Something in the way Willow spoke that single word chilled Ben Holiday to the bone.
“Then suddenly a creature appeared before me, a wraith come from the mists of the predawn night.” The sylph’s green eyes glittered. “It was a unicorn, Ben, so dark that it seemed to absorb the white moon’s light as a sponge would absorb water. It was a unicorn, but something more. It was not white as the unicorns of old, but ink black. It barred my passage, its horn lowered, hooves pawing at the earth. Its slender body seemed to twist and change shape, and I saw it was more demon than unicorn, more devil than fairy. It was blind in the manner of the great marsh bulls, and it had their fury. It came for me, and I ran. I knew, somehow, that I must not let it touch me — that if it were to touch me I was lost. I was quick, but the black unicorn followed close behind. It wanted me. It meant to have me.”
Her breath came quickly, her slender body tense with the emotions that raged within. The room was deathly still. “And then I saw that I held in my hands a bridle of spun gold — real gold threads drawn and woven by the fairies of the old life. I didn’t know how I had come to possess that bridle; I only knew that I mustn’t lose it. I knew that it was the only thing in the world that could harness the black unicorn.”
The hand tightened further. “I ran looking for Ben. The bridle must be taken to him, I sensed, and if I did not reach him with it quickly, the black unicorn would catch me and I would be…”
She trailed off, her eyes fastened on Ben’s. For an instant, he forgot everything she had just told him, lost in those eyes, in the touch of her hand. For an instant, she was the impossibly beautiful woman he had come upon bathing naked in the waters of the Irrylyn almost a year ago, siren and fairy child both. The vision never left him. He recaptured it each time he saw her, the memory become life all over again.
There was an awkward silence. Abernathy cleared his throat. “It seems to have been quite a night for dreams,” he remarked archly. “Everyone in the room but me appears to have had one. Bunion, how about you? Did you dream about friends in trouble or books of magic or black unicorns? Parsnip?”
The kobolds hissed softly and shook their heads in unison. But there was a wary look to their sharp eyes that suggested they did not wish to treat the matter of these dreams as lightly as Abernathy did.
“There was one thing more,” Willow said, still looking only at Ben. “I came awake while I ran from the thing that hunted me — black unicorn or devil. I came awake, but I felt certain the dream had not ended — that there was still something more to come.”
Ben nodded slowly, his reverie broken. “Sometimes we dream the same dream more than once…”
“No, Ben,” she whispered, her voice insistent. Her hand released his. “This dream was like yours — more premonition than dream. I was being warned, my High Lord. A fairy creature is closer to the truth of dreams than others. I was being shown something that I am meant to know — and I have not yet been shown all.”
“There are stories of sightings of a black unicorn in the histories of Landover,” Questor Thews advised suddenly. “I remember reading of them once or twice. They happened long ago, and the reports were vague and unconfirmed. The unicorn was said to be a demon spawn — a thing of such evil that even to gaze once upon it was to become lost…”
The food and drink of their breakfast sat cooling on plates and in cups on the table before them, forgotten. The dining hall was still and empty, yet Ben could sense eyes and ears everywhere. It was an unpleasant feeling. He glanced briefly at Questor’s somber face and then back at Willow’s once more. Had he been told of her dream — and perhaps even of Questor’s as well — and not experienced his own, he might have been inclined to dismiss them. He did not put much stock in dreams. But the memory of Miles Bennett in that darkened office, nearly frantic with worry because Ben was not there when he was needed, hung over him like a cloud. It was as real as his own life. He recognized a similar urgency in the narrative of the dreams of his friends, and their insistence simply reinforced a nagging conviction that dreams as vivid and compelling as theirs should not be dismissed as the byproducts of last night’s dinner or a collection of overactive subconsciousnesses. “Why are we having these dreams?” he wondered aloud.