To my astonishment, the demon drew back as if confronted by a giant. “Whiiiy?” it demanded.
The lad pointed to the Hinny, then moved his hands together to indicate small size. He had come for the foal.
The demon scratched its icicle-haired head in seeming confusion: no foal here! The blue lad then did something strange indeed. He brought out a large harmonica—I had not known he carried such an instrument—and brought it to his mouth. He played one note—and the demon reacted as if struck. Sleet fell from it like droplets of perspiration, and it pointed down the slope. I looked—and there, in a patch of green in a narrow valley, stood my beloved Snowflake. The poor little filly was huddled and shivering, for nowhere in the White Mountains is it warm.
The demon faded back into its crevice, and we made our way down the steep slope to the valley. The way was tortuous, but the blue stallion picked out footholds where I thought none existed, and slowly we descended. It was like being lowered into a tremendous bowl, whose sides were so steep our every motion threatened to start a snowslide that could bury the foal. Oh, yes, we moved cautiously!
At last we reached the patch of green. I dismounted and ran to Snowflake, and she recognized me with a whinny. The warmth that encompassed me seemed to enclose her too, and she became stronger. “Oh,” I cried, hugging her. “I’m so glad thou art safe! I feared—” But my prior worries were of no account now. The blue lad had enabled me to rescue Snowflake, even as he had promised.
Then I heard a rumble. Alarmed, I looked up—and saw the snow demons on high, pushing great balls of snow off ledges. They were starting an avalanche—and we were at the base of it! It was a trap, and no way could we escape.
For the first time I saw the blue lad angry. Yet he neither swore nor cowered. Instead he brought out his harmonica again and played a few bars of music. It was a rough, aggressive melody—but what good it could do in the face of the onrushing doom I knew not. Soon the sound was drowned out by the converging avalanche.
The snows came down on us like the lashing of a waterfall. I screamed and hugged Snowflake, knowing our end had come. But as I braced myself for the inevitable, something strange happened.
There was a blinding flash of light and wash of heat, like as an explosion. Then warm water swirled around my feet.
Warm water? I forced open mine eyes and looked, unbelieving. The snows had vanished. All the valley, high to the tallest surrounding peaks, was bare of snow, with only water coursing down, and steam rising in places. We had been saved by some massive invasion of spring thaw.
“It must be magic!” I cried, bewildered. “Unless this is a volcanic region. But what a coincidence!”
The lad only nodded. Still I recognized not his power!
We walked up the slope, escaping the valley and the deepening lake that was forming at its nadir. I rode the Hinny, and Snowflake walked beside. It was a long climb, but a happy one.
At the high pass leading to the outside the cold intensified. From out of a crevice a snow demon came. “Yyoooo!” it cried windily, and with a violent gesture hurled a spell like a jag of ice at the blue lad.
But the Hinny leaped forward, intercepting that scintillating bolt with her own body. It coalesced about her front legs, and ice formed on her knees, and she stumbled, wheezing in pain. I leaped off, alarmed.
The blue lad cried out in a singsong voice, and the foul demon puffed into vapor and floated away. Then the boy came to minister to the Hinny, who was on the ground, her knees frozen.
“That bolt was meant for me,” he said. “Hinny, I can cure thee not completely, for knees are the most difficult joints to touch and thou canst not rest them now, but I will do what I can.” And he played his harmonica again, a few bold bars, then sang: “Hinny’s knees—now unfreeze.”
The ice vanished from her legs. The Hinny hauled herself to her feet. She tested her knees, and they were sturdy. But I could see some discoloration, and knew they had been weakened somewhat. It seemed she could walk or run on them, but special maneuvers might now be beyond her.
Then I realized what I should have known before. I turned to the lad. “Thou didst that!” I accused him. “Thou canst do magic!”
He nodded soberly. “I concealed it not from thee,” he said, like as a child caught with hand in cookie-jar. He was so shamefaced and penitent I had to laugh.
I put mine arm about his small shoulders and squeezed him as a big sister might. “I forgive thee,” I said. “But do not play with magic unduly, lest thou dost attract the notice of an Adept.”
He made no comment. Shamed am I to recall now the way I patronized him then, in mine ignorance! We remounted and went on out of the mountains, slowly, in deference to the Hinny’s almost-restored knees and the weakness of the foal. At last we reached the warmth of the lowlands, and there we camped for the night. Snowflake grazed beside the Hinny, who watched out for her in the manner of a dam, and I knew the foal would not come to harm. We foraged for berries and nuts, which fortunately were plentiful and delicious. Such fortune was ever in the presence of the blue lad, for he preferred to use his magic subtly.
At dusk the sunset spread its splendor across the western sky, and in the east a blue moon rose. The lad brought out his harmonica again, faced the moon, and played. Before, he had produced only single notes and brief strident passages. This time he started gentle, as it were tuning his instrument, warming it in his hands, playing a scale. His little hands were hardly large enough to enfold it properly, yet they were marvelously dextrous. Then, as the moon waxed and the sun waned, he essayed a melody.
I was tired, not paying real attention, so was caught by surprise. From that instrument emerged music of such beauty, such rare rapture as I had never imagined. The tune surrounded me, encompassed me, drew me into itself and transported my spirit up, high, into the ambience of the blue moon. I sailed up, as it were, into the lovely blue-tinged clouds, riding on a steed made of music, wafting through blue billows toward the magic land that was the face of the moon. Larger it grew, and clearer, its landscape ever-better defined. As I came near it I saw the little blue men on its surface, blacksmiths hammering out blue steel. Bluesmiths, I suppose. Then I saw a lady in blue, and her hair was fair like mine, and she wore a lovely blue gown and blue slippers set with blue gems for buttons, and on her head a blue tiara, and she was regal and beautiful beyond belief. She turned and fixed her gaze on me, and her eyes were blue like mine—and she was me.
Amazed, flattered and alarmed, I retreated. I flew back past the blue mists like a feather-shafted arrow, and suddenly I was on the ground again. The boy stopped playing, and the melody faded hauntingly.
I realized it not then, but he had shown me the first of the three foundations of my later love for him: his music. Never in all Phaze was there a man who could make such—
(The Lady Blue paused, resting her head against her hand, suffering. Stile started to speak, but she cut him off savagely. “And thou, thou image, thou false likeness! Thou comest to these Demesnes bearing his harmonica, using it—”
(“His?” Stile asked, astonished.
(“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 returned 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 selfishness.
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.
CHAPTER 3
Proton
Neysa carried Stile across the fields to the forest where the nearest usable f
old 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.