'All have destinies.' She looked up at the sky. From where he watched, her horn drew a line from him to the north star. 'As all have stars. As you have a star.'
'What of those who refuse their own star and would choose another?'
She held the point of her horn unwavering. 'Stars last. We do not. Refuse it as long as you must; it will still wait for you.'
'But I may refuse it as long as I wish.'
When she did not respond, he said, 'If I cannot shape my own destiny, I still refuse the destiny shaped for me. Farewell — again.'
He barely heard her say, 'I know — again.' He wondered if she were mourning.
Near dawn the stag came to a dark and cheerless spot. When he arrived at the point near which the sedge was withered from the lake and no birds sang, he gazed around.
Ahead of him a shadowy spirit in armor stood, waving his sword restlessly among the weeds. He bent forward, his lips moving in curses too old to mean much to any but the stag.
The king jerked upright, startled, as the stag sang loudly:
King Peris's men were duty bound,
to guard the wood from fear.
The King, in pride, set sword aside,
to bargain with the deer.
King Peris responded, waving his sword in time to the music:
'There is no hunt for me,' said he,
of any creature born,
unless I could in shadow wood
hunt down the unicorn.'
After a moment's hesitation, the stag responded:
'None knows so well where she may dwell
as I who did her will,
if you will heed, then I will lead,
and you may have your kill.'
The king resumed his search in the weeds. 'Imagine hearing that old thing again, clumsy meter and all. What made you think of it?'
The stag made no move to help the king. 'I heard parts of it being sung last night.'
'Well, well. Folk art endures amazingly, wouldn't you say? I wouldn't have thought anyone alive would remember it.' He looked sharply at the stag. 'It was, I assume, someone alive.'
'It was. One of the centaurs — you remember them;
they replaced you as guardians? — still knows some of the song. But you shouldn't be surprised; scandal always outlives honor'
'True. For example, look at us — though we can hardly be said to be outliving anything.'
Presently the spirit grunted in satisfaction and raised a timeworn crown on his sword-point. He put it on with a bony hand, adjusting it carefully and standing straight. For barely a moment he looked like some mockery of a real monarch.
The stag said deliberately, 'Long live the king.'
'The king lived long enough.' The dead king sat a moment, looking much like a tired man, for the dead who may not rest know more weariness than any of us. 'Tell me, did you see anyone this night?'
'You know I did. A knight, a mage, a half-elf, assorted two-legged shortlings. They are important to you?'
'They are important, I think.' The king said absently, 'You seem curious. I had thought you indifferent to everything.'
'To everything beneath me, which is much of the world. And you, great and loyal Peris?'
'Much the same. Of course, more is beneath a dead king'
The stag said drily, 'Long though we have endured, our standards are still better preserved than we are. May they last forever. What is their importance?'
'The standards?'
'Their importance is self-evident, or it is none. I mean the strangers; how are they important?' 'To the future of our wood and world.'
'Ah. Politics.' The stag nodded wisely. 'I try to avoid politics.'
'I understand completely,' the king said casually. 'I tried to avoid politics — once.'
'A question of permission to enter, and of forced entry, wasn't it?'
'It was.' He added with uncustomary frankness, 'A question of entry by evil, and into these woods — which at that time were not called Darken. Perhaps you remember the stanzas — »
'I do.' The stag sang, a little too eagerly for the king's liking:
but one lone guard forewarned the King:
'This hunt is evil-starred;
for those with arms and potent charms
against whom we must guard
no more will wait with eyes of hate
and souls and hearts of gall,
but purge the wood of light and good,
and Gods forgive us all.'
He looked expectantly at King Peris, who sighed hollowly and sang with as full a voice as a spirit could muster:
Still Peris boasts, 'Step down, my hosts,
and hear the hunting-horn,
let men invade both wood and glade,
we hunt the unicorn.'
He lowered his sword, which he had raised for emphasis. 'It wasn't that way at all, of course. And it wasn't rebellion, or wilful treason, or any of those things. My men were bored; I was bored. A hint or two from their commanding officer — ' he made a mock bow' — was all it took.' He looked around himself. 'Imagine thinking anything in a short life and a merry one could be boring. I threw away a kingdom for a day's amusement and an afterlife of painful tedium.'
'I am surprised to hear you admit it.'
'I am surprised also. Perhaps something is troubling me. Let us change the subject.'
'I shall. Did you speak to any of the strangers?' As the king shook his head, the stag nodded, 'For I thought I saw one address you.'
'Ah. That one was a mage. He spoke first.' The king looked as though he had never even tried to evade answering.
'What did he say to you? I could not hear.'
King Peris said with difficulty, 'He knew that we were the spirits of men who had failed a pledge, that we were doomed to perform that same task endlessly until we somehow earned final peace.'
'Knowledgeable man.'
