Prince Lнr said, "Sometimes, when he has been on the tower, there is something in his face. Not a light, exactly, but a clearness. I remember. I was little, and he never looked like that when he looked at me, or at anything else. And I had a dream." He was walking very slowly now, scuffing his feet. "I used to have a dream," he said, "the same dream over and over, about standing at my window in the middle of the night and seeing the Bull, seeing the Red Bull -" He did not finish.
"Seeing the Bull driving unicorns into the sea," Schmendrick said. "It was no dream. Haggard has them all now drifting in and out on the tides for his delight – all but one." The magician drew a deep breath. "That one is the Lady Amalthea."
"Yes," Prince Lнr answered him. "Yes, I know."
Schmendrick stared at him. "What do you mean, you know?" he demanded angrily. "How could you possibly know that the Lady Amalthea is a unicorn? She can't have told you, because she doesn't remember it herself. Since you took her fancy, she has thought only of being a mortal woman." He knew quite well that the truth was the other way around, but it made no difference to him just then. "How do you know?" he asked again.
Prince Lнr stopped walking and turned to face him. It was too dark for Schmendrick to see anything but the cool, milky shining where his wide eyes were.
"I did not know what she was until now," he said. "But I knew the first time I saw her that she was something more than I could see. Unicorn, mermaid, lamia, sorceress, Gorgon – no name you give her would surprise me, or frighten me. I love whom I love."
"That's a very nice sentiment," Schmendrick said. "But when I change her back into her true self, so that she may do battle with the Red Bull and free her people -"
"I love whom I love," Prince Lнr repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters."
Before the magician could reply, the Lady Amalthea was standing between them, though neither man had seen or heard her as she came back along the passageway. In the darkness she gleamed and trembled like running water. She said, "I will go no farther."
It was to the prince that she spoke, but it was Schmendrick who said, "There is no choice. We can only go on." Molly Grue came nearer: one anxious eye and the pale start of a cheekbone. The magician said again, "We can only go on."
The Lady Amalthea would not look straight at him. "He must not change me," she said to Prince Lнr. "Do not let him work his magic on me. The Bull has no care for human beings – we may walk out past him and get away. It is a unicorn the Bull wants. Tell him not to change me into a unicorn."
Prince Lнr twisted his fingers until they cracked. Schmendrick said, "It is true. We might very well escape the Red Bull that way even now, as we escaped before. But if we do, there will never be another chance. All the unicorns of the world will remain his prisoners forever, except one, and she will die. She will grow old and die."
"Everything dies," she said, still to Prince Lнr. "It is good that everything dies. I want to die when you die. Do not let him enchant me, do not let him make me immortal. I am no unicorn, no magical creature. I am human, and I love you."
He answered her, saying gently, "I don't know much about enchantments, except how to break them. But I know that even the very greatest wizards are powerless against two who keep to each other – and this one is only poor Schmendrick, after all. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you."
She turned to look at the magician at last, and even through the darkness he could feel the terror in her eyes. "No," she said. "No, we are not strong enough. He will change me, and whatever happens after that, you and I will lose each other. I will not love you when I am a unicorn, and you will love me only because you cannot help it. I will be more beautiful than anything in the world, and live forever."
Schmendrick began to speak, but the sound of his voice made her cower like a candle flame. "I will not have it. I will not have it so." She was looking back and forth from the prince to the magician, holding her voice together like the edges of a wound. She said, "If there is left a single moment of love when he changes me, you will know it, for I will let the Red Bull drive me into the sea with the others. Then at least I will be near you."
"There's no need for all that." Schmendrick spoke lightly, making himself laugh. "I doubt I could turn you back if you wished it. Nikos himself never could turn a human being into unicorn – and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact. Let it end here then, let the quest end. Is the world any the worse for losing the unicorns, and would it be any better if they were running free again? One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end. Marry the prince and live happily ever after."
The passageway seemed to be growing lighter, and Schmendrick imagined the Red Bull stealing toward them, grotesquely cautious, setting his hoofs down as primly as a heron. The thin glimmer of Molly Grue's cheekbone went out as she turned her face away. "Yes," said the Lady Amalthea. "That is my wish."
But at the same moment, Prince Lнr said, "No."
The word escaped him as suddenly as a sneeze, emerging in a questioning squeak – the voice of a silly young man mortally embarrassed by a rich and terrible gift. "No," he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king's voice: not Haggard, but a king whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give.
"My lady," he said, "I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch's door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."
The Lady Amalthea did not answer him. Schmendrick asked, "Why not? Who says so?"
"Heroes," Prince Lнr replied sadly. "Heroes know about order, about happy endings – heroes know that some things are better than others. Carpenters know grains and shingles, and straight lines." He put his hands out to the Lady Amalthea, and took one step toward her. She did not draw back from him, nor turn her face; indeed, she lifted her head higher, and it was the prince who looked away.
"You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you. Also to find some way of starting a conversation." But the Lady Amalthea spoke no word to him.
Pale as lime, the brightness was rising in the cavern. They could see one another clearly now, each gone tallowy and strange with fear. Even the beauty of the Lady Amalthea drained away under that dull, hungry light. She looked more mortal than any of the other three.
"The Bull is coming," Prince Lнr said. He turned and set off down the passageway, taking the bold, eager strides of a hero. The Lady Amalthea followed him, walking as lightly and proudly as princesses are taught to try to walk. Molly Grue stayed close to the magician, taking his hand as she had been used to touch the unicorn when she was lonely. He smiled down at her, looking quite pleased with himself.