Blue Adept (3 page)

“A greeting, Stallion. I come to negotiate.”

The man-Stallion put three fingers to his mouth and blew another chord that still sounded like an accordion.
 
Two unicorns trotted in, supporting a structure on their horns. They set it down and retreated. It was a table fashioned of old unicorn horns, with attached seats. It was surely far more valuable than ivory, for much of the magic of unicorns was associated with their horns.
 
The Stallion sat, gesturing Stile to do the same.

“What has an Adept to negotiate with a simple animal like me?”

Stile realized this was not going to be easy. The Herd Stallion was not partial to him, since Stile had embarrassed the creature in the course of their first encounter. He would have to explain carefully. “Thou knowest I was murdered not long ago.”

“Thou hast no need to negotiate for recognition of thy status or right to thy Demesnes,” the Stallion said, surprised. “We honor the way that is. Only this herd and Kurrelgyre’s werewolf pack know thou art not the original Adept. We accept thee in lieu, since thy magic is equivalent and thou’rt a being of integrity, as are we. No news of thy condition has escaped the herd.”

Stile smiled. “It is not that. Sire. I have not made a secret of my status. It is that I must secure my position and avenge my murder.”

“Indubitably.”

“I believe it is an enemy Adept I seek. Therefore I must approach the matter cautiously, and trust myself only to my most reliable companion. That, of course, is mine oath-friend Neysa. Therefore—“

“Now I chew on thy gist. A gravid mare would not be fit for such excursion.”

“Exactly. I therefore seek a postponement of her breeding, until my mission is done.”

The Stallion frowned. “She has missed two seasons—“

“Because she was excluded from the herd—because of her color,” Stile said grimly. “Her color has not changed.”

“Ah, but her status has! She has connections she lacked before. The animals of my herd have taken a fancy to her, and the wolves of the pack we oft have fought no longer attack, because of her. In all the herds of all the valleys of Phaze, none save her is steed to an Adept.”

“Steed and friend,” Stile said. “A friendship well earned.”

“Perhaps. In any event, that makes up for her deficiency of—“

“Deficiency?” Stile demanded ominously, reaching for his harmonica. He had intended to keep this civil, but this was a sore point.

The Stallion considered. They were within the unicorn circle, but it had not been proven whether that would stop a newly fashioned spell performed in the heat of the Blue Adept’s ire. No creature insulted an Adept, or anything dear to an Adept, carelessly. The Stallion retreated half a step, figuratively. “Shall we say, her color pleases me now, and what pleases me shall not be cause for comment by any other unicorn.”

“An excellent statement,” Stile agreed, putting away his instrument. He had discovered that one unicorn seldom objected to praise or defense of another. It would be beneath the Herd Stallion’s dignity to stud an inferior mare.
 
“Her presence at my side pleases me now,” Stile continued.
 
“Who in thy herd can travel the flying league faster than she?”

The Stallion raised his human eyebrow in an elegant gold arch. “Who besides me, thou meanest?”

Now Stile had to back off diplomatically. “Of course. I meant among mares—“

“I concede that for her size—“

“Is aught amiss with her size?” This was another power-ploy, for Neysa was no smaller among unicorns than Stile was among men.

“It is a serviceable size. I am certain she will bear a fine foal.”

They were sparring, getting nowhere. The Stallion still intended to breed Neysa.

“I think thou didst not entirely withstand the oath of friendship,” Stile remarked. “The mare is more attractive to thee than she was before.”

The Stallion shrugged. It had been Stile’s potent spell that caused the other unicorns and the werewolves to swear friendship with Neysa, and the Stallion did not like to admit to being similarly affected. Yet he was proof against such gibes. “Perhaps. But here thy power may yield to mine, even as mine paled before thine in thy Demesnes.” Stile had set the unicorn back, during that prior encounter. Now the Stallion was having his satisfaction. One offended a creature of power at one’s own risk, even if one had the power of an Adept.

“I need Neysa, this season.
 
How may I obtain postponement of the breeding?”

“This is a matter of honor and pride. Thou must contest with me in mine own manner, weapon to weapon. An thou dost best me in fair combat, thou winnest thy plea. An thou dost fail—“ Stile had a notion how savage such an encounter could be.

“If?” he prompted.

The Stallion smiled. “An thou dost fail, I win mine. We contest not for life here, but only for the proper priority of our claims. I claim the right to breed my mares as I see fit and in mine own time; thou claimest the bond of friend-ship to this mare. It ill behooves us two to strive against each other on any except a civil basis.”

“Agreed.” Stile certainly had no need of a life and death combat here! He had hoped a simple request would suffice, but evidently he had been naive. “Shall we proceed to it now?”

The Stallion affected amazement. “By no means. Adept!
 
I would not have it bruited about that I forced my suit against one who was ill-prepared. Protocol requires that a suitable interval elapse. Shall we say a fortnight hence, at the Unolympics?”

“The Unolympics?”

“The annual sportive event of our kind, parallel to the Canolympics of the werewolves, the Vampolympics of the batmen, the Gnomolympics of—“

“Ah, I see. Is Neysa to compete therein?”

The Stallion evidently hadn’t considered that. “She has not before, for reasons we need not discuss. This year I believe she would be welcome.”

“And no apology to be made for any nuance of color or size that any less discriminating creatures might note?”

“None, of course.”

Stile did not like the delay, but also knew he had no serious chance against the Stallion, who looked to weigh a full ton, was in vibrant health, and had quite a number of victory notches on his horn. The creature was in fact pro-viding him time to reconsider, so that Stile could change his mind and yield the issue without suffering humiliation in the field. It was a decent gesture, especially when coupled with the agreement to let Neysa enter the general competition if she wanted to. Stile knew she could perform the typical unicorn maneuvers as well as any in the herd, and this would give her the chance to prove it at last. She had suffered years of shame; now she could publicly vindicate herself.

“A fortnight,” he agreed.
 
The Stallion extended his hand, and Stile took it. His own hand was engulfed by the huge and calloused extremity with hooflike nails. Stile fought off his automatic resentment and feeling of inadequacy. He was not inadequate, and the Stallion was being honorable. It was a fair compromise.

The Stallion shifted back to his natural form. He blew another chord on his horn. The unicorn circle opened. Stile began to feel lighter. His body faded. His spells were re-turning, as the anti-magic power of the unicorns diffused.
 
That also was worth noting: his spells had never ceased operating, they had merely been damped out temporarily.
 
Neysa stepped forward hesitantly. “The Stallion invites thee to participate in the Unolympics in two weeks,” Stile told her as he mounted.

She was so surprised she almost shifted into girl-form, which would have been awkward for him at the moment.
 
She blew a querying note, hardly daring to believe the news. But the Stallion made a chord of affirmation.
 
“And I will go there too, to meet the Stallion on the field of honor,” Stile added, as though this were an after-thought.

This time she did change shape. Stile found himself riding the girl-form piggy-back, his legs around her tiny waist.
 
Hastily he dismounted. “Nay—“ she said.
 
“Neigh indeed! If I weren’t invisible and featherlight, thou wouldst have been borne to the ground by my weight in most indelicate fashion. Get back to thy proper form, mare!” Hastily she complied. He remounted, and she galloped away from the herd. It seemed that none of the unicorns had noticed anything—until one mocking saxophone peal of music sounded. Clip had been unable to hold back his mirth any longer.

Neysa fired back an angry concatenation of notes, then galloped harder. They fairly flew across the slope. Soon they were well away. “Just for that, thou shouldst make him participate in the Unolympics too,” Stile suggested, and she snorted affirmatively.

But now his own problem came to the fore. “Maybe I can ask the Oracle how to handle the Stallion,” Stile mused aloud. But that was no good; he had used up his single Oracular query before, in the process of discovering his Phaze identity.

“One other thing bothers me,” Stile remarked after a bit, as they galloped across the lovely plain. “Why is the Herd Stallion being so polite about it? He could easily have insisted that I fight him today, and he surely would have won. He has no special brief for me, yet he treated me with extraordinary fairness.”

Neysa veered to approach an island copse of oat trees.
 
Safely inside the tangle of growth, she made a shrug that hinted he should dismount. When he did, she shifted to girl-form again. “It is thy spell,” she said. “All the herd is oath-friend to me, and if he took me unfairly, humiliating thee, they would turn against him.”

Stile struck his head with the heel of his unseen hand.
 
“Of course! Even a king must consider how far his subjects can be pushed.” So his magic had indeed affected the Stallion, albeit circuitously, by affecting those the Stallion had to deal with.

Neysa stood, not yet shifting back, looking at him expectantly though of course her eyes could not focus on him. Stile took her in his arms. “I believe these are more words than thou has spoken to me in thy life before,” he said, and kissed her.

He turned her loose, but still she waited. He knew why, yet could not act. They had been lovers, and she remained, in girl-form, the nicest and prettiest girl he knew, and he was not turned off by the knowledge that she was in fact a unicorn. But their relationship had changed when he met the Lady Blue. He found himself not constitutionally geared to have more than one lover at a time in a given frame. The irony was that he did not have the Lady Blue as lover or anything else, though he wanted everything else.
 
If companionship, loyalty, and yes, sex sufficed, Neysa was his resource.

And there it was. His aspirations had made a dimensional expansion. He was not certain that he could ever have all of what he wanted, yet he had to proceed as if it were possible. And he had to explain this to Neysa without hurting her feelings.

“What we had before was good,” he said. “But now I must look forward to a female of mine own kind, just as thou must look forward to the breeding and foal that only a male of thine own kind can give thee. Our friendship endures, for it is greater than this; it has merely changed its nature. Had we any continuing sexual claim on each other, it would complicate my friendship to thy foal, when it comes, or thine to my baby, if ever it comes.”

Neysa looked startled. It was almost as if her human ears perked forward. She had not thought of this aspect.
 
To her, friendship had been merely a complete trusting and giving, uncomplicated by interacting relationships of others. Stile hoped she was able to understand and accept the new reality.

Then she leaned forward to kiss him again, locating him with uncanny accuracy—or was his spell weakening?—and as their lips touched, she shifted back to equine form. Stile found himself kissing the unicorn. He threw his arms about her neck and yanked at her lustrous black mane, laughing.

Then he mounted, hugged her again, and rode on. It was all right.

Back at the Blue Demesnes, Stile uninvoked the spells, became visible and full-weight, and turned Neysa out to graze. Then he talked to Hulk and the Lady Blue.
 
“I must meet the Stallion in ritual battle a fortnight hence,” Stile said. “At their Unolympic celebration. This is for honor, and for the use of Neysa this season—yet I know not how I can match him, and am bound to suffer humiliation,”

“Which is what he wants,” Hulk said wisely. “Not thy blood, but thy pride. He wants to take a thing of value from the Blue Adept, in public, not by theft or by technicality but by right.”

The Lady’s blue eyes flashed. In this frame, it was literal: a momentary glare of light came from them. She was no Adept, but she did have some magic of her own. Stile remained new enough to Phaze to be intrigued by such little effects. “No creature humiliates the Blue Adept!” she cried.

“I am not really he, as the Stallion knows,” Stile re-minded her unnecessarily.

“Thou hast the image and the power and the office,” she said firmly. “It is not thy fault that thou’rt not truly he.
 
For the sake of the Demesnes, thou canst not let the unicorn prevail in this manner.”

The preservation of the Blue Demesnes was of course what this was all about, to her mind. Stile was merely the figurehead. “I am open to suggestions,” he said mildly. “I would ask the Oracle how I might prevail, had I not ex-pended my question in the course of achieving my present status.”