Year of the Unicorn Read Online Free Page A

what must happen soon. The shawl over my arm I whipped about my shoulders. To have sought my own would have perhaps marked my going, so I had one found on the back of a chair-dull green instead of grey, but no colour in the night.
     
    The way I took was a private one long known to me by my labours in the still room, and it was to that chamber I went, crossing the winter blasted garden at a run. There were snow flakes, large and feathery, falling. A storm such as this was another stroke of good luck. Within the still room the chill was not yet complete, and the good scents hung in the air. What I had come to do must be done swiftly and yet with care.
     
    There were bags on a side shelf, each quilted into pockets of different sizes and shapes. One of these in my hands-and then, moving with care, for I dared not show a light, I made my way about the cupboards and tables, from shelves to chests, thankful that long familiarity made my fingers grow eyes for this task. Phials, boxes, small vials, each to its proper pocket in the bag, until at last I slung over my shoulder such a bag of simples and healing aids as Dame Alousan had supplied to the war bands. Last, not least but foremost, I groped my way to a far cupboard. It was locked by a dial lock, but that was no bar to me who had been entrusted with its secret years ago. I counted along a row of bottles within, making that numbering twice, then working loose a stopper to sniff.
     
    Faint indeed was the odour-sharp, rather like the vinegar from the orchard apples. But it told me I was right. The bottle was large and difficult to carry. However, to try to decant what I needed for my purpose was impossible here and now. I gripped it tight between crooked arm and breast as I relocked the cupboard.
     
    There was always the chance that Dame Alousan might find it in mind to check her storehouse, even at this hour and season. Until I reached my own room I was in danger of discovery. Yet in me the exultation grew with the belief that all was moving as I wished.
     
    My small chamber was in a turn of the hall, a meeting place between the corridor of the Dames' cells and the portion given to visitors and boarders. Lights shown dully about the frames of some of the latter doors, but only the night lamp was alive at the far end of the cell hallway. My quick breath slowed as I closed my door behind me, though I had as yet taken only the first and far lesser steps on the path I had chosen to walk this night.
     
    I set spark to my own lamp on the small table and set down thereon the flask I had brought out of the still room. A tray-so-then the small horn cup always used for medicinal doses, a spoon-all laid out. Last of all-the dose! I poured with care-filling the smaller bottle from my cupboard with the colourless liquid out of the flask. This much, no more-then-into it drops-five, six-from another phial. I counted under my breath, watching the mixture and its changing colour, until it was a clear and refreshing green.
     
    Now-to wait-And deep inside me grew a wonder as to how I could be so sure that this would be the way of it. My long suppression of my "power", if that was the word one might apply to my strange bits of knowledge and feeling which warred against controls I kept on them, might that not now have led to deception, a self-confidence which could defeat me? I could not sit still, but stood by the narrow window looking out into the night and the snow. There were lights in the village, marking the inn where Lord Imgry's escort now took their ease. Beyond that only the dull dark of the dale. North-the brides were riding north to the waste border-down Norsdale, and on past the Arm of Sparn, into Dimdale, and Casterbrook, and the Gorge of Ravens-well, off the map of our knowing-
     
    Yet all the time my eyes watched the outer world my ears listened for sounds of the inner one, for I had carefully left my door ajar to better that hearing. And in me excitement bubbled and