Piers Anthony - Blue Adept

“How much does it cost?”

“Free, free!” the android—rather, the golem—cried.

“Everybody wins!”

“Fat chance,” Stile muttered. He did not dismount from Neysa; that might be part of the trap. He took the proffered ball gingerly, bracing for magic, but there was none. The ball seemed ordinary.

Experimentally, Stile threw. The ball shot across to strike the bull’s-eye. The booth went wild, with horns sounding so loudly as to drown out everything else. A metal disk dropped out of a slot. The golem picked it up and handed it to Stile. “Here’s the prize, sir! Good shot!” Stile hesitated. He had been aiming to miss the target; instead magic had guided the ball to score. Anyone else would have been deceived, thinking it was his own skill responsible. The golem had spoken truly: everybody won. The game was rigged for it. But why?

Stile looked at the disk. It was an amulet, obviously. He was being presented with it. Yet all this could not have been set up for him alone; he had come unexpectedly—and even it he had been expected, this was too elaborate. Why would visitors be treated to this?

He had an answer: the Red Adept, like most Adepts, was fundamentally paranoid and asocial, and did not like visitors. Power was said to tend to corrupt, and the Adepts had power—and tended to be corrupted. Since they had to live somewhere, they established individual Demesnes reasonably separated from each other, then guarded these Demesnes in whatever fashion their perverse natures dictated. Yet they could not kill intruders entirely randomly, for some were legitimate tradesmen with necessary services to offer, and others might be the representatives of formidable groups, like the unicorns or Little People. Sometimes, too, Adepts visited each other. So instead of random killing, they fashioned selective discouragements. The Black Adept had his puzzle-walls, so that few could find their way in or out of the labyrinth; the White Adept had her ice, and the Brown Adept her giant golems. Probably a serious visitor would ignore the beckonings of the barkers and booths. Those who were ignorant or greedy would fall into the trap. This amulet was surely a potent discouragement, perhaps a lethal one. It was best left alone.

But Stile was ornery about things like this. He was curious—and he wanted to conquer the Red Adept, magic and all. If he couldn’t handle one amulet, how could he handle the maker of amulets? So he sprang the trap. “Amulet, I invoke thee,” he said, ready for anything—he hoped. The disk shimmered and began to grow. Projections sprang from it, extending out and curving toward him. A metallic mouth formed in the center, with gleaming Halloween-pumpkin teeth. The projection arms sought to grasp him, while the mouth gaped hungrily. Of course his armor and protective spell should be proof against this, but there was no sense taking a chance. “Send this spell straight to Hell,” Stile sang, using the first of his prefabricated spells.

It worked. The expanding amulet vanished in a puff of smoke. His own magic remained operative here, as he had expected. He had now dipped his toe in the water. He nudged Neysa with his knees, and she walked on down the center aisle. They ignored the clamoring of the golems; there was nothing useful to be gained from them. The domicile seemed much larger from the inside, but there was not extensive floor space. Soon they were at the far side, looking out the back door. Where was the Red Adept?

“On another floor,” Stile muttered. “So do we play hide and seek—or do I summon her with magic?” Neysa blew a note. Stile could understand some of her notes. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Use magic to locate her, quietly.” He considered a moment. “Lead us to Red—where she has fled,” he sang.

A speck of light appeared before them. Neysa stepped toward it, and it retreated, circled around them, and headed back down the aisle they had come along. They followed. It made a square turn and advanced on one of the booths.

“Tour the sensational house of horrors!” the proprietor-golem called.

The light moved into the horror house doorway. The aperture was narrow, too tight for Neysa’s bulk. But they solved that readily enough; Stile dismounted, and she changed into girl-form in black denim skirt and white slippers. She was not going to let him meet the Red Adept alone.

Stile stepped into the aperture, Neysa close behind. He didn’t like this, for already he was partially separated from Neysa, but it seemed his best course. Trace the Red Adept quickly to her lair-within-this-Iair; maybe she was asleep. If so, he would wake her before finishing her. More likely she was at the very heart of her deadliest ambush, using herself as the bait he had to take. But he had to spring it—and he had to do it properly. Because it wasn’t enough to kill the Adept; he had to isolate her, strip her of her power, and find out why she had murdered his other self. He had to know the rationale. Only when he was satisfied, could he wrap it up.

The difficult part would not be the killing of her. Not after what he had seen of Hulk’s demise. The hard part would be satisfying himself about that rationale. Getting the complete truth. Or was he fooling himself? Stile had never, before this sequence of events that started with the anonymous campaigns against him in both frames, seriously contemplated becoming a murderer himself. But the things that he had learned—

It was dark inside the horror house. The passage folded back and forth in the fashion such things did; Stile had navigated many similar ones in the Game. Darkness did not bother him, per se. Neysa, too, could handle it, especially since her hearing was more acute than his. The light led them on through the labyrinth. A spook popped up, eyes glowing evilly: a harmless show. But it made Stile think of another kind of danger: the noose, choking him, preventing him from singing a defensive spell. That was how his other self had died. That was typical of the way the Red Adept attacked. One of these spooks could be a noose, that he would not see in the dark until it dropped over his head. He needed a specific defense against it. “Turn me loose against a noose,” he sang quietly.

A collar formed about his neck, a strong ring with sharp vertical ridges that would cut into any rope that tightened about it. Proof against a noose.

The maze-passage opened onto a narrow staircase leading up. Dim illumination came from each step, like phosphorescence, outlining its edge. A thoughtful aid from Pro-ton practice, so children would not trip and fall. Stile stepped out on the first step—and as his weight came on it, it slid down to floor level, like a downward-moving escalator. He tried again, and again the stair countered him. There did not have to be anything magical about this; it could be mounted on rollers. It could not be climbed. Yet the glow of light he had conjured to show the way was moving blithely up the stairway; that was where the Red Adept was.

“I think I’ll have to use magic again,” Stile said. He oriented on the stair and sang: “All this stair, motion for-swear.” Then he put his foot on the lowest step again. The step did not slide down. It buckled a bit, as if trying to move, but was fixed in place. Stile walked on up, each step writhing under his tread with increasing vigor, but none of the steps could slide down.

Then one step bit his foot. Stile looked down and discovered that the step had opened a toothy mouth and was masticating his boot. It was in fact a demon, compressed into step-form, and now it was resuming its natural shape. Stile had not had this sort of motion in mind when fashioning his spell, so it had not been covered. Neysa exclaimed behind him. She, too, was being at-tacked. All the steps were demons—and Stile and Neysa were caught in the center. The trap had sprung at last. Hastily Stile tried to formulate a spell—but this was hard to do with the distraction of his feet getting chewed. Neysa changed into firefly form and hovered safely out of reach of the demons. “Send this spell straight to Hell!” he sang.