Piers Anthony - Out of Phaze

There was eerie fungus light inside. She moved on down the tunnel and into the central chamber. There was the troll, as ugly as any of his kind, carving a figurine out of stone with his bare hands. For this was the talent of trolls, to manipulate stone as if it were clay, and to carve either tunnels or objects from it. Usually the objects were weapons, but sometimes they were artistic. Lovely statues and amulets filled the chamber, each individual and fascinating in its own right. Though any troll could, only Trool did; that artistry had distinguished him from the others of his kind. That, and his constancy of character.

“I fear I cannot help thee, Fleta,” Trool said before she had even presented her case. “I cannot change the ways of entire species, and would not if I could. And my power extends not to the frame of science.”

Somehow she had known Trool would be aware of her. The Book of Magic gave him extraordinary power, even for an Adept. “I think thou canst,” she communicated. She used the horn-language of her kind, speaking in notes and harmonies. Few others understood it, but the Red Adept had no trouble.

“But I would not,” he said.

“What better be there for me?” she demanded with sharp notes.

“Let me fashion thee a shape in his likeness, that the Brown Adept can animate as a golem.”

“Nay!” Fortissimo.

“Stile be such an animation,” he reminded her. For Stile’s body had returned to Proton, animated by the Blue Adept, who had lost his own body. A golem body

had been carved by the troll, and animated by the Brow Adept, and Stile’s soul had infused it. In all things it h mimicked his natural body perfectly, except two: it lack-the bad knees of the original, and it could not reproduce Stile’s son Bane had been sired before the change o bodies.

“But it be Stile’s real soul,” she played. “What thou dost offer me be merely Mach’s appearance—and that exists already, in Bane. It be only Mach I want, none other.”

“An the golem of Proton come again to Phaze, neither his kind nor thine would permit what thou dost desire,” he said.

“Aye. So it be hopeless. Therefore must thou give me what I come for.”

“How shall I face thy dam, an I do this?”

“Thou hast no need to tell her.”

The Adept gazed at her sadly. “Since I can help thee not my way, must needs I help thee thy way. But I like it not. Choose thy form.”

Fleta changed to girl form. “This be the form in which I came to love him,” she said, speaking the human tongue for the first time.

“I fear I will do penance for this,” Trool said. He handed her an amulet. “Invoke this, when thou art ready.”

She took the amulet. “I invoke thee,” she said immediately.

Nothing happened, physically. But she felt the magic of the amulet fasten about her, and knew it had done its work. She was now unable to change form.

“I thank thee, Adept,” she said.

“I curse the need,” he said.

She stepped forward and kissed him on his ugly cheek. “How be it a creature as nice as thou hast no companion?”

“I be alienated from mine own kind,” he said gruffly.

Because he supported Stile’s program of greater equality for the nonhuman creatures of Phaze, and of restraint in magic. The other trolls supported the Adverse Adepts. Of course he had the magic to capture and tame any female of any species, including troll or human, but he declined to use it that way. Thus his tragedy was like hers, in its fashion.

“Do thou ensure that none interfere,” she said.

“Aye,” he agreed glumly. “None save an Adept could, and none would.”

Fleta turned and walked from the mountain. The ground opened to let her out, then closed again behind her. Now she was on her own.

She walked all day northwest, toward the center of the great White Mountain range. Her human legs grew tired, for she was not hardened to such travel in this form, but it was the only way, now. However long it took, she could afford.

No creatures bothered her along the way. She knew that Trool had seen to that. He had not helped her to travel there, because he did not like her purpose, but he had agreed to protect her from interference during the interim.

It took several days. At last she reached the mountains, and climbed the foothills, and then the main slopes. As evening closed, she made her way to a grassy ledge overlooking a deep chasm.

It was the ledge where her dam, Neysa, had stood, twenty years before, when ready to leap off rather than suffer Stile to conquer her. Neysa had not intended suicide; she would have changed in midair to her firefly form, and flown away, leaving Stile to fall to his death below. But he, not realizing that, had freed her instead— and in that act had captured her after all. Thereafter she had given him everything. Later he had made to her that Oath of friendship that had subtly changed the relationship of men, unicorns and werewolves, and whose power still was felt, twenty years later. But that Oath had its root at this site, where he had taken that first step.

Fleta stood at the brink. Neysa had not contemplated suicide—but Fleta did. Had she come here ordinarily, she could have leaped—but would have changed to bird form involuntarily, rather than die. So she had had herself enchanted. Now, when she jumped, she would not be able to change her mind.

This act would solve the problem. She would be beyond caring, and Mach, if he ever learned of it, would know that there was no longer anything to distract him from his other business. She was freeing him—from her. From the temptation and distraction of the impossible.

“Mach!” she cried, letting her love for him overflow at last, letting the mountains hear it. Indeed they heard, for they echoed it back. At the snowy heights the snow-demons emerged from their ice caves, marveling at that echoing word. A ripple passed through the air: the splash of conviction.

Now she had uttered it. Now she was committed.

Then she made a swan-dive off the ledge.

15 - Blue

Bane found himself back in a Proton cell, this time clamped to a wall so that he could not move. Evidently Mach had not been able to free himself. But had he been successful in freeing Agape? That was what really counted.

He tuned himself out, knowing that there was nothing he could do at the moment, and that there was nothing the Contrary Citizens could do to him, since without him they would have no avenue to Phaze. Since this machine body had no so-called natural functions, his immobility did not generate discomfort. Obviously something had happened, to make the Citizen wary of his prisoner’s freedom. What had Mach done?

A screen came on before him. It was set in the wall opposite, and his head was locked into place facing it; he could tune it out in his mind, but could not look at anything else. It seemed his captor wanted him to watch it.

The picture was of the interior of a house or suite.

The furnishings were in shades of blue. “Pay attention, robot,” Citizen Purple’s voice came. “You thought you were pretty clever, springing the amoeba, but watch how we get her back.”

So the Citizen didn’t know that Bane had returned to Proton. He thought he was addressing Mach. Thus he was inadvertently providing the very information Bane most desired: the news that Agape had escaped. Mach had done his job!

But if she had escaped, she should have gone to Citizen Blue. The picture showed blue, suggesting that this was his residence. Was she here?

Indeed she was; in a moment she entered, in the company of a lovely older serf woman. They sat on the couch, unaware that they were being observed.

“We have to free Mach,” the older woman said earnestly. “They can no longer put pressure on him by threatening you, which is one reason he arranged to free you first. He could have used my friends to free himself, but he didn’t want to leave you in their power.”