Minotaurs were notorious for slaying outsiders. The man had taken the ultimate risk in challenging a minotaur, even in something as seemingly harmless as a game of bones.
Caven nodded at Dauntless. "Where'd you get that . . . carnival pony, half -elf ?"Tanis felt annoyance rise like a boil. Dauntless had taken the half-elf through dozens of encounters, facing all manner of dangers, from highwaymen to goblins. If he also was gentle enough to trust with children, what of it?
But the four would have to keep some peace if they were to bring back the ettin. Thus Tanis didn't respond to Caven's jibe; he merely nudged Dauntless into the ragged gait that passed for the gelding's canter and moved into the lead.
It was time to find an ettin.
Chapter 8
The Portent
"Dreena."
Kai-lid struggled in the web between sleeping and waking. The voice that spoke was ghostly, as if it could belong to either world.
"Dreena."
She knew the voice, or one just like it. She'd heard it as a large-eyed child learning simple spell-casting at her mother's knee. But Kai-lid's mother was dead.
Still the voice persisted. Kai-lid opened her eyes to total darkness. Sitting up partway on her cot in the cave and striving to see through the blackness, Kai-lid could smell something large and warm-blooded moving near her, sensing but not touching her. The being was magical, but incompletely so. Kai-lid moved her lips to begin a light spell, but the voice sounded first. "Shirak."
Silver light streamed over Kai-lid and over the tall creature whose head brushed against the ceiling of the cave. The spell-caster gasped.
It was a unicorn.
White light bathed the platinum hide of the imposing creature. The unicorn was tall, its muscles well defined, its intelligent eyes the liquid blue-white of ice. But the voice was gentle. "Hello, my Dreena." That whispering sibilance. Surely Kai-lid had heard it before.
"Mama?" The question came in the quavering voice of the five-year-old Dreena ten Valdane, not the husky tones of the grown-up who'd fled from her father and renamed herself Kai-lid.
Kai-lid/Dreena remembered fleetingly the sad woman who had reared her through infancy, then 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
