The silence bothered him. Badly.
“You probably saved my life. I want to thank you,” he ventured finally, his voice sounding unnaturally loud to him.
“You can thank me by leaving,” she responded curtly, without turning to face him.
Hunter stared at her perfect profile. Haunting beauty. No wonder the Huntmen thought her a sorceress. “I came here to—”
“I know why you came.”
“I’m not a Huntman,” he said quietly, and was ignored. He tried again. “I came to find the unicorns—though not to harm them,” he added swiftly. “My name is Hunter Morgan and I…I just want to find the unicorns.” The last words were hopelessly inadequate, he thought, but it was difficult to address half of a beautiful face. Quite deliberately, he lowered his voice to a drawl he had been told was quite charming. “What’s your name?”
Somewhat to his surprise, she replied, “Siri.”
“A lovely name. For a lovely lady.”
She tossed him one scathing, contemptuous look, and Hunter immediately felt very small. So much for your vaunted charm, fool! Still smarting beneath the sting of his earlier embarrassed helplessness and the vulnerability of his desire, he nonetheless refused to give in to anger. Evenly, he said, “You are beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. And I’d think the same even if I weren’t trespassing in your damned valley.”
He thought he saw her shoulders stiffen and then loosen in an oddly defeated movement, but couldn’t be sure. Restless in spite of—or perhaps because of—his weakness, Hunter was determined that this beautiful, cold woman would talk to him. He was certain that the coldness was a facade; the underlying gentleness he sensed had to be the real Siri, and he wanted to know that woman, wanted to know her with an intensity that surprised him. It was more than desire for her.
Shock tactics, he thought. “I saw a unicorn,” he said flatly, hazy memory fueled by inner certainty and flung at her, and this time he was positive that she tensed and then slumped in defeat.
“Cloud,” she said almost inaudibly.
Hunter felt tension steal through his own body. “Cloud?”
Siri abandoned her cooking, half-turning to face him and leaning against the stone hearth. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, the posture giving the man a still stronger sense of her defeat. “Cloud. He leads the herd. He found you and guided me to you. I knew you were here, but I didn’t know where.”
“How did you know I was here?” he asked.
“I felt your pain,” she said simply, the cold mask of her face at odds with the gentle, tired voice.
“You—” He stared at her. “You felt my pain?”
She nodded.
Feeling himself on treacherously unsteady ground, since he was not a believer in magic or in psi, Hunter abandoned that point. “Cloud leads that herd? How many?”
“Ten,” she said bleakly. “Just ten now.”
Hunter felt suddenly shaken. “Ten? You mean only ten exist?”
“Only ten.” Her voice became hard and embittered. “Men have hunted them, you see. Down through the ages. Hunted and killed them for their horns, because they believed the horns possessed magical properties of one kind or another. Hunted and caged them for their rarity. And Unicorns cannot live in captivity.”
“But they must breed,” Hunter muttered, unwillingly affected by her words.
“They breed. But Unicorns live many years before they reach the Age of Mating. And here in this valley, they mate during one season and give birth during the next. In the Summer. Once every ten Standard years. And during that short, precious time, men die trying to get into this valley. Some die inside the valley, and some kill Unicorns before they die.”
Abruptly and unexpectedly, Hunter was brought up short, not because of what she had said about the unicorns, but because of what had been revealed by her words. He had no idea how old she was or if she had spent her entire life in this relatively sheltered valley, but her knowledge—”Standard years?”—of the world outside this tiny one made her either inexplicably wise, very well educated—again, inexplicably—or else perhaps what rumor and legend had made her out to be.
No, witch, sorceress, warrior, Keeper, human or inhuman—whatever she was had to be explained by rational means. And in spite of his excessive interest in myths, Hunter was a rational man. He did not like puzzles.
“Where were you born?” he shot at her suddenly.
She looked at him for a long, silent moment, and Hunter had the peculiar feeling that she was unsurprised by the change of topic because she knew very well the mental twists that had brought him to it. And her dry words confirmed his feeling.
“Thinking of the legendary Keeper of ten thousand years?”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“There have been Keepers for more than ten thousand years,” she told him. “And if you have your way, Morgan, I’ll be the last of the line.”
It didn’t occur to Hunter until later that she had not answered his original question. Instead, he felt compelled to defend himself. “I’ve told you. I don’t want to harm the unicorns. I just want to prove that they exist.”
“Why?” she asked flatly.
“Because…” His voice faltering, Hunter wondered if his reasons could be explained to this woman with the cold, beautiful face and suddenly fierce voice. The reason that had sent him on his Quest would sound selfish and arrogant: Because I want a throne. And the other reasons he had discovered only during the Quest would sound, he thought, foolish: Because my world needs to know if the substance of the dream exists.
She didn’t give him a chance. Turning back to the cooking fire, she reached for a bowl on a shelf beside the hearth, using a ladle to fill it from the cooking pot. She carried the bowl and a spoon across to him. “Eat,” she ordered.
Holding the bowl and listening to the hungry growls of his stomach as the appetizing scent of an unidentifiable soup rose to his nostrils, Hunter watched her return to the fire for a moment and then seat herself in the single chair at a rough wooden table before the hearth. He tasted the soup tentatively and, pleased with the unusual spicy flavor, got down to eating in earnest.
But he didn’t take his eyes off Siri. He watched her draw forward a stack of what looked like large playing cards and briskly shuffle them before laying out a cryptic pattern on the table. He watched her stare down at the cards for a long, still moment, her face oddly altered into something tight and suddenly fearful. He watched her sweep up the cards, shuffle again, and again lay out the strange pattern.
His soup finished, Hunter tried to talk to her. But Siri ignored him as if he were no longer in the room. She repeated the same sequence over and over, the strain in her face growing stronger with each repetition. Hunter was curious at this transformation, but he felt languid and sleepy despite the continued aching fullness of his loins, and his curiosity gradually dissolved.
—
Siri heard the man’s voice quieten until there was silence, and she didn’t have to look over at the bed to know that the sleeping mixture had done its work. Had he been aware of being drugged, she knew that he would have claimed she’d put him to sleep to avoid his questions and speed his recovery—and he would have been right. But only as far as it went.
Relieved to be able to drop her mask of coldness, Siri propped her elbows on the table and rested her face in her hands. Why, she asked herself bitterly, had he come as he had? If she’d been able to confront him for the first time before the awful injuries that had left him weak and helpless, meeting strength with strength, there would have been no need for a mask. She would have been fiercely angry and hotly defensive of her beloved charges. She would have quite possibly killed the man.
Instead, Cloud had led her to the broken, bleeding body of a man who had, in his unconsciousness, laughed raggedly, with a strange defiance. And something had turned over within her breast, tempering her anger at his intrusion into her valley. Bitterly aware that she could very well be destroying any hope f
or the future of the herd, Siri had gritted her teeth and used every ounce of skill at her command to save the man’s life.
She should have let him die. Siri knew it, and the knowledge was as dry and bitter as dust in her mouth. Hunter Morgan was obsessed, and a man obsessed was a dangerous and deadly force. He had claimed to have no intention of harming the herd, and she believed that he meant that. But the knowledge he would inevitably carry from the valley would sound a death knell for them just as surely as if he struck the killing blows with his hands.
And there was more, she knew. Though her contact with men had been infrequent, she knew about male needs. The Huntmen, their brutal, half-fearful hunger for her obvious in their thoughts, had always disgusted and repelled her. What they wanted was possession, bestial and uncomplicated, and the images in their minds had sickened her.
But Hunter Morgan…From his mind, she had caught images similar—and yet vastly different—from those of the Huntmen’s minds. His body had swollen in bold need, and she had known what he wanted of her. But he hadn’t thought of stark possession, of merely relieving his needs in her body or of gaining any kind of control over her. He hadn’t thought of destroying.
He had thought of mutual pleasures, of senses alive and bodies seeking a completion, a merging, a passionate union.
And her body had responded to that. She had felt a drawing sensation deep inside her, an abrupt, unfamiliar heavy ache. Her breasts had hurt suddenly, her heart thudded wildly, and an unknown hollowness throbbed between her legs. For the first time in her life she had been wholly, completely aware of her body as distinctly different from a man’s, as female and yearningly incomplete.
And, oh, the terrible danger in that!
Drawing a rasping breath, Siri uncovered her face and stared down at the cards spread out before her. With a smothered curse as violent as any the man had uttered, she swept the cards up and dealt them out again. And again. She stared blindly down at the pattern that repeated itself no matter how many times she dealt. They had never lied to her, the cards. Never. And because of what they now stubbornly told her, Siri felt a sudden terrified desperation. She had to get him out of her valley; he presented a double threat to the herd—and to herself. Because the cards never lied.
She and the man would be lovers.
Forbidden! Outcast!
Coming to her feet in one smooth motion, Siri crossed the now-silent room to stare down at the sleeping man. She prayed to an unknown deity to give her the strength to kill this man, but long moments brought a slump of defeat and the hot pressure of tears walled up and trapped somewhere in her heart.
It had taken her three days to recover from the drain of energy needed to save Hunter Morgan’s life, three days in which she had barely moved to seek the sustenance of food and water and to make certain that he was healing. She had even left the Unicorns to fend for themselves, something she had never before done. And if she had not been so weary, she would have realized then that this man’s life meant more to her than it had any right to. Too much to kill him now, even though it quite probably meant the destruction of the Unicorns and of the only life she had ever known.
She wondered, dimly and on some remote level of herself, what it was about this man that had reached down and touched something inside her. She tried to look at him with the disinterested, faintly distasteful gaze of someone who had no choice but to accept an unwelcome guest for a brief time, tried to see him with the clarity of unthreatening objectivity.
He was a big man, with powerful arms and shoulders and a great barrel of a chest tapering to a leanly muscled stomach and flanks. Long legs promised endurance and strength, and his virility was as potent and obvious as any stallion’s. She bent quickly to remove the white bandage around his forehead, noting with the satisfaction of a talented healer that not even a scar remained to bear witness to the terrible gash she had found leaking away his life’s blood. Then she continued to gaze at him. His thick black hair was a little shaggy, raggedly cut, framing a face that was lean and filled with a compelling strength. Awake, he had the cool, level gaze of a man accustomed to command, and the curiously vivid green eyes, at the moment hidden from Siri, were alive with intelligence.
A man that women would call handsome and men dangerous, Siri knew. A man who had begun his Quest with the fixed intention of seeing it through. A man who would not easily be dissuaded from that intention. A man who was more than a threat to her peace.
“Leave,” she whispered haltingly to the sleeping, unaware presence. “Go back where you came from, before you destroy us all. You won’t be my lover! I won’t let you. The herd would die without me, and you’d take me away from them. You’d destroy the trust. Please leave….”
Whirling suddenly, Siri left the cabin, because it was time to patrol and because it was past time to stop staring down at Hunter Morgan.
She sent a reassuring whistle to Cloud as the stallion lifted his head, and stood for a moment at the edge of the lake, watching the rest of the herd graze in the tall meadow grass. Ten. Only ten now. And only two due to foal this season. Maya, the strikingly beautiful mare who was Cloud’s most beloved mate and a vanishingly rare ivory color, and Teen, who was mated to Crom, Cloud’s second son.
Sighing unconsciously as she watched the herd, Siri lovingly considered each creature in turn. Cloud, long white beard flowing as he turned watchful eyes on his family. Maya, close beside her mate, still graceful on her feet despite the extra weight of the foal to come. Crom and Teen off to one side, the young stallion anxiously nuzzling his mate and clearly concerned by her first pregnancy.
Sighing this time with familiar exasperation, Siri shifted her gaze to the spirited battle going on nearby. Storm, Cloud’s eldest son, arrogant to a fault, was being angrily pursued by his fiery and barren mate Fancy. And Siri didn’t have to see Heart hurry to Cloud’s side to know that the young and gentle filly had found herself unexpectedly cornered by Storm, who wanted a second mate.
Looking at frightened, bewildered Heart, Siri ached inside. Heart would have been Sasha’s mate next Season—had he lived. But Sasha had died weeks before, and poor Heart, still grieving, was both too young and too frightened to accept the attentions of Storm or to understand Fancy’s jealousy. Only the fact that Fancy was too wise to turn her ire on Heart made the situation bearable. And only when Fancy matured enough to share her mate would there be peace.
Cloud trumpeted abruptly, commandingly, his rusty call quieter these days since his favorite son had died, and the squabbling between Storm and Fancy ceased immediately. At once, Fancy sidled up to Cloud coquettishly, as she always did, soothing Cloud’s temper by apologizing prettily. Storm merely stood off to one side, gazing at his father and his mate with the overbearing eye of the heir soon to be crowned.
Biting her lips, Siri looked worriedly at Cloud. Older than the valley, and filled with the ancient wisdom of his race, Cloud was her special friend. She loved him deeply, and to see him now, the proud arch of neck and tail gone forever since the death of Sasha, hurt her unbearably. Listless, responding little even to the anxious nuzzling of Maya and the frightened closeness of Heart, Cloud watched over the herd as he’d always done, but rarely bothered to chastise Storm any longer.
But Storm’s mother, Shree, an old and dignified matron, nipped her wayward son’s gleaming white rump fiercely, and Storm danced away in ludicrous surprise. Weeks ago, Siri would have laughed aloud at Shree’s clear despair at her son’s misbehavior; today it didn’t even spark a smile. She watched with an unfamiliar weariness as Shree briefly nuzzled Cloud and then comforted the frightened Heart, who was her daughter.
Siri felt something bump her abruptly, nearly sending her sprawling, and she laughed for the first time in days. “Rayne!” she exclaimed, finding her balance and staring down at the forehead rubbing frantically against her hip. The first foal of the Season, lively and inquisitive Rayne was constantly trying to alleviate the fierce itch of her newly emerging horn. Siri helpfully sc
ratched the delicate white forehead, looking smilingly down at velvety dark eyes half-closed in blissful enjoyment. Then little Rayne, her long legs still not quite steady, trotted away to check on the whereabouts of her mother, gentle Dawn, Cloud’s third mate.
Siri looked back at the herd, seeing each creature as an individual with a personality uniquely his or her own, and her weariness returned. Only a few more weeks. If she could protect the herd for only a few more weeks, the Summer would be over. The Winter would be long and cold and lonely, but at least she would have the satisfaction of knowing that the herd lived.
If she could keep them alive for the next few weeks.
If Hunter Morgan didn’t destroy them all.
If the cards were wrong…just this once.
She took a deep breath and turned away to begin her patrol, wondering dimly if she had the strength she would surely need in the coming days. The man had to leave the valley. And he had to leave with a vow of silence somehow extracted from him. Which left Siri with a bitter choice of three alternatives, the first of which she already knew to be fruitless: She couldn’t kill him. So she had either to chance his leaving with full knowledge of the Unicorns and their reality and whereabouts, or else she would have to allow him to stay until she could convince him that they should remain as they were: a treasured myth. And she was almost willing to risk his leaving with full knowledge.
Because if he left with that knowledge, at least there was a chance that no one else would be able to find the valley, or would survive finding it. But if Hunter Morgan remained for any length of time, there would be no chance, no chance at all for the Unicorns.
Unless the cards were wrong….
—
When Hunter awoke, the cabin was lighted only by the low fire in the hearth and by a lamp sitting on the table before it. He was clear of mind and immediately aware that he had slept for some time; it was night and the silence of the room was broken only by the crackle of the fire.