And she knew she must give it.
She shuddered violently. What was she thinking? If she even came close to the unicorn, she could be lost. She should forget this madness! She should go to Ben…
She let the unfinished thought trail off, huddled down against the night and the stillness, and wrestled with her indecision. She wished her mother were there to comfort her or that she could seek again the counsel of the Earth Mother.
She wished most of all for Ben.
But none of them was there. Except for Parsnip, she was alone.
The moments slipped by. Suddenly she rose, a soundless shadow, left Parsnip asleep in the gathering of pines, and disappeared silently into the Deep Fell. She went not on reason, but on instinct, without doubt or fear, but with certainty that all would be well and she would be kept safe.
By dawn, she had returned. She did not have the golden bridle in her possession, but she knew now where it was. Her fairy senses had told her what even the Earth Mother could not. The bridle had been stolen yet again.
She woke Parsnip, gathered together her few things, cast a brief glance back at the dark bowl of the hollows, and started walking east.
Thieves
When Ben Holiday and Edgewood Dirk awoke the following morning, the hunter was gone. Neither had heard him leave. He had departed without a word, disappearing so completely that it was almost as if he had never been. Even his face was just a vague memory for Ben. It was only his story of the hunt for the black unicorn that lingered on, still vivid, still haunting.
Breakfast was a solemn affair. “I hope he finds what he’s looking for,” Ben muttered at one point.
“He can’t,” Dirk replied softly. “It doesn’t exist.”
Ben was beginning to wonder about that. The black unicorn seemed as elusive as smoke and about as substantive. The unicorn was seen, but never for more than a few moments and never as more than a fleeting shadow. It was a legend that had assumed a scant few of the trappings of reality, but which remained for all intents and purposes little more than a vision. It was altogether possible that a vision was all the unicorn was — some strayed bit of magic that took form but never body. In Landover, you never knew.
He thought about asking Dirk, but then decided against it. Dirk wouldn’t give him a straight answer if he knew one, and he was tired of playing word games with the cat.
He decided to change the subject.
“Dirk, I’ve been giving some thought to what the Earth Mother told us about the golden bridle,” he said when breakfast was finished. “She told Willow that it was last in the possession of Nightshade, but she didn’t say anything about what had become of the witch since I sent her into the fairy mists.” He paused. “You knew I had done that, didn’t you? That I had sent Nightshade into the mists?”
Dirk, seated on an old log, shifted his front paws experimentally. “I knew.”
“She sent my friends into Abaddon, and I decided to give her a taste of her own medicine,” he went on by way of explanation. “I was given Io Dust by the fairies, a powder that, if breathed, made you subject to the commands of the one who fed you the Dust. I used it later on the dragon Strabo, too, as a matter of fact. At any rate, I used it on Nightshade first and caused her to change herself into a crow and fly off into the mists.” Again he paused. “But I never knew what happened to her after that.”
“This rather boring recapitulation is leading somewhere, I trust?” Dirk sniffed.
Ben flushed. “I was wondering whether or not Nightshade had found her way out of the mists and back into the Deep Fell. It might help if we knew that before we waltzed blindly on in.”
Dirk took a long moment to clean his face, causing Ben’s flush to heighten further with impatience. At last the cat looked up again. “I have not been down into the Deep Fell myself in quite some time, High Lord. But I understand that Nightshade might well be back.”