He sat up blinking, smiling at something long ago. "Father," he said in a quick, wondering voice. "Father, I had a dream." Then he saw the unicorn, and he rose to his feet as the blood on his face began to shine and move again. He said, "I was dead."
The unicorn touched him a second time, over the heart, letting her horn rest there for a little space. They were both trembling. Prince Lнr put his hands out to her like words. She said, "I remember you. I remember."
"When I was dead -" Prince Lнr began, but she was away. Not a stone rattled down after her, not a bush tore out as she sprang up the cliff: she went as lightly as the shadow of a bird; and when she looked back, with one cloven foot poised, and the sunlight on her sides, with her head and neck absurdly fragile for the burden of the horn – then each of the three below called to her in pain. She turned and vanished; but Molly Grue saw their voices thump home into her like arrows, and even more than she wished the unicorn back, she wished that she had not called.
Prince Lнr said, "As soon as I saw her, I knew that I had been dead. It was so the other time, when I looked down from my father's tower and saw her." He glanced up then and drew in his breath. It was the only sound of grief for King Haggard that any living thing ever made.
"Was it I?" he whispered. "The curse said that I would be the one to bring the castle down, but I would never have done it. He was not good to me, but it was only because I was not what he wanted. Is it my doing that he is fallen?"
Schmendrick replied, "If you had not tried to save the unicorn, she would never have turned on the Red Bull and driven him into the sea. It was the Red Bull who made the overflow, and so set the other unicorns free, and it was they who destroyed the castle. Would you have it otherwise, knowing this?"
Prince Lнr shook his head, but he said nothing. Molly asked, "But why did the Bull run from her? Why didn't he stand and fight?"
There was no sign of him when they looked out to sea, though he was surely too vast to have swum out of sight in so short a time. But whether he reached some other shore, or whether the water drew even his great bulk down at last, none of them knew until long after; and he was never seen again in that kingdom.
"The Red Bull never fights," Schmendrick said. "He conquers, but he never fights."
He turned to Prince Lнr and put a hand on his shoulder. "Now you are the king," he said. He touched Molly as well, said something that was more of a whistle than a word, and the three of them floated up the air like milkweed plumes to the top of the cliff. Molly was not frightened. The magic lifted her as gently as though she were a note of music and it were singing her. She could feel that it was never very far from being wild and dangerous, but she was sorry when it set her down.
No stone of the castle remained, nor any scar; the earth was not even a shade paler where it had stood. Four young men in rusty, ragged armor wandered gaping through the vanished corridors, and turned around and around in the absence that had been the great hall. When they saw Lнr, Molly, and Schmendrick, they came running toward them, laughing. They fell on their knees before Lнr and cried out together, "Your Majesty! Long live King Lнr!"
Lнr blushed, and actually tried to pull them to their feet. "Never mind that," he mumbled, "never mind that. Who are you?" He peered in amazement from one face to the next. "I know you – I do know you – but how can it be?"
"It is true, Your Majesty," the first of the young men said happily. "We are indeed King Haggard's men-at-arms – the same who served him for so many cold and weary years. We fled the castle after you disappeared into the clock, for the Red Bull was roaring, and all the towers were trembling, and we were afraid. We knew that the old curse must be coming home at last."
"A great wave took the castle," said a second man-at-arms, "exactly as the witch, foretold. I saw it go spilling down the cliff as slowly as snow, and why we did not go with it, I cannot tell."
"The wave parted to go around us," another man said, "as I never saw any wave do. It was strange water, like the ghost of a wave, boiling with a rainbow light, and for a moment it seemed to me -" He rubbed his eyes and shrugged, and smiled helplessly. "I don't know. It was like a dream."
"But what has happened to you all?" Lнr demanded. "You were old men when I was born, and now you are younger than I am. What miracle is this?"
The three who had spoken giggled and looked embarrassed, but the fourth man replied, "It is the miracle of meaning what we said. Once we told the Lady Amalthea that we would grow young again if she wished it so, and we must have been telling the truth. Where is she? We will go to her aid if it means facing the Red Bull himself."
King Lнr said, "She is gone. Find my horse and saddle him. Find my horse." His voice was harsh and hungry, and the men-at-arms scrambled to obey their new lord.
But Schmendrick, standing behind him, said quietly, "Your Majesty, it may not be. You must not follow her."
The king turned, and he looked like Haggard. "Magician, she is mine!" He paused, and then went on in a gentler tone, close to pleading. "She has twice raised me up from death, and what will I be without her but dead for a third time?" He took Schmendrick by the wrists with a grip strong enough to powder bones, but the magician did not move. Lнr said, "I am not King Haggard. I have no wish to capture her, but only to spend my life following after her – miles, leagues, even years behind – never seeing her, perhaps, but content. It is my right. A hero is entitled to his happy ending, when it comes at last."
But Schmendrick answered, "This is not the end, either for you or for her. You are the king of a wasted land where there has never been any king but fear. Your true task has just begun, and you may not know in your life if you have succeeded in it, but only if you fail. As for her, she is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her."
Most strangely then, he put his arms around the young king and held him so for a time. "Yet be content, my lord," he said in a low voice. "No man has ever had more of her grace than you, and no other will ever be blessed by her remembrance. You have loved her and served her – be content, and be king."
"But that is not what I want!" Lнr cried. The magician answered not a word, but only looked at him. Blue eyes stared back into green; a face grown lean and lordly into one neither so handsome nor so bold. The king began to squint and blink, as though he were gazing at the sun, and it was not long before he lowered his eyes and muttered, "So be it. I will stay and rule alone over a wretched people in a land I hate. But I will have no more joy of my rule than poor Haggard ever had."
A small autumn cat with a crooked ear stalked out of some secret fold in the air and yawned at Molly. She caught him up against her face, and he tangled his paws in her hair. Schmendrick smiled, and said to the king, "We must leave you now. Will you come with us and see us in friendship to the edge of your domain? There is much between here and there that is worth your study – and I can promise you that there will be some sign of unicorns."
Then King Lнr shouted for his horse again, and his men searched for it and found it; but there were none for Schmendrick and Molly. Yet when they came back with the king's horse, they turned at his amazed stare and saw two more horses trailing docilely behind them: one black and one brown, and both already saddled and bridled. Schmendrick took the black for himself, and gave the brown horse to Molly.