Piers Anthony - Blue Adept

“So thou dost need that dragon eliminated,” Stile concluded.

“For that I believe my people would abate their disquietous murmurings about the loan of the Flute.”

“Even so,” Stile said warily. “This is a large dragon?”

“Enormous.”

“Breathes fire?”

“Twenty-foot jets from each nostril.”

“Armored?”

“Stainless steel overlapping scales. Five-inch claws. Six-inch teeth. Lightning bolts from eyes.”

“Temperament?”

“Aggressive.”

“Resistive to magic?”

“Extremely. The Worm beds in Phazite, so has developed a considerable immunity.”

“I wonder what it was like in its prime?” Stile mused.

“No matter. In its prime it needed not the tribute of our kind.”

“But if the Platinum Flute were employed—“

“The magic of the Flute be stronger than the anti-magic of the Worm.”

“Then it is possible that an Adept carrying the Flute could dispatch the creature.”

“Possible. But hardly probable. The Worm cannot be abolished by magic alone.”

“Well, I’d be willing to make the attempt.”

“Nayl” the Lady Blue cried. “Few dragons hast thou encountered; thou knowest not their nature. Accept not this perilous mission!”

“I would not borrow a thing of value without giving service in return,” Stile said. “But if I could borrow the Flute to brace the Worm, thereafter I would feel justified in borrowing it for one task of mine own. There might be other uses I could make of it besides matching a unicorn stallion, until I locate the one for whom the Flute be intended.”

“Thou meanest to brace the Worm?” the Elder asked.

“At least to make the attempt. If I fail to dispatch it, I will return the Flute immediately to thee, if I remain able to do so.”

“Nay!” the Lady cried again. “This is too high a price to risk, for the mere postponement of the breeding of one mare. She is mine oath-friend, yet—“

“For that trifle thou dost this?” the Elder demanded, abruptly suspicious. “Thou dost risk thy life against the Worm, and thy pride against the Stallion, for ... ?”

“She is a very special mare, also mine oath-friend,” Stile said stiffly, not wanting to admit that things had pyramided somewhat.

“I fear my people will not support this,” the Elder said. “They will fear thou wouldst borrow the Flute merely to abscond with it, facing no Worm. Who would stop thee, armed with it?”

Both Stile and the Lady reacted with anger. “My Lord Blue does not cheat!” she flared. “I thought we had already made proof of this. Again will I stand hostage to that.”

“Nay,” Stile said, touched by her loyalty, though he knew it was the honor of the Blue Demesnes she was protecting rather than himself. “Thou’rt no hostage.”

The Elder’s canny gaze passed from one to another. “Yet perhaps this would do, this time. Let the Lady be my guest, here, for a few hours; do we care if others assume she be security for this loan of the Flute? Methinks no man would leave his love to be sacrificed to a dragon. If the Worm be slain, thy mettle is proved, and the loan is good.”

“The Lady is not my—“ Stile started, then reconsidered.

It was a matter he preferred not to discuss here. Also, he would be operating on an extremely tenuous footing if he denied his love for her. He would not permit her to be fed to the dragon, whatever her feeling for him.

“Others be not aware of that,” the Elder said, delicately skirting the issue. “Few know that the Lord of the Blue Demesnes has changed. Let her remain with me, and none of my people will hold thy motive in suspicion. She will not be ill-treated.” He glanced at the Lady. “Dost thou perchance play chess?”

“Perchance,” she agreed, smiling.

Stile realized that the Elder had proffered a viable compromise. It was a way to suppress the objections of the Mound Folk, without really threatening the Lady. Certainly Stile was not about to take her with him to meet the dragon!

“Do thou keep the harmonica during mine absence,” Stile said to the Lady, handing her the instrument. “This time I must use the Flute.”

“I like this not,” she said grimly. But she took the harmonica. If Stile did not return, she would at least retain this memento of her husband.

Pyreforge, meanwhile, was setting up the chessmen. Stile carried the Flute with him into the depth of the crevice. Now he knew the origin of the hot wind and demonic odor from this crevasse. The Worm lurked below! He had never fought a real dragon before, as the Lady had mentioned, and was not entirely sanguine about this one. The closest approach to a dragon he had made was the one in the Black Demesnes, actually formed from a line, and when balked it had unraveled literally into its component string. The Worm surely would not do that! Adept-quality magic should prevail—but still, if anything went wrong—

Well, he should have the advantage of surprise. The Worm would assume Stile was another item of tribute, a victim to be consumed. He should be able to get quite close before the monster realized what it was up against. That would give him time to survey the situation. Pyreforge had assured him that the Flute would facilitate his magic, yet he had also said that magic alone would not suffice; that suggested that the Flute was not quite as powerful a charm as the Mound Folk wished to believe.

Now they were well below the ledge they had hurdled before. Neysa picked her way carefully as the path nar-rowed, and Stile kept the Flute assembled and handy. For him it should serve double duty—both to protect his ability to do magic, and to summon the magic itself, since he needed music for his spells. He would have been in trouble if he had needed to play two different instruments simul-taneously for those purposes! He was rehearsing those spells in his mind now—one to abate fire, another to shield him from biting, another to make him invisible. But mainly he needed one to eradicate the Worm, one way or another. Could the creature be banished to Hell? Here in this magic frame, there really was a Hell. He had accidentally sent Neysa there once; that had led to a lot of trouble. Which meant that that option was out, now; Neysa would not go for it. He was extremely wary of antagonizing his unicorn friend; unicorns were devastatingly stubborn once they made an issue of something.

Not Hell, then. How about a size change? Convert the giant Worm into a midget worm, harmless. Maybe in three more centuries it would grow back into a giant, but by then it should be far away—if some hungry bird hadn’t snapped it up in the interim. What would be a suitable spell? Monstrous Worm, be small as a germ. Hardly great art, he lamented as usual, but for the purpose of magic it only needed to rhyme and have appropriate meter. What kind of magic would be wrought by superior verse? Some day he would have to experiment with genuine poetry, instead of doggerel, and see what happened. Now the path leveled out. A large, round tunnel took off to the side—the bore of the Worm. A hot drift of air came from it. The Worm could not be far distant.

Stile hesitated. He leaned down to whisper into Neysa’s left ear, which rotated obligingly to receive his words. “If we march blithely into the Worm’s lair, methinks we’ll be slightly cooked,” he said. “Yet if we do not, the monster may become suspicious. I would like to lure it out to a location convenient for me, so that at least I can survey it before emerging to engage it—yet how can I bring it to me without engaging it?”

Neysa blew a short, positive note. Realizing that she had a notion, Stile dismounted.

She shimmered into girl-form, a petite, lovely, naked, semi-elven lass. “Tribute,” she murmured, making a gesture of innocence and helplessness.