Unicorn Point
Piers Anthony
Content
1 - Stile
2 - Mack
3 - Flach
4 - Blue
5 - Tania
6 - Nepe
7 - Neysa
8 - Bane
9 - Forel
10 - Sheen
11 - Phoebe
12 - Troubot
13 - Clip
14 - Agape
15 - Sirelmoba
16 - Purple
17 - Fleta
18 - ‘Corn
Author's Note
1 - Stile
Stile took the Lady Blue in his arms. “Thou dost know what we are about,” he said.
The Lady was fifty years old now, and her face was lined, but she remained beautiful to him. Her hair still fell to her waist, fair but seeming tinted with blue because of her blue gown and slippers. She stood slightly taller than he, because of his diminutive stature; it had never been an issue between them.
After a pause, she murmured, “I know, my love.”
“I will return in a few days,” he continued gravely. “Thou shallst have company.”
“True.” But there was a tear on her cheek. He kissed her, then went outside the castle. There was Neysa, her head turning white, her socks falling down about her hooves but her hide glossy black between, and her muscles still firm. She remained a fine figure of a unicorn; as her kind put it, her horn retained its point. Stile mounted her bareback, and she trotted across the drawbridge over the moat. Neysa paused without being asked, so that Stile could turn and wave to the castle. A blue kerchief waved back from the window. Stile felt a pang, because all three of them knew that much more was afoot than this simple excursion. Then Neysa turned away, and trotted from the Blue Demesnes. They were on their way.
“We have time,” Stile remarked, reverting to the dialect of his origin, as he tended to do when alone with her. “Let’s take the scenic route.”
Neysa played an affirmative note on her horn, and bore west. Stile, reminded by the sound, which resembled that of a harmonica, brought out his own harmonica and began to play. In a moment Neysa joined in, and they played a duet, as they had in the old days when both were young. The music was pretty, and there was an enhancement around them, be cause music summoned Stile’s magic. He seldom used it these days, because a given spell could be invoked only once, and he preferred not to waste any. Magic, even for an Adept, was often the last resort. But it was all right to summon die ambience without drawing on it.
After a while Stile paused in his playing. “I remember when you protested my power, old friend,” he said. She played a laughing bit of melody. She had forgiven him his power a quarter century before, at the time he made his Oath of Friendship to her. From that time on, all the unicorns of her Herd, and all the werewolves of Kurrelgyre’s Pack, had been her friends too, charmed by the peripheral power of that Oath. There had been no war between Herd and Pack, despite significant changes in their compositions as members grew and bred and migrated, and the Oath had become a minor legend. It had been the proof of his status as the Blue Adept, for only Adept magic could affect unicorns against their will.
“Aye, I remember well,” he continued, experiencing the nostalgia of old times. “I was an injured jockey from the frame of Proton, discovering the strange new world of Phaze. I decided I needed a steed, and you were there, you beautiful animal, the finest of your kind I had seen, and small like me. I loved you that moment, but you did not love me.” Neysa played a note of agreement. Her horn was musical, but she could talk with it in her fashion, and he understood her well. All the advanced animals of Phaze could communicate well in other than the human mode, though not as well as they could by using it, because the conventions of notes or growls or high sonics were less versatile than the completely developed human languages.
“So then did I challenge thee, and mount thee and ride thee, and thou didst try to throw me off, and we careered all over Phaze!” he continued, playfully switching back to Phaze dialect. “I think I kept my place chiefly by luck—“ Here she snorted derisively. “But then thou didst get set to leap from the high point, and I thought we both would die, and I let thee go—and won thee after all.” And she agreed. “Then there came to me a woman, young and fair and small, and lo! it was thee in human guise, and I learned what it meant to befriend a unicorn,” he continued. “And now we be old, and I have my son Bane and thou thy filly Fleta, and they both be grown and have offspring in their fashion. Were we wrong to oppose their unions? How much mischief might we have avoided, had we accepted their pleas!”
