Piers Anthony - Blue Adept

While he pondered, the Lady reappeared. “The ogre prepares to depart. Know ye why?”

“I know,” Stile said.

‘I like this not”

How did she feel about this arrangement? “He is a good man, worthy of the likes of thee, as I am not.” If she grasped his hidden meaning, she gave no sign.

“Worth is not the issue. I have a premonition of doom about him.”

“I confess to being uneasy. I thought it was jealousy or guilt.”

“Those, too,” she agreed, and then he was sure she understood. But she did not elaborate.

He changed the subject. “Now I fear to leave thee here alone—yet must I seek the Flute, lest mine enemy move against me. Neysa will go with me.”

“Is it security thou seekest—or vengeance?”

Stile grimaced, looking at her. “How is it thou knowest me so well?”

“Thou’rt very like my love.”

“Would he not have sought vengeance?”

“For himself, nay. For those he held dear—“ She halted, and he suspected she was remembering her vision of the fiery destruction of the trolls who had wiped out the Blue Adept’s village. Then she met his gaze again. “Without Hulk or Neysa, the Blue Demesnes be not safe for me now. I must go with thee to the Purple Mountains.”

“Lady, it may be dangerous!”

“More dangerous with thee and thy magic than without thee?” she inquired archly. “Have I misjudged thee after all?”

Stile looked askance at her. “I had thought thou dost not crave my company. For the sake of the good work done by the Blue Adept thou callest me lord, but in private we know it is not so. I do not mean to impose my presence on thee more than necessary.”

“And with that understanding, may not the Lady accompany the Lord?”

Stile sighed. He had made due protest against a prospect that in fact delighted him as much as it made him nervous and guilty. “Of course she may.”

The Lady rode a pale blue mare, the offspring of the foal of the Hinny and the Blue Stallion. As she had described, this mare’s color was mainly an echo of the blue harness, but the effect was there. The Blue Stallion had been alive but aging when the Blue Adept was killed; the horse, it was understood, had died of grief.

Stile rode Neysa. He had never ridden another steed since taming her. No horse could match her performance, but it was more than that. Much more.

They crossed the fields south of the Blue Castle and entered the forest adjacent to the Purple Mountain range. Soon they were in the foothills. According to Stile’s references, the geographical tomes collected by his other self, the tribe of the Dark Elves who worked platinum lived on a mountain about fifty miles east of where the convenient curtain-access to Proton was. The animals knew the way, once it had been determined; Neysa had ranged these lands for years and knew the location by description, though she was not conversant with the actual Elven Demesnes. Here the lay of the land was gentle, and the air balmy, with patchwork clouds making the sunshine intermittent. The ride became tedious despite the pleasure of the surroundings. Had Stile been riding alone, he would have slept, trusting Neysa to carry him safely, or have played his harmonica, or simply have talked to the unicorn. But the presence of the Lady Blue in her natural splendor inhibited him.

“It was across this country I rode the Hinny, so long it seems ago,” she remarked.

Stile found no appropriate response. He rode on in silence, wishing that the tragedy of his other self did not lie between them.

“The Hinny,” she repeated musingly. “How I miss that fine animal!”

This was safer ground. “How is she now? Ten years is a fair span in the life of a horse, about thirty of ours, but not interminable.”

“Of course thou knowest not,” the Lady said somberly. “The Hinny was bred by the Blue Stallion, and returned to her wilderness fastness alone. The blue lad went back to his business, about which we inquired not, but which I believe was the meticulous construction of the Blue Castle. I remained with my family and with Snowflake, the white foal we had rescued. Sometimes out in the fields we thought we glimpsed the Hinny, and our hearts yearned toward her, but never came she nigh. Yet I was ill at ease. The revealed identity of my erstwhile companion the blue lad astounded me, and I was shamed. Yet I was intrigued too, and potently flattered by his suit. I remembered the vision I had had while he played his music, the Lady in the blue moon, and the subtle appeal of that notion grew. Later I learned that he had gone to inquire the identity of his ideal wife, and the Oracle had named me. It had for once been not obscure or circuitous or capable of alternate interpretation; it had told him exactly where and when to find me. Hence he had come at the designated moment, extremely fortuitous for me as I hung dangling in the clutch of the troll, and preserved my life when else it would have ended there. He had done all that he had done only to win my favor, though I was his by right from the moment he rescued me. And I only an ignorant peasant-girl!”

“The Oracle knew better,” Stile murmured. “Thy Lord’s legacy lives on in thee, when else it would have perished.” She continued as if she had not heard him. “Ah, what a foolish girl was I in that time. Long and long was it before ever I gave him the third Thee.”

“I beg thy pardon. Lady. I don’t follow—“

She gestured negligently with one hand. “Of course thou art from another culture, so I needs must inform thee. In Phaze, when a person loves another and wishes to have it known without obligation, she omits the statement and repeats only the object. Thee, three times. Then that other may do as he wishes, without reproach.”

“I don’t understand,” Stile said. “Just to say to a person Thee, th— “ Neysa nearly bucked him off as she drowned him out with a blast from her horn.

“Say it not carelessly nor in jest,” the Lady reproached him. “It has the force of an oath.”

Shaken, Stile apologized. “I have much to learn yet of this culture. I thank thee. Lady, for educating me, and thee, Neysa, for preventing me from compromising myself ignorantly.” But it would not have been a lie if he had said it to the Lady; this was a battle all but lost at the outset. Still, it would have put her in an awkward situation.

“When next I saw the Hinny,” the Lady continued blithely, “she was in sad state. Gravid, she had been beset by cowardly predators, jackals, and was nigh unto death. She limped to our gate, remembering me, and I screamed and roused my rather. Never did I see him so angry, for the Hinny had been his admiration since the instant he saw her first. He took his cudgel and beat off all the curs that harried her, while I tried to help her. But all was for naught; she had lost much blood, and expended her last store of vitality reaching us, and the Hinny died at our door.

“Then did I remember the spell the blue lad had left me.

*Blue to me—I summon thee!’ I cried. And he was there. When he saw the Hinny he gave a great cry of agony and fell upon her, taking her head in his arms, and the tears flowed down his face. But she was dead, her open eyes seeing naught, and all his magic availed not.

“The lad brought out his harmonica and played a tune, wondrously sad, and two moons clouded over and the sun faded, and a shimmer formed in the air between us. It made a picture, and it showed the Hinny, as she had been in life, great with foal, grazing near the wood. Then a pack of jackals charged, a foul horde, surly ill-kempt curs of scant individual courage, like to wolves as goblins be to men, seeking to overrun their quarry by sheer mass. She leaped away, but the weight of the foal within her made her ponderous and somehow her front feet stumbled, causing her to fall and roll, and the brutes were on her in a motley pile, ripping at her flesh, tearing at her ears and tail. She struggled to her feet, but they hung on her like despicable leeches, and her precious blood was flowing. Gashed and weakening, she struggled out of that wood, the jackals constantly at her feet, leaping at her, trying to drag her down again, so that she left a trail of blood. So at last she came to me, and I saw myself scream and throw my hands to my head, reacting hysterically instead of helping her, and then my father came with his cudgel, and the magic vision faded.