Blue Adept (40 page)

“Then we brace to meet the lioness in her den,” Stile said, not really surprised. The worst traps would be there.
 
Neysa did not seem thrilled, but she marched gamely forward. It occurred to Stile that he might need more than armor to protect Neysa and himself. Suppose monsters hurled rocks or spears from ambush? He needed to block off any nonmagical attack. “Missiles spend their force,” he sang. “Return to their source.” That should stop that sort of thing. He wasn’t sure how far such spells extended, particularly when opposed by other Adept magic, but this precaution couldn’t hurt. The spells of Red could not be abated this way—but that was limited to amulets. He should have a fair fighting chance—and that was all he wanted. A fair match—so that he could kill the Red Adept without compunction.

Neysa walked up the spiraling path. There was no at-tack. Stile felt nervous; he really would have preferred some kind of resistance. This could mean that no one was home—but it could also mean an unsprung trap.
 
A trap—like that of Bluette, in the other frame? Bluette herself had obviously known nothing of it; she had been cruelly used. Stile hoped she had managed to survive, though he knew he still would not follow that up; now that he was married to the Lady Blue, there could be no future in any association with Bluette. Meanwhile, his rage at the fate of Hulk burgeoned again, and Stile had to labor to suppress it. Hulk, a truly innocent party, sent by Stile himself to his doom. How could that wrong ever be abated?

There were a number of deep emotional wounds Stile bore as a result of the malicious mischief of the Red Adept; he could not afford to let them overwhelm them.
 
His oath of vengeance covered it all. Once Red was dead, he could let the tide of buried grief encompass him. He simply could not afford grief—or love—yet. Not while this business was unfinished.

They rose up high as they completed the first loop. From a distance the castle had seemed small, but here it seemed extraordinarily high. The ground was thirty feet below, the building another sixty feet above. Magic, perhaps, either making the hill seem smaller than it was, when viewed from a distance, or making it seem higher than it was, from here.

Stile brought out his harmonica and began to play. The magic coalesced about him, making the castle shimmer—and the perspective changed. His gathering magic was canceling Red’s magic, revealing the truth—which was that the castle was larger than it had seemed, but the hill lower 2 than it now seemed. So it was a compromise effort, drawing from one appearance to enhance the other. Pretty clever, actually; the Adept evidently had some artistic sensitivity and sense of economy.

Now they arrived at the door. It was open, arched, and garishly colorful, like an arcade entrance. From inside music issued, somewhat blurred and off-key. It clashed with Stile’s harmonica-playing, but he did not desist. Until he understood what was going on here, he wanted his magic close about him.

They stepped inside. Immediately the music became louder and more raucous. Booths came alive at the sides, apparently staffed by golems, each one calling for attention. “How about it, mister? Try thy luck, win a prize.
 
Everybody wins!”

This was the home of an Adept? This chaotic carnival?

Stile should have worn his clown-suit!

Cautiously he approached the nearest booth. The golem-proprietor was eager to oblige. “Throw a ball, hit the target, win a prize! It’s easy!”

Neysa snorted. She did not trust this. Yet Stile was curious about the meaning of this setup, if there was any meaning to it. He certainly had not expected anything like this! He had become proficient in the Game of Proton in large part because of his curiosity. Things generally did make sense, one way or another; it was only necessary to fathom that sense. Now this empty carnival in lieu of the murdering Red Adept—what did it mean? What was the thread that unraveled it?

This was, of course, dangerous, but he decided to take the bait. If he couldn’t figure out the nature of this trap by looking at it, he might just have to spring it—at his own convenience. He could certainly hit the target with the ball; he was quite good at this sort of thing. But true carnival games were traditionally rigged; the clients were suckers who wasted their money trying for supposedly easy prizes of little actual value. In the Proton variants, serfs had to use play-money, since there was no real money. Here—

“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.

Nothing significant happened. Of course not; he had already used that spell. He needed a variant. “Send this smell—ouch!” The teeth were beginning to penetrate, as the demons grew steadily stronger. “Put this spell—in a shell!” he sang desperately.

The shell formed, pretty and white and corrugated like the clamshell he had in his haste visualized, enclosing all the demons—and Stile and Neysa too. He had not helped himself at all.

Neysa came to the rescue. She shifted to unicorn-form.
 
There was barely room for her on the stairway, but her hooves were to a certain extent proof against the teeth of the demons. She sucked in her barrel-belly somewhat, giving herself scant clearance, and blew a note of invitation to Stile.

Gratefully he vaulted back onto her back. Neysa did a dance, her four hooves smashing at the teeth below. Now it was the demons who exclaimed in pain; they did not like this at all.

Neysa moved on up until she reached the top landing, bursting through the shell he had made. Bits of the shell flew down to mix with the bits of teeth littering the stair.
 
Stile dismounted and stood looking back. “Something I don’t quite understand here,” he murmured as the demons at last achieved their full natural forms, but were unable to travel because of his spell. “If she has demons, why did she hide them there instead of sending them after me? Why did they come to life when they did, instead of when I first touched them? There’s a key here—“ Neysa changed back to girl-form, which really was more comfortable in these narrow confines. “Amulets must be invoked,” she reminded him. One thing about Neysa: she never chided him for the time he took to work things out his own way. Whatever he did, she helped. She was in many respects the ideal woman, though she was really a mare.