Piers Anthony - Unicorn Point

Fearfully, they brought them forth. She inspected the ragged urchins, then questioned each in turn. “Be thou native to this village? Know ye o’ any who be not?” All the children were native. Tania went to the adults, fixing each with just enough of her Eye to be assured they were telling the truth. “Dost know an any child came here, or departed here, o’ the type I seek?”

No one knew of any. It was as she had expected: it had taken more than two days to verify that this village was clean. And only about ninety-nine villages to go! Actually it took less than six months to check all the human settlements, because news of their search spread, and each village was eager to be exonerated. Soon the far-flung personnel were arriving almost as their party did, so that the job could be done in a day. Of course the very time consumed in their search caused the event in question to become increasingly remote. But since the villagers knew the nature of the search, their memories of the time in question were sharp-ened. They could not cheat or conceal anything, because Tania always cross-checked, inquiring not only of individual memories, but of what they knew or had heard of the experience of others, and of any missing villagers. No one escaped scrutiny, and no one dissembled; all were clean. As expected. In Tania’s mind. Purple had done much damage by his foolish insistence that the human population be checked first. Translucent was right: the boy had avoided that form, knowing it would be checked.

‘And now needs we must verify the ‘corns,” Tania said as they finished with the last village. “Another colossal waste o’ time.”

“True,” Fleta agreed. “My boy be not among mine own kind.”

“Yet needs must we check, by order o’ those we answer to,” Tania said, disgusted. They were unified in this: they knew they were about to waste another significant portion of a year.

In the course of these months, Tania knew she had made an inroad on Bane, though he still held out. She caught him looking at her when she supposedly slept, and he pretended to ignore her when she found pretexts to make close contact, instead of disengaging. He wanted her, but would not admit it. She might have done better, had it not been for the monthly exchanges he made with the rovot. He went to Proton to be with his alien love, while Mach the rovot assumed control of his body. That complicated things, because Mach loved Fleta and she him; it disgusted Tania to see them together, and to have to share residence when they were sleeping together. But, worse, Mach was a full Adept, whose power vastly over matched hers; she could hope neither to tempt him nor defy him. She was definitely the odd one out, during that month, and it grated fiercely.

Yet Mach supported the search, both because he was committed to it and because he wanted his son back. He could cast a spell that verified the knowledge of a village in a moment, instead of the hours Tania required. He could conjure them from site to site far more swiftly and accurately than could Bane, who had to devise a new spell each time. Increasingly, with Bane, they were planning their route carefully and walking or riding from village to village, borrowing a horse for Tania while Fleta assumed ‘corn form and carried Bane. Thus the time they saved at the villages was expended in travel. But with Mach it went phenomenally fast. They checked the unicorns. The Herds were more resistive to the process than the human villages had been, but after Tania called on Translucent for aid, and he sent a deluge—not a storm, merely a horrendous burst of water—against a recalcitrant Herd, that washed out its best pasture, drowned three foals, and left erosion gullies where their trails had been, they decided to cooperate. Unicorns had magic, and Herd magic was strong, but it was sheer hubris to oppose an Adept, and that single reminder sufficed.

Mach was a complete loss, but during the Bane-months, Tania continued her unsubtle campaign of seduction. When he had an erection during sleep, as men did, she teased him unmercifully, suggesting that he had suppressed and unrequited urges. Sometimes she joined him under his blanket. When he tried to ignore her, she nudged closer, until she was on the verge of initiating the act. That forced him to get up and move, erection and all, to her obvious amusement. For a time he slept with Fleta: riding her as she grazed. But that was wearing on her, and too much contact with his other self’s lover, and he had to give it up. Yes, Tania was making progress. The irony was that if Bane had been a less decent man, he would have had less trouble; he could have warned her off, then struck her when she impinged, and she would have had to take it lest she forfeit all future opportunities. But something else was happening. She had set out to seduce Bane away from his alien lover, but the more he resisted her, the more personal this challenge became. The longer he did it politely, showing consideration for her dignity despite his objection to her effort, the more she came to respect his consistency. Obviously his days of playing were over; he neither yielded to her nor abused her, being always proper in his actions despite what might rage within him. She had to admire that control. She realized one day that this was a two way business: while she was making progress in arousing his desire, he was arousing her own. In fact, she was falling in love with him.

That did not abate her effort. It intensified it, because the prior reasons remained; it was simply that one more reason had been added. The truth, to her surprise, was that it was rather pleasant falling in love. It was like sliding down a snowy hill, reveling in the sensation of motion. Now, instead of using her artifices in a calculated manner, she used them naturally. Instead of forcing herself to put forth her best physical aspects, so as never to turn Bane off, she found herself putting forth also her best emotional aspects. Her increasing joy in his company buoyed her during the tedious details of the search. She no longer chafed at the time it consumed; she would be satisfied to have it continue indefinitely. She just wanted to be close to him. In fact, now when she joined him as he slept, she did not try to arouse him sexually; she merely lay beside him, satisfied that he tolerated this much. She wished she could kiss him, but she knew that was forbidden even more sternly than sex, because he could not accept it without implying that he liked her. With men, sex and love were two separate things, and of those two, their love was much harder to win.

Fleta, with the attunement any female had to such things, knew it as soon as Tania did, yet did not rage against it. Why? After some thought, Tania realized why: the mare understood that she had nothing to lose by this development. If Bane came to love Tania, while Tania did not love Bane, the leverage was hers; if Tania came to love Bane, the leverage might be his. Did the mare hope that Tania could be weaned away from the Adverse Adepts? That certainly could be. But there was a complication. One day when she happened to be briefly alone, she spied a toad. She stunned it with a glance, then went to step on it. It was her way to squash toads part way, so that thereafter they could not survive, but took days to expire in torment. But this time she set her foot on it and could not squash. It was not that her foot lacked the power, but that her will did. She did not want to hurt the toad.

She paused to consider this failure, appalled. Then, slowly, she realized the reason. It was her love of Bane: he would never torment a toad, or any animal. She could not love him without partaking somewhat of his qualities, so now she could not do to a toad what he would not. Not without going against the grain of her love. Not without becoming something he was less likely to be able to love. And there was another key: she wanted to be loveable, in his eyes. Well, it was a nuisance, but rather than forfeit the strange delight of her new emotion, she decided to abide by its dictates. “My apology to thee, toad, for stunning thee,” she murmured to it. “In a moment thou willst recover. Here, I proffer a fly for thee.” And she stunned a fat fly that was foolish enough to pass at that moment. It dropped before the toad. Soon after the toad recovered, so would the fly, and the toad would nab the fly before it got away. Then she departed, bemused by the incident and by its significance. She was becoming a gentle creature! She would have to hide this complication from her brother, who definitely would not understand.