Piers Anthony - Blue Adept

“Never did I enter any ladder until the final moment. I practiced privately, in my Proton-Citizen mother’s facilities.”

“Even if the Oracle referred to my defeating thee in the Tourney, and thus destroying thy remaining chance for Citizenship,” Stile said slowly, “I had three years tenure remaining, and would not have entered this year’s Tourney but for thy intercession.”

“The Oracle betrayed me on many levels, it seems,” she said.

How right he had been to analyze the nature of the Oracle’s statements carefully! Yet the mischief of the Oracle was only in its confusing answers; it did not initiate things. Someone must have taken this into account. But what a devious plot this was! “Could anyone in Proton-frame seek revenge? A friend of thine other self, perhaps, avenging her demise?”

“She had no friends; she was like me. That was why she was disinherited. And no one knows she’s gone; they think I’m her.”

That had been a neat operation! “Someone in Phaze, then. Unable to attack an Adept here, so he interferes with thee there? Perhaps a vampire, able to cross the curtain in human guise—“ Suddenly Stile wondered whether Neysa, now hovering behind him, would be able to cross the curtain in girl-form. Had she ever tried it? Unicorns did not exist in Proton, but girls did, and if there was no girl parallel to—

“Why send a robot to defend thee, then? Why not simply send it to attack me? That’s one expensive robot thou hast; for that value, it would have been easy to send a competent execution squad after me. It is as likely that the attack was directed at thee, at thy magic self, with protection sent to thy Proton-self so that it could come after me.”

Food for thought! “There is that,” Stile agreed. “The Oracle must have known that despite thy attack on the Blue Adept, his alternate self would find thee. The key seems to lie in the unknown party who sent the robot. Find that party, and we may be on the trail of the true enemy. There does seem to be more afoot here than merely my convenience or thy demise; the plot be too convoluted to account for these.”

“That’s for sure! It isn’t much, but it will have to do.” She raised her right hand. “On thy mark, get set, go! End of truce.” And she threw an object at him. Stile dodged the object. It looked like a small knife, a stiletto—which it could be. But it was also an amulet, and he didn’t want to invoke it. It stuck in the wall behind him and remained there, a bomb awaiting detonation. Red threw another object. This one resembled a ball. When Stile dodged it, the thing bounced off the wall and settled to a stop near his feet. He was floating a few inches off the floor, since his flying spell remained in operation, so the ball did not touch him.

She threw a third. It was like a beanbag, dropping dead behind him. But none of them could hurt him as long as he didn’t invoke them.

Then Red invoked one herself. She held the amulet in her hand, spoke to it, and dropped it on the floor. It formed into a hissing snake with glistening fangs. “Go for that man,” she told it.

The snake crawled rapidly toward him. Rather than flying upward as Red might want. Stile drew his sword and decapitated the reptile.

Already she was activating another amulet—a bat. Stile did not want to kill it, because it might be a member of the vampire tribe who had given him safe lodging for the night. A captive of the cruel Adept, bound to do her bid-ding. Yet if it attacked him—

It did. Its little eyes gleamed insanely, and droplets of viscous saliva fell from its teeth. It could be rabid. There was no help for it; he had to use magic.

“Bat—scat!” he sang. The bat vanished.

But now the three inert amulets near him animated. One was turning into a demon resembling a goblin, growing larger each second. Another was hissing out some kind of greenish vapor, perhaps a toxic gas. The third was catching fire, becoming a veritable ball of flame. Stile could not ignore any of these. For the moment he floated clear of all three—but all were expanding, and there was not any great clearance, and the ceiling was festooned with amulets. If he flew high, and banished them with his own spells, hell would break loose from that ceiling. Red had more amulets than Stile had immediately available spells, so this sequence could be disastrous. That was the disadvantage of bracing the Adept in her own Demesnes; her power was overwhelming here. It would be better to deal with the three activated threats some other way.

The Red Adept, smiling wickedly, was already throwing more amulets. Stile had either to act or to retreat—and to retreat would be tantamount to defeat, for he surely would have more trouble passing her defenses a second time.

Now was the moment of decision,

Neysa, who had been hovering as the firefly, shifted to mare-form. She speared the demon on her horn, then shoved it into the green vapor. The demon screamed in agony, then expired. That was poison, all right! Neysa backed off, the demon still impaled on her horn. She did not dare touch that vapor with her nonmagical flesh. Meanwhile, the ball of fire blazed fiercely, and it was floating up toward Stile.

Stile had an inspiration. He began playing his harmonica. The music filled the room, summoning his magic—but he did not sing any spell. He just kept playing. He knew now that the music-magic could have a certain effect itself, without any specific spell, if he directed it with his mind. So he willed it to suppress other magic. If this had the force of new magic itself, the effect would be opposite, and he would be in twice as much trouble as before; but if it worked—

The fireball guttered and dimmed and sank, finding itself slowly stifled. The green vapor ceased its expansion and lost some of its color. None of the new amulets were activated. Phew! The gamble had paid off.

Neysa approached the vapor cautiously, seeing it be-come denatured. She used the dead demon on her horn as a crude broom to shove the vapor into the fire. The two joined instant battle, destroying each other. Stile broke off is music, and the battle intensified as its compass narrowed: the fire tried to bum up the vapor before the vapor could smother it. But the vapor was stronger; soon the fire was out.

Neysa mopped up the remaining vapor on the demon. Then with a strong motion of her head she hurled the demon directly at the Red Adept.

The woman was caught by surprise. She scrambled off her couch just before the sodden demon landed. Her collected amulets scattered across the floor like so much jewelry. The green vapor sank into the material of the couch, rendering it uninhabitable, while the demon lay on it as if asleep.

Stile had another inspiration. He had noticed that Red was careful which amulets she threw and which she kept. Obviously some amulets served the invoker, while others attacked the invoker. Benign and malign spells, as it were. If he could get hold of some of the benign amulets, he could use them against her. That should turn the tide. But she was alert to the threat. She dived for the spilled collection, reaching it before Stile got there. Stile reacted with a spot decision he hoped he would not regret. “Each spell farewell!” he sang, willing all the amulets within range out and away from the castle. Since he had been playing his harmonica, his magic should be strong enough to affect most of them.

The result was confusion. His act of magic invoked all the nearby amulets—but it also banished them. They tried to animate and depart simultaneously. Since there were many of them, their magic outmassed his. Thus they were coming to life faster than they were moving out.

Rapidly-forming things and creatures were scrambling for the exits. One resembled a squid, crawling on its tentacles. Another was like a yellow sponge, rolling along, leaving a damp trail that stank of putrefaction. Several were bats or other flying creatures. Some were colored clouds and some were blazes of light or darkness. One was a small flood of water that poured down through the crevices; an-other was a noisy string of exploding firecrackers. Stile had to keep dodging and ducking to stay clear of them. His incantation had also abated his flying spell; he was con-fined to the floor again, where he didn’t really want to be. For one thing, the Red Adept was there, avoiding creatures with equal alacrity. At the moment she was trying to brush a swarm of tiny red spiders out of her hair. Both Red and Blue were now too busy to concentrate properly on each other.