The Journal of Prince Malaclypse of the Thirteen Daggers...

I found a nice spot on the forest floor, and sprawled myself, staring up at the branches hundreds of feet above me.  Jared was sitting down a few yards away, and Stormchaser was out gliding a bit.  That was when I got the Trump contact.

I sighed, and said, "Yes?  I hope this is important."  It was my father, Caine, and he was struggling to keep the contact open.  I saw that with his free hand he was holding a wound in his abdomen.

"Malaclypse," he weakly said.  "You must help.  It... took him."

"Took who?" I asked, sitting bolt upright as I did.  I think Jared noticed something was up when I did that, but I was too busy worrying about Dad.

"Julian," came the reply.

"Who took Julian?"  Jared heard that and rushed over to me, asking of me what I asked my dad.  I extended my hand to him, inviting him into the contact.  He accepted.

"Now tell us, what happened?"

He took a deep breath and began.  "We were in the forest, and this black unicorn came up and looked at Julian.  It didn't take very long, but I then saw that he had been mesmerized somehow.  I threw a dagger at it, but it dodged it.  It then ran up to me, (now that I think about it, its speed was reminiscent of Morgenstern's), and gored me.  I then called you."

"Bring me through," I said, and held out my hand.  I noticed in the back of my mind that Jared and Stormchaser were having an argument.

He extended his bloodied hand to me, and dragged me through by grabbing my shirtfront.  Jared and Stormchaser came through as well.

I looked at Dad and muttered, "Oh, hell."  I tore off my sleeves and started a makeshift bandaging of my father.  Jared called Gérard.  "Which way did that thing take him," I asked, as I was bandaging Caine, Jared was explaining things to Gérard, and Caine was bleeding.

He pointed off away from him, not too far from a tree with one of his daggers impaled in it, and said, "That way.  But don't worry about me; go get Julian.  And my dagger, too."

I glanced back at Jared.  "Can you get that dagger?  I'm a bit busy here."

"Get it yourself.  I want to get my dad back."

I shrugged.  Jared said that Gérard wanted Caine brought through to him, so he could patch him up better than I was doing.  We sent him through, and before the contact closed, I handed Caine's dagger through to Gérard.  When all that was finished, I looked at Jared and said, "Well, let's go get that bitch."

We looked around where Caine had pointed and saw hoof prints.  We followed them, and eventually found a spot where they just stopped abruptly.  We also saw the Shadow trail that the unicorn had left.  We unhesitatingly continued on the trail.

The trail led through thick patches of forest, complete with vines and thorn bushes.  Daylight was waning as we walked, and when it was twilight, Jared pulled out his Trumps and stopped, concentrating on one.  I continued moving.

A few minutes later, I saw and heard a torch nearing me, being held by someone.  Just to be safe, I ducked into some shrubbery and waited.  It was Jared.  When he was about a foot past me, I jumped up from the bush and said, "A torch.  Good idea."  He seemed to have been startled a bit by that.

We continued walking, and eventually were confronted by a voice saying, "Stop right there, humans!"  We both dropped to the ground and drew our respective weapons: I took out a dagger, and he started drawing his bow.

The voice then said, "Continue with that bow, human, and you won't live a moment longer."

Out where the voice was, I saw two vaguely humanoid silhouettes, both shorter than human height, as well as broader.  I wasn't sure which one was the owner of the voice, but I fortunately had two hands, so I drew another dagger and threw one at each silhouette.  It was the one on the left that screamed and fell.  It was also then that arrows flew.

Jared and Stormchaser ducked off to the left, but I ran to the ex-voice to get my daggers back.  That proved to be a foolish move, as I took three arrows for it.  One was in my left tricep, the second in my left shoulder, and the third too close to my right kidney.  I decided to ignore the daggers for now, (I still had ten left), and went and hid behind a tree.  I broke off the shafts at that point.  I heard a twanging of a bowstring followed by a body falling from a tree.  Sounds like Jared's getting in on this now, too.  As near as I could figure from the arrows from the first volley, there were eight of them give or take an unslit throat.  An archer and the leader were now dead.

I heard more twangs from the trees, and over by the ex-voice, I saw another shape lift up the guy I daggered, and not too long after that I saw an arrow shaft sticking out of his back.  I peeked out from behind my tree, and saw a silhouette in a tree.  I put a dagger in him.  Three of the archers were now dead, and I heard some of them getting out of their trees and walk down the path, looking for me.

The one in the lead was swinging his bow in an arc ahead of him, and when his bow was pointed the farthest away from me, I put a dagger in his chest.  I ducked back behind the tree just in time to avoid the arrow from the other guy.

It wasn't too long after then that someone shouted, "Humans aren't supposed to be this tough.  I'm leaving!"  And his footsteps could be heard leaving the area.  The rest of the group followed him, apparently in agreement with him.  I waited around for a few minutes, when I heard another person walking up the path.  It stopped, and turned in my direction.  I saw a silhouette of an eagle on the right shoulder.  I stood up and said, "You're good at finding things in the forest, aren't you?"  He just nodded.

"Hey, before we get going again," I said, "Could you get these arrowheads out of me?"  He said sure, and did.  He then began signing, and the wounds closed up.  The only other time I saw singing-surgery was when I saw his dad operating on an animal.  I had lost some blood, but I'm a hardy Amberite, and besides, I now owed that bitch.  "Oh," I said as we continued on the trail, "when we find her and kill her, her horn is mine."  Jared seemed a bit shocked at the statement, (whether from the statement or the emotion behind it, I did not know), but quickly understood and agreed with me.

We got back on the trail, lit torch and all.  After a few more Shadows, the moon began to rise; it was full and the color of blood.  The light it cast was truly eerie.  Looking out to where the trail led, we saw a valley that, as far as size goes, put Garnath to shame.  The moon rose higher as we followed the trail, and was mid-sky by the time that the trail intercepted a river.  It started heading upstream, but we stopped for a second by the river.  Jared pulled out a Trump, (I saw it this time; it was his father, Julian), and attempted contact.  Shortly after he did that was when I saw the raft.

It was a flatbed boat, with a small cabin in the center of it.  There were about six men, (not dwarfish things this time), that I could see from my vantage, and there were bows and arrows on the cabin's outer wall.  At about the same time that it takes a Trump contact to completely go through, the black unicorn turned her head and stared directly at Jared.  I threw a dagger at her.  She parried it with her horn.  Thoroughly worried at this point, I pulled Jared into the small wood near where we were standing, which not only gave us cover from the arrows that were about to start flying, but it also broke his Trump contact.

"Damn," he muttered, behind his tree.  "Same thing."

"Y'know," I said, hearing an arrow thunk into a tree, and noticing the clouds gather above, "I'm hurt.  Not physically, but emotionally.  She parried my dagger.  She didn't even feel I was important enough to dodge, like she did dad; she just parried it.  That hurts."

"Yes, I'm sure it does," he said, noncommittally, "but we need to get my dad back.  And now they're on water.  This sucks."

"Well, they're almost completely past us now, so let's go look for something we can follow them on.  Like a log, or something."  We looked for them, saw that they had indeed passed, and went and found a nice log that suited out purposes.  After a few minutes of floating, we noticed a flaw in our plan:

"We're going too slow!" Jared yelled.

I grinned.  "I can fix that."

We rounded a curve in the river--and a very curvaceous river it was--and as I did, I manipulated Shadow via Pattern to the extent that we could get ourselves a small motorboat.  "What's that?" he asked.

"It's a motorboat," I replied.  "It will get us back to them much faster than what we were using before."

"How's it work?"

"Propellers, gasoline, oil, motor, electricity.  Basic tech."  We got back in the water, went back through Shadow to where we left the trail, and got back on, going fast to catch up to them.  It didn't take long, and by that time we had decided on a course of action.

I sped the boat past their raft, and Jared fired four arrows in that time.  We didn't get hit, but he hit three of them.  One fell in the water, and the other two fell on deck.  Three down, approximately three to go.

We were now in front of them, and were readying ourselves for our second pass when the unicorn stepped back out of the cabin; she must have gone back in while we were looking for the motorboat.  I heard a rumbling in the air and looked up.  The red moon was almost completely covered by storm clouds, and the air was was feeling charged.  At about that instant, a bolt of lightning came down from the sky and missed us by about 15 yards to our left.

"Aim for the bitch!" I yelled to Jared.

He nocked arrows and shot them in succession, and I looked at the unicorn and said "Muck!"  I think Jared was about to ask me what I said, when the unicorn, after having parried the first two arrows, slipped on the deck and took the third arrow in the neck.  She nickered and whinnied in pain, and then ran to the opposite end of the deck, putting the cabin between us and her.  We continued on our second pass, Jared just about ready to fire again, when the lightning came a second time.

This one was a lot closer, but it didn't disturb us very much.  The only ill effects were on Jared and his archery.  He missed his shots.  We were now behind the raft, the unicorn probably back up front by now, and I was turning our boat around for our third pass.  Considering that our first pass was on the port and our return on the starboard, I figured the unicorn would think our third pass would be port side, so I decided to have our third pass be on the starboard as well.  Apparently the unicorn didn't know how maneuverable this thing was, because she wasn't expecting us to be on the same side as her.

"We can take her this time," I told Jared.  He took aim, and I noticed that the air around us was getting charged.  I yelled "Heiss!" at the unicorn right before Jared shot his first arrow, and as he let it fly, I noticed a small spot of red at the base of the horn on her head.  She whinnied in pain as the lightning came down near us and at the same time that Jared's arrow found her chest.

This time the lightning was very accurate.  It hit about, mmm, maybe two feet to our left, and utterly broke the boat.  The three of us, (don't forget the bird), went flying in separate directions.  I don't know what Jared did when he hit, (my guess, though, is that he went looking for his bird), but I just kept my momentum, what little was left after I hit the water, and swam under the raft to the opposite side I was on before.  Our boat was hit on the raft's starboard, so I swam over, (or under, as it were),  to its port.

I emerged from the water very quietly, and when I looked onto the deck, I saw two of the remaining archers looking off of the starboard at the wreckage.  I chuckled to myself and drew a dagger.  I threw it at one of them, and knowing that it would hit and kill, I dove underwater and swam back to the starboard.  I came up like I did last time and saw two things simultaneously: the corpse of the guy I hit, and the second guy looking over the edge of the raft on its port, where I had just left.  "This is just way too easy," I thought to myself as I drew another dagger and sheathed it in the second guy's back.  Just to keep 'em guessing, I swam back under the raft to the port, because there was still one guy left.

But apparently he was a quick learn, for when I came up, he was already looking in the general area of where I now was, an arrow half-drawn.  I decided against yelling an expletive of surprise in favor of inhaling a deep breath.  I dove down as he finished the pull on the drawstring, but wasn't completely under by the time he let go.  He hit me in the back of my left thigh.  That was when a short "Shit!" escaped my lungs, and as I swam to the bow of the deck I thought to myself, "That's four."  Before I came up this time I decided to take out the arrow.  Not only would it get the thing out of my leg, it might delude that prick into thinking that he killed me.  Then again, maybe not.

There was about a foot of the raft above the waterline, so I had plenty of room to get my nose above the water and still remain unseen.  When I managed to catch a good breath, I turned around to face the raft and lifted my self up enough to see the deck.  All I saw was the corpses of the dead, the cabin, and behind the cabin, on the starboard side, was a fully exposed left arm holding a bow, and the bow was fully bent, ready to let fly an arrow.  I took careful aim and hit the shoulder.  The bow was released, and the arrow flew wild, most likely missing its target; he was probably aiming for Jared.

The archer looked around the corner with a scowl, and ran for me.  As he passed the cabin's outer wall, he removed an axe that was hanging there.  It had a short handle, and that meant that he could throw it at me.  And in fact, he did.  I ducked back under the water, felt the axe whiz past the top of my hair, and then heard it splash in the water.  Deciding that I didn't want to be where this guy was rushing, I swam over to the port side of the boat.

I came up and looked around the deck.  The archer was standing at the bow looking around, (he also had a sword in hand.  where does he get all these things?), and there was an eerie blue light coming out of the cabin door.  I had another dagger ready to throw at him, but I also had the thought that if I raised myself enough to throw it, he'd be able to see me.  It wasn't a very lage raft; this'd be a test of speed.

He continued walking some, and when he passed the cabin door, he looked in.  He gasped, and an expression of complete rage/shock spread over his face.  He yelled something in his language that could've been "No!", "Shit!", or the name of his deity.  The blue light was stonger now, and a wisp of smoke slipped through the open door.  He then ducked around the cabin, out of my line of sight, and shortly after that I heard a splash.  A lot of smoke was coming from the cabin.

I decided to get on the boat and then climb onto the roof of the cabin.  I wanted there because if I were there, the bitch couldn't use that lightning of hers any more.  I then took a closer look at the cabin and decided that I couldn't get on top of it with my hurt leg.  I looked back behind me and saw Jared.  I still wanted out of the water, so I did so.  Without bouyancy on my side any longer, my movement was now hampered a little.  I looked at the cabin, and smoke was now leaking through the cracks in the walls.  The smoke had a greasy tang, like burning meat, and for some reason I was thinking that the bitch was performing a summoning of some kind.  "Something evil this way comes," I said, looking around the raft.  Jared went to look inside the cabin.

With dagger in hand, I watch Jared.  "What's up?" I try to ask, but I don't manage to finish it before he rushes into the cabin.  Jared came out not too much later, Julian in arms.  He set Julian down on the deck and said, "Mal, I've got something for you!"

"Whuzzat?" I asked.

He extended his hand, and in it was the black unicorn's horn.

I snatched the horn from his hand, and, staring at it, said, "It's dead?"  I went to the door of the cabin and looked in.  The unicorn was burning with a blue flame.  I walked over to it, kicked it four times, and said, "There!  We're even!"  I left the cabin by then, for as you may not know, burning black unicorn doesn't smell pleasant.

When I came out, I saw Jared with his bird and Julian.  I offered to help by carrying the bird, but he decided he wasn't hampered any.  I pulled out my Trumps and shifted out Gérard's.  The contact formed normally.  "Come on, Jared, let's go.  Uncle, get us the hell out of here."  He pulled all of us through the contact.  We were standing on the deck of Gérard's flagship, and it was the middle of the day.  Collapsing to the deck felt like a good idea to me at the time, and I went along with it.

Laying sprawled on my back, the horn clutched in my right fist, I had a sudden revelation: "Shit!  I gotta get my daggers back!"  Too tired to follow through on that thought, I simply laid on the deck as Gérard's surgeons patched us up.  We were all eventually carried into the same room where my pop was healing, and after a while, Jared woke up from his whatever-nap.  Dad was grouchy, (which meant he was getting better), Julian didn't remember a thing, I'd be walking as soon as Gérard let me put pressure on my leg, and the bird was on a perch next to Jared's bed.

Dad looked over to me and at the horn I still clutched in my fist and said, "That would make a wonderful blade for a dagger."

Jared, having just woken up, said, "What? You're crazy! You'd only throw it away!"

In response to Caine, I said, "Yeah, well, if it does turn into a dagger, it's mine.  Do you have any idea how many arrows I took because of that thing?"

Caine chuckles and said,  "In the first place, it's yours, not mine.  You've earned it.  In the second place, throwing is not the only use for daggers."

I nodded to Dad.  "Thanks, then."  To Jared I said,  "Yeah, can you imagine how well a unicorn horn blade would be at slitting throats?"

"First, you'd have to be stealthy enought to get that close," responded Jared.

I put a disappointed look on my face.  "I am my father's son, you know."

Caine muttered, "Let no man attempt to doubt the obvious."

Julian was looking at the horn, and he then said, "Mal, you should listen to your father.  With a blade like that, I could make a weapon equal to Grayswandir.  Smaller, yes, but in no way inferior."

"Indeed?"

Returning back to the previous thread, Caine said, "Whose son could he be, some bumbling oaf like Corwin or Eric?"

"Perish the thought!" I exclaimed.

Julian said, "Don't talk about him like that, Caine, you'll give him a swelled head."  But he wa's smiling a little when he said it, so obviously he didn't mean a word of what he said; he knew I was all that.

Caine answered, "Well, he saved your ass, didn't he?"  They both laughed then.

Trying not to hog all the glory, I said, "Well, Jared helped quite a bit as well..."

To which Jared said, "Until Mal dumped me in the river."

Smiling at Jared, I said, "Pardon me, but that was part of the plan, was it not?"

Julian said, "Damn, and I missed it all.  What happened?"

Jared answered, "Dad, It's a long story."

I said, "Well, we followed that bitch through Shadow, and killed it.  Then we got you out of the area where the thing began burning."

Julian snickered.  "I don't see Gérard letting you out of here today.  Will it take longer than that?  I don't want the short version.  Tell me what happened."

Before beginning the story, I had a question: "Say, what about you?  How'd that thing hypnotise you?"

Julian frowned, and reached down inside his armor for that round green gem he wears.  "She...she came up to me, as though she were glad to see me.  There was no menace in it.  I thought she must be kin to the white unicorn of legend...perhaps a sister.  She pointed her horn at my breast, not as a threat, but as if she knew where this jewel was hanging.  She seemed interested, friendly.  I...trusted her.  I see now that was foolish.  She touched it with her horn...and that's all I remember."

I turned to dad.  "That what you saw?"

Caine said, "I saw Julian climb on that creature, and I called to him, but he didn't seem to hear me.  Either I'm not as trusting, or her power to fascinate was focused on him alone.  When I tried to stop her from leaving, that was when she stabbed me with her horn."

I nodded.  To Julian I said,  "You said you can make this into a dagger for me?"

Julian actually smiled and looked eager.  "It will be a weapon out of legend!"

Jared spoke up to his dad: "I tried to Trump you twice. Do you remember anything at all about that?"

Julian shook his head.  "No."

Jared continued: "I felt cold blackness all around, and then I heard music that seemed to call me onward.  I think it would have killed me if I followed."

Caine scowled.  "You're lucky she didn't snare you, too.  Maybe she couldn't do it at that distance."

I spoke up with "Well, I don't know if Gérard told you, Dad, but she parried one of my daggers with her horn, and later on parried one of Jared's arrows."

Caine looked a little surprised.  "An arrow.  Now I don't feel bad about my dagger that she dodged."

Being this far into the story, we decided to actually tell it to our dads.  I'm not going to bother re-writing it in this journal, because I already did it once.  Other things did happen in the conversation, though.  They both nodded when we said we were following on the log, as if it were something they could imagine doing.  Dad also found the whole bit with me pegging the archers with my daggers particularly funny.  When we got to the part where the lightning knocked us into the water, Julian surfaced with an observation: "This could put a damper on things."  I gave him a questioning look and he smiled slightly and said, "Falling in the river."  I knew that most people in Amber wouldn't believe me if I told them that Julian actually cracked a joke.

After a while, Julian spoke up: "The creature could apparently traverse Shadow in some way.  Did she seem to have any hint of the Pattern about her?"

I said, "Never checked for that.  I just figured that it was a unicorn that could dodge Caine's daggers, and mesmerize Julian, so I didn't think traversing Shadow would be that much more of a stretch."

Jared shook his head.  "No.  I didn't notice any."

I then remembered something I had said earlier.  Feeling better now, I felt I could follow through on my thought.  "Damn.  I gotta get my daggers back."  I began to get out of the bed.

Caine growled at me.  "Do I have to call Gerard to keep you in that bed?"

Frezing my motions, I said, (almost feebily), "It's just a flesh wound."  Jared collapsed into his pillows.  Apparently he caught the reference.

Caine, apparently not catching the reference, said with a laugh, "Want to try explaining that to my dear little brother?"

Continuing with my side of the argument, I said, "No, really.  See?  Just in the back of the leg, that's all."  I did have a slight smile on my face, though.

After we all got out of there, I actually did have Julian forge the horn into a dagger for me.  I watched as he heated it and re-formed it.  He roughened and blackened the handle end, and the still-silvery blade end now only had a hint of the waviness that a unicorn's horn has in abundance.  Oftentimes, during the War, whenever I'd hold my thirteenth dagger I'd get these feelings.  Almost like flashes of intuition.  I could also see new things.  For example, even when Julian had that stone of his under his armour, I could see a glow in that spot whenever I touched the dagger.  I also had that time during the was when I thought my dad was dead, but that all changed when he knoched Brand into the Abyss with that well-placed arrow.  And now we're walking on a bridge over the Abyss as the mother of all Shadow Storms closes on our asses...

 Continue with Mal's Journal...
 Back to my homepage.
 Back to the Campaigns' Intro Page.
 E-mail me.