like a lizard, they may keep them up inside.' Treven knew that he had to stamp the eggs; it was possible the soldiers could have done it, but nobody wanted to take chances that a drakling might survive. It took only a few seconds, and near the end, Treven was smiling. 'That was actually quite fun, for cold-blooded infanticide,' he said.

  Daul's men prepared an ambush, but because of their smell had to stay back in the tall grasses with their horses. Treven and I hid inside the egg cave. 'When he comes, I will ride out first,' Treven told me. 'You must hide in the brush. Where I go you cannot follow.'

  We spoke at length of happier things, then, but the intricacies fail me; they pale in memory to the thing that comes next.

  Come the morning the dragon returned home. Treven fixed me with a glare, then rode out. I snuck from the cave, to the brush nearby, and watched as the dragon sniffed the air, then its beady eyes found Treven, more glorious in the mornlight than any king or maiden.

  Malleum spoke, and his voice was like the crackle of a firepit, full of smoke and heavy with soot. 'Hello, death. Come for me at last? I thought you'd lost your nerve.'

  Treven reared up; at the signal, Daul's men cut the ropes holding back an avalanche of rock above the dragon, and boulders nearly as large as a man cascaded on him like the devil's rain. The dragon pushed to free itself, and roared fire. Treven sauntered around the aura of the
flame, around to an incline. As the dragon's breath finished, the fires shrunk back, and Treven raced along the slope.

  Treven lept off the rock. The dragon's wings fluttered, vainly trying to pull its legs free, but one smacked Treven in the back, and I'll remember the noise it made until my death. Treven's horn still jabbed into Malleum's belly, and they fell together to the ground.

  But the horn had not pierced the dragon's heart, only his breast, and Treven's back was broken. In vain he tried to push his head with the few muscles still responsive in his neck. 'Die, bastard,' Treven bleated, but couldn't make it so.

  I bolted from my thicket, and was beside him in a moment. He stared into me, 'Help me,' he whispered, and my heart sank, because I knew he was dying and there was nothing I could do. 'Help me kill him.' I blinked through my tears, and lifted his head, but the dead weight of his body was more than I could push. Suddenly Daul was behind me, helping me lift. Treven screamed from the pressure on his neck, and Malleum wailed as the horn pierced him through, then was silent.

  I fell to the earth with Treven's head against my legs; his horn, torn clear, wept blood from its place in the dragon's chest. 'It's not so bad,' Treven whispered, 'being the last of something. The things I feared, I feared for naught- but I did not die for naught.'”

  I've always