Fleta came in to share the meal, resuming human form. “What, not enough greenery?” Tania inquired lightly. “Methought thou wouldst have got a bellyful by now!”
“Aye,” the mare agreed, giving her a direct look. Bane kept a straight face. Tania smiled, masking her ire; the animal had struck back effectively enough. Well, it was a useful reminder; she might address the mare contemptuously, but she must never forget that this was a canny creature whose intellect was the equal of most full-blooded humans. The king of the snow demons swore by her ability in chess. Tania knew nothing of chess, finding such pastimes boring, but it was said that it required considerable savvy for good playing. She must confine her contempt to her manner, not her belief, or she could one day regret it.
And of course she knew why the mare had come in: she could not graze enough in six hours to carry her the rest of the day and night, unless the foraging was excellent, and here it was only average. Also, she intended to prevent Tania from flirting with Bane during the meal. Lots o’ luck, filly! she thought. It was almost as much fun aggravating the unicorn as it was tempting the man.
So it went for the days and nights until the village personnel assembled. Bane never gave a sign of being affected, but she knew he was, in the way a piling was weakened by the surging water of the shore; eventually it would give way.
On the morning of the third day the villagers lined up: a motley collection of men, youths, women and children. They hardly seemed to have a good suit of clothing between them. Tania stood before them and made her statement: “We search for a child who may have joined you this past week. Bring forth your children.”
Fearfully, they brought them forth. She inspected the ragged urchins, then questioned each in turn. “Be thou native to this village? Know ye o’ any who be not?”
All the children were native. Tania went to the adults, fixing each with just enough of her Eye to be assured they were telling the truth. “Dost know an any child came here, or departed here, o’ the type I seek?”
No one knew of any. It was as she had expected: it had taken more than two days to verify that this village was clean.
And only about ninety-nine villages to go!
Actually it took less than six months to check all the human settlements, because news of their search spread, and each village was eager to be exonerated. Soon the far-flung personnel were arriving almost as their party did, so that the job could be done in a day. Of course the very time consumed in their search caused the event in question to become increasingly remote. But since the villagers knew the nature of the search, their memories of the time in question were sharpened. They could not cheat or conceal anything, because Tania always cross-checked, inquiring not only of individual memories, but of what they knew or had heard of the experience of others, and of any missing villagers. No one escaped scrutiny, and no one dissembled; all were clean.
As expected. In Tania’s mind, Purple had done much damage by his foolish insistence that the human population be checked first. Translucent was right: the boy had avoided that form, knowing it would be checked.
“And now needs we must verify the ‘corns,” Tania said as they finished with the last village. “Another colossal waste o’ time.”
“True,” Fleta agreed. “My boy be not among mine own kind.”
“Yet needs must we check, by order o’ those we answer to,” Tania said, disgusted. They were unified in this: they knew they were about to waste another significant portion of a year.
In the course of these months, Tania knew she had made an inroad on Bane, though he still held out. She caught him looking at her when she supposedly slept, and he pretended to ignore her when she found pretexts to make close contact, instead of disengaging. He wanted her, but would not admit it. She might have done better, had it not been for the monthly exchanges he made with the rovot. He went to Proton to be with his alien love, while Mach the rovot assumed control of his body. That complicated things, because Mach loved Fleta and she him; it disgusted Tania to see them together, and to have to share residence when they were sleeping together. But, worse, Mach was a full Adept, whose power vastly overmatched hers; she could hope neither to tempt him nor defy him. She was definitely the odd one out, during that month, and it grated fiercely.
Yet Mach supported the search, both because he was committed to it and because he wanted his son back. He could cast a spell that verified the knowledge of a village in a moment, instead of the hours Tania required. He could conjure them from site to site far more swiftly and accurately than could Bane, who had to devise a new spell each time. Increasingly, with Bane, they were planning their route carefully and walking or riding from village to village, borrowing a horse for Tania while Fleta assumed ‘corn form and carried Bane. Thus the time they saved at the villages was expended in travel. But with Mach it went phenomenally fast.
They checked the unicorns. The Herds were more resistive to the process than the human villages had been, but after Tania called on Translucent for aid, and he sent a deluge—not a storm, merely a horrendous burst of water—against a recalcitrant Herd, that washed out its best pasture, drowned three foals, and left erosion gullies where their trails had been, they decided to cooperate. Unicorns had magic, and Herd magic was strong, but it was sheer hubris to oppose an Adept, and that single reminder sufficed.
Mach was a complete loss, but during the Bane-months, Tania continued her unsubtle campaign of seduction. When he had an erection during sleep, as men did, she teased him unmercifully, suggesting that he had suppressed and unrequited urges. Sometimes she joined him under his blanket.
When he tried to ignore her, she nudged closer, until she was on the verge of initiating the act. That forced him to get up and move, erection and all, to her obvious amusement. For a time he slept with Fleta: riding her as she grazed. But that was wearing on her, and too much contact with his other self’s lover, and he had to give it up. Yes, Tania was making progress. The irony was that if Bane had been a less decent man, he would have had less trouble; he could have warned her off, then struck her when she impinged, and she would have had to take it lest she forfeit all future opportunities.
But something else was happening. She had set out to seduce Bane away from his alien lover, but the more he resisted her, the more personal this challenge became. The longer he did it politely, showing consideration for her dignity despite his objection to her effort, the more she came to respect his consistency. Obviously his days of playing were over; he neither yielded to her nor abused her, being always proper in his actions despite what might rage within him. She had to admire that control. She realized one day that this was a two-way business: while she was making progress in arousing his desire, he was arousing her own. In fact, she was falling in love with him.
That did not abate her effort. It intensified it, because the prior reasons remained; it was simply that one more reason had been added. The truth, to her surprise, was that it was rather pleasant falling in love. It was like sliding down a snowy hill, reveling in the sensation of motion. Now, instead of using her artifices in a calculated manner, she used them naturally. Instead of forcing herself to put forth her best physical aspects, so as never to turn Bane off, she found herself putting forth also her best emotional aspects. Her increasing joy in his company buoyed her during the tedious details of the search. She no longer chafed at the time it consumed; she would be satisfied to have it continue indefinitely. She just wanted to be close to him. In fact, now when she joined him as he slept, she did not try to arouse him sexually; she merely lay beside him, satisfied that he tolerated this much. She wished she could kiss him, but she knew that was forbidden even more sternly than sex, because he could not accept it without implying that he liked her. With men, sex and love were two separate things, and of those two, their love was much harder to win.
Fleta, with the attunement any female had to such things, knew it as soon as Tania did, yet did not rage against it. Why? After some thought, Tania realized
why: the mare understood that she had nothing to lose by this development. If Bane came to love Tania, while Tania did not love Bane, the leverage was hers; if Tania came to love Bane, the leverage might be his. Did the mare hope that Tania could be weaned away from the Adverse Adepts? That certainly could be.
But there was a complication. One day when she happened to be briefly alone, she spied a toad. She stunned it with a glance, then went to step on it. It was her way to squash toads part way, so that thereafter they could not survive, but took days to expire in torment. But this time she set her foot on it and could not squash. It was not that her foot lacked the power, but that her will did. She did not want to hurt the toad.
She paused to consider this failure, appalled. Then, slowly, she realized the reason. It was her love of Bane: he would never torment a toad, or any animal. She could not love him without partaking somewhat of his qualities, so now she could not do to a toad what he would not. Not without going against the grain of her love. Not without becoming something he was less likely to be able to love. And there was another key: she wanted to be loveable, in his eyes.
Well, it was a nuisance, but rather than forfeit the strange delight of her new emotion, she decided to abide by its dictates. “My apology to thee, toad, for stunning thee,” she murmured to it. “In a moment thou willst recover. Here, I proffer a fly for thee.” And she stunned a fat fly that was foolish enough to pass at that moment. It dropped before the toad. Soon after the toad recovered, so would the fly, and the toad would nab the fly before it got away.
Then she departed, bemused by the incident and by its significance. She was becoming a gentle creature! She would have to hide this complication from her brother, who definitely would not understand.
They completed the unicorns, finding them innocent of concealing the boy, as expected. Now most of a year was gone. The trio had settled into a kind of camaraderie of familiarity, and Tania discovered that she was even getting to like Fleta. The mare was reliable and forthright, and had a cheery sense of humor that often brightened things. In the first weeks she had been subdued because of her loss of her son and her dislike of Tania, but as she gradually became acclimatized to the situation her natural nature came to the fore. She was no dumb animal; her mind was bright and inquisitive, and she loved a challenge just as Tania did. She was a fan of the Proton Game, and longed to return there and play again, but knew she could not. During their off hours she taught Tania the fundamentals and ways of the Game, making it interesting. They played little mock games, making grids on the ground, leading to short foot races or mumbledypeg or riddle-questions, and the time passed pleasantly. Tania no longer wondered why the Proton rovot had come to love her; she was a loveable creature.
They discussed the matter of the search, and decided to check the vampire bats next. It was Fleta who had suddenly come up with it: “Mayhap he became not a bird, but a bat! Midst the vamps could he fly and be himself, and learn but one new form!”
“Aye!” Tania exclaimed, joyed by this revelation. In her excitement she forgot herself so far as to hug Fleta, then was embarrassed. It was not that she detested the touch of an animal, for she did not; it was that she should never have let her real emotion show so obviously.
But later, reconsidering, she had another thought: Fleta had accepted the hug. There had been a time when the ‘corn would have reacted by changing form and stabbing violently with her deadly horn. Instead she had hugged back—and then been as embarrassed as Tania. Tania’s developing appreciation of Fleta had after all been returned.
A few days later, between Flocks, at a time when they were apart from Bane, Tania braced her on it. “Methinks despite our best intent, we be becoming friends,” she said.
“I know thy nature!” Fleta flared. “What a fool I be, e’er to be friends to thee!” But then, after a pause, while Tania waited: “Aye.” For among her other good qualities was honesty.
“I thought thee but an animal, but I have come to appreciate thy ways.”
“I hated thee and all thy kind,” the mare returned. “But lately thou hast changed, or seemed to. Softer, more generous, seeking no longer to hurt those who ne’er hurt thee.”
“Thou knowest why.”
“Aye.”
They pursued it no further. Tania had fallen in love with Bane, and it had caused her to do what he liked, and that had changed her. But she could realize that love only at the expense of Agape, the alien female, and that Fleta could not abide. In fact, Agape had formidable friends in Phaze, for her tour here had put her into close contact with a number of folk. It was said that she had facilitated the union of the Red Adept and Suchevane, the beautiful vampiress, and that their son was named after her. Al, for Alien: a compliment, not an insult. No, Tania’s love of Bane was incompatible with her friendship with Fleta—yet both existed. So long as that love remained unfulfilled.
The vampires too turned out to be clean. The boy—or more likely the Adept Stile—had outsmarted them completely, utilizing a hiding place they could not guess.
So they proceeded methodically through the various species of Phaze, knowing that Flach could have assumed any form and joined any tribe. The trolls, the ogres, the elves, the goblins, even the assorted tribes of demons: all had to be verified, no matter whose allies they called themselves.
Years passed. Tania’s love for Bane, receiving tolerance but no acknowledgment, burned ever more fiercely. She had always been highly possessive and destructive, but this condition so transformed her that she was neither. She was satisfied just to be with him, and to act the way she believed he liked. This meant no more deliberate exposures of her body, for not only did that brand her in his mind as a slut, his experience in Proton inured him to the sight of female flesh. She no longer tried to join him as he slept; it was similarly counterproductive. Oh, he liked the sight and feel of what she offered, but the fact of the offering generated more repulsion in him than attraction. She had made herself, at the beginning, an animal to him: a creature to be used rather than loved, and the uses were limited. So she labored constantly to be his ideal of a woman, and it was a challenge that became increasingly easy. The most alarming thing about it was that she liked herself better, too.
Somewhere along the way, she realized that she had been had: Bane had used magic to make himself immune to her charms. Probably the Rovot Adept had fashioned a superior spell for his other self. So her case was lost, and had been almost from the outset. Why hadn’t she caught on long before this? Because she hadn’t wanted to. She had become a fool for love.
As it seemed that the search would never end, it did. They were checking the werewolves, and suddenly realized that the boy could have doubled back to join the Pack he had passed on his route with Neysa, having scouted it on the way. They verified the number of pups who had come to that Pack that year, from other Packs. They knew from their preliminary survey how many pups remained there, and after allowing for deaths in transit and since, they found the count skew by one. There was one more wolf in Kurrelgyre’s Pack than there should be. That one, they were sure, would prove to be Flach, now four years older than he had been.
They paused to take stock. Mach happened to be with them at this time, which meant that the verification would be prompt. “I believe this is it,” he said. “Our son will be ours again.”
“Aye,” Fleta agreed, evincing mixed emotions. “But after four years, ‘mongst the wolves, how will he be?”
“A fighting creature,” he said. “And a canny one. Even at four, he and Nepe fooled us completely. We are liable to have a handful.”
“An he wanted to help the Adepts, he would have hidden not,” she said. “Be we right to force him?”
“That notion has bothered me,” Mach admitted. “So long as we could not find him, the matter was moot. Now that we are about to, we have a decision to make. Do we really want to take him in?”
Fleta did not answer. It was obvious that her emotions were warring: she loved her son, and did n
ot love the cause of the Adverse Adepts, yet was bound to serve it.
Mach turned to Tania. “Thee?”
Tania tried to keep her face straight, but such a shock went through her that she could not; her eyes overflowed, and she too was unable to speak.
“What game is this?” Mach asked, annoyed.
Now Fleta found her voice. “Tease her not, my love; it be not kind.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “I asked a simple question.”
“Thou didst bespeak her in our tongue.”
“Why, so I did; it is of no consequence, and easy to do here. What is your point?”
“She loves Bane.”
His brow furrowed. Like most males, he was singularly dense about certain things. “So?”
“Therefore she loves thy likeness, e’en as I love Bane’s likeness.”
Still he did not get it. “Bane and I have kept in touch. I gave him a spell to make him immune from her blandishments, having been warned by her other self’s behavior in Proton. If she fell into her own trap, she has only herself to blame.”
“Mayhap. But ill it behooves thee to tease her about it.”
“What are you talking about? I have left her strictly alone! This has always been purely business, and remains so. I asked her for her opinion about recovering our son.”
“Thou idiot!” she flared. “Thou didst bespeak her ‘Thee’! Twice more, and it be—”
“The likeness of Bane swearing love for her,” he concluded, finally getting it. “Yes, I suppose that would be a shock. I apologize, Tania, for inadvertently teasing you.” Had there been any doubt of his complete indifference to her, this ended it. But he was not Bane.