CHAPTER TEN
'Whoa!' cried Fost, motioning for a halt. Moriana's greyhound squealed in terror as she reined in harshly. In a single fluid movement, she dropped her bow from shoulder to hand and pulled an arrow from her quiver. By the side of the track, Darkwood stood looking on with his habitual smile. He didn't unsling his bow.
Heart racing, Moriana followed Fost's gesture. She expected enemies. What she saw made her heart leap, but not from fear.
A unicorn stag stood on a knoll to the left of the path. The trees grew sparsely there. The great beast stood between two of the black, gnarled anhaks and gazed down at the travellers, one forefoot raised.
Something in the animal's attitude told Moriana the posture was not that of a creature poised for flight. It regarded them with disdain, its eyes huge and amber, set in the capacious skull on either side of the single straight horn. Its hide was a glossy chestnut and its throat and wide chest glowed silvery. A long tail ending in a tuft of auburn was held curled over the animal's back like a manticore's sting.
'Will you shoot, Lady?' Darkwood's smile had taken on the tilt they had come to associate with some private jest. 'Their flesh is a delicacy beyond compare.'
Moriana looked at Fost. His mouth was compressed in a curious fashion as if he tried to suppress a grin. Erimenes swayed at his side.
'Shoot!' the genie urged, his eyes gleaming with spectral blood-lust.
'No,' begged Ziore, floating beside Moriana. 'He's too magnificent!'
Moriana lowered her bow, relaxed the string and slid the arrow back into its sheath.
'She's right. I could only slay such a beast if I starved. Never for sport.'
As if it heard her words, the stag dipped its horn once and vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
'You chose wisely, Highness,' said Darkwood. 'You'd never have hit him.'
Moriana's mouth tightened. This groundling made jokes at her expense, and she didn't care for it. 'You forget I'm Skyborn,' she informed him haughtily.
'Oh, I know that, Lady, and I know well you could put three arrows out of three through my chest with that monster bow of yours. But skill counts for more in hunting the Nevrym unicorn than cleverness of hand and eye. You'd have missed him, this I know.' His grin widened. 'Even as I'd know you'd next have seen him charging from that clump of blackleaf.' He pointed at a clump of shrubbery twenty yards distant. 'With his head down and blood in his eye. And I know a unicorn's fighting horn will pierce a quarter inch of the finest North Keep plate as if it were parchment.'
Moriana started to protest. Thinking she'd suffered enough, Fost put in, 'They're intelligent. And very cunning.'
'Intelligent? Nonsense. They're mere beasts.' Erimenes sniffed his contempt for such a notion.
'And are the war eagles of the Sky City mere birds?' Darkwood shook his head. 'No, my friend. You've now met the third part of the triumvirate that rules Nevrym.' 'The third?' asked Moriana, intrigued despite her anger.
'We're another.' Darkwood doffed his triangular cap and bowed. 'The last is the trees, of course.' 'The trees?' Moriana scoffed.
'He's telling the truth. Do you think you could find your way to the Tree again unaided?'
'Of course.' She glared at Fost. She was a veteran warrior. Once she'd passed over terrain she knew it by heart.
'Of course,' agreed Darkwood, in an infuriating imitation of the woman's voice, 'provided your intentions were peaceful toward the forest and its various inhabitants. Were they otherwise, your party might wander lost until you died of starvation.' He smoothed straw-colored hair back from his forehead. 'Only foresters can find their way unimpeded by the trees' magic. And where our allies of wood don't want us, we generally don't go.'
'But your people are well armed and prepared for invasion.' Moriana was genuinely puzzled. The many-tiered keep carved into the heart of the Tree was meant to serve as a fortress, its outer walls dotted with arrow slits and its interior honeycombed by well-stocked caches of emergency stores. Most of the humbler dwellings of the foresters were built like birds' nests high up and secure in the embrace of anhak limbs, reachable only by ladders.
'It's not unknown for Nevrymin to settle their little differences by force of arms. We are individualists at heart and not prone to taking commands of others.' Reminded of this, Moriana recalled that most battles the Nevrymin fought were internecine. That was the key to the seeming puzzle of a jovial king in Nevrym named Grimpeace. It had been Fost who explained this to her.
'He's a friendly man, but he's friendly because we come as friends. He earned his name by the way he imposed order in Nevrym when he acceded to the Tree twenty-three years ago. The Nevrymin all respect the Tree, but they're divided into factions as antagonistic and rivalry-ridden as tenement blocks in The Teeming. North Nevrymin, Central Nevrymin, Eastcreekers, Coastrunners, a score in all. Few of the factions were inclined to pay much heed to the authority of a boy who'd scarcely started to sprout his first growth of beard. They learned what the young king offered was a grim peace, indeed. Since then, banditry and sectional strife in Nevrym have been at an all-time low.
'Then, too,' said Darkwood, all trace of mirth vanished from his blue eyes, 'it isn't unknown for Nevrymin to guide outwoods foes along these ways in defiance of tradition and the trees.'
'What kind of man would do that?' asked Ziore in wonder. Her empathy gave her an appreciation keener even than Fost's of the sacred nature of the compact between men and beasts and trees.
'You've met one, I fancy.' Darkwood's voice turned winter cold. 'Fairspeaker by name.'
But not even the thought of Nevrymin breaking faith with their forest was enough to keep the summer in Darkwood's nature suppressed for long. He warmed and the skin around his eyes and mouth settled into well-worn smile lines.
'But the day's too lovely for talk of that, and we've leagues yet to travel before reaching the North Cape range.' He set the cap on his head at a suitably jaunty angle and started off along the leaf-carpeted path.
'One question, my good man.' Darkwood stopped and regarded Erimenes with his hands on hips. His grin hadn't been dented by the spirit's supercilious tone. 'How do you know the flesh of the unicorn stag is succulent if your folk lack the gumption to hurt them?'
The forester's cheer was the equal of even Erimenes at his most infuriating.
'My good ghost, from the height of your exalted years you must realize that any forest exists in a delicate balance,' he said in the tone of one explaining a simple lesson to a dull student. 'No single population can be allowed to grow unchecked. So we hunt the unicorn stag, and a most demanding sport it is.' His smile showed prominent eyeteeth. 'And they, of course, hunt us. We give them rare sport, too, or so I'm led to believe.'
Their reception at North Keep was less than cordial.
In response to five minutes' pounding on the twenty-foot-tall iron gates, first with Fost's fist and then with the pommel of his sword, a small peephole set four feet off the stone roadbed scraped open. A single bloodshot eye peered forth without any hint of friendliness. 'Go away,' came the growl from within.
'We've come a long ways up the coast road,' said Fost. 'We're in need of food, baths, a good night's sleep. We're prepared to pay.'
The latter phrase usually unlocked the domain of the dwarves. The dark maroon eye blinked once.
'We want nothing to do with your filthy money. The gate's shut for the night. Go away.'
Fost's dog growled. Astride her sidestepping dog a few yards behind, Moriana tightened the grip on her reins. She didn't like the dwarf guard's tone any more than the dogs did.
'My good man, I suggest you open this gate immediately if you desire that your head should keep company with your shoulders. I am a guest of state and your rulers will be little pleased by your insolence to me.'
'Who're you?' came the rude question, the eye swivelling to bear on her.
'I am Moriana Etuul, Queen in exile of the City in the Sky, and if you don't admit us at once…'
The eye withdrew but only to permit heavily bearded lips to appear and spit through the grill.
That for you,' said the eye, appearing again, 'and for all decadent lordlings who oppress the people! And for
