“Haggard’s fortress,” Schmendrick murmured, shaking his head in wonderment. “Haggard’s dire keep. A witch built it for him, they say, but he wouldn’t pay her for her work, so she put a curse on the castle. She swore that one day it would sink into the sea with Haggard, when his greed caused the sea to overflow. Then she gave a fearful shriek, the way they do, and vanished in a sulphurous puff. Haggard moved in right away. He said no tyrant’s castle was complete without a curse.”

“I don’t blame him for not paying her,” Molly Grue said scornfully. “I could jump on that place myself and scatter it like a pile of leaves. Anyway, I hope the witch has something interesting to do while she waits for that curse to come home. The sea is greater than anyone’s greed.”

Bony birds struggled across the sky, screeling, “Helpme, helpme, helpme!” and small black shapes bobbled at the light-less windows of King Haggard’s castle. A wet, slow smell found the unicorn. “Where is the Bull?” she asked. “Where does Haggard keep the Bull?”

“No one keeps the Red Bull,” the magician replied quietly. “I have heard that he roams at night, and lies up by day in a great cavern beneath the castle. We’ll know soon enough, but that’s not our problem now. The nearer danger lies there.” He pointed down into the valley, where a few lights had begun to shiver.

“That is Hagsgate,” he said.

Molly made no answer, but she touched the unicorn with a hand as cold as a cloud. She often put her hands on the unicorn when she was sad, or tired, or afraid.

“This is King Haggard’s town,” Schmendrick said, “the first one he took when he came over the sea, the one that has lain longest under his hand. It has a wicked name, though none I ever met could say exactly why. No one goes into Hagsgate, and nothing comes out of it but tales to make children behave‌—‌monsters, werebeasts, witch covens, demons in broad daylight, and the like. But there is something evil in Hagsgate, I think. Mommy Fortuna would never go there, and once she said that even Haggard was not safe while Hagsgate stood. There is something there.”

He peered closely at Molly as he spoke, for it was his one bitter pleasure these days to see her frightened in spite of the white presence of the unicorn. But she answered him quite calmly, with her hands at her sides. “I have heard Hagsgate called ‘the town that no man knows.’ Maybe its secret was waiting for a woman to find it out‌—‌a woman and a unicorn. But what’s to be done with you?”

Schmendrick smiled then. “I’m no man,” he said. “I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all.”

The foxfire lights of Hagsgate grew brighter as the unicorn watched them, but not even a flint flared in King Haggard’s castle. It was too dark to see men moving on the walls, but across the valley she could hear the soft boom of armor and the clatter of pikes on stone. Sentinels had met, and marched away again. The smell of the Red Bull sported all around the unicorn as she started down the thin, brambly path that led to Hagsgate.