Piers Anthony - Split Infinity

He no longer had qualms about attacking an un-armed creature. He studied the golem. The creature might be made of wood, animated by magic, but it still had to obey certain basic laws of physics. It had to have joints in its limbs, and would be vulnerable in those joints, even as Stile was. It had to hear and see, so needed ears and eyes, though these would probably function only via magic. Whoever had made this golem must have a real knack for this kind of sorcery. An-other Adept, most likely, specializing in golems.

The golem came—and Stile plunged the point of his rapier like a hypodermic into the thing’s right eye. The golem, evidently feeling no pain, continued forward, only twisting its head. The sword point, lodged in the wood, was wrenched about. It snapped off.

Stile had not been expert with this weapon, so this was less of a loss than it might have seemed. He aimed the broken end at the golem’s other eye. But the creature, aware of the danger, retreated. It turned and crashed through the window in the far wall.

Stile pursued it. He leaped through the broken window—and found himself back in the courtyard, where Neysa had been pacing restlessly, breathing out her heat. She paused, startled, at the appearance of the golem. Her eyes informed her it was Stile, with one eye destroyed, but her nose was more certain. She made an angry musical snort.

The golem cast about with its remaining eye. It spied the fountain-whale. It grabbed the statuary in both arms and ripped it from its mooring.

Neysa, alarmed, charged across the courtyard, her horn aimed at the golem. “Don’t stab it!” Stile cried. “The thing is wood; it could break thy horn!”

As he spoke, the golem heaved the whale at him. The statue was solid; it flew like a boulder. Neysa leaped at Stile, nosing him out of the way of it. The thing landed at her feet, fragmenting.

“Art thou all right, Neysa?” Stile cried, trying to get to his feet without bending his knees too far.

She gave a musical blast of alarm. Stile whirled. The golem was bearing down on him with a whale fragment, about to pulp his head.

Neysa lifted her head and snorted a jet of flame that would have done credit to a small dragon. It passed over Stile and scored on the golem.

Suddenly the golem was on fire. Its wood was dry, well-seasoned, and filled with pitch; it burned vigorously. The creature dropped the whale fragment and ran madly in a circle, trying to escape its torment. Blows and punctures might not bother it, but fire was the golem’s ultimate nemesis.

Stile stared for a moment, amazed at this apparition: himself on fire! The golem’s substance crackled. Smoke trailed from it, forming a torus as the creature continued around its awful circle.

And Stile, so recently out to destroy this thing, experienced sudden empathy with it. He could not let it be tortured in this fashion. He tried to quell his human softness, knowing the golem was a literally heartless, unliving thing, but he could not. The golem was now the underdog, worse off than Stile himself.

“The water!” Stile cried. “Jump in the pond! Douse the fire!”

The golem paused, flame jetting out of its punctured eye to form a momentary halo. Then it lurched for the pool, stumbled, and splashed in. There was a hiss and spurt of steam.

Stile saw Neysa and Kurrelgyre and the Lady Blue standing spaced about the courtyard, watching. He went to the pond and kneeled, carefully. The golem floated face down, its fire out. Probably it didn’t need to breathe; still—

Stile reached out and caught a foot. He hauled it in, then wrestled the body out of the pond. But the golem was defunct, whether from the fire or the water Stile could not tell. It no longer resembled him, other than in outline. Its clothing was gone, its painted skin scorched, its head a bald mass of charcoal.

“I did not mean it to end quite this way,” Stile said soberly. “I suppose thou wast only doing thy job, golem, what thou wert fashioned for, like a robot. I will bury thee.”

The gate guard appeared. He looked at the scene, startled. “Who is master, now?”

Startled in turn. Stile realized that he should be the master, having deposed the impostor. But he knew things weren’t settled yet. “Speak to the Lady,” he said.

The guard turned to her. “A wolf comes, seeking one of its kind.”

Kurrelgyre growled and stalked out to investigate. “Speak naught of this outside,” the Lady Blue directed the guard. Then she turned to Stile. “Thou’rt no golem. Comest thou now to destroy what remains of the Blue Demesnes?”

“I come to restore it,” Stile said.

“And canst thou emulate my lord’s power as thou dost impersonate his likeness?” she asked coldly.

Stile glanced at Neysa. “I can not. Lady, at this time. I have made an oath to do no magic—“

“How convenient,” she said. “Then thou needst not prove thyself, having removed one impostor, and thou proposest to assume his place, contributing no more to these Demesnes than he did. And I must cover for thee, even as I did for the brute golem.”

“Thou needst cover for nobody!” Stile cried in a flash of anger. “I came because the Oracle told me I was Blue! I shall do what Blue would have done!”

“Except his magic, that alone distinguished my lord from all others,” she said.

Stile had no answer. She obviously did not believe him, but he would not break his oath to Neysa, though he wanted above all else to prove himself to the Lady Blue. She was such a stunning figure of a woman—his alternate self had had tastes identical to his own.

Kurrelgyre returned, assuming man-form. “A member of my pack brings bitter news to me,” he said. “Friend, I must depart.”

“Thou wert always free to do so,” Stile said, turning to this distraction with a certain relief. “I thank thee for thy help. Without seeking to infringe upon thy prerogatives, if there is aught I can do in return—“

“My case is beyond help,” the werewolf said. “The pack leader has slain mine oath-friend, and my sire is dying of distemper. I must go slay the pack leader—and be in turn torn apart by the pack.”

Stile realized that werewolf politics were deadly serious matters. “Wait briefly, friend! I don’t understand. What is an oath-friend, and why—?”

“I needs must pause to explain, since I shall not be able to do it hereafter,” Kurrelgyre said. “Friendship such as exists between the two of us is casual; we met at random, part at random, and owe nothing to each other. Ours is an association of convenience and amicability. But I made an oath of friendship with Drowltoth, and when I was expelled from the pack he took my bitch—“

“He stole thy female?” Stile cried.

“Nay. What is a bitch, compared to oath-friendship? He took her as a service to me, that she be not shamed before the pack. Now, over a pointless bone, the leader has slain him, and I must avenge my friend. Since I am no longer of the pack, I may not do this legitimately; therefore must I do it by stealth, and pay the consequence, though my sire die of grief.”

Oath-friendship. Stile had not heard of this before, but the concept was appealing. A liaison so strong it pre-empted male-female relations. That required absolute loyalty, and vengeance for a wrong against that friend, as for a wrong against oneself. Golden rule.

Yet something else nagged him. Stile pursued it through the tangled skein of his recent experience, integrating things he had learned, and caught it.

“There is another way,” he said. “I did not grasp it before, because this frame evidently has a more violent manner of settling accounts than I am used to. Here, perhaps, it is proper to kill and be killed over minor points of honor—“