Then there was nothing but a floor awash in seawater, and Anne felt the heat of the blood already working in her, making her head swim. She nudged the unicorn, who walked forward until she stood quite near the queen. Ahèz was looking in disbelief at her own hands, still edged with the light of the day that had summoned the sea-drake. “That is not possible,” she said.
Anne said softly, “My father too left me. His horse killed him, but he had lost all his desire to live. I mourned him; I was angry at him. But it is not an excuse for cruelty.”
“Who are you to speak to me so?” Ahèz demanded. “Why do youhave my father’s ring? Impostor! Usurper! Seize this woman and I will have her smothered.” In her eyes was a child’s fatal selfishness that becomes cruelty in men and women.
No one moved.
“Here is your father’s ring,” said Anne, and laid it on the table.
The queen cried, “Will no one kill this woman? Kill the unicorn and bring me the horn. Iwantthem. She has disturbed my feast.”
Anne said, “Do you not wish for daylight, lady?”
“Why should I?” she spat back. “My father loved daylight, and I hate him.”
A different light filled the hall, a new enchantment, the furtive glimpse of another day in that same hall, Queen Malgven of the korrigan, great with child, and her husband, the crowned king Gralon Meur, their hands entwined. Just a glimpse, two ghosts drawn forth by a lonely child burdened with power. “They only wanted each other,” said Ahèz. “I am waiting formylove. I will have my banquets and my dances until he comes. You can have nothing to say to it, vagabond.”
Anne asked warily, “Have you met your love, Majesty?”
“Of course I have! He came to one of my banquets; he told me that he would love me forever.” The bells were ringing louder, audible now through the walls.
Anne said, “He is not coming back.”
“He will!” retorted the girl. “Someone has to come back. Not Father, not Mother, but someone must come back! It’s notfair.”
“It is not fair to be a queen,” said Anne. “But you were born to make justice for others and expect none for yourself. This you have not done. All here will witness it. But you can remedy it now. Help me bring the city out into daylight.”
“I don’t want it,” said Ahèz, crossing her arms. “It is impossible. This night is well enough; I will stay here.”
Anne held the unicorn’s mane and looked into the complexity of lights and shadows, saw the infinity caught within. “Will you?” she whispered. “But your will is not that of your people.” To the crowded room she whispered, “Remember the dawn, and the living world.”
They remembered. They believed in her. They wanted the same thing, and in that moment she was the instrument of their will. With that thought like a blazon in her heart, Anne let her mind fill with the light of day and of the summer sea.
The unicorn’s neck was warm under her hand, there was the dragon’s blood upon her again, and somewhere, just a glimpse, she saw a man of terrible beauty, neither mortal nor korrigan, come unseen to that hall and watch her with cold eyes, the color of a sea-drake’s scales.
She did not think any sorcery could have done this thing. Certainly not hers, all untrained. But these people were wild for their own freedom.
With a strength she did not possess, Anne dragged Keris back to where it had begun, into the lands of men, upon the great bay of Douarnenez. She screamed as the pain of it tore through her, as the dawn light struck the high spire of its palace.
She fell from the unicorn’s back. But there were hands on her now, the strength of others holding her up, helping her stand. When she looked for the strange figure, he had disappeared.
Dawn shone redly through the high upper windows.
Anne felt the unicorn’s horn hot against her face, the agony of healing. She swayed on her feet, sweating and sick, her will bent on Ahèz once more. She said, “Come and be a queen in the light and not the shadows.”
Ahèz just looked at the hard faces of the people, the knights with their swords, the unicorn at Anne’s shoulder. Her face crumpled suddenly. “Why did you do that? I was happy. The night was perfect.” Her face turned raw with hatred as she stared at the unicorn. “I hunted over all the fields of the world and you never came to me. My father gave me the keys to the seawalls anyway, but I knew I was not the true queen, for I had never touched a unicorn. I hated my place all the more since it was not mine. I suppose it is yours, vagabond,” she said bitterly to Anne, “and you have come to take it.”
Anne said nothing.
The old knight said, “This lady has the ring and the unicorn’sblessing; Keris is rightly ruled by someone blessed by the creature who walks in two worlds.”
“It is mine!” Ahèz cried out. “I inherited it! My father gave it me.”
With a wild motion, she snatched up the golden mask that lay upon the table and threw herself at Anne. The knight’s sword hissed free, but he was too slow. It was the unicorn who moved quicker; the horn pierced Ahèz’s shoulder and she fell back with a spreading stain on her robe.
The unicorn was still. Gentleness in that dark eye, but no mercy.
“I am queen,” said Ahèz. She held the gold mask between her hands. The smothering-mask. “I am queen,” she said again, and put the mask to her face.
