Piers Anthony - Split Infinity

“Well, I’ll just have to go and look;’ Stile decided. “I’ll check out each Adept until I find which one is dead, and see if that was me. Then I’ll be satisfied. Only—how can I be sure that two aren’t dead, and I have found the wrong one?”

“No problem there,” the werewolf said. “Thine other self would have looked exactly like thee, so any who saw thee in his demesnes would know. And every Adept has his own peculiar style of magic, his means of implementation, that he alone commands. What style is thine?”

“Stile style,” Neysa murmured, permitting herself to smile fleetingly.

“Spoken, or sung, in verse,” Stile said. “Music summons the power. Which Adept uses that mode?”

“We know not. The Adepts vouchsafe no such in- formation to common folk. Often they veil their magic in irrelevant forms, speaking incantations when it may be in fact a gesture that is potent, or posturing when it is a key rune. Or so it is bruited about among the animal folk. We know not who makes the amulets, or the golem people, or the potions or graphs or any of the other conjurations. We only know these things exist, and know to our dismay their power.” He turned to Stile, taking one hand. “But friend—do not do this thing. If thou findest thine Adept-self, thou wilt become that Adept, and I shall have to bear the onus of not having slain thee when I had the chance. And Neysa too, who helped thee: lay not this geas upon her.”

Stile turned to Neysa, appalled. “Thou feelest that way also?”

Sadly, she nodded.

“Methinks she led thee to the Oracle to avoid the peril she saw looming,” Kurrelgyre said. “To destroy a friend—or turn an Adept loose on the realm. Here thou art safe, even from thy friends.”

“But I am bound by mine oath!” Stile said. He hoped he was getting the language right: thy and my before a consonant, thine and mine before a vowel. “I will not perform magic! I will not become the monster thou fearest. I seek only to know. Canst thou deny me that?”

Slowly Kurrelgyre shook his head. “We can not deny thee that. Yet we wish—“

“I must know myself,” Stile said. “The Oracle said so.”

“And the Oracle is always right,” the werewolf agreed. “We can not oppose our paltry judgment to that.”

“So I will go on a quest for myself,” Stile concluded. “When I have satisfied my need-to-know, I will return to mine own frame, where there is no problem about magic. So thou needst have no fear about me turning into whatever ogre thou dost think I might. I have to return soon anyway, to get my new employment, or my tenure will expire.”

Neysa’s gaze dropped.

“Why carest thou about tenure?” Kurrelgyre inquired. “Remain here, in hiding from thine enemy; thou hast no need to return.”

“But Proton is my world,” Stile protested. “I never intended to stay here—“

The werewolf stood and drew Stile gently aside.

“Needs must I speak to thee in language unbecoming for the fair one to hear,” he said. Neysa glanced up quickly at him, but remained sitting silently by the garden.

“What’s this nonsense about unbecoming language?”

Stile demanded when they were out of Neysa’s earshot. “I don’t keep secrets from—“

“Canst thou not perceive the mare is smitten with thee?” Kurrelgyre demanded. “Canst not guess what manner of question she tried to formulate for the Oracle?”

Stile suffered a guilty shock. He had compared Neysa in various ways to Sheen, yet missed the obvious one. “But I am no unicorn!”

“And I am no man. Yet I would not, were I thee, speak so blithely of departure. Better it were to cut her heart quickly, cleanly.”

“Uh, yes. No,” Stile agreed, confused. “She—we have been—I assumed it was merely a courtesy of the form. I never thought—“

“And a considerable courtesy it is,” Kurrelgyre agreed. “I was careless once myself about such matters, until my bitch put me straight.” He ran his fingers along an old scar that angled from his shoulder dangerously near the throat. Werewolves evidently had quite direct means of expressing themselves. “I say it as should not: Neysa is the loveliest creature one might meet, in either form, and no doubt the most constant too. Shamed would I have been to lay a tooth on her, ere thou didst halt me. Considering the natural antipathy that exists between man and unicorn, as between man and were-wolf and between unicorn and werewolf, her attachment to thee is a mark of favor most extreme. Unless—chancest thou to be virginal, apart from her?”

“No.”

“And most critical of all: canst thou touch her most private parts?”

Stile reddened slightly. “I just told thee—“

“Her feet,” Kurrelgyre said. “Her horn. No stranger durst touch a unicorn’s magic extremities.”

“Why yes, I-“

“Then must it be love. She would not else tolerate thy touch. Mark me, friend: she spared thee, when she learned thou wert Adept, because she loved thee, and therein lies mischief with her herd. Thou canst not lightly set her aside.” He touched the scar near his throat again.

“No,” Stile agreed fervently, thinking again of Sheen. He had always had a kind of personal magnetism that affected women once they got to know him, though it was usually canceled out by the initial impression his size and shyness made. Thus his heterosexual relation-ships tended to be distant or intimate, with few shades between. But with that situation went a certain responsibility: not to hurt those women who trusted them-selves to him.

He remembered, with another pang of nostalgia, how the jockey girl Tune had stimulated his love, then left him. He had never been able to blame her, and would not have eschewed the affair had he known what was coming. She had initiated him into a world whose dimension he had hardly imagined before. But he did not care to do that to another person. He had no concern about any injury from Neysa; she would never hurt him. She would just quietly take herself away, and off a mountain ledge, and never transform into a firefly. She would spare him, not herself. It was her way.

Kurrelgyre’s question was valid: why couldn’t Stile remain here? There was a threat against his life, true—but he had fled Proton because of that, too. If he could nullify that threat in this frame—well, there were appeals to this world that rivaled those of the Game.

In fact, magic itself had, for him, a fascination similar to—no! His oath made that academic.

What, then, of Sheen? He could not simply leave her in doubt. He must return at least long enough to ex-plain. She was a robot; she would understand. The practical thing for him to do was pick the most convenient world and stay there. It would be enough for Sheen to know he was safe; her mission would then have been accomplished.

As he had known Tune was safe and happy . . . Had that been enough for him? To know she had success-fully replaced his arms with those of another man, and given that man in fact what she had given Stile in name: a son? He had understood, and Sheen would understand—but was that enough?

Yet what else could he do? He could not remain in both frames, could he? In any event, his tenure on Pro-ton was limited, while it seemed unlimited here.

Stile returned to Neysa and sat beside her, Kurrel-gyre trailing. “The werewolf has shown me that I can not expect to solve my problems by fleeing them. I must remain here to find my destiny, only visiting the other frame to conclude mine affairs there.” As he said it, he wished he had chosen other phrasing.

Neysa responded by lifting her gaze. That was enough.

“Now for thee, werewolf,” Stile said. “We must solve thy riddle too. Did it occur to thee that the Blue thou must cultivate could be an Adept?”