Blue Adept

by Piers Anthony

  In due course he returned to crank down the drawbridge, which seemed to be formed of a huge slab of ice. Stile skated blithely across and on into the central courtyard, admiring the way the daylight refracted through the ice walls. And the floor abruptly converted to stone. Stile tripped on it and took a genuine tumble; he had not been paying attention to his feet. He adapted his fall to an acrobatic roll in what he hoped was comical fashion, then removed his skates.

  Neysa did not reappear. She remained as a firefly, hiding in his hat. Stile knew why; her conversion back to equineform would attract attention to him. Who but the Blue Adept, as the Platinum Elves had pointed out, rode a unicorn? But she would change in a hurry if it became necessary. He felt much more secure with her along.

  There were no special preliminaries. The White Adept walked out, looking much as she had at the Unolympics, but older and fatter. She had evidently used her magic only to improve her image moderately. “What hast thou got, churl?” she demanded irritably. “What dost thou want?”

  “I have a rare show of antics and prestidigitation,” Stile said, making his voice comical too. “ ’Twill lighten thy spirit and make thee laugh. All I ask in return is the smallest of favors.”

  “What smallest favor?” She was evidently used to panhandlers.

  Stile brought out a silver medal he had conjured in preparation for this moment. “This amulet—it is expended. I want it restored to provide me heat from the cold.”

  “Amulets are not my business,” she snapped. “Thou shouldst apply to her who makes them.”

  So it was a female Adept who made the amulets! This was a valuable confirmation. “Once an amulet attacked me,” he said. “Now must I take them secondhand.”

  “Attacked thee?” She chortled. “Surely served thee right! Very well—if thou dost perform amusingly, I will reward thee appropriately.”

  “I thank thee,” Stile said humbly. He was fully aware that she had made no significant commitment. That was not what he needed. Once she showed the form of her magic—

  “Get on with it, clown,” White snapped, her mouth setting into solidified sourness. “Make me laugh.”

  Stile went into his act. He had developed a joker-ritual as part of his Proton-Game expertise, and he had considerable manual dexterity. He put on his “stupid midget” pantomime, trying to eat a potato that kept wriggling out of his hands, looking for a comfortable place to sleep, finding none, and getting tangled up in his own limbs, drawing scarves out of his ears, taking spills, and in general making a funny fool of himself. He was good at it, using no real magic, only stage magic, before a person who well knew the difference. Though the White Adept tried to maintain a sour face, slowly it weathered and cracked. She evidently did not like peasants, and had deep satisfaction seeing one so aptly parodied. Also she, like many people, thought there was something excruciatingly funny about mishaps happening to a midget. In the end she was laughing wholeheartedly.

  Stile completed his show. White sobered quickly. “I like thee, fool. I believe I shall keep thee here for future entertainments.”

  “Honored Adept, I cannot stay,” Stile said quickly, though he had expected something like this. “All I want is mine amulet recharged.”

  She frowned. “Very well, fool. Give it here.”

  She was up to something. Stile passed over the medal, braced for action.

  The White Adept laid the medal on the floor. She brought out a long-handled charcoal marker and drew a mystic symbol around it. When the figure was complete, she tapped it five times: tap-tap, Tap-tap, TAP.

  The medal exploded into a dozen huge shapes. Ice monsters, translucent, with snowy fur and icicle teeth and blank iceball eyeballs. The small fragments of metal seemed to adhere only to their formidable claws: nails that were literal nails.

  “Cool this arrogant peasant in the cooler, coolies,” she ordered, pointing at Stile.

  The monsters advanced on him. Stile tried to run out of the courtyard, but they leaped out to encircle him. Grinning coldly, they drew their noose tight. There would be no gentle handling here.

  Suddenly Neysa flew out and changed to her unicornform. She charged forward, spearing a monster on her horn, lifting her head, and hurling the thing away to the side. It crashed into its neighbor, and both went down in a tangle of shattering ice.

  “Ho! A unicorn!” White screamed, outraged. “Think ye to ’scape my power in mine own Demesnes, animal?” She started to draw another symbol on the floor.

  That meant trouble. Obviously she could conjure anything with the right symbol. Stile launched himself at the White Adept—and was caught in a polar-bear hug by an intervening ice monster and lifted from the floor. Fool! he chided himself. He should have sung a spell. But no—White did not yet know his identity, apparently not connecting the unicorn directly to him. He preferred to keep it secret if he could. He would try to handle this without magic.

  He had better! The monster had a frigid hand over Stile’s mouth, half suffocating him and preventing him from speaking.

  Stile tried to get his hand on the Platinum Flute. That would become a suitable weapon! But, jammed up against the freezing demon, he could not reach the Flute.

  He elbowed the monster. Ouch! That ice was hard! He kicked, but the monster seemed to have no feeling in its body. Stile could not throw the creature, because he had no footing. Meanwhile, that terrible cold was penetrating his flesh.

  Neysa was busy routing the other monsters. One monster might be too much for Stile to handle, but one unicorn was too much for the whole horde of them. She bucked, her hind hooves flinging out to shatter two monsters; she plunged forward to impale another on her horn. With every motion she demolished a monster. Stile could have had no better ally.

  But Stile was held silent, and the White Adept was completing her new symbol figure. This surely meant mischief.

  Stile bit the hand over his mouth. This helped; the icy fingers crunched under his teeth. The monster might feel no pain, but it couldn’t gag Stile with no fingers. Stile chewed and chewed, breaking off and spitting out the huge hand piecemeal.

  Now the witch’s second symbol animated. A swarm of stinging flies puffed into existence. They flung themselves onto Neysa—who stiffened the moment they stung, thin flame jetting from her nostrils. Then, with an extended note of despair, she fell to the floor.

  There was no question about the ability of an Adept to handle a unicorn! White’s magic was more cumbersome to implement than Stile’s was, but it was devastating when it got there.

  “Dump the animal into the lake—under the ice.” White ordered the two remaining ice monsters. “Dump the peasant-clown there too; he’s too much trouble.”

  But Stile could speak now. “Monsters of ice,” he sang breathlessly, “turn into mice!”

  He had not gathered his power by playing music, so the potency of his spell was not great. That was the cumbersome quality of his own invocations. When fully prepared, he could do excellent magic—but of course White, when set up with a number of drawn symbols, could surely perform similarly. His spell operated incompletely. The two ice monsters shimmered into rather fat white rats.

  “Magic!” White hissed. “Now I know thee! How durst thou intrude on these my Demesnes, Blue?”

  Stile brought out his harmonica as he walked toward Neysa. He had decided he didn’t need the Flute on this occasion. The deadly stingflies rose up in their humming cloud, orienting on him. “I intrude to ascertain whether thou art mine enemy,” he said to the witch.

  “I was not thine enemy before—but I am now!” she cried. “Sting him, flies!”

  Stile played his instrument. The flies felt the coalescing force of his magic and hesitated. Stile willed heat—and as the flies came near, they dried up and dropped to the floor. A few hardier ones persisted until their wings burst into flame.

  Stile stopped, looking at the prostrate unicorn. He thought of Hulk and Bluette, knocked out by gas. Which parallels were valid and which were produ
cts of his guilt? But this situation he could handle. “Neysa defy the bite of the fly,” he sang.

  The unicorn woke and struggled to her feet. Stile could heal others, but not himself.

  White was forming a new symbol. Stile faced her and sang: “White take the road, as a frog or a—tortoise.”

  The witch did a doubletake as the spell passed her by. Stile had not filled in the obvious rhyme. Then she reached for the symbol again.

  “Let thy flesh become cold,” Stile sang, and the magic gathered as though to pounce. “And thy body grow … oily.”

  Again she reacted, fearing the worst; no one feared age like a middle-aged woman! Again she was left unscathed as the spell fizzled. Stile’s intent could only be consummated with a terminal rhyme. Once more she went for her spell.

  “White form a pyre, and burn like—fir,” Stile sang.

  This time her white hair seemed to take on a tinge of orange flame. “Enough!” she cried. “Thou’rt victor, Blue! Thy magic cannot truly transform me, but it could make me very uncomfortable. What dost thou want?”

  “Only to see thy magic operate,” Stile said. “And to depart in peace.”

  “No one sees the secret of my magic mode and departs in peace!” she protested. “The mode is always an Adept secret. Sooner would I dance naked before a crowd.”

  “Thou hast seen my magic mode,” Stile pointed out. “I lived my whole life naked in a crowd, ere I came to Phaze.”

  “Well, no one else shows either magic or body!”

  “Yet thou knowest the identity of the amulet-maker.”

  She considered. “Ah, now it comes clear! Thy vengeance!”

  “Indeed,” Stile agreed. “Thou dost not seem to be the one I seek, but it would help if I learned who mine enemy really is.”

  “Aye, I know her. There are secrets witches share. But I will not tell thee. It is not thy business.”

  “The amulet-maker murdered me!” Stile cried. “And seeks to kill me again. That is not my business?”

  “Well, mayhap thou wouldst see it that way. But it is not my business to betray her to thee.”

  “Witch, thou runnest fair risk of suffering my wrath,” Stile said, feeling the righteous heat rise. The force of his oath urged him onward. “Yet can I turn thee into—”

  “Nay, the power of one Adept is ineffective against another Adept on guard. Yet neither is it my business to betray thee to her. Depart now, and I shall not tell her thou hast narrowed thy choices to two.”

  To two. Two remaining female Adepts. White had given him some information, by way of placation. That helped considerably. The only problem was that he knew of only one other female Adept.

  Well, he would check that one. He mounted Neysa. He played a bar of music, then sang: “Man and steed, to Brown proceed.”

  They shot sidewise, accelerating to horrendous velocity, passing right through the ice walls without touching them and zooming southeast. Plains, hills and forests shot by in blurs. Then they slowed and came to an abrupt halt.

  They were before the great brown wooden door of a brownstone castle from whose highest turret a brown pennant flew. Obviously the Brown Demesnes.

  Stile looked around. A muddy river flowed behind the castle, but none of its water was diverted into a moat. On its banks stood a sere, brown forest. It might be summer in the main part of Phaze, but it was winter at the White Demesnes and fall here at the Brown Demesnes.

  Neysa snorted, not liking it. Stile could appreciate why; the grass, too, was brown.

  “Well, do we sneak in this time, or boldly challenge?” Stile asked the unicorn. She blew a note of negation, ending in a positive trill. “I agree,” he said, “I’m tired of sneaking. We’ll settle this openly this time.” He wondered whether it was true that one Adept could not directly enchant another Adept who was on guard. That notion seemed to be giving him confidence, certainly.

  He faced the door and bawled in as stentorian a voice as he could muster: “Brown, come forth and face Blue!”

  The huge door cranked open. A giant stood in the doorway. He was as massive as the trunk of an oak, and as gnarly. He carried a wooden club that was longer than Stile’s whole body. “Go ’way, clown!” he roared.

  Clown. Oops—he was still garbed in that fool’s suit! Well, let it be; he didn’t want to mess with a nullification spell right now.

  Stile was used to dealing with men larger than himself; all men were larger than himself. But this one was extreme. He was just about ten feet tall. If he swung that club, he could likely knock Stile off Neysa before Stile could get close enough to do anything physical.

  Unless he used the Platinum Flute as a lance or pike…

  But first he had to try the positive approach. “I want to meet the Brown Adept.”

  The giant considered. His intelligence seemed inversely proportional to his mass. “Oh,” he said. “Then come in.”

  Just like that! Neysa trotted forward, following the giant. Soon they were in a large brownwood paneled hall.

  A man was there, garbed in a brown robe. He was brown of hair, eyes and skin. “What want ye with me?” he inquired, frowning.

  “Nothing,” Stile said. “I want the Adept herself.”

  “Speak to me,” the man said. “I am Brown.”

  “Brown is a woman,” Stile said. “Must I force the issue with magic?”

  “Thou darest use thy magic in my Demesnes?” the brown man demanded.

  Stile brought out his harmonica and played a few bars. “I dare,” he said.

  “Guard! Remove this man!”

  Giants appeared, converging on Stile and Neysa. “I want these creatures swept,” Stile sang quickly. “And bring the Brown Adept.”

  It was as if a giant invisible broom swept the giants out of the hall. Simultaneously an eddy carried in a disheveled, angry child. “Thou mean man!” she cried. “Thou didst not have to do that!”

  Stile was taken aback. “Thou’rt the Brown Adept?” But obviously she was; his spell had brought her.

  “If I were grown and had my full power, thou wouldst never be able to bully me!” she exclaimed tearfully. “I never did anything to thee, clown!”

  Appearances could be deceptive, but Stile was inclined to agree. Why would a child murder an Adept who meant her no harm? Unless this was another costume, concealing the true form of the Adept. “I am here to ascertain that,” Stile said. “Show me thy true form.”

  “This is my true form! Until I grow up. Now wilt thou go away, since thou art not a very funny clown?”

  “Show me thy true form of magic,” Stile said.

  “Art thou blind? Thou didst just make a jumble of all my golems!”

  Golems! “Thou makest the wooden men!”

  She was settling down. “What else? I use the brownwood growing outside. But most of these were made by my pred—the prior Brown Adept. He trained me to do it just before he died.” A tear touched her eye. “He was a good man. It is lonely here without him.”

  “Knowest thou not a wooden golem usurped the Blue Demesnes?” Stile demanded.

  Her cute brown eyes flashed. “That’s a lie! Golems do only as told. I ought to know. They have no life of their own.”

  Like the robots of Proton. Only some robots, like Sheen, and her sophisticated friends, did have consciousness and self-will. “Thou hast sent no golem in my likeness to destroy me?”

  Now she faltered, bobbing her brown curls about. “I—I did not. But I have not been Adept long. My predi-pred—”

  “Predecessor,” Stile filled in helpfully.

  “That’s the word! Thanks. Predecessor. He might have. I don’t know. But he was a good man. He never attacked other Adepts. He just filled orders for them. Golems make the very most dependable soldiers and servants and things, and they never need feeding or sleeping or—”

  “So another Adept could have ordered a golem in my likeness?” Stile persisted, piecing it together.

  “Sure. He made golems in any likeness, in
exchange for other magic he needed. Like a larderful of food, or a get-well amulet—”

  Stile pounced on that. “Who traded him an amulet?”

  “Why the Red Adept, of course. She makes all the amulets.”

  Something was wrong. “I met the Red Adept at the Unolympics. Red was a tall, handsome man.”

  “Oh—she was in costume, then. They do that. Just as I tried to do with a golem when thou camest. Sometimes strangers are bad to children, so Brown warned me not to reveal myself to intruders. I didn’t know thou wert apprised I was a girl.”

  It burst upon Stile with dismaying force. The costume! Not merely different clothing or appearance, but different sex too! Child’s play to produce the image of the opposite sex. In fact, Red could have done it without magic. Remove the mustache, lengthen the hair, put on a dress, and the Red he had seen was a woman. Remove the dress so that she was naked, and cover the hair with a skullcap, and it was the woman who had killed Hulk in the mine. How could he have overlooked that?

  “Brown, I apologize,” Stile said. “A golem invaded my Demesnes, and I thought thee guilty. I see I was mistaken. I proffer amends.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” she said, smiling girlishly. “I haven’t had company in a long time. But thou mightest put back my giants.”

  Stile made a quick spell to restore the golems he had swept away. “Is there aught else I can do for thee before I go?” he inquired.

  “Nothing much. I like thy unicorn, but I know they don’t mess with other Adepts or anybody. Only other thing I’m trying to do is grow a nice flower-garden, but they all come up brown and dry. I don’t want thy magic for that; I want to do it myself.”

  Neysa blew a note. Stile dismounted, and she shimmered into girl-form. “Unicorn manure grows magic plants,” Neysa said.

  “Gee—pretty ones?” Brown asked, her eyes lighting. “Like a Jack-in-the-pulpit who preaches a real sermon, and tiger-lilies who purr?”

  Neysa had already changed back to her natural shape. She blew an affirmative note.

  “Send one of thy golems with a cart and fork,” Stile said. “A giant, who can haul a lot. Thou knowest where the herds roam?”