The Lady Amalthea lay where she had fallen, though now she was trying to rise, and Prince Lнr still guarded her, raising his naked hands against the enormous shape that loomed over him. The tip of the prince's tongue stuck out of one corner of his mouth, making him look as serious as a child taking something apart. Long years later, when Schmendrick's name had become a greater name than Nikos's and worse than afreets surrendered at the sound of it, he was never to work the smallest magic without seeing Prince Lнr before him, his eyes squinted up because of the brightness and his tongue sticking out.
The Red Bull stamped again, and Prince Lнr fell on his face and got up bleeding. The Bull's rumble began, and the blind, bloated head started down, lowering like one half of the scales of doom. Lнr's valiant heart hung between the pale horns, as good as dripping from their tips, himself as good as smashed and scattered; and his mouth buckled a little, but he never moved. The sound of the Bull grew louder as the horns went down.
Then Schmendrick stepped into the open and said a few words. They were short words, undistinguished either by melody or harshness, and Schmendrick himself could not hear them for the Red Bull's dreadful bawling. But he knew what they meant, and he knew exactly how to say them, and he knew that he could say them again when he wanted to, in the same way or in a different way. Now he spoke them gently and with joy, and as he did so he felt his immortality fall from him like armor, or like a shroud.
At the first word of the spell, the Lady Amalthea gave a thin, bitter cry. She reached out again to Prince Lнr, but he had his back to her, protecting her, and he did not hear. Molly Grue, heartsick, caught at Schmendrick's arm, but the magician spoke on. Yet even when the wonder blossomed where she had been – sea-white, sea-white, as boundlessly beautiful as the Bull was mighty – still the Lady Amalthea clung to herself for a moment more. She was no longer there, and yet her face hovered like a breath in the cold, reeky light.
It would have been better if Prince Lнr had not turned until she was gone, but he turned. He saw the unicorn, and she shone in him as in a glass, but it was to the other that he called – to the castaway, to the Lady Amalthea. His voice was the end of her: she vanished when he cried her name, as though he had crowed for day.
Things happened both swiftly and slowly as they do in dreams, where it is really the same thing. The unicorn stood very still, looking at them all out of lost, elsewhere eyes. She seemed even more beautiful than Schmendrick remembered, for no one can keep a unicorn in his head for long; and yet she was not as she had been, no more than he was. Molly Grue started toward her, speaking softly and foolishly, but the unicorn gave no sign that she knew her. The marvelous horn remained dull as rain.
With a roar that set the walls of his lair belling out and cracking like circus canvas, the Red Bull charged for the second time. The unicorn fled across the cave and into darkness. Prince Lнr, in turning had stepped a little to one side, and before he could wheel back again, the Bull's plunging pursuit smashed him down, stunned, with his mouth open.
Molly would have gone to him, but Schmendrick took hold of her and dragged her along after the Bull and the unicorn. Neither beast was in sight, but the tunnel still thundered from their desperate passage. Dazed and bewildered, Molly stumbled beside the fierce stranger who would neither let her fall nor slacken her pace. Over her head and all around, she could feel the castle groaning, creaking in the rock like a loosening tooth. The witch's rhyme jangled in her memory, over and over.
Suddenly it was sand slowing their feet, and the smell of the sea – cold as the other smell, but so good, so friendly that they both stopped running and laughed aloud. Above them, on the cliff, King Haggard's castle splayed up towards a gray-green morning sky splashed with thin, milky clouds. Molly was sure that the king himself must be watching from one of the tremulous towers, but she could not see him. A few stars still fluttered in the heavy blue sky over the water. The tide was out, and the bald beach had the gray, wet gleam of a stripped shellfish, but far down the strand the sea was bending like a bow, and Molly knew that the ebb had ended.
The unicorn and the Red Bull stood facing each other at the arch of the bow, and the unicorn's back was to the sea. The Bull moved in slowly, not charging, but pressing her almost gently towards the water, never touching her. She did not resist him. Her horn was dark, and her head was down, and the Bull was as much her master as he had been on the plain of Hagsgate, before she became the Lady Amalthea. It might have been that same hopeless dawn, except for the sea.
Yet she was not altogether beaten. She backed away until one hind foot actually stepped into the water. At that, she sprang through the sullen smolder of the Red Bull and ran away along the beach: so swift and light that the wind of her passing blew her footprints off the sand. The Bull went after her.
"Do something," a hoarse voice said to Schmendrick, as Molly had said it long ago. Prince Lнr stood behind him, his face bloody and his eyes mad. He looked like King Haggard. "Do something," he said. "You have power. You changed her into a unicorn – do something now to save her. I will kill you if you don't." He showed the magician his hands.
"I cannot," Schmendrick answered him quietly. "Not all the magic in the world can help her now. If she will not fight him, she must go into the sea with the others. Neither magic nor murder will help her."
Molly heard small waves slapping on the sand – the tide was beginning to turn. She saw no unicorns tumbling in the water, though she looked for them, willing them to be there. What if it is too late? What if they drifted out on the last ebb tide, out to the deepest sea where no ships go, because of the kraken and the sea-drake, and because of the floating jungles of wrack that tangle and drown even these? She will never find them then. Would she stay with me?
"Then what is magic for?" Prince Lнr demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder hard, to keep from falling.
Schmendrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for."
They could not see the unicorn for the hugeness of the Bull; but suddenly she doubled on her track and came flying up the beach toward them. Blind and patient as the sea, the Red Bull followed her, his hoofs gouging great ditches in the damp sand. Smoke and fire, spray and storm, they came on together, neither one gaining, and Prince Lнr gave a soft grunt of understanding.
"Yes, of course," he said. "That is exactly what heroes are for. Wizards make no difference, so they say that nothing does, but heroes are meant to die for unicorns." He let go of Schmendrick's shoulder, smiling to himself.
"There is a basic fallacy in your reasoning," Schmendrick began indignantly, but the prince never heard what it was. The unicorn flashed by them – her breath streaming blue-white, and her head carried too high – and Prince Lнr leaped into the path of the Red Bull. For a moment, he disappeared entirely, like a feather in a flame. The Bull ran over him and left him lying on the ground. One side of his face cuddled too hard into the sand, and one leg kicked the air three times before it stopped.
He fell without a cry, and Schmendrick and Molly alike were stricken as silent as he, but the unicorn turned. The Red Bull halted when she did, and wheeled to put her once more between himself and the sea. He began his mincing, dancing advance again, but he might have been a courting bird for all the attention the unicorn paid him. She stood motionless, staring at the twisted body of Prince Lнr.