Blue Adept (7 page)

(“Has it not the word ‘Blue’ etched upon it?” she demanded. “He had it imported from the other frame, to his order.”

(Stile brought out the harmonica, turning it over. There, in small neat letters, was the word. “I conjured his instrument,” he murmured, awed and chagrined. “I must return it to his widow.”

(She softened instantly. “Nay, it is thine. Thou art the Blue Adept, now. Use it well, as he did.” Then she re-turned to her narrative.)

I shook my head. “Never have I heard the like, thou darling child!” I said. “How could a lad thine age master music so well?”

He thought a moment, pensive in his concentration, as though pondering some weighty ethical matter. Then he replied: “May I show thee my village on the morrow? It is not far out of our way.”

“Was not that village destroyed?” I asked thoughtlessly.

“Aye, it was.”

I was sorry for my question. “Of course we can go there, if it please thee. Unless the trolls remain—“ “No trolls remain,” he assured me gravely, and I remembered that lightning had destroyed the trolls.
 
Next day we came to the site. It was nothing, only a glade of greenest grass and a few mounds. All had been destroyed and overgrown. I was vaguely disappointed, having anticipated something more dramatic—yet what is dramatic about long-past death?

“May I show thee how it was?” he inquired, his small face serious.

“Of course,” I said graciously, not understanding what he meant.

“Go and graze;” he said to our steeds. They moved out gladly, and little Snowflake with them.
 
Then the blue lad played his harmonica again. Once more the absolutely lovely music leaped out, encompassing us, and some intangible presence formed. I saw a cloud about the glade, and then it thinned to reveal a village, with people going about their business, washing clothing, eating, hammering horseshoes, playing. I realized that this was a vision of his home as it had been, years ago, before the disaster. A village very like mine own.
 
The village was perhaps a little better organized than mine, however, more compact, with the houses in a ring and a central court for socializing and supervision of the children. Mine was a sea-village, mainly, open to the water; this was an inland establishment, closed against the threats of the land. The sun was shining brightly—but then the shadows moved visibly, and I knew this was to show time passing. Night fell, and the village closed down.
 
Then in the stillness of dark the trolls came, huge, gaunt and awful. Somehow they had broken through the enchantment that protected the village, and they descended on it in a ravening horde. Faintly I heard the screams as the monsters pounced upon sleeping villagers. Men woke fighting, but each troll was large and strong, and there were many of them. I saw a woman torn apart by two trolls who were fighting over possession; they laughed with great grotesque guffaws as her left arm ripped out of its socket, and the troll holding that arm was angry because he had the smaller share, and clubbed the other troll with it while blood splattered everywhere. But then a screaming child ran by, a little girl, and the troll caught that child and brought her to its face and opened its awful mouth and—and bit off her screaming head.

Then the image faded, mercifully, for I was screaming myself. Never had I seen such horror! The darkness covered all. After a pause, the dawn came. The trolls were hidden in the houses, gorged; they would not go abroad by light of day, and suffered no fires, for that they were the opposite of goblins in this respect and the light was painful to them. They had buried themselves under piled blankets, shutting out all signs of the day. They were safe; no villager remained alive.

No—one remained. A child, a boy—he emerged from the trunk of a hollow tree. It seemed he had been playing in it when the trolls descended, or doing something he wasn’t supposed to, like practicing spells, then had hidden frozen in fright until dawn made it safe to emerge. Now he stood, surveying the ruin—and it was the blue lad.
 
“Thou!” I exclaimed. “Thou didst witness it all! Thy village, thy family, most brutally destroyed!”

“Have no sympathy for me,” he replied grimly. “I was transformed that hideous night from youth to enchanter. I realized that no force but magic could restore the balance, and so—“ He spread his hands. “Look what I did.” I looked—and saw the figure in the image raise his hands, and I heard him faintly singing, though I could not make out the words. Then, suddenly, a ring of fire appeared, encircling the village, blazing ferociously. Magic fire, I knew, but still fierce and hot. It burned inward, not outward, while the blue lad watched. He must have spent his sleepless hours in hiding devising that terrible spell, perfecting it. It ignited the outer thatch cottages. Now the trolls woke, and ran about in the fire, burning, terrified—but they could escape only inward toward the center of the village. And there the fire pursued them, itself a ravening demon.

Now it was the trolls who gibbered in horror, and were granted no reprieve, as they huddled in the center of the village, heads covered, backs to the fire. Inevitably it closed on them, torturing them before it consumed them, and then fain would I have felt sorry for the trolls, but that I remembered the woman torn apart and the decapitated child. No mercy for the merciless! The trolls fought each other, trying to keep place in the closing circle, showing not the faintest compassion for their fellows, only selfish-ness.

At last the dread fire burned itself out, its magic consuming flesh as readily as wood. Only mounds and ashes remained. All of the trolls had been destroyed. Except—except there was a stirring in a mound, and from it came a little troll, that must have been deeply buried by its mother, so that it alone survived. Now it looked about and wailed, afraid of the coming day.

The blue lad spied it, and knew that this one could not have killed any people, and he cast a spell of darkness that clothed it, and let the little troll go. “Thou’rt like me,” the blue lad quoth. Then he turned his back on what had been his home, and walked away.

The music stopped and the vision dissipated. I looked across at the blue lad. He had shown me his second major component: his power. Yet I did not realize, or perhaps refused to let myself know, the significance of this deadly ability.

“Thou—thou wast as thou art now!” I exclaimed. “Thou hast not changed, not grown. But the destruction of thy village occurred ten years ago! How could—“ “I was seventeen,” he replied.

“And now thou’rt—twenty-seven?” I asked, realizing it was true. “I thought thee twelve!” “I am small for my size,” he said, smiling.
 
He was as much older than I, than I had thought him younger. No child of twelve, but a full-grown man. “I—“ I began, nonplussed.

“Thou didst ask how a person my age could play the harmonica so well,” he reminded me.

“Aye, that I did,” I agreed ruefully. Now that the joke was turned on me, I felt at ease.

The blue lad—blue man—summoned our steeds, and we proceeded on. We made good progress, and arrived the next day at mine own village. Almost, I had been afraid I would find it a smoking ruin, but of course this was a foolish fantasy born of the horror I had viewed. My folks rushed out to greet me in sheer gladness, and Snowflake was reunited with her dam Starshine, and all was gladness and relief.

Then the blue man said to his blue stallion: “Go service the Hinny; she has completed her pact with me.” And the stallion went off into the privacy of the forest with the Hinny, who must have been in heat—aye, in heat from the first time she spied that stallion!—and I was glad for her.
 
She would have her foal, and well had she earned it.
 
My father’s gaze followed them. “What a stallion! What a mare!” he murmured. “Surely that foal shall be like none known among us.”

The blue man shrugged, and said to me: “Lady, an thou ever needest me, sing these words: ‘Blue to me—I summon thee.’” Then he turned to my father, thinking me distracted by my tearful mother, for that my days-long absence had worried them much. “Sir, may I marry thy daughter?” he asked, as if this were a question about the weather.

My mouth dropped open in sheerest surprise, and I could not speak.

“Art thou the Blue Adept?” my father asked in return.
 
I was stunned again, knowing suddenly the answer. How could I have missed it, I who had seen his power!
 
Then the Blue Adept shook hands with my father and walked in the direction the horses had gone. No answers had been given, for none were needed. Normal people associated not with Adepts, and married them never.
 
The Lady Blue finished her narrative and looked up at Stile. “Now canst thou go about thy business. Adept,” she said.

“I thank thee, Lady,” Stile said, and departed her presence.

Neysa carried Stile across the fields to the forest where the nearest usable fold of the curtain passed. “While Hulk remains away, and I am in the other frame, do thou protect the Lady Blue from harm,” Stile murmured as she galloped. “I have no better friend than thee to do this bidding.”

The unicorn snorted musically. He hardly needed to tell her! Were they not oath-friends?

They reached the curtain, where it scintillated faintly in the shadowed glade. “I will try to return in a day,” Stile said. “If I do not—“ Neysa blew a word-note: “Hulk.”

“That’s right. Send Hulk after me. He knows the frame, he knows the Game. Should anything untoward happen to me in Proton-frame—“ She blasted vehement negation. Her horn could sound quite emphatic on occasion.

“Oh, I’ll look out for myself,” he assured her. “And Sheen is my bodyguard there. She has saved me often enough. But in the remote chance that—well, thou canst go and get bred immediately, and raise thy foal—“ Neysa cut him off with a noise-note, and Stile let the subject drop. It had been difficult enough getting her to accept the fact of his Adept status; she was not about to accept the prospect of his demise. He hoped he would not disappoint her.

Stile faced the curtain. Through it he made out the faint outline of a lighted hall, and piles of crates. A person was walking down the hall, so Stile waited until it was clear.
 
Most people had no awareness of the curtain, and there was a tacit agreement among curtain-crossers that the ignorance of such people be allowed to remain pristine. Then he hummed an impromptu tune as he undressed and folded his clothing carefully and hid it away in the crotch of a branch.

As he stood naked, Neysa shifted into naked girl-form, embraced him, kissed him, and laughed. “I am like Proton!”

“Takes more than nakedness to be part of Proton-frame,” Stile said gruffly. “Thou’rt full of mischief, unicorn.” He disengaged from her and resumed his humming before the curtain.

“Send me all into that hall,” he singsonged, stepping forward.

He felt the tingle as he passed through. He was in the hall, naked, alone. He turned around and faced Neysa, who was faintly visible beyond the curtain. She had shifted back to her natural form. “Bye, friend,” he called, and waved to her.

Then he went resolutely back and walked rapidly down the hall. It was strange being bare again, after getting accustomed to the mores of the other frame.
 
Soon the hall intersected a main travel route, where many naked serfs walked swiftly toward their places of employment. He merged with them, becoming largely anonymous. He was smaller than all the men and most of the women and some of the children, but he was used to this. He still resented the disparaging glances some serfs cast at him, but reminded himself that a person who made a value judgment of another person solely in consideration of size was in fact advertising his own incompetence to judge. Still, Stile was glad to get out of the public hall and into his private apartment.

His handprint keyed open the door. Stile stepped inside.
 
A naked man looked up, frowning. For a moment they stared at each other. Then the other stood. “Sheen did not tell me you would return this hour. I shall retire.”

“One moment,” Stile said. He recognized the man as his double: the robot who filled in for him while he was in the magic frame of Phaze. Without this machine. Stile’s absences would become too obvious, and that could make mischief. “I have not encountered you before. Does Sheen treat you well?”

“Sheen ignores me,” the robot said. “Except when others are present. This is proper in the circumstance.”

“Yet you are programmed to resemble me in all things.
 
Don’t you get bored?”

“A machine of my type does not get bored unless so directed.”

“Not even when you are put away in the closet?”

“I am deactivated at such times.”

This bothered Stile, who felt sympathy for all oppressed creatures. “If you ever do feel dissatisfied, please let me know. I’ll put in a word for you with the mistress.”

“Thank you for your courtesy,” the robot said without emotion. “It does not fit my present need. I am a machine.
 
Should I retire now?”

“When is Sheen due back?”

“In four minutes, fifteen seconds from ... mark.”

“Yes, retire now. I’ll cover for you.”

The robot, of course, did not assimilate the humor.
 
Robots came in many types and levels, and this one was relatively unsophisticated. It had no consciousness feed-back circuits. It walked to the wall, looking completely human; it bothered Stile to realize that this was exactly the way he looked to others, so small and nondescript. The robot opened a panel and stepped into the closet-aperture behind. In a moment it was out of sight and deactivated.
 
Stile was reminded of the golem that had impersonated him, or rather, impersonated his alternate self the Blue Adept until he, Stile, arrived on the scene to destroy it.