Well of the Unicorn Read online

  The Well of the Unicorn

  Fletcher Pratt

  Fantasy Masterworks Volume 23

  eGod

  flyboy707

  Contents

  Title

  Introduction

  Authors Note

  Table of Contents

  1 Taxed Out

  2 The Cot: There is a Song

  3 Naaros: A New Friend at the Old Sword

  4 Naaros: Men Meet at Night

  5 The Road: Change and Unchange

  6 The Iulia: First Tale of the Well

  7 The Iulia Once More: Gifts are Given

  8 The Isles of Genfebbi: "It Is Not Fair"

  9 Ships Come to Salmonessa

  10 Salmonessa: Now We Have an Allegiance

  11 Salmonessa: The Duke Plans

  12 A Night in Salmonessa

  13 The Causeway: Baffle

  14 A Night in Mariola

  15 Hestinga: It Is Another Day

  16 A Judgement in Hestinga

  17 The Count's Pillow: Second Tale of the Well

  18 Issue of the Pass: Captains Gather

  19 The Whiteriverdales: Spear and Shield

  20 The Whiteriverdales: Debate of the Deserion

  21 The High Hills of Froy: They Ride

  22 Shalland: Evil at the Inn

  23 Shalland: Debate of Meliboe the Enchanter

  24 The Northern Sea: A Bond Broken

  25 The Northern Sea: Third Tale of the Well

  26 Os Erigu: The Cup of War

  27 Os Erigu: Generosity Rejected

  28 Os Erigu: Ramp of the Cat

  29 Os Erigu: Treason

  30 Bear Fjord: The Brand is Aloft

  31 Farewell to Os Erigu

  32 Hrakra Mouth: Great Tidings

  33 The Coast of Skogalang: Fourth Tale of the Well

  34 Return from Sea

  35 Naaros: "I Am Free"

  36 Naaros: Duty

  37 Naaros: Wedding Day

  38 The Whiteriverdales: Wedding Night

  39 The Whiteriverdales: No End

  About the Author

  Introduction

  THE NOVEL of the created world is a very special genre. Only recently has it achieved popularity—and with that popularity, enough examples to really be called a genre. The floodgates of public acceptance were opened with J. R. R. Tolkien's epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

  Direct ancestors are easy enough to find. One might mention Oz and Barsoom, the fairy tale, and early adventure science fiction. Mythical cities and countries have always been with us, from Prester John's kingdom onward, but L. Frank Baum, in his Oz series, deliberately created a whole kingdom, totally unrelated to anywhere we knew, with its own geography and political structure. In his Mars books, Edgar Rice Burroughs presented a whole world subject only to its own laws.

  Science fiction went on to create worlds in plenty, but all had at least one foot in a hypothetical reality. Writers of "pure" fantasy and its sister, horror fiction, created lost civilizations. The pulp adventure writers of the thirties wrote tales of our own Earth's past, but a past found in no history book and not even in the myths of any recognizable culture. These tales were usually flavored with heroic adventure and had more than a touch of magic, since if one is creating one's own world, magic is bound to add glamor not found in our own.

  J. R. R. Tolkien came to the field from another direction, that of the children's fairy tale. The Hobbit, vaguely based on Celtic and Anglo-Saxon myths, told of a world that humanity shared with elves, dragons, and dwarves on a more or less equal basis. With The Lord of the Rings, an enormous work obviously written for adults but set in the same world, the novel of the created world had come of age.

  But six years before The Lord of the Rings was published, a book appeared that I consider the purest example ever written. It is Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn, truly a book ahead of its time. It set standards from which rules for this elusive and special kind of story might be drawn.

  1. The milieu and cast of the story should have nothing to do with any recognizable time or place. (The world of The Well is certainly nowhere to be found on any map or in any present or past we know of.) However:

  2. The setting should be physically recognizable as our own world. (The natural aspects of the world of The Well, its flora and fauna, are not alien to us.)

  3. The created world should have an ordered political and/or social structure. (That of The Well is particularly finely drawn.) This creates a clear field in order that:

  4. The main point of the tale should be action or adventure. Why create a world for domestic comedy?

  It could be argued that magic is a necessary ingredient, but I feel not. There is at least one superb example that uses no magic at all (Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy), and its spare and subtle use in The Well of the Unicorn is one of the book's strongest points.

  The challenge of this kind of novel is great. The writer has no limits to his creation, it is true, but great craft is required to harness that freedom into a reality that will hold the reader's interest and sympathy. Fletcher Pratt more than succeeded in this book. Pratt was a military historian, and the warfare of his semimedieval world rings true. An accomplished fantasist, he created, with L. Sprague de Camp, several notable worlds of what-might-have-been. Here, on his own, he created a classic.

  Baird Searles Director of Drama and Literature WBAI, New York

  Author's Note Before the Tale Begins:

  THIS IS THE reader's book. All proper names are therefore to be pronounced in any way he chooses, except in conversation with another reader, in which case the two must settle their differences as best they can, for there is no rule.

  It may be that one imagines he has caught a warcry or a movement that reminds him of something he has known in another world than the one discussed here, and yet not quite the same. He will be perfectly correct in this; one of the most fascinating things about histories real or imagined (and this is not to draw a line between the two) is how they almost repeat an earlier pattern but never quite accomplish it, like one of those designs in a tessellated pavement which runs out into something else at a corner. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why it is interesting to stare at such a pave or to follow real and unreal history when one is idle of other matters. One is watching for the repeated shock which never quite comes. In our world Augustus-Napoleon does not follow Caesar-Napoleon, however men expect that he will, nor does Hitler-Bonaparte attain the fate of his model.

  So in this other world, but that is an off-wandering; the need here is to provide a guide as far as the gate of our history, imaginary or real. A certain Irish chronicler named Dunsany caught some of the news from this nowhere and set it down under the style of "King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior," but the events he cites took place generations before any told here, and he was only interested in a very small part of them, to wit: the revolt of King Argimenes. The Irish chronicler did not tell that the revolt was against the heathen of Dzik, who burst in upon the Dalarnan lands with their gospel and sword in the days when men were living at peace and their problems all seemed solved; though he did say that, like all conquerors, these conquerors had become luxurious.

  This Argimenes was one of the greatest kings of whom there is a record and his son Argentarus hardly less. They ruled over the Dalecarles, who before the heathen invasion were one people with those that later come to be called Vulkings (since all their counts were named Vulk), which is shown by the fact that their institutions bear so much resemblance. The mountain countries, as Acquileme and the Lacias, East and West, were corners of Dalarna never under the rule of Dzik; their people had a certain dark-haired strain in them, whereas the coastal Dalecarles were, like the heathen,
blond. Therefore the Vulkings held they were the only true Dalecarles and, after the heathen were driven from the land, sought to restore it as it was before, or as they thought it had been, which is not at all the same thing. Quarrels arose, for if the Dalecarles had been in subjection, the Vulkings had been kept out of it, which makes men far more intolerant.

  Yet both parties still paid respect to the Empire, for it was by this time an Empire, King Argimenes in his later years having been wedded with the Princess of Stassia from across the southern sea that is also called the Blue Sea. It would be some time before this union that there was discovered the Well of the Unicorn, the well of peace, with which this narrative is concerned; the world's wonder. The turbulent Twelve Cities, which had known no master, submitted themselves to the Empire to partake in the blessings of the Well; they are east-away and somewhat south from Stassia, among islands and half-islands, and their back-country is full of men who wear skirts, take more than one wife, and do not have the true religion. Even the terrible heathen of Dzik kept the peace of the Well—after they had been fairly beaten in the field by Argimenes, Argentarius, and above all, Aureolus, that changed the kingdom to an Empire and its title from silver to gold.

  East of Dalarna lies Salmonessa and its hot dukes (but the maps will show that); south of all are Uravedu and the Spice Islands, very rich, but the commons thereof are blue-faced pagans who wear breechclouts only; north is the Micton country stretching to eternal mists, where short-legged warlocks dwell. At the period of which we speak the Counts Vulk have made good their claim to rule all Dalarna—and the rest is the story.

  1 Taxed Out

  AIRAR COULD HEAR the horses before they reached the corner of the hedge where the big plane tree was. They were six in number, not talking—an oldish man in dirty blue with a twist-beard, who would be the bailiff; three archers, one of them a dark-skinned Micton man with his bow already strung; and damned Fabrizius in the middle, with his broad flat face and nose held high, well muffled in a fur-lined jacket and followed by a servant on a horse that stumbled.

  Airar stood up with the wintry southering sun striking through branches across his face as one of the archers helped his lordship the bailiff to descend, the row of seals across his belly tinkling against each other like cracked pans. He had a parchment in his sleeve.

  "I have a mission in the Count's name with Alvar Airarson."

  "He is not here. I am Airar Alvarson."

  Beyond, Airar could see Fabrizius shake his head— with that expression of decent regret that always covered his baseness.

  "Then you stand deputy in his name as the heir of the house?" asked the bailiff, more with statement than question. "In accordance with the statute of the fourth year of Count Vulk, fourteenth of the name, relating to real properties, confirmed by the Emperor Auraris, I make demand on this estate for two years' arrears of the wall tax; and moreover for repayment of certain sums loaned to the estate by one Leonce Fabrizius, the said loan having been duly registered with the chancery of Vastmanstad and attest by the mark of Alvar Airarson."

  Airar swallowed and took half a step, but the bailiff surveyed him with the impassive eye of a fish while the Micton archer tittered and nocked a shaft. "I do not have the money," said he.

  "Then in the name of the law and the Count, I do declare this stead called Trangsted forfeit to the Empire. Yet as it is provided in the statute of the realm that no stead shall be forfeit without price, but acquired by purchase only, I do offer you the sum of one gold aura therefor out of the Count's generosity, and those present shall be witness. Wherewith you stand quit of all claims against you and go free." He fumbled the piece from the scrip at his side, bored manner of a formula of many repetitions. For a moment Airar seemed like to strike it from his hand; then seeing the Micton's covetous eye fall toward it, reached instead.

  "So now this land and house are the property of our Count. I call on you to leave it, bearing not more than you carry on your back without setting the bundle down for five thousand paces." He turned from Airar, busness with him done, to look expectant at Fabrizius; but the latter beckoned to Alvarson, who stood a moment with hand on pack, mouth set in a line of mutiny, yet well enough bred to hear what even the Prince of Hell had to say for himself.

  "A moment, son of Alvar," said he while Airar noted how the little tuft of fur over his ear wagged as the broad mouth opened. "You have not been altogether well treated, and though you may not believe it, I hold a high regard for you. For as our Count has said, we must all live together, Dalecarles and Vulkings, each giving his best to make one people in this land. So I have made a place for you where you can do better than well. If you will go to Naaros by the dock and tell your name to the master of the cog Unicorn, he will make you of his company for a voyage of sure profit. Come, my boy, your hand."

  "No hand," said Airar shortly, and swinging his pack up started resolutely down between the hedges wondering whether he ought not to throw a spell, but no, they would have protection. Fabrizius shrugged and turned to the bailiff, but now it was the latter's turn to be busy, signing to the tall archer, the one who had remained mounted, to go with the young man—perhaps fearing some trick of violence like a return along the shadow of the hedge and a flung knife, though Airar carried no other weapon.

  As he turned down the road where the hedge fell low, an old brown horse beginning to turn grey at the edges lifted his head and stepped slowly toward the roadside. His name was Pil. Airar looked past him, not meeting his eye, past the house where now no smoke came from the chimney, across the long brown fells rising like waves with crests of brush here and there, till they went up into the rounded crests of the Hogsback, with black trees thinning out to pine and the gleam of snow along the upper ridges far beyond. A door banged sharply in the still air, Leonce Fabrizius entering his new house. Goodbye, Trangsted—good-bye, Pil. Airar shook his head, trudging along, and the tall archer leaned down:

  "Cheer up, younker, you have the world to make. What you need is a couple of nights with one of Madame Korin's girls at Naaros. That'll fix you up."

  The horse's hoofs went klop-klop on the frozen road and Airar said nothing.

  "You get over it. Why, when I was a lad we were taxed out ourselves—that was up in West Lacia in the days of the old Count and how I came into service, scrubbing armor at Briella, when the old man went down there and hired himself out for a cook in the castle, at the time of the Count's war with the heathens."

  Not a word said Airar, and the tall archer tapped the neck of his horse with one glove.

  "Now take yourself," he went on. "Here you are, a free man, no debts, or service due, and a figure to make some of those court fillies prance to be ridden or a baron glad to have you at his gate. The world's not perfect, but a young fellow is a fool not to make the best out of what he has given him. Set yourself up for an archer, younker, or a billman, which is easier; you'll be noticed, never doubt it. I've done all right at Briella and here I am with a face to scare mice. But you're a Dalecarle, not so? Well, then, try Salmonessa; Duke Roger keeps lively girls there and I have heard he keeps an agent in Naaros to wage men. I'll even give you a word, What do you say?"

  "No, bugger Roger of Salmonessa."

  "Why, you sguittard, you milk-sucker, if—"

  He jerked hard on the rein and Airar looked up angry into a face unlike most Vulkings, long, lean, and lined from nose to jaw. "Oh, sir," he cried, all his black mood running off as soon as it had accomplished its object of reaching another, "I cry your pardon. There must be a doom on me that always I strike at those who would be my friends. But in fact you speak at a hard time when I have lost everything and can gain nothing, being clerk but kept by law from it, nor carry weapons in Dalarna that is my home, nor have even a roof to my head."

  The tall archer dropped rein and hand, now mollified. "No matter, younker. I grant you grace. Aye, it would be an ill like, playing tomcat to one of Duke Roger's bawds. Duke! Why, he's only a hedge-duke, or duke of the rabbits,
not worth sitting at the feet of a simple count. Now—"

  He left it unfinished and for a while they strode and rode along with communication silently established past the stead where the three sons of Viclid used to live. There were a couple of Micton slaves in the barnyard, trying to persuade a bullock to some mysterious doing, trotting around incompetently with many cries, the slow beef pulling from their grasp. The young man thought of these clumsy fools tracking mud across the floors of Trangsted. Presently the place and the hill on which it stood were left behind, the noise behind them still, and the tall archer said:

  "My name is Pertuit. You are for Naaros, then?"

  "Where else?"

  "Kinfolk there?"

  Airar gave a short, hard laugh, like a bark. "A—a— father's brother—Tholo hight."

  "No friend of mine. But it is said: long is the street where no sibling sits at the end."

  "Aye. Tholo Airarson sits in a street where Leonce Fabrizius' house is and plays his client."

  The archer Pertuit whistled. "That's a fine coil. Not that I have anything against Fabrizius, but you were a pig's head sure to be his man, even at the second remove, under the circumstances. Yet what else have you? Hell's broth, it's like being taken by the heathen of Dzik, that offer you a horse—to ride with them to the wars or before them to the scaffold. I was there once, but I found a little black-haired wench who would rather have me play jig on a pallet with her than alone at the end of a rope, therefore escaped."

  He shook his head, problem too deep for him, and they came to the crest of another of the long fingers reaching down from the Hogsback. The trees by the roadside dropped away here and a little distance out the knuckle ended, so they could see for miles in the windless clear air out to the west where a clump of wood on the horizon took a nip from the sinking sun. Between were long fields, only a few checkered with winter plowing, the rest brown pasture and animals like toys, moving slowly. Through its center ran the great river, the Naar, dark blue in illumination already becoming uncertain, with flashes of white that caught the last light as ice slid down its floor toward Naaros city.