Steel and Stone

disappeared-died after giving birth to a stillborn baby brother, her father's aides had said. For a long time before her death, that woman had cried in pain and sadness.

Rumor had it that the Valdane had ordered his mage to ease his wife out of life with some post-pregnancy complication. The Valdane had convened a state funeral with a closed casket-which sparked more rumors. But the common folk believed Dreena's mother had fled one night, that a fleet-footed silver horse had met her at the edge of the wood outside the castle.

'Mama?' Kai-lid repeated now.

The unicorn dipped its head and touched the tip of its horn to the ground before Kai-lid. 'If it helps you to think of me as your mother, let it be so, Dreena.'

'But are you?'

The unicorn didn't answer, and when Kai-lid asked again, the creature said simply, 'We have no time. There is trouble, Dreena.'

'I came here because my mother grew up near here,' Kai-lid persisted. 'My father married here during his travels as a young man.'

'I know. You cannot hide-here or anywhere-any longer,' the unicorn said. 'Your father has fled to the Icereach. There he is amassing an army.'

'Surely he cannot be a threat to me all the way from the Icereach,' Kai-lid protested.

The whisper continued, almost hypnotic in its effect upon the young woman. 'He and the mage have a powerful artifact.'

Kai-lid shivered. She pulled her robe tighter around her. 'Janusz believes I'm dead. He'll never think to scry for me. Here I am safe. I don't want to leave.'

'I know.' The unicorn dipped her horn once more and began to back out of the cave. 'But there is no time.'

'Wait! What should I do?' Kai-lid cried.

Instead of answering directly, the silvery creature stood in the cave's mouth. 'Remember this, Dreena. It will help you.'

'But…'

The unicorn began to chant:

'The lovers three, the spell-cast maid, The winged one of loyal soul, The foul undead of Darken Wood, The vision seen in scrying bowl. Evil loosed with diamond's flight.

'Vengeance savored, ice-clenched heart Seeks its image to enthrone Matched by sword and fire's heat, Embers born of steel and stone. Evil cast with jewel's light.

'The lovers three, the spell-cast maid, The tie of filial love abased, Foul legions turned, the blood flows free, Frozen deaths in snow-locked waste. Evil vanquished, gemstones might.'

As the last line resonated in the night air, the light around the unicorn began to fade. The creature pivoted toward Darken Wood. 'Wait!' Kai-lid called again, lunging from her cot and racing barefoot over the stone floor. When she reached the opening, the unicorn was gone.

The night was silent. Kai-lid heard no stamp of hooves, saw no gray shadow slip into the woods. A mist enveloped the scene.

Then suddenly she was back in her cot, her blanket on the floor, and she was shivering in the predawn chill.

'It was a dream,' Xanthar insisted moments later, when she'd finished relating what had happened.

'No,' she insisted. 'It was real.'

They were in their favorite spot for talking-two branches, one above the other, jutting out of a dead sycamore. 'If you flew very high,' Kai-lid said sullenly, 'you might still spot her. But you're too stubborn.'

'Legend says that if a unicorn wants to be seen, it will be. If not, no amount of searching or wishing will help. Anyway, I've never heard of a unicorn venturing out of Darken Wood.'

'My cave is very close to the woods.' Her voice rose. 'You're so obstinate. It was my mother, I tell you.'

Xanthar fluffed his feathers and shifted on his perch. 'Since when is your mother a unicorn? Anyway, you told me your mother is dead.'

'When I was little, she told me she came from north of Haven. That could mean Darken Wood.'

The owl snorted and muttered, 'Hardly,' but Kai-lid went on, carried away by her story.

'I used to think she was a unicorn in human form, that she fell in love with my father and married him and went away to Kern with him. When life grew unbearable, she resumed her unicorn form and returned home. I never told anybody. But she would know what is in my heart.'

'It's romantic nonsense, Kai-lid, a dream born of eating something you shouldn't have in Haven yesterday.'

'I saw my mother.'

The discussion circled on itself until both owl and mage grew weary. Each sat wordless, stubbornly silent at first and then merely lost in thought. Finally, as the sky was growing light in the east, Xanthar spoke again as though no time had passed. 'And you believe it, that your father will attack from the south?'

Kai-lid hesitated. Then she nodded. The owl nodded, too. 'Then we must act,' he said softly.

'We?' she asked, sitting up. Her hood fell back. 'You can't go far from Darken Wood. You'll lose your magic.'

'We don't know that for a certainty. The rules of Darken Wood may vary. They say that travelers who enter much of Darken Wood find their weapons have disappeared-but not here. They say ghosts prevent travelers from entering-but not here. I may be able to go farther away than we have thought.'

'You've said…'

'We must stop the Valdane.'

'We're safe here.'

The giant owl was silent for a time. Then he said, 'No one is safe anywhere.' Kai-lid remembered Xanthar's dead mate and nestlings.

'You are his daughter. You can't hide from him if he is determined to find you.'

Kai-lid turned her back on the owl. Her voice was tight. 'He forced me into a marriage I didn't want, hoping to gain control of the Meir's kingdom. Then, when the Meir and I fell in love and barred him from our land, he attacked. He killed my husband. Should I forgive that?'

'I'm not telling you to forgive anything. I'm telling you that you have to stop him. You alone may be able to.'

Kai-lid slid from her branch to a lower one, then to the ground. She glared up at the owl. 'I won't do it.'

'You escaped because your lady's maid went back, you said.'

Kai-lid's face went white. 'Stop it.'

But Xanthar continued. 'Lida went back,' he said. 'You told me this yourself, Kai-lid. Lida went back; she dressed in your clothes, realizing your father would destroy the castle, and knowing that only if they found a body they believed to be Dreena ten Valdane's would they stop from coming after you.'

The owl's voice was relentless. Kai-lid put her hands over her ears. The bird switched to mindspeak.

She was your friend. You grew up together; her mother reared you both. And she died for you. Whether you are Dreena ten Valdane or Kai-lid Entenaka, can you be selfish now?

The spell-caster began to cry.

Recall that morning, Kai-lid. Recall it, Dreena.

Against her will, the spell-caster remembered fleeing the castle with Lida. The servingwoman balked halfway down the escape tunnel, saying she had to go back for something and asking if Dreena wanted to leave her wedding pendant with the Meir in his coffin as a final gesture of love.

Memories from that hasty predawn exchange still haunted Kai-lid. Lida's shadowed face, resolution and fright alternating in her features. The damp of the stones that walled the corridor. The musty smell of the earthen floor. The sound of water dripping. And over it all, the booming of the enemy's drums, mimicking Dreena's heart. She'd removed the pendant, kissed the broad green stone, and placed it in Lida's hand. She half-guessed what her faithful friend had in mind, but she made no protest. Dreena told Lida to meet her in a cave beneath a copse of trees west