* * *
The multi-colored desert dunes gave way on the sixth day to more and more low scrub bushes and patches of yellow-green grass. Alila had avoided the oasises for fear of tongues carrying tales of a pregnant woman with jade eyes. The unicorns could find ground water with the sensitive tendrils on their muzzles and call it forth from the ground with their horns. Supplies, which Alila had packed for two unicorns and herself only, grew thin as she tried to go without to help the always hungry princess get enough to eat.
When she spied the low profile of mud huts, Alila decided to leave Yaehala behind with the unicorns and venture into the little village. The smell of fish drying caught her nose and made her concave stomach grumble, reminding her of the sparse meals she had been consuming. The village lay along a tributary to the great Makra river. Unicorns outpaced horses, though not perhaps loaded with riders and full panniers of frankincense, Alila started to think that perhaps they were well free of the princess’s pursuit.
Alila bargained in the village for dried fish, a fat skin of camel’s milk sweetened with honey, and fresh melon, imagining the smile on Yaehala’s face when she saw this bounty. She made her way back down to the wadi where she’d left her unicorns.
Child’s laughter and the clink of a goat bell greeted her. Alila almost dropped her purchases in her haste to get over the edge of the rocky hill.
A boy dressed in a rough goat hair vest and leggings sat beside the princess, playing a puzzle game with a piece of bright, knotted thread. For a moment, Alila did not see the unicorns, but then her frantic eye picked them out among the yellow and sand colored rocks. Gabi and Hezi had lain down, tucking their opalescent horns beneath their thick dust-colored tails, holding perfectly still, looking like two more rocks in the landscape.
At least her unicorns were smarter than the thrice-damned princess.
“Hai!” Alila called down.
Yaehala looked up with what Alila wanted to imagine was a guilty expression. She waved and Alila sighed, then picked her way down into the wadi.
“Thank you for the game,” the princess said to the goat boy. “But my friend is here, and I must go.”
“Yes, yes.” He grinned at her, young enough that there were still gaps in his teeth.
Alila seethed inside but set down her purchases. She started as the boy stepped up beside her and tucked on her dajib.
“Are you princess too?” he asked and Alila’s anger boiled up. She clasped his shoulders, meaning to set him away from her. The boy, surprised by her sudden, strong grip, clutched at her headscarf, pulling it away from her face.
He screamed as her cheeks were revealed and twisted out of her grasp. Alila released him, cursing and scrambled to get her scarf back into place.
Too late. She met Yaehala’s eyes and saw the shock and fear glowing in them. Acid rose from Alila’s stomach and she held out her hands, though as a warning or in supplication, even she wasn’t sure.
“Killer. Unclean.” The boy’s cries followed him out of the wadi as he dragged the lead goat with him, the heavy bell chiming like a death knell.
“What are you?” Yaehala asked. Her arms clutched at her belly again, as though she needed to shield the unborn child.
Alila swallowed the stinging bile in her throat and pulled her headscarf down again revealing the two red tears in the afternoon sunlight.
“Murderer,” Yaehala said.
Gabi and Hezi rose and padded on quiet feet to stand beside Alila, solid walls of flesh and fur. She tangled her hands in their frothy manes.
“As you knew, there were holes in my story,” Alila said, the words like grit on her dry tongue. She drew strength from her unicorns. They had not abandoned her.
“Did the two you killed deserve it?” Yaehala said after a tense moment. Her jade eyes flicked to the unicorns and then back to Alila’s own dark gaze and there was a pleading look in them.
“No.”
“Explain,” Yaehala demanded. She straightened her slender shoulders and lifted her chin. For the first time since they’d met, Alila saw the princess as she must have been at court, imperious and proud even in rough woven dajib and dull colors.
“No.” The word was a door sliding closed between them.
Alila couldn’t tell the story. Her throat clogged and her chest burned as though the thick scars where her nipples used to be were fresh-made wounds. The past was a dark thing, a dust storm waiting to envelop her world and wipe away everything familiar. She clung to the unicorns and stared the princess down, breathing in tight, shallow gasps.
After many long moments, Yaehala turned away.
They left quickly, an uneasy truce between them, the princess clearly deciding that Alila and her unicorns were still useful to her and shouldn’t be abandoned this close to her destination. There was no banter between them and Yaehala kept her eyes on Hezi’s neck.
Alila rode in tense silence, outwardly still but curling in pain within. She’d replaced her headscarf more from habit than need and hot tears dripped unwanted from her eyes and left salty trails over her mouth.
A shadow passed over her and Alila looked up into the deepening blue of the dusky sky, expecting to see an eagle judging from the size of the wings. Instead the arrow-like body of a Seeker lizard, long in the tail with a sharp V of wings, floated above them, circling before turning off toward the river on their left. Alila pursed her lips. The lizards weren’t native to these parts, much preferring the skirling peaks in the east where the Zwigir roamed on their spotted horses.
Zwigir. She cried out in alarm, almost in unison with Gabi and Hezi. How many shadows had circled them on their ride toward the sea, how many times had she thought them only curious char buzzards or sand eagles? Alila cursed.
Yaehala, riding some distance off, twisted and called out something that the evening wind stole away. The sound of many horses, racing quickly over the hard ground, punctured the air.
“Ride. Flee,” Alila yelled, knowing that Hezi and Gabi’s sensitive hearing would catch the command even if Yaehala couldn’t.
She ducked down and pressed her face into Gabi’s whipping mane as the unicorn shifted from her running walk to her great springing run. The panniers bounced and jostled, the woven reeds cutting into Alila’s legs. Gabi leapt and soared through the air, landing for a stride and then leaping again, covering the ground with frightening speed.
The unicorn cried out as something buzzed by Alila’s head. She gripped Gabi’s mane and twisted around, her eyes watering and her vision blurred. A thick quarrel stuck out of the unicorn’s flank. Dark blood ran from the wound and Gabi’s stride turned lopsided. But the unicorn didn’t stop.
Another terrible scream, like a bell breaking, pierced the air and Alila saw Hezi go down. She shrieked at Gabi to stop, to turn back for her twin, but the unicorn’s ears were flattened to her head and she ran with pain-crazed leaps, froth flying from her narrow mouth.
Alila beat her fists on Gabi’s neck until her hands were numb. Her thighs were on fire from clinging to the unicorn’s back and her calves were a nest of welts from the bouncing panniers.
Finally, as full dark fell and the green light of the first moon tinged the horizon, Gabi staggered to a stop. Alila more fell than dismounted and lay gasping on the warm ground.
She pushed herself to her feet and drew her knife. The quarrel had a broad hunter’s head on it and she murmured apology to Gabi as she cut it free. The unicorn’s blood was amethyst in sunlight, but looked sickly black beneath the rising moons.
Gabi nuzzled her before twisting to bathe the wound with her long tongue. Alila pulled off her headscarf, grabbed her water skin, and sat down again, taking deep breaths of the cool night air between painful swallows of tepid water.
Hezi. They had to go back. Alila looked around the scrubby flats for a landmark. She saw the skeletal shapes that might be baobab trees in the distance and stumbled to her feet. Gabi followed behind, trilling softly and bumping her back
with her nose.
“Sah, sah, my love,” Alila murmured. “We’ll go back as soon as I get rid of those panniers.”
She left the panniers in the shadow of the first tall tree. Nearby the river burbled and Gabi headed for the muddy banks, sinking her head into the dark water up to her horn.
Five of the moons were above the horizon by the time Alila and Gabi found the trail of the mercenaries. The ground was scuffed and bloodied where some kind of struggled had taken place and there were drag marks and many hoof prints leading away, back toward the rocky hills where the village lay. Alila sent a prayer to the nine moons that Hezi was still alive and set out after the mercenaries.
She reached the edge of the hills at all moons’ rise. A cough in the dark warned her about the sentry and Alila veered off into shadow, sliding as silently as her protesting legs would let her to the ground. She crawled toward the glow of a small fire and saw two men sitting at it. The cough had come from somewhere to her right. She let her eyes pick out the shifting movement of a third man leaning against the thick trunk of a twisted scrub bush.
The rest of the mercenaries were camped down in a deep wadi between two pieces of rock where at some point in the distant past a river had cut a sheer cleft that formed a natural blind before plunging underground. The three sentries guarded the entrance, the moonlight and their fire providing too much light for her to slip past.
Alila stayed low to the ground, thigh muscles a web of pain now, and crawled to the lip of the cleft. Three more fires, larger than the sentry one, burned below, illuminating the camp. Most of the mercenaries seemed asleep, content to trust their sentries. One was awake at the middle fire. A blanketed bundle leaned against the steep wall and when it moved, Alila realized that Yaehala was here and still alive.
But where was Hezi? There. Alila crept along the lip further until she saw the shape she’d mistaken for a large rock. Hezi lay on her side, held down with a web of ropes and stakes, her opalescent horn chained with iron and her muzzle wrapped in wool. Dark blood streaked the unicorn’s side and reminded Alila of Yaehala’s dead horse.
Hezi’s side was moving. She was alive. Alila let out a shuddering breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding and slid on her belly to the far edge of the wadi. The deep cleft narrowed here, but the farthest part wasn’t as steep as the walls. Alila hoped that Hezi, if unfettered, could leap up this part and escape.
Hand over hand, picking her toe and finger holds with terrified care, Alila climbed down the wall of the cleft. Pebbles and grit slid away from her grip and made sounds like thunder in her ears as they trickled down the wall ahead of her. Heart in her throat, Alila waited with every move for the sharp punch of a quarrel digging into her back.
None came. Her feet touched the floor of the wadi and Alila dropped down low. She drew her knife and slid up to the unicorn. Hezi tried to raise her head but Alila put a calming hand on her. One dark, sea-storm eye rolled open and looked at her. Then the unicorn calmed.
Each rope took too long to saw through and she started to despair that she could finish before moonset. Alila watched the camp, trying to pick out any sign of movement or alarm through the flickering shadows cast by the fires. She kept her hand on Hezi, freeing her horn and head last. Finally, as the first moon dipped below the edge of the wadi, the unicorn was freed. All she had to do was climb onto Hezi’s back and leave this place.
Alila hesitated. Yaehala had said that Medb would cut her open and take the child. That must be the reason she is still alive. She pressed a hand to her own barren belly. Zetha’s ghost must be laughing, she thought. Zetha. Alila’s betrayer. Her friend.
Full circle. When Yaehala died, it wouldn’t really be Alila’s fault. She’d tried. Just as she’d reached out her hand and tried to stop her friend’s tumbling fall.
Right after she’d pushed Zetha in blind rage.
“I didn’t know you were with child. I didn’t know you would fall,” she mouthed the words, crouching beside the unicorn as Hezi licked at her furred sides, closing the gashes.
She didn’t see how to get to Yaehala. Here, in the shadow of the narrowing cleft, she and the unicorn were hidden for the moment. To get to Yaehala she’d have to cross a camp of sleeping, dangerous men and somehow get the princess away from her watcher.
It was an impossible task.
Even as she thought this, Alila’s eyes scanned the cleft wall. There was a ledge about twenty feet above that ran nearly to where Yaehala’s curled body rested. The man had his back to the rear of the wadi, not expecting danger from this direction. A terrible plan formed in Alila’s mind and she lifted her fingers to brush against the slightly raised tattoos on her cheek.
Nothing would calm the storm of the past or heal the scars she carried both outside and within. Alila pressed her palms together and bowed her head, remembering the warm, soft strength of Yaehala’s fingers twining around her own. She had no desire to add power to that dark storm. She had accidentally killed her pregnant friend out of grief and rage.
Alila would not leave another to die. She could not ignore this chance. She commanded Hezi to wait in the shadows with a whisper only a unicorn could hear. Then she started to climb again.
The ledge was mostly clear of debris and pebbles. Alila descended when she was right behind the man, drawing her knife as she dropped behind him.
He heard her feet touch the ground and started to turn. She caught his greasy top-knot with one hand and pulled his chin down toward his chest, the way she’d used to kill goats for feast days. Her blade sliced through his throat, warm blood spraying.
Her vow to never kill another human died with the mercenary. It was nothing like slaughtering a goat.
Swallowing bile, Alila wiped her blade on the dead man’s dajib and crawled forward to Yaehala, placing her hand over the princess’s mouth as she gently shook her.
Jade eyes snapped open and the princess blinked rapidly, as though she believed she dreamed. Alila eased her hand off Yaehala’s mouth and quickly cut the ropes binding the princess’s ankles and hands. She motioned toward the back of the ravine with her head and then crept along the wall, keeping an eye on the slumbering mercenaries.
Alila wanted to cry with relief when they found the shadows at the rear of the cleft but she held it in and instead motioned to Hezi, miming that Yaehala should mount the unicorn.
Yaehala pointed to Alila and shrugged elaborately. Alila motioned to the cliff and then started to climb, refusing to give the princess a choice about riding the unicorn. If the woman wanted out of here, she’d figure out what she had to do.
Stones rattled and Alila turned her head as Hezi bounded up the nearly vertical slope, touching down only once before gaining the top in a soaring leap.
Shouts rang out from the camp and Alila set her feet and hands to climbing with reckless speed. She slipped twice, but her scrabbling toes found tiny purchase and she dragged herself up to the lip. Gabi bit into her dajib and dragged her fully over, nearly flinging her to her feet. Alila didn’t hesitate. She leapt onto the unicorn’s back, her hands twisting in the silken mane.
They fled, shadows over the landscape, making for the sea.
The unicorns chose the path, Alila and Yaehala too tired to do more than cling. When they plunged into the river, the cold water shocked the women awake and Alila scooped water into her hands, splashing it into her dry mouth, washing away the bitter tastes of fear and panic.
Even the fast horses of the Zwigir couldn’t catch up to unicorns running at night. As moonset brought deep dark to the landscape, the unicorn horns glowed, opalescent light guiding them across the sloping plains.
They ran through the dark and into morning, the day warming up as the followed the river until it joined the broad expanse of the Makra on its plunge toward the sea.
The sun soared white and merciless overhead as they reached the green hills that blocked their view of the sea. Far behind them on the plains, Alila saw dark shapes spread out in a hunting forma
tion. Riders. She didn’t need to guess who they were.
“How,” Yaehala’s voice died in a croak. She licked her lips and tried again, “how far?”
The unicorns were slowing. They had dropped from their soaring gallop down to their running walk, sides heaving and foam dripping from open jaws. Even they weren’t tireless. Alila turned back from watching their pursuers and looked ahead.
Too far. She stroked Gabi’s sweat-soaked neck. They needed to run again if they were to have any hope. She nudged the unicorn toward the river and her companions followed.
“We have to let them rest a moment,” Alila said, sliding down from Gabi’s back as they reached the grassy bank. The unicorn heaved a sigh and stumbled into the water. Yaehala slid off Hezi and collapsed into the grass.
The two unicorns waded chest deep into the river and dunked their heads. Alila thought about following their example, but she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to stand in the current or lift her head above water. Instead she crawled to the edge and drank deep.
“They will catch us if we linger,” Yaehala said, though she made no move to get up.
“We will run in a moment.” Alila said. She refused to meet Yaehala’s gaze as the woman crawled up beside her and dipped her own hands into the water.
“Tell me about the tattoo?” Yaehala asked softly.
A Seeker lizard’s narrow shadow flashed over them, darkening the grass between them for a moment until it circled away.
“Zetha. She was my friend. We were born in the same summer. I was bethrothed to a rich man and she wanted him, though she had, I knew, given her body to a fisherman.” Alila stared at the rippling water and a bitter laugh crowded in with the words in her throat. “She threatened to lie and tell his family that I was no longer a virgin unless I called the wedding off. She would have ruined me, shamed my family. I pushed her, harder than I meant. The fall broke her neck.”
“Two tears. Two deaths,” Yaehala murmured.
“She was pregnant. I didn’t know.” Alila turned and faced the princess then, tears rising. “I didn’t know.” It hadn’t come out until afterward when Zetha’s sister confessed the pregnancy. Zetha’s family, outraged, had demanded that Alila be put to death, but her own family’s standing had granted her a terrible false mercy.
“So they marked you,” Yaehala said.
“Here,” Alila touched her tattoos. Then her chest and finally the place between her thighs. “Here as well. They cut away my womanness and left me in the desert for the gods to decide my fate.”
“The gods sent you unicorns.” Yaehala had tears in her jade eyes and Alila thought for a moment that they were only a mirage, her own blurred vision playing tricks on her. Then the princess touched her cheek and bowed her head, her warm forehead touching Alila’s.
“We must go.” Alila pulled away and rose, her legs nearly giving out beneath her as she whistled to the unicorns.
Gabi and Hezi emerged from the river cleaned of sweat but still with haggard looks in their shifting, deep-sea eyes.
“Sah, sah, we must flee,” Alila said as she helped Yaehala onto Hezi’s back.
They fled. The riders were far closer than they had been, but the sloping hills kept the women out of bow range as the unicorns made a final springing dash for the sea.
At the crest of one soaring leap, Alila caught the glint of water. At the crest of the next leap she realized that what she’d mistaken for wave sound mingling with the horrible pounding of her own racing heart was actually the sound of the Gwadar Falls plunging toward the Mirror Sea.
A quarrel thunked into the turf ahead of them; Gabi springing sideways to avoid another as it hummed through the air. Alila cried out above the rushing noise of the falls, screaming a warning to Yaehala.
More quarrels filled the air and a sharp pain almost wrenched Alila from her mount. Burning agony shot through her shoulder and her left arm no longer gripped Gabi’s mane. The scent of her own blood filled her nose and the world blurred to red spots as shadows threatened the edges of her vision. She started to slide sideways.
A strong hand caught her up and suddenly Yaehala was there, the twin unicorns leaping in tandem. The princess gripped Alila, keeping her astride.
The hill leveled out and then dropped in a steep, grassy dune to the white sand of a curving, crescent beach that shone like the third moon to Alila’s blinking gaze. Three ships with red and silver sails moored in the shining silver sea and Yaehala started shouting in a language Alila didn’t recognize.
As the unicorn’s hooves hit the sand, the quarrels stopped and disappointed cries rang out from behind them. Men and women with shaved heads and red robes swarmed out of tents on the shore, loading crossbows and drawing long knives.
Alila twisted her head around, biting down against the agony the movement poured into her. Behind them, on the rise of the hill, the mercenaries had stopped pursuit, thick horn bows lowered. They hovered there a moment and then peeled away back over the hill, seeming to dissolve into the sky.
The unicorns raced right to the sea’s edge and plunged into the waves. Warm, gentle hands pulled Alila down into the surf and she let her eyes close.
* * *
“Come with me.” Yaehala rested her fingers on Alila’s palm.
“I am anathema. Marked. Forbidden.” Alila turned her face away but the princess tucked her hand beneath her chin and pulled her back to facing.
“The Araji priests do not care. They will grant you sanctuary with me. Their islands have many rivers and glades. Gabi and Hezi will be happy, playing on black sand beaches and sleeping with the sea as their lullaby.”
“You are cruel to use them against me,” Alila murmured but she couldn’t put any sting in her words. “Namoh is my home.” It was. She knew that she would miss the desert winds, her canyon filled with cool shadows and heady frankincense.
“And when my son is old enough, you and I will return here,” Yaehala said, her beautiful face set with stony resolve. “Let me share this respite with you. Please, Ali.”
“Alila,” she murmured. She shut her eyes and breathed in. Someone in the camp on the beach was burning frankincense, though not the quality of the resin she’d left behind them. Respite. Sanctuary.
Alila closed her fingers over the princess’s, human skin to human skin, and nodded.
* * * * *
Word-of-mouth and reviews are vital for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review wherever you purchased it. Even a few lines sharing your thoughts on this story would be extremely helpful for other readers. Thank you!
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Want to read more fantasy by Annie Bellet? The first book in the Chwedl Duology is now available in trade paperback, audio, and all ebook formats.
In an ancient Wales that never was...
The twin brothers Emyr and Idrys are cursed to live as hounds; Emyr by night, and Idrys by day. The twins believe they will be trapped this way forever until they meet the fierce and curious Áine, a changeling woman born with fey blood and gifts struggling to fit into a suspicious human world.
Áine unravels the fate of Emyr and his twin as all three of them fall in love. To free her lovers from the curse, she embarks on a journey to the realm of the fey where she confronts her own unique gifts and heritage. Ultimately, she must decide where her heart truly lies and what she’s willing to risk to get what she desires most.
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Also by Annie Bellet:
The Gryphonpike Chronicles:
Witch Hunt
Twice Drowned Dragon
A Stone’s Throw
Dead of Knight
The Barrows (Omnibus Vol.1)
Chwedl Duology:
A Heart in Sun and Shadow
The Raven King
Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Divisio
n Series:
Avarice
Wrath
Hunger
Envy
Lust
Inertia
Vainglory
Short Story Collections:
The Spacer’s Blade and Other Stories
River Daughter and Other Stories
Deep Black Beyond
Till Human Voices Wake Us
Dusk and Shiver
By Spell and Sword
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About the Author:
Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is a Clarion graduate and her stories have appeared in magazines such as AlienSkin, Digital Science Fiction, and Daily Science Fiction as well as multiple collections and anthologies. Follow her on her blog at “A Little Imagination” (https://overactive.wordpress.com/)
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If you want to get to be notified when Annie Bellet’s next novel or collection is released, please sign up for the mailing list by going to: https://tinyurl.com/anniebellet. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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