The Last Unicirim’s Bride Read online

  Even in the approaching night, the waters looked strangely inviting. She settled with dipping her toes just past the surface, hands braced against the wooden deck of the pier. The waters themselves looked to be deep at this end – she remembered how deep the students earlier had gone. They all acted like it was super warm, but to her, it felt cold.

  Something flickered in the water.

  Maya’s attention snapped to the disturbance. It looked like tiny beads of light, as if fireflies were drifting under the surface.

  How beautiful, she thought, staring at the eddying patterns underneath the water, as they glowed brighter and then dimmed. She continued watching the vanishing light, wondering what had created such a strange, orange glow under the surface. They wouldn’t have those luminescent plankton or something here, would they?

  She kept smiling, right up to the point where something grabbed her leg.

  Before she had time to register, the thing that had seized her yanked hard, dragging her body into the lake. Pain lanced her back from where she scraped the wood. The grip on her ankle felt strong and cold and scaly, like a fish. She only had time for a yelp before the waters closed over her head, and the surprise fast blended into sheer, mindless terror.

  Renne

  Twenty-Five Years After the Sacking of River’s End.

  Shouts and war cries penetrated the early dusk. Renne impassively watched the skirmish break out in the near distance by the swathe of trees that encircled the eastern side of the encampment. The werewolves were giving them trouble again. Stupid, brutish creatures. They didn’t seem to care much about the conflict the whole kingdom was in.

  Although some had been eager to help his cause, many more viewed the gathering rebellion as a threat to their existence and had resorted to raids along the outskirt camps, aiming for the humans of their population. A part of him wanted to join the fight, but of course, general Witslaw had long since advised him to not be so foolish.

  Besides, Renne was an Unbonded unicirim, without a partner. Until he found the right partner, he was little more than a feathery horse with a shiny white horn when he shifted. He could have chosen, years ago, to Bond with someone... but he wanted to do it right. Instead of just settling with the nearest convenient partner with magic, he wanted to find someone with that supposed mystical connection everyone talked about.

  Bonded. Such a stupid thing. A supposed joining of two souls, two minds, that enhanced their magic and power beyond normal reach. The thing they sung about in their stories, glorified. The unicirim, with their Bonded, soaring above the skies, summoning lightning, and fire, and whatever magic the singers and storytellers could think up.

  He hadn’t seen much of that lightning and fire when his father and stepmother fell to the onslaught of the dragons. Their supposed noble powers resulted in nothing more than a drawn out death.

  A noise behind him alerted him to his younger brother’s presence. Callum, resplendent in a blue-gold suit, blond curls tumbled about his face. He looked every inch the noble prince in his early thirties, but there was a kind of weariness there. That weariness bit into all of them. Too many years hiding, forging connections, and little progress to show for it.

  “Brother,” Callum said, inclining his head towards Renne. In response, Renne got up from his tree stump, hands clasped behind him.

  “You realize we’re going to have to do something about these werewolves.” Renne closed his eyes, listening to the triumphant shouts of his men as they drove back the attackers. “We don’t have that many troops to spare between all the warcamps. If we keep losing them to werewolf aggression, we’ll hardly have enough troops to assault Bastion, let alone our own cursing city.”

  “We’re trying,” Callum said shortly. “Our allied werewolves are attempting to negotiate a ceasefire with the forest wolves.”

  “And how’s that going?”

  The prince’s light eyes soured into a frown. “We were sent back the heads of the last two messengers. It seems they prefer to harass us on behalf of their Bastion allies.”

  “Lovely.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, Renne continued with, “General Witslaw says that we shouldn’t push forward with the assault until we’ve fully secured our territory.” Renne thought of the rugged old general who had spent years after their escape conferring with their other military leaders to raise up an army. Or, well, several small armies. People who had in one way or another suffered from the tyranny of the dragons. A general ran each warcamp, each commanding with their own preferred style of tactics. All of the royals were confined to Witslaw’s camp, the largest of them all, unless they visited the others on diplomatic exchanges. “The one you like, though, General Fenclaw – he thinks we should push on to better grounds and abandon our current holdings.”

  Callum stood beside his brother now, watching torch flames bob in the darkening clearing, as the Witslaw troops inspected the damage to their camp. A total of seven thousand or so troops made up the Witslaw compound – as big an army as any in Albalon. Renne glanced at his brother, again feeling a slight surge of jealously. Even though Renne was the oldest, it would be Callum inheriting the throne if they reclaimed River’s End. All because he was fortunate enough not to be a child out of wedlock. All because he didn’t have half Zorin blood, from the time their common father visited the far east of Albalon and returned with a tiny, impure child.

  “Do you think it’s true,” Renne said suddenly, still gazing into the distance, but not really picking up any particular detail, “that there is such a thing as a true Bond?” It was a topic that often tackled his mind, since the more years he went without Bonding, the more he wondered if he was just holding out for some foolish, made up notion.

  “Obviously,” Callum said, his voice dry. He wasn’t Bonded, either. “Otherwise we’d be little more than flying ponies. No one gets scared of a flying pony, do they?”

  Privately, Renne agreed with Callum. “Father didn’t have a true Bond with your mother though, did he? There wasn’t any special magic. Not like the stories keep saying. They didn’t do anything special when they fought.”

  Callum remained silent for a moment, before he gave a rather bitter smile, one that dug down into Renne. “Of course they wouldn’t have anything special. Their Bond was weak. It was obvious our father didn’t like my mother as much, wasn’t it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be born.”

  Well, that’s true, Renne thought, even though the words felt like an accusation, somehow. A shout against his existence. They both stood there on grassy soil, on the edge of their encampment – and although they were inches apart, they might as well have been miles away in terms of their social status. Their nanny, Beatrice, had raised them up, but the treatment wasn’t exactly equal. It was obvious she preferred the pure royals, as compared to a halfblood. Halfbloods had legitimacy, but not all people agreed.

  To Callum’s credit, though, he didn’t lord over this fact too often. Renne began to pace away from his brother now, heading towards the nearby river to wash his face. He itched to fight, to do something rather than stand and placidly watch skirmishes. But they didn’t want him risked. Just in case something did happen to the other royals and he inconceivably became the last of the bloodline. Half blood was better than no blood.

  But now, thinking about their total invasion force – eighteen or so thousand people of various races against the might of the dragons – Renne didn’t really see how they could win.

  Maybe they did outnumber the dragons. But one dragon alone… We’ll never reach River’s End, he thought, thinking again how the dragons had choked the skies so many years ago. The prospects seemed horrible to Renne. But general Witslaw acted convinced that their coalition could win.

  Just before Renne reached the river, he heard wild, plaintive screams and froze. Screams? His hand drifted to his sword, tucked within a simple leather scabbard, and his eyes focused on patches of light floating under the watery surface.

  I know those lights...

 
A thrashing figure disturbed the lights, their shouts cut off as they disappeared underneath. Instantly, Renne scrambled to the point of disappearance, sword held at the ready, heart beating a little faster. Two shadowy figures spun like seals, one of them appearing to grip the other hard, preventing their quarry from rising to the surface. The river was about three meters deep at this point in the bend. Eventually, he chose to drop the sword and take his knife instead, and dove in as well – he didn’t have any armor to weigh him down, restricted to a boiled leather cuirass and thick pants and boots. His hand reached out until he grabbed one of the figures and felt scales. This one! The water resistance stopped him putting as much force into the knife thrust as he’d liked, but it did the job. In a storm of bubbles, the kelpie let go of its victim and swam frantically away with a powerful fish tail, leaving Renne to emerge above water with a choking, coughing individual. He saw the monster speed down the river, then disappear in a swirl of light.

  This person is lucky I was here, Renne thought, dumping the figure on the river bank, letting them gasp for oxygen. Kelpies are relentless when it comes to their prey.

  When the figure recovered enough, spluttering out water, they turned around, and Renne came face to face with a human woman, wearing inappropriate attire. Strange attire, too. The material seemed too shiny, too skimpy compared to the type of outfits he was used to. Her eyes were as round as dinner plates, and she looked around blankly, as if unable to comprehend where she was.

  “You should be more careful,” he told the human, picking up his sword after returning the dagger to his smaller side sheath. “Kelpies are opportunistic predators. If you see the light, you run. Plenty of warning when it happens – you have to be moronic to allow one to get you.”

  The human, who wore a simple bloused shirt and a skirt, gaped at him like he was speaking a different language. Then, after an awkward pause, she said, “Kelpie?”

  Oh, dear skies, Renne thought. “The thing that attacked you. A –” Realizing saying the word kelpie would hardly help her understanding, he said, “water horse. Big, murderous fish horse that eats landlubbers like you for breakfast.”

  When she continued giving him that blank stare, he sighed. Maybe she was in shock or cold. Now that he considered it, she was trembling. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the camp, get you some decent clothes and a drink.”

  He took a couple of paces forward and scooped her up in his wet arms. She was about as heavy as a kitten to him, even with the wet, outlandish clothes. Her breathing quickened, perhaps in fear. She didn’t attempt to squirm out of his hold, however, or fight him.

  “I,” she said, the back of her head pressed against his left shoulder, “Um, you’re in fancy dress, right? One of those cosplayers at the party?”

  When he stared at her in bafflement, her expression became rueful, and she let out a wild, breathless laugh, slightly tinged with hysteria. “No, no. I’m reaching. Of course you’re not in fucking fancy dress. And… somehow, I’m in a completely different area.” Her voice became quieter, more contemplative. “This isn’t Great Lake. I was there, and then I wasn’t. Where – where am I?”

  “Ah.” Her confusion irritated him, but she had been the result of a near drowning. Perhaps her brain wasn’t quite all there, yet. Great Lake didn’t sound like a place he knew. “You’re in Albalon. One of the western kingdoms.”

  “Al...balon…? Is that a place in America?”

  “What?”

  Now she frowned at him. “A place in America,” she repeated, as if saying it again would make it easier to understand.

  “I don’t know of any place called America.”

  “But you said… western… wait. Western kingdom?”

  Renne was getting a little tired of her ignorance, but kept walking anyway, deciding where best to dump her off. “Wherever you claim to come from, right now you’re in Albalon. And it’s a problem if you don’t know the country you happen to be in. Where have you been living? Under a rock?”

  “Maybe you’re from Africa? Russia? China?”

  “No,” he said shortly. “Albalon.”

  A rather desperately confused expression took over her face. “That’s not a made up name, is it?”

  “No. Why would I make it up?” He couldn’t quite pinpoint her accent. She didn’t sound like any of the dialects he knew. She spoke in a more measured way, drawing out her vowels. She certainly didn’t sound like a native, but what then explained her being here? Did some dragon or unicirim kidnap her or something and fly her over? Her weight, light at first, gradually burdened his arms as he approached the edge of the encampment. His brother had long since left, and figures sat around campfires with relaxed postures. Likely general Witslaw would want to speak to him soon and tell him what information the scouts had gleaned.

  I’ll dump her with Yvonne, Renne decided. She’ll find a use for this one. The human felt awkward against his arms. Something about her presence kept him glancing at her, examining the sodden strings of dark hair clinging to her oval face and that desperate, hopelessly lost expression, but otherwise, he said nothing.

  “We are on earth, right, at least?” the strange female asked. “I mean, you are speaking English...” Her tone of voice seemed to hide the implication that he was lying, somehow. He shook his head, hating the way the water squelched in his boots. Should have drained them.

  “I speak Albanese,” he told her. “And so do you.”

  “You’re lying. You have to be.” At each consecutive shake of his head, her voice became smaller. “I swear to God, I hope this is a prank.”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she said, now looking panicked again.

  “Why do you use that word?” He readjusted his grip, raising her higher, and saw a few of Witslaw’s men approaching, along with a witch scout. “Why would I shit on you?”

  The panic failed to recede from her expression, and seeing the new people approach her in the rapidly increasing darkness made her lock up in his arms like a block of wood. “I – I don’t – this isn’t –” She bit her words off as the witch scout saluted Renne smartly.

  “Your highness,” she said with a light, rich voice. “Witslaw wants you in his tent.” The witch wore dark clothes and a cloak with a hood. She also had the strange black markings on her face that were supposed to denote her branch of magic.

  “Yvonne, I told you to stop addressing me like that.”

  She gave another elaborate bow. “But why would I? Especially when it annoys you.”

  He huffed in exasperation. “Fine. Can you take this human off me? Give her to Beatrice. I rescued her from a kelpie.”

  Yvonne pursed her thin lips. “Sure. I’ll take her. You better hurry. Witslaw’s been waiting for the past fifteen minutes.”

  “Noted,” he said, passing the human to the witch like she was a sack of potatoes. “Maybe you can help her get back to her kingdom. It sounds like she comes from very far away.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Yvonne said, holding the human without much effort. The witch was built like a tank, stockier than most other humans. “I know a few things about kelpies that you don’t. But we’ll see.”

  “You learn about kelpies living in a swamp?”

  “Swamps are made from water. You should know all about that.”

  Referring to the first time they’d met, of course. He wasn’t likely to forget that any time soon. “Yes, I’m very grateful you saved me.”

  “Better be.”

  The female in Yvonne’s arms let out a frightened squeak as she was deftly carried away by the witch scout. With a long, drawn out sigh, Renne made his way to Witslaw’s place in the center of the warcamp. The common soldiers and merchants were housed mostly in wooden barracks or previously standing buildings. Witslaw had chosen what was probably a former town hall. They called the place an encampment, but it might as well have been a town dominated exclusively by their soldiers and the people who followed the sol
diers, selling wares or medicine, charms or women.

  It was a chaotic scramble of lives. Nothing like how Renne had once pictured their war to go. He’d imagined many versions that the war would go once they gathered sufficient resources and people to do so. He just never imagined that it would be so… boring.

  He gave a curt nod to the guards standing outside the general’s accommodation. They didn’t react, but let him pass inside so he could go and listen to yet another report about werewolves and drama in the other armies.

  Maya

  “Alright, then,” the scary witch-woman said. Some of her yellow hair poked out of the hood. She’d dumped Maya in a rather crude looking tent which had a whole assortment of questionable things dangling from strings tied to the top of the tent. Things like shrunken heads, bone charms, and was that a human finger? “You’ve been kelpied. Unfortunate for you. Most kelpies like to drown their prey where they hunt them. Much less effort. Seems your kelpie took you on a little journey.”

  All these words came to Maya in a surreal, detached way. She still felt rather weak from the events of earlier, and now everyone around her was talking of concepts that made no sense. What made even less sense was how she ended up from a lake with hotels ringing the parks just outside, to a river in some primeval forest, being strangled by a beast with a horse’s head and white, sinister eyes, and grasping, scaly hands. Not to mention the huge fish tail it had in place of a normal tail. Definitely not something easy to forget. It wasn’t a prank, either, because that thing really had tried to kill her, and then… someone wearing leather armor got her out of the water? The woman flung some dry clothes at her.

  “I don’t – I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”

  The witch woman, with the strange squiggly lines running from her eyes like badly smudged makeup stared at her intently for a moment. “You got some odd clothes there. Impractical, too. Where do you claim to come from?”