"That much is true." She waited.
"How do they think of me? Do they think of me as
one of them?" The loneliness in his own voice startled him.
"You are regarded differently by different beings. Do you wish to be thought one of them?"
The stag thought of those he knew and taunted, then thought of the draconians. "I had not thought so. But recently I discovered a threat which I do not want to harm creatures here, as though they were mine and I cared for them."
"Then by that care, they are yours and you theirs. Does that please you?"
After a long silence, the stag said quietly, "I had not thought it would."
"I am glad." The Forestmaster added, "But that is not why you came, this night, as you have come all the others."
"True." The stag came forward to the rock. "I have come to you a final time. Will you not have me?"
"In service, yes. In love, no." She leapt from the rocks, landing in a cascade of light like stars, even by day. Like the king, like the stag himself, she did not seem surprised by events.
But she was astonished when the stag bent his forelegs and knelt awkwardly in the dust before her. He swayed, unaccustomed to kneeling. "Then I will serve you, a final time. This last thing I do of my own choosing."
The unicorn stared at his lowered head. "May I ask why?"
The stag answered, not moving. "Do not think me inconstant."
"That is the last thing I would think you."
"Good. All that I felt, all that I wish for and desire — " his voice wavered" — are unchanged. But in all the endless times that I have left here, returned here, betrayed here, I never saw the simplest reality of this place: That the wood is larger than I am. It is larger than my need. In the end, it will be larger, and last longer, than even my love could. I offer that love, to it and you, freely and without asking in return — since without asking, you and the wood itself and all in it have always given what you could. I offer my service, and," he finished humbly, "I hope it is well done enough to be of use."
The unicorn looked at him for a long time, seeing every detail of him, every hair and horn and eyelash. At last she said gently, "Most well done, beloved. And remember that I have only said that I could not love you — never that I did not. Go with the hunt."
She touched his forehead with her horn three times.
He fell sideways, legs jerking and twitching. Terrible cries came from him, most loudly when the antlers broke off. His coat grew paler with each moment, and where the Forestmaster had touched him a single spiral horn emerged, blood-tipped, pulling itself through his splintered forehead.
When the draconians emerged, they saw a rock peak and only one unicorn, tottering unsteadily on its hooves. With shouts of triumph they leaped into the air, gliding in pursuit of the unicorn, with their swords swinging and their fanged mouths wide.
The stag moved, stumblingly at first, into Darken Wood. One by one the draconians alit and stalked him on foot.
Through the long afternoon, the stag learned again the old lesson: some hunters one may outrun, but not outlast. Whenever he entered the slightest clearing, the draconians covered more ground than he, gaining rest from the time spent gliding. He wondered if they could fly at all, but soon he was too tired to wonder. While he stayed in the densest forest they could not fly, but he could not run easily, either.
Moreover, in the forest he had to break his own trail, but they could follow in the way he left behind;
he was doing their trailbreaking as well as his own. If he stopped to rest even a moment, he heard the snap of brush and swish of branches closer behind him than they had been when last he rested.
"I would not," he observed to himself as he raced after one such pause, "have thought they could be so patient. It is like being pursued by the dead, as I above all have cause to know."
They had swords and daggers, and perhaps other weapons as well, but the animal in the stag thought most of those pointed teeth, the cold eyes, the hissing breath. He had been pursued — how many times? — for sport, for the challenge, even for his antlers or for a vow, but being chased as meat -
His heart went sick within him and pounded every beat as hard as his hooves pounded the rock-strewn ground.
Behind him came the cold cries of the hunting draconians. To the rhythm of his own rock-chipped hooves, he could not choose but hear the darkest verse of the song touching on himself and on King Peris:
The guards have fled; their trusting land
all undefended lies;
and through the wood invaders ride
with darkness in their eyes.
Without alarms they practice charms
that drive away that light
and shadow into darken wood
is made that evil night.
And afterward, with sword and spear
and horse and horn and hound
they hunted down King Peris's men
and ran them all to ground.
The King was slain, his body lain
among his dying men,
But they were told ere they were cold
to rise and hunt again.
He ran over the green and sunlit hill called Huma's Breast, and found no peace there. Within sight of Prayer's Eye Peak he raced along the river called Night, and took no sleep by it.
He passed the Vale of Sorrow. He passed the Cliffs of Anger. He passed the Slough of Betrayal. Always the draconians grew closer.
"I had not thought Darken Wood so large," he thought once. "Surely I should never have chided the king for a single lapse in guarding so large a trust." He thought briefly of all the scorn he had shown the king, and more fleetingly of how he had originally tempted the king into betraying his trust, but there was little time for apology.
Twice, in the late afternoon, they encircled him and began closing. The first time, he leaped contemptuously over a startled draconian, in full view of the company. The soldier jerked his sword upright hastily, but barely managed to leave a furrow along the stag's flank.
"A scratch, nothing more," he told himself as he limped away. He considered tossing a stinging retort over his shoulder, but thought better. "I would only be lowering myself." And he might, he admitted silently, need the breath.
The second time, panting and exhausted in the Glen of Thorns, he had lain frozen under a branch of blooming sorrow's end, waiting until the draconians had plodded past him to slip quietly away, unmissed until a soldier looked back and saw the white mane as the transformed stag scuttled, head lowered, through the thorn bushes.
"A fawn's trick," he panted, ashamed. "I got away by hiding like a fawn."
He stared at his own side, mottled with thorn scratches and rock scrapes. "No wonder it worked. Still, perhaps these creatures don't see well by day." But he looked at the sun, already sunk below treetop level, and he knew that there would be no third escape.
By dusk he was tottering, barely ahead of the draconians, barely able to move his legs. His eyes showed white all around the edges, and he smelled his own blood in his nostrils. Each step brought a new ache, each breath another side-stitch.
There was no question but that they would kill him. All that mattered was when and where.
Once he nearly sank down on a patch of deathwort, ready to let it end appropriately. If this were but one more death in an endless series, what did it matter whether he died well or badly?
But he heard them coming and struggled wearily to his feet. "I have," he gasped, "an appointment. With a friend, and with — others. I will fail no one this time."
The sun was no more than a blood-red sliver in the brush when he lurched across the trail and into the small glade. He looked around dazedly, though he knew the place well. Even where there were no trees, there seemed to be shadows, and the grass itself seemed tainted with death.