Blue Adept Page 30

  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 if 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-lair; 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 Proton 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 forswear.” 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 attacked. All the steps were demons—and Stile and Neysa were caught in the ce
nter. 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.

  “Ah, yes.” Amulets were quiescent until animated by the minor magic of a verbal command. So these step-demon-amulets had waited for that magic. But he had not invoked them. He had merely fixed them in place.

  Unless it was not the words, but any magic directed at the amulet that accomplished the invoking. So when he cast his spell of stability—yes.

  But this meant he would have to be careful how he used his magic here. No amulet could hurt him unless he invoked it—but he could accidentally invoke quite a few. Any that were within range when he made a spell.

  In fact—suddenly a great deal was coming clear!—this could explain the whole business of this carnival-castle. If it was defended by amulets that had to be invoked by the intruders, these amulets would be useless unless something caused them to be activated. So—they were presented as prizes, that greedy people would naturally invoke. Because an amulet was just a bit of metal until it was invoked, worth little. When the golem-barkers claimed that “everybody wins” that was exactly what they meant. Or, more properly, everybody lost, since the amulets were attackers. Stile had acted as projected—and had he not been Adept himself, and on guard, he could have been in serious trouble from that first “prize.”

  But these steps had not been prizes. They were a defense against magic—and that, too, had been pretty effective. So he was really making progress because he was passing from the random traps to the serious ones. The steps, that would not remain firm without a spell that converted them to demons …

  Could it be that the Red Adept herself could not invoke her amulets—or that they would attack her if she did? Like bombs that destroyed whoever set them off? So that the intruder had to be forced to bring his doom upon himself? If so, and if he resolutely refrained from invoking amulets either by word or by the practice of magic, he should have the advantage over—

  Advantage? Magic was his prime weapon! If he couldn’t use that, how could he prevail?

  A very neat trap, to deprive him of his chief power! But unlike his alternate self, Stile had had a lifetime to develop his nonmagic skills. He could compete very well without magic. So if his refusal to invoke the hostile amulets limited him, it also limited his enemy, and he had the net advantage. This was a ploy by the Red Adept that was about to backfire.

  “I think I have it straight,” Stile told Neysa. “Any magic invokes the amulets—but they can’t affect me if I don’t invoke them. So we’ll fight this out Proton-fashion. It may take some ingenuity to get past the hurdles, but it will be worth it.”

  Neysa snorted dubiously, but made no overt objection.

  The passage narrowed as it wended its way into a hall of mirrors. Stile almost walked into the first one, as it was angled at forty-five degrees to make a right-angle turn look like straight-ahead. But Neysa, somehow more sensitive to this sort of thing than he, held him back momentarily, until he caught on. After that he was alert to the mirrors, and passed them safely.

  Some were distorting reflectors, making him look huge-headed and huge-footed, like a goblin, and Neysa like a grotesque doll. Then the mirrors reversed, making both resemble blown-up balloons. Then—

  Stile found himself falling. Intent on the mirror before him, he had not realized that one square of the floor was absent. A simple trick, that he had literally fallen for. He reacted in two ways, both bad: first, to grab for the sides, which were too slick to hold, and second to cry a spell: “Fly high!”

  This stopped his fall and started his sailing upward through the air—but it also invoked the nearest amulets, which happened to be the mirrors. Now they themselves deformed, stretching like melting glass, reaching amoeba-like pseudopods toward him. Mirrors were everywhere, including the floor and ceiling; Stile had to hover in the middle of the chamber to avoid their silicon embrace.

  Neysa had gone to firefly-form, and was hovering beside him. But the ceiling mirrors were dangling gelatinous tentacles down toward him, making the chamber resemble a cave with translucent stalactites. Soon there would be no place to avoid them.

  But the little glow of light showed the way out. They followed it down through the pit Stile had first fallen into and up again in another chamber whose amulets had not been invoked.

  Stile was about to cancel his flying spell—but realized that would have taken another spell, which could start things going again. It was harder to stay clear of magic than he had thought! For now, it seemed best to remain flying; it was as good a mode as any.

  They flew after the glow. It took them through a section of shifting floors—that had no effect on them now—and a forest of glistening spears that might be coated with poison, and a hall whose walls were on rollers, ready to close on whoever was unwary enough to trigger the mechanism by putting weight on the key panel of the floor. This was certainly a house of horrors, where it seemed only magic could prevail. But they had found a loophole; continuing magic did not trigger the amulets. Only the invoking of new magic did that. So they had a way through.

  Abruptly they flew through a portal and entered a pleasant apartment set up in Proton Citizen style: murals on the walls, rugs on the floor, curtains on the windows, a food dispenser, holo-projector, and a couchbed. The technological devices would not operate in this frame. Unless they had been spelled to operate by magic. Stile was not sure what the limits were, to that sort of thing. Did a scientific device that worked exactly as it was supposed to, by the authority of magic, become a—

  Then Stile realized: on the couch reclined the Red Adept.

  Stile floated to a halt. Red was not concealing her sex now. She was wearing a slinky red gown that split down the sides to show her legs and down the front to evoke cleavage. Her hair was luxuriously red, and settled about her shoulders in a glossy cloud. All in all, she was a svelte, attractive woman of about his own age—and a full head taller than he. She was certainly the same one who had been responsible for Hulk’s murder.

  “Before we finish this, Blue,” she said, “I want to know j
ust one thing: why?”

  Stile, ready for instant violence, was taken aback. “Thou, creature of evil, dost ask me why?”

  “Normally Adepts leave each other alone. There is too much mischief when magic goes against magic. Why didst thou elect to violate that principle and foment so much trouble?”

  “This is the very information I require from thee! What mischief did I ever do thee, that thou shouldst seek to murder me in two frames?”

  “Play not the innocent with me, rogue Adept! Even now thou dost invade these my Demesnes, as thou didst always plan. I have heard it bruited about that thou dost consider thyself a man of integrity. At least essay some semblance of that quality now, and inform me of thy motive. I cannot else fathom it.”

  There was something odd here. Red acted as if she were the injured party, and seemed to mean it. Why should she lie, when her crimes were so apparent? Stile’s certainty of the justice and necessity of this cause was shaken; he needed to resolve this incongruity, lest he always suffer doubt about the validity of his vengeance.

  “Red Adept, thou knowest I am here to destroy thee. It is pointless to hide the truth longer. Art thou hopelessly insane, or didst thou have some motive for thy murders?”

  “Motive!” she exclaimed. “Very well, Blue, since thou choosest to play this macabre game. I proffer thee this deal: I will answer truly as to my motive, if thou dost answer as to thine.”

  “Agreed,” he said, still somewhat mystified. “I shall provide my motive before I slay thee. And if I am satisfied as to thy motive, I shall slay thee cleanly, without unnecessary torture. That is the most I can offer. I made mine oath to make an end of thee.”

  “Then here is my rationale,” she said, as though discussing average weather. “The omens were opaque but disquieting, hinting at great mischief. The vamp-folk were restive, responding reluctantly to my directives. Indeed, one among them made petition to the Oracle, asking, ‘How can we be rid of the yoke of Red?’ And the Oracle answered, ‘Bide for two months.’ A vamp spy in fief to me reported that, so naturally I had to verify it personally. Indirect news from the Oracle can never be wholly trusted; there are too many interpretations. But there did seem to be a threat in two months concerning me—and that time, incidentally, is now nearly past. So I rode a flying amulet to the Oracle, and I asked it ‘What is my fate two months hence?’ and it replied ‘Blue destroys Red.’ Then I knew that I had to act. Never has the Oracle been known to be wrong, but I had no choice. I operate in both frames; I could be hurt in either. The Oracle said not that I would lose my life, only that I would be destroyed, which could mean many things. The only way to secure my position was to be rid of Blue before Blue took action against me. So I sent one of Brown’s golems with a demon amulet to Blue, while meanwhile I sought out Blue’s alternate self in Proton too, lest Blue die yet also destroy me. But someone warned thee, and sent a robot to guard thee, and I was unable quite to close that loop. Now must I do it here, or suffer the fate the Oracle decreed for me. Sure it is, I mean to take thee with me, an the Oracle prove true. Thou art the cause of all my woe.”