Read Online The Prophecy by Hilari Bell - Free Book Online Page B

muscles and leaped, just as Lysander jumped for it. It lit on a small hummock and teetered precariously.
    Lysander fell into the bog, launching a sheet of liquid mud in all directions. The high-pitched shriek in Perryn’s mind made his head ache. With a final, nimble leap the unicorn fled, its spotless white hide shining in the dark.
    Perryn pulled the bard out of the mud and waited until the stream of curses ran out. “At least we learned something,” he remarked. “Alirian the teacher wrote that no experiment is a failure if you learn from it.”
    “What have we learned? That unicorns are both faster and smarter than we are?”
    “It hates mud,” said Perryn. “Look at us. It didn’t have a spot on it. It almost let you catch it rather than risk falling into that muck.”
    “I’m not thrilled about it myself.” The bard wiped his muddy hands on his muddy tunic and grimaced. “And what was that…it wasn’t a sound, exactly.”
    “I think it must have been a mind-voice,” Perryn said. “I’ve read that many magical creatures possess them, and even the mir—even some man-made artifacts were given voices by their creators, so they could communicate with others. But I’d never heard one before.”
    In fact, he’d never dreamed he might hear one, and the thrill of it pulsed in his heart. He’d read that powerful magic was always self-aware and usually possessed some means to give that awareness voice. And magic was what he needed to defeat the dragon!
    “Come on,” said Perryn. “I have another plan.”
     
     
    THE UNICORN WAS MORE CAUTIOUS THE NEXT night, pausing frequently to smell the breeze and peer about. Perryn had taken care to be downwind of the starting point of his trap. The swamp mud reeked.
    The unicorn came slowly down the path and passed his hiding place. Perryn waited till it had almost reached the sharp bend before he leaped out.
    “Got you!” he shouted. He ran toward it, swinging a mud-drenched strip of what remained of his cloak. With a mind-splitting shriek the unicorn darted down the trail—just as Perryn had hoped it would! The next shriek, as the unicorn almost collided with the mud-soaked rags he had hung across the path, was even shriller. Perryn was almost on it now. Mud-soaked rags ahead, mud-covered grass and roots draping the bushes to the left, and the mud-drenched boy behind. The unicorn bolted right.
    It had taken most of the day to find a place to set this trap, but now the unicorn was racing down a closed chute, the long, wide bog on its left and a wall of muddy bushes on its right. They had sacrificed Perryn’s cloak, all of Lysander’s spare clothes, and one of the ropes to make a solid fence. Unless the unicorn was prepared to get dirty, there was only one direction it could go.
    And it was going that way with amazing speed. Perryn was barely able to stay close enough to see the culmination of his plan.
    The bog curved. Now the unicorn saw the bog to the right and ahead of it, mud-wrapped bushes to the left, and the muddy boy behind. One of the bushes was lower than the others. With a mighty leap, the unicorn left the ground. It cleared the low bush with inches to spare and lit right in the center of the snare loop. Branches thrashed as the rope whipped around the unicorn’s neck.
    Lysander grabbed the other end of the rope, keeping it taut so the unicorn couldn’t slip out of it. “Got you, you slippery moon beam.”
    Perryn squirmed through the brush.
    The unicorn’s sides heaved. Its eyes rolled up and it slid limply to the ground.

“Of course I will aid so noble a cause,” said the unicorn.
     

7
     
    “ NOW WHAT ?” PERRYN GAZED AT THE UNCONSCIOUS unicorn—he had no idea what to do.
    “Hobbles,” said the bard, snatching up the remainder of their first rope. “As fast as we can make them.” He had barely bound the creature’s back feet when it began to stir.
    “Ooh, what a horrible dream.” The voice chimed in Perryn’s mind. “I