Piers Anthony - Out of Phaze

“Why didn’t you decide to go the other way, and intercept your Herd?” he asked. ‘The goblins would not have followed there, would they?”

She sighed. “There be a matter I did not explain to thee,” she said. “My sire retired some fifteen years ago, and my uncle Clip assumed mastery o’ the Herd. That concerned not my dam, Neysa, his sibling, because she no longer marched with the Herd. She stayed at the Blue Demesnes.”

“Why should your mother be concerned about her brother getting promoted?”

“It be the Herd Stallion who breeds all the mares.”

“Oh! And she’s too closely related!”

“Aye. And I be too. So it became needful, as I came of age, to seek another herd. I was on that mission when I heard thy cry for help in the swamp.”

“What a coincidence!” Mach exclaimed. “I’m glad I arrived at the right time! I would have been roach-food otherwise!”

“Nay, I was near throughout. I—I knew Bane was going often to the glade, and I hoped to see him again, yet hesitated to intrude, an he be on Adept business.”

“So you just sort of stayed in the vicinity for a while,” Mach said. “Understandable. How long were you there?”

She murmured something.

“What was that? I didn’t hear.”

“A fortnight,” she said, somewhat less faintly.

“Two weeks? Just in the hope he might decide he wanted to see you?”

“Aye,” she said, abashed.

“You really were stuck on him!” Then Mach regretted his choice of words. “I mean—“

“Thy meaning be clear,” she said, blushing.

“And so you rescued me, thinking I was him. And stayed with me, because you liked him.”

She nodded, looking uncomfortable.

“Oh, Fleta—I’m sorry! Without ever knowing it, I brought you so much mischief!”

“Nay, Mach. Thou didst bring me joy.”

“But you know I am not the man Bane is—not here in Phaze! Without your help, I’d have been lost many times over. I’d still be lost without you! Bane would have been no burden to you at all!”

“Aye, he needed me not,” she agreed.

He looked at her, slowly understanding. “You need— to be needed.” Then he took her in his arms again and kissed her.

But after a bit another thought occurred. ‘Two weeks— you must be overdue at the other herd!”

“Aye,” she said.

“And now I am keeping you from it. This really is not fair.”

“I wanted to join the other herd not really that much,” she confessed. “Better to roam free, as my dam did, before my time.”

“Well, you are welcome to my company as long as you like it,” he said. “I’m in no position to refuse it, even if I wanted to.”

There was a spot in the sky to the east. Fleta looked nervously at it. “Mayhap just a bird,” she said. “But if a harpy—“

“On a search-pattern for us,” he agreed. “Where can I hide?” They were in open meadow; there was not even a substantial tree nearby.

“Take my socks,” she said.

“Your socks?”

‘Take them,” she repeated urgently as the flying shape came closer. She became the unicorn.

“But Fleta, that’s just the color of your fur on your hind feet! No way—“

She fluted at him. Mach shrugged and squatted to touch her hind leg. To his surprise he discovered that the golden color did come off; in a moment he held two bright socks, and Fleta’s legs were black.

Fleta resumed human form. “Put them on, quickly.”

Mach put them on over his shoes. And stood astonished.

His body changed. He now seemed to be a golden animal. A horse—or a unicorn. He could see illusory hindquarters behind him, and suspected that his head resembled that of a horse with a horn.

“Graze,” Fleta whispered, and changed back to equine form herself.

Mach leaned forward, trying to get his illusory head into the proper position for grazing. Evidently his performance was satisfactory, for Fleta did not correct him.

The flying form turned out to be a large bird, perhaps a vulture. It flew overhead and did not pause. False alarm, perhaps, but Mach was glad they hadn’t taken the chance. If the Adepts interrogated the bird, all they would get was a report of two unicorns grazing in the field. Meanwhile he had learned another thing about his fascinating companion!

Fleta changed back to girl form. “It was nothing, I think,” she said. “But here we be dawdling when we should be traveling. Methinks I must carry thee, to make the distance.”

“But I don’t want to burden you—“

“An we get spotted, how much greater a burden!” she exclaimed. She changed into unicorn form.

Mach realized that she was correct. Quickly he removed his socks and put them back on her feet; then he mounted her.

She started walking, then trotting, then galloping. Now they were moving like the wind, covering the ground far more rapidly than they had. She headed straight southwest, angling toward the distant Purple Mountain range. All he had to do was hang on.

She began to play on her horn, a lovely tune whose cadence was set by the beat of her falling hooves. Mach, delighted, picked up the melody and hummed along with her. His father was musical, and music was part of the Game, so Mach had trained on a number of instruments and learned to sing well. He had perfect pitch and tone as clear as an instrument could render it, being a machine himself, but it was more than that. Through music he could come closest to the illusion of life and true feeling. Now, of course, he really was alive, and this body had a power of voice almost as good as his own. So he hummed, first matching Fleta’s tune, then developing counterpoint, and it seemed to facilitate her running. Unicorns, he realized, were made to play while moving. He knew that their combined melody was a kind of a work of art, for Fleta was very good and so was he. There was rare pleasure in this, despite the urgency of their traveling.

An hour passed, and still she ran at a pace no horse could have maintained. Her music became less pretty, more determined. Her body became warm, but she did not sweat. Instead, he noted with surprise, her hooves got hot. Sparks flew from them when they touched the hard ground. She was dissipating heat through her hooves!

As evening closed, they were near the great mountains. Now at last Fleta slowed. Mach could tell from the way her body moved that she was extremely tired; she had covered a distance of perhaps three hundred kilometers in short order without respite. Her melody had faded out, the energy it expended now required for her running. Finally she stopped, and he jumped off, sore of arm, leg and crotch. He had learned bareback riding for the Game, but never this extreme!

They were near a grove of fruit trees, probably by no accident. “Rest, Fleta!” he said. “I’ll forage for food!”

She didn’t argue. She went under a tree, changed to girl form, and threw herself down as if unconscious.

Mach collected fruits and located a nearby spring. This was an ideal location!

Then he heard something. He flattened himself against a tree.

It turned out to be a party of what he took to be goblins. They were like gnarled little men, about half his own height, with huge and ugly heads, and correspondingly distorted hands and feet. “Damn nuisance!” one was muttering as they passed, traveling a faint forest trail. “No unicorns here!”

“But we’ve got to check anyway,” another said.

The six of them trekked on. They hadn’t spotted Mach; they hadn’t really been looking. This was just a pointless assignment to them; evidently they hadn’t been told the reason for it. Mach relaxed.

“Hey, I see something!” one exclaimed.

Mach’s living heart seemed to catapult to a crash-landing against his breastbone. Had they seen him?