Blue Adept (13 page)

“Thou’rt weary,” the Lady said. “Let me lay my hands on thee.”

“Not necessary,” Stile demurred. But she stopped him and ran her soft hands across his arms and around his neck, and where they touched, his remaining discomfort faded. She kneaded the tight muscles of his shoulders, and they loosened; she pressed his chest, and his breathing eased; she stroked his hair and the subconscious headache became nonexistent. The Lady Blue was no Adept, but she did possess subtle and potent healing magic, and the contact of her fingers was bliss to him. He did not want to love her, yet, for that would be foolhardy; but only iron discipline kept him from sliding into that emotion at a time like this. Her touch was love.

“I would that my touch could bring the joy to thee that thy touch does to me,” Stile murmured.

She stopped immediately. It was a silent rebuke that he felt keenly. She wanted no closeness with him. Not while she mourned her husband. Perhaps not ever. Stile could not blame her.

They moved on into the castle-proper. The Lady preceded him to the bath, where Hulk soaked in a huge tile tub set flush with the floor, like that of a Proton Hammam.
 
The huge man saw the Lady, nodded, then in an after-thought sought ineffectively to cover himself. “I keep for-getting this is not Proton,” he muttered sheepishly. “Men don’t go naked in mixed company here.”

“Thou’rt clothed in water,” the Lady reassured him. “We be not overly concerned with dress, here. My present suit differs not much from nudity.” She touched the blue material momentarily. “I have myself stood naked before a crowd and thought little of it. The animals wear no clothing in their natural forms, and oft not in their human shapes. Even so, I would not have intruded, but that my lord is here and needs must be informed immediately.” “That’s right!” Hulk agreed. “Do thou step outside a moment. Lady, and I’ll get right out of this.”

“No need,” Stile said. “I am here.” He had been behind Hulk, whose attention had been distracted by the prior entry of the Lady.

“Oh. Okay. I have the Oracle’s answer. But thou dost not have much time. Stile. May I talk to thee privately?”

“If the Lady is amenable,” Stile agreed.
 
“And what is this, unfit for mine ears?” the Lady Blue demanded. “Well I know you two are not about to ex-change male humor. Is there danger?”

Hulk looked guilty. He used his fingers to make a ripple in the bath water. “There may be. Lady.” The Lady looked at Stile, silently daring him to send her away. She called him “lord” and deferred to him in the presence of others, for the sake of appearances, but he had no private power over her.

“The Lady has suffered loss already,” Stile said. “I am no fit replacement, yet if the Oracle indicates danger for me, she is rightfully concerned. She must not again be forced to run the Blue Demesnes without the powers of an Adept.”

“If thou wishest,” Hulk agreed dubiously. “The Oracle says that thou canst only defeat the Herd Stallion by obtaining the Platinum Flute.”

“The Platinum Flute?” Stile repeated, perplexed.
 

“I never heard of it either,” Hulk said, making further idle ripples with his hand. The ripples traveled to the edges of the tub, then bounced back to cross through the new ripples being generated. Stile wondered passingly whether the curtain that separated the frames of science and magic was in any way a similar phenomenon. “But there was another querist there, a vampire—“

“The likes of us have naught to do with the likes of them!” the Lady Blue protested.

“Or with the unicorns or werewolves?” Stile asked her, smiling wryly.

She was silent, unmollified. Certainly her husband had not had much association with such creatures. The free presence of unicorns and werewolves in the Blue Demesnes dated from Stile’s ascendance. He felt this was an improvement, but the Lady was evidently more conservative.
 
“Actually, he was not a bad sort at all,” Hulk said. “I lost my way, going in, and he flew by in bat-form, saw I was in trouble, and changed to man-form and offered to help. He hadn’t realized I was human; he thought I was a small giant or an ogre, and those pseudomen sort of look out for each other. I think he was rather intrigued by my motorcycle, too; not many contraptions like that in Phaze! I was afraid I was in for the fight of my life, when I realized what kind of creature he was, but he told me they only take the blood of animals, which they normally raise for the purpose and treat well. In war, they suck the blood of enemies, but that’s a special situation. They never bother friends. He laughed and said it wasn’t true that people bitten by vampires become vampires themselves; that’s a foul myth propagated by envious creatures. Maybe that story originated from a misinterpretation of their love-rites, when a male and a female vampire share each other’s blood. The way he told it, it almost sounded good. A fundamental act of giving and accepting. I guess if I loved a vampire lady, I’d let her suck—“ He broke off abruptly, embarrassed. “I didn’t say that well. What I mean is—“ Stile laughed, and even the Lady smiled briefly.

“There is no shame in love, any form,” Stile said.
 
“Uh, sure,” Hulk agreed. “I got to talking with him, and the more I knew him, fhe better I liked him. He drew me a map in the dirt so I could locate the Oracle’s palace with-out getting in trouble. Then he changed back to a bat and flew off. And you know, that route he pointed out for me was a good one; I made it to the Oracle in a couple more hours, when it could’ve been days the way I had been going.”

Hulk made another wave on the water, one that swamped the pattern of wavelets. “I’m finding it harder not to believe in magic. I saw that man change, I saw him fly.
 
He was there when I arrived, and showed me that room where the Oracle was—just a tube sticking out of the wall.
 
I felt sort of silly, but I went ahead and asked ‘How can Stile defeat—‘ I forgot to use thy Phaze title, but it was too late, and it didn’t seem to matter to the Oracle—‘How can Stile defeat the unicorn Herd Stallion in fair combat at the Unolympics?’ And it replied ‘Borrow the Platinum Flute.’ I couldn’t understand that, and asked for a clarification, but the tube was dead.”

“The Oracle has no patience with fools,” the Lady said.
 
“It answers only once, and considers all men fools; no offense to thee, ogre.”

Hulk smiled. It seemed he had been nicknamed after the monster he most resembled, and he did not mind. “So I discovered. But I feared I had failed thee. Stile.”

“I was as baffled when it told me to ‘Know Thyself,’” Stile said. “My friend Kurrelgyre the werewolf was told to ‘Cultivate Blue’ and could not understand that either. We all have trouble with Oracular answers, but they always make sense in the end.”

“Not always desired sense,” the Lady Blue agreed.
 
“When it told me ‘None by One,’ I thought it spouted nonsense. But now I know to my grief what—“ She turned away, but Stile had glimpsed the agony that transfixed her face before she hid it. He had not realized that she had ever been to the Oracle. That answer must have related to the death of her husband.

Hulk filled in the awkward pause. “I talked again with Vodlevile Vampire—that’s his name—and we compared notes. It seemed he had asked the Oracle how to help his son, who was allergic to blood—that’s no joke to a vampire—“

“I should think not!” Stile exclaimed.

Hulk was quite serious. “They don’t live on blood all the time. But they need it to be able to change to their bat-form and fly. The blood facilitates the magic. So his boy couldn’t keep up with the family, if—well, I guess I’d be concerned too, in that situation.”

“Of course,” Stile agreed, sorry that he had even considered any humorous side to this.

“But all the Oracle told him was ‘Finesse Yellow.’ That made him furious, because he said Yellow is an Adept, and vampires don’t deal with Adepts. They live near one, and they’re afraid of her and leave her strictly alone. But if they did have truck with Adepts, they wouldn’t try to cheat them or anyone else, and Yellow was the very worst one anyway. Several of their number have been trapped by her and sold to other Adepts, who spell them into blind loyalty and use them for spying and for terrorizing other captives.
 
Gives the whole tribe a bad name. So he was going home without an answer he could use. I couldn’t help him; I don’t know anything about Adepts. It was too bad.”

“He sounds like a creature of character,” Stile said.
 
“Why should the Oracle suggest to such a creature that he cheat? That’s the same as no answer.”

“Finesse is not the same as cheat,” the Lady pointed out.
 
“It implies some artifice or devious mechanism, not dishonesty.”

“Vodlevile is a very forthright person,” Hulk said. “No tricks in him. Still, he helped me. He told me that most of the metal tools and weapons and musical instruments of Phaze are made by the Little People, the tribes of Dark Elves, and that some worked with bone, and some with wood, and some with silver, or with gold, or with platinum.
 
So probably if thou canst find the right tribe of elves—“

“The Little Folk are not easy to find,” the Lady Blue said. “They dwell mainly in the Purple Mountains, and they dislike normal men and deal with them seldom. Most of all they detest Adepts. When my lord desired an excellent musical instrument, he could not go to them, but had to trade with a hawkman who had a connection across the curtain. He said he would like to be in touch with the Little Folk, but that they wanted naught he had to offer.”

“So Vodlevile informed me,” Hulk said. “That’s what I meant about danger. It seems that the more precious the metal a tribe works with, the less use that tribe has for men, because men try to steal the artifacts. Especially they hate big men. I’d be dead the moment I set foot in their territory. And the Blue Adept—“ He shook his head. “So my Oracle answer isn’t much use either. But I report it to thee, for what it’s worth, and hope this doesn’t cause mischief.”

Stile was already deep in thought. “The advice of the Oracle is always practical, if obscure. One has to work to understand it, usually. But it surely makes sense—for both me and the vampire. And him I may be able to help, in return for his help to thee.”

“I had hoped thou wouldst see it that way,” Hulk admitted. “It really is thy mission he tried to facilitate.”

“I like this not,” the Lady said. “Thou meanest to go among the Little Folk.”

“Perhaps,” Stile agreed. “That’s the mischief Hulk feared, knowing mine inclination. But first I must tackle the matter nearer at hand. It will take me a moment to devise a suitable spell. Let’s meet in the courtyard in ten minutes.”

“No spell will take thee safely to the fastness of the Little Folk,” she protested. “Like the unicorns, they resist magic. Better thou goest among trolls or goblins; there at least thou wouldst have a fair chance.”

“I had in mind summoning the Yellow Adept.”

“The Yellow Adepti” she cried, horrified. “In these Demesnes?”

“I swore never to return to her Demesnes, so must needs she visit mine. Thus do I finesse the restriction. Come on—we have to give Hulk a chance to get dressed.” Stile led the way out. The Lady was spluttering, but offered no further resistance.

They met in due course in the courtyard. The Lady had evidently communicated the situation to the unicorn, for Neysa was moving her horn about angrily and snorting just beneath the level of meaning.

Stile played his harmonica to bring the magic ambience.
 
Then he intoned: “Yellow Adept, I ask of thee, come to the Blue Demesnes, to me.”

Abruptly the yellow hag was there before them. “Blue, methought we were at quits!” she snapped. “Seekest thou war between Adepts?”

“By no means. Yellow. I only wish to bargain with thee, to mutual advantage, and may not invade thy Demesnes again.”

Her somewhat beady eyes peered about. “There is that, my handsome. Thou’rt a man of thy literal word. But I am not garbed for socializing. Give me leave to freshen up first.” And she felt about her baggy old dress, searching for a potion.

“Allow me, since thou’rt my guest.” Stile played a bar of music, then intoned: “While Yellow visits Castle Blue, grant her youth, image and hue.”

In place of the old crone stood a ravishingly beautiful young woman with an hourglass configuration and long golden-yellow tresses, wearing a marvelously fetching evening gown. Hulk’s jaw fell, and the Lady Blue’s eyes widened. Neysa merely snorted disparagingly; she had seen it before.

Lovely Yellow brought out a vial, shook out a drop, and caught it as it formed into a mirror. “Oh, thou shouldst not, thou darling man! Yes, thou hast recaptured it perfectly, my delicious!”

“Yet she remains a witch,” the Lady Blue said tightly.
 
Neysa snorted agreement.

Yellow shot a glance at them. “Witch, thou sayst? And aren’t we all, regardless of our shapes or magic? What chance does any man have, against a vamp of whatever color?”

“None,” Hulk muttered. Neysa made as if to stab him with her horn, and he hopped out of the way.
 

“What I wish is this,” Stile said briskly. “There is a vampire man, Vodlevile, whose son is allergic to blood.
 
The Oracle told him to finesse Yellow. He refuses to deal—“

“Aye, I have a potion to cure that malady,” Yellow agreed. “But what does he offer in return?”