The girl picked up the snake carefully and carried it into the castle proper.
What was this, Stile wondered—an infirmary? Certainly it was a far cry from the Black or Yellow Demesnes, in more than physical distance. Where was the catch?
The girl came for the rabbit. The snake had not reappeared; was it healed—or dead? Why did the animals trust themselves to this castle? Considering the reputation of Adepts, these creatures should have stayed well clear.
Now another woman emerged. She wore a simple gown of blue, with blue slippers and a blue kerchief tying back her fair hair. She was well proportioned but not spectacular in face or figure. She went directly to the snow-monster. “For thee, a freeze-potion,” she said. “A simple matter.” She opened a vial and sprinkled its contents on the monster. Immediately the melt disappeared. “But get thee safely back to thy mountain fastness; the lowlands are not safe for the likes of thee.” She admonished it with a smile that illuminated her face momentarily as if a cloud had passed from the face of the sun. “And seek thee no further quarrels with fire-breathing dragons!” The creature nodded and shuffled out.
Now the woman turned to Kurrelgyre. Stile was glad he was in disguise; that daylight smile had shaken him. The woman had seemed comely but ordinary until that smile. If there were evil in this creature, it was extraordinarily well hidden.
“We see not many unicorns here, sir,” she said, echoing the sentiment of the guard at the gate. Stile was startled by the appellation, normally applied only to a Citizen of Proton. But this was not Proton. “Which one has the injured knees?”
The werewolf hesitated. Stile knew his problem, and stepped in. The unicorn costume was for sight only; any touch would betray the humanness of the actual body. “I am the one with the knees,” he said. “I am a man in unicorn disguise.”
The Lady turned her gaze on him. Her eyes were blue, of course, and very fine, but her mouth turned grim. “We serve not men here, now. Why dost thou practice this deceit?”
“I must see the Blue Adept,” Stile said. “Adepts have not been hospitable to me, ere now. I prefer to be anonymous.”
“Thou soundest strangely familiar—” She halted. “Nay, that can not be. Come, I will examine thy knees, but I can promise nothing.”
“I want only to see the Adept,” Stile protested. But she was already kneeling before him, finding his legs through the unicorn illusion. He stood there helplessly, letting her slide her fingers over his boots and socks and up under his trouser legs, finding his calves and then at last his knees. Her touch was delicate and highly pleasant. The warmth of it infused his knees like the field of a microwave therapy machine. But this was no machine; it was wonderfully alive. He had never before experienced such a healing touch.
Stile looked down—and met the Lady’s gaze. And something in him ignited, a flame kindled in dry tinder. This was the woman his alternate self had married.
“I feel the latent pain therein,” the Lady Blue said. “But it is beyond my means to heal.”
“The Adept can use magic,” Stile said. Except that the Blue Adept was dead—wasn’t he?
“The Adept is indisposed,” she said firmly. She released his knees and stood with an easy motion. She was marvelously lithe, though there were worry-lines about her mouth and eyes. She was a lovely and talented woman, under great strain—how lovely and how talented and under how much strain he was now coming to appreciate by great jackrabbit bounds. Stile believed he knew what the nature of that strain might be.
Kurrelgyre and Neysa were standing by, awaiting Stile’s decision. He made it: he bent carefully to draw off the unicorn socks, revealing himself undisguised. “Woman, look at me,” he said.
The Lady Blue looked. She paled, stepping back. “Why comest thou like this in costume, foul spirit?” she demanded. “Have I not covered assiduously for thee, who deservest it least?”
Stile was taken aback. He had anticipated gladness, disbelief, or fear, depending on whether she took him for her husband, an illusion, or a ghost. But this—
“Though it be strange,” the Lady murmured in an aside to herself. “Thy knees seemed flesh, not wood, and there was pain in them. Am I now being deluded by semblance spells?”
Stile looked at the werewolf. “Does this make sense to thee? Why should my knees not be flesh? Who would have wooden knees?”
“A golem!” Kurrelgyre exclaimed, catching on. “A wooden golem masquerading as the Adept! But why does she cover for the soulless one?”
The Lady whirled on the werewolf. “Why cover for thy henchman!” she exclaimed, her pale cheeks flushing now in anger. “Should I let the world know my love is dead, most foully murdered, and a monster put in his place—and let all the good works my lord achieved fall into ruin? Nay, I needs must salvage what I can, holding the vultures somewhat at bay, lest there be no longer any reprieve or hope for those in need. I needs must sustain at least the image of my beloved for these creatures, that they suffer not the horror I know.”
She returned to bear on Stile, regal in her wrath. “But thou, thou fiend, thou creature of spite, thou damned thing! Play not these gruesome games with me, lest in mine agony I forget my nature and ideals and turn at last on thee and rend thee limb from limb and cut out from thy charred bosom the dead toad that is thy heart!” And she whirled and stalked into the building.
Stile stared after her, bathed in the heat of her fury. “There is a woman,” he breathed raptly.
Neysa turned her head to look at him, but Stile was hardly aware of the import of her thought. The Lady Blue—protecting her enemy from exposure, for the sake of the good work done by the former Blue Adept. Oh, what a wrong to be righted!
“I must slay that golem,” Stile said.
Kurrelgyre nodded. “What must be, must be,” He shifted to wolf-form and sniffed the air. Then he led the way into the castle.
Stile followed, but Neysa remained in the courtyard. She had run almost without surcease for a day and night, carrying him, and her body was so tired and hot she could scarce restrain the flames of her breath. Kurrelgyre, unfettered, had fared better; but Neysa needed time by herself to recover.
No one sought to stop them from entering the castle proper. The guard at the gate had been the only armed man they encountered, and he was back at his station. There were a few household servants, going innocently about their businesses. There was none of the grimness associated with the demesnes of the other Adepts he had encountered. This was an open castle.
The wolf followed his nose through clean halls and apertures until they arrived at a closed door. Kurrelgyre growled: the golem was here.
“Very well, werewolf,” Stile said. “This needs must be my battle; go thou elsewhere.” Kurrelgyre, understanding, disappeared.
Stile considered momentarily, then decided on the forthright approach. He knocked.
There was, as he expected, no answer. Stile did not know much about golems, but did not expect much from a construct of inanimate materials. Yet, he reminded himself, that was what the robot Sheen was. So he had to be careful not to underestimate this thing. He did not know the limits of magical animation. “Golem,” he called. “Answer, or I come in regardless. Thine impersonation is at an end.”
Then the door opened. A man stood there, garbed in a blue robe and blue boots. He was, Stile realized, the exact image of Stile himself. His clothing differed in detail, but a third party would not know the two of them apart.
“Begone, intruder, lest I enchant thee into a worm and crush thee underheel,” the golem said.
So golems could talk. Good enough.
Stile drew his rapier. For this had werewolf and unicorn labored so diligently to return his weapon to him! “Perform thy magic quickly, then, impostor,” he said, striding forward.
The golem was unarmed. Realizing this, Stile halted without attacking. “Take a weapon,” he said. “I know thou canst not enchant me. Dost thou not recognize me, thou lifeless stick?”
The golem s
tudied Stile. The creature was evidently not too bright—unsurprising if its brains were cellulose—but slowly Stile’s aspect penetrated. “Thou’rt dead!” the golem exclaimed.
Stile menaced him with the sword. “Thou art dead, not I.”
The golem kicked at him suddenly. Its move was almost untelegraphed, but Stile was not to be caught off guard in a Situation like this. He swayed aside and clubbed the creature on the ear with his left fist.
Pain lanced through his hand. It was like striking a block of wood—as he should have known. This was a literal blockhead! While he paused, shaking his hand, the golem turned and butted him in the chest. Stile braced himself just in time, but he felt dull pain, as of a rib being bent or cartilage torn. The golem bulled on, shoving Stile against the wall, trying to grab him with hideously strong arms. Stile knew already that he could not match the thing’s power.
Unarmed? The golem needed no overt weapon! Its body was wood. Stile got his sword oriented and stabbed the torso. Sure enough, the point lodged, not penetrating. This thing was not vulnerable to steel!
Now he knew what he was up against. Stile hauled up one of his feet and got his knee into the golem’s body as it tried to butt again. His knee hurt as he bent it, but he shoved the creature away. The golem crashed against the far wall, its head striking with a sharp crack—but it was the wall that fractured, not the head.
Stile took a shallow breath, feeling his chest injury, and looked around. Kurrelgyre was back, standing in the doorway, growling off other intruders. This would remain Stile’s own personal fight, like a Game in the Proton-frame. All he had to do was destroy this undead wooden dummy. Before it battered him into the very state of demise he was supposedly already in.
He no longer had qualms about attacking an unarmed creature. He studied the golem. The creature might be made of wood, animated by magic, but it still had to obey certain basic laws of physics. It had to have joints in its limbs, and would be vulnerable in those joints, even as Stile was. It had to hear and see, so needed ears and eyes, though these would probably function only via magic. Whoever had made this golem must have a real knack for this kind of sorcery. Another Adept, most likely, specializing in golems.
The golem came—and Stile plunged the point of his rapier like a hyodermic into the thing’s right eye. The golem, evidently feeling no pain, continued forward, only twisting its head. The sword point, lodged in the wood, was wrenched about. It snapped off.
Stile had not been expert with this weapon, so this was less of a loss than it might have seemed. He aimed the broken end at the golem’s other eye. But the creature, aware of the danger, retreated. It turned and crashed through the window in the far wall.
Stile pursued it. He leaped through the broken window—and found himself back in the courtyard, where Neysa had been pacing restlessly, breathing out her heat. She paused, startled, at the appearance of the golem. Her eyes informed her it was Stile, with one eye destroyed, but her nose was more certain. She made an angry musical snort.
The golem cast about with its remaining eye. It spied the fountain-whale. It grabbed the statuary in both arms and ripped it from its mooring.
Neysa, alarmed, charged across the courtyard, her horn aimed at the golem. “Don’t stab it!” Stile cried. “The thing is wood; it could break thy horn!”
As he spoke, the golem heaved the whale at him. The statue was solid; it flew like a boulder. Neysa leaped at Stile, nosing him out of the way of it. The thing landed at her feet, fragmenting.
“Art thou all right, Neysa?” Stile cried, trying to get to his feet without bending his knees too far.
She gave a musical blast of alarm. Stile whirled. The golem was bearing down on him with a whale fragment, about to pulp his head.
Neysa lifted her head and snorted a jet of flame that would have done credit to a small dragon. It passed over Stile and scored on the golem.
Suddenly the golem was on fire. Its wood was dry, well-seasoned, and filled with pitch; it burned vigorously. The creature dropped the whale fragment and ran madly in a circle, trying to escape its torment. Blows and punctures might not bother it, but fire was the golem’s ultimate nemesis.
Stile stared for a moment, amazed at this apparition: himself on fire! The golem’s substance crackled. Smoke trailed from it, forming a torus as the creature continued around its awful circle.
And Stile, so recently out to destroy this thing, experienced sudden empathy with it. He could not let it be tortured in this fashion. He tried to quell his human softness, knowing the golem was a literally heartless, unliving thing, but he could not. The golem was now the underdog, worse off than Stile himself.
“The water!” Stile cried. “Jump in the pond! Douse the fire!”
The golem paused, flame jetting out of its punctured eye to form a momentary halo. Then it lurched for the pool, stumbled, and splashed in. There was a hiss and spurt of steam.
Stile saw Neysa and Kurrelgyre and the Lady Blue standing spaced about the courtyard, watching. He went to the pond and kneeled, carefully. The golem floated face down, its fire out. Probably it didn’t need to breathe; still—
Stile reached out and caught a foot. He hauled it in, then wrestled the body out of the pond. But the golem was defunct, whether from the fire or the water Stile could not tell. It no longer resembled him, other than in outline. Its clothing was gone, its painted skin scorched, its head a bald mass of charcoal.
“I did not mean it to end quite this way,” Stile said soberly. “I suppose thou wast only doing thy job, golem, what thou wert fashioned for, like a robot. I will bury thee.”
The gate guard appeared. He looked at the scene, startled. “Who is master, now?”
Startled in turn, Stile realized that he should be the master, having deposed the impostor. But he knew things weren’t settled yet. “Speak to the Lady,” he said.
The guard turned to her. “A wolf comes, seeking one of its kind.”
Kurrelgyre growled and stalked out to investigate.
“Speak naught of this outside,” the Lady Blue directed the guard. Then she turned to Stile. “Thou’rt no golem. Comest thou now to destroy what remains of the Blue Demesnes?”
“I come to restore it,” Stile said.
“And canst thou emulate my lord’s power as thou dost impersonate his likeness?” she asked coldly.
Stile glanced at Neysa. “I can not, Lady, at this time. I have made an oath to do no magic—”
“How convenient,” she said. “Then thou needst not prove thyself, having removed one impostor, and thou proposest to assume his place, contributing no more to these Demesnes than he did. And I must cover for thee, even as I did for the brute golem.”
“Thou needst cover for nobody!” Stile cried in a flash of anger. “I came because the Oracle told me I was Blue! I shall do what Blue would have done!”
“Except his magic, that alone distinguished my lord from all others,” she said.
Stile had no answer. She obviously did not believe him, but he would not break his oath to Neysa, though he wanted above all else to prove himself to the Lady Blue. She was such a stunning figure of a woman—his alternate self had had tastes identical to his own.
Kurrelgyre returned, assuming man-form. “A member of my pack brings bitter news to me,” he said. “Friend, I must depart.”
“Thou wert always free to do so,” Stile said, turning to this distraction with a certain relief. “I thank thee for thy help. Without seeking to infringe upon thy prerogatives, if there is aught I can do in return—”
“My case is beyond help,” the werewolf said. “The pack leader has slain mine oath-friend, and my sire is dying of distemper. I must go slay the pack leader—and be in turn torn apart by the pack.”
Stile realized that werewolf politics were deadly serious matters. “Wait briefly, friend! I don’t understand. What is an oath-friend, and why—?”
“I needs must pause to explain, since I shall not be able to do it hereafter,” Kurrelg
yre said. “Friendship such as exists between the two of us is casual; we met at random, part at random, and owe nothing to each other. Ours is an association of convenience and amicability. But I made an oath of friendship with Drowltoth, and when I was expelled from the pack he took my bitch—”
“He stole thy female?” Stile cried.
“Nay. What is a bitch, compared to oath-friendship? He took her as a service to me, that she be not shamed before the pack. Now, over a pointless bone, the leader has slain him, and I must avenge my friend. Since I am no longer of the pack, I may not do this legitimately; therefore must I do it by stealth, and pay the consequence, though my sire die of grief.”
Oath-friendship. Stile had not heard of this before, but the concept was appealing. A liaison so strong it pre-empted male-female relations. That required absolute loyalty, and vengeance for a wrong against that friend, as for a wrong against oneself. Golden rule.
Yet something else nagged him. Stile pursued it through the tangled skein of his recent experience, integrating things he had learned, and caught it.
“There is another way,” he said. “I did not grasp it before, because this frame evidently has a more violent manner of settling accounts than I am used to. Here, perhaps, it is proper to kill and be killed over minor points of honor—”
“Of course it is!” the werewolf agreed righteously.
“Just so. My apology if I misinterpret thine imperatives; I do not wish to give offense. But as I perceive it, thou couldst rejoin thy pack. Thou hast only to kill thy sire—”
“Kill my sire!” Kurrelgyre exclaimed. “I told thee—”
“Who is dying anyway,” Stile continued inexorably. “Which death would he prefer—a lingering, painful, ignominious demise by disease, or an honorable, quick finish in the manner of his kind, as befits his former status, by the teeth of one he knows loves him?”
The werewolf stared at Stile, comprehending.
“And thus thou’rt restored to thy pack, having done thy duty, and can honorably avenge thine oath-friend, without penalty,” Stile concluded. “And take back thy bitch, who otherwise would be shamed by the loss of both wolves she trusted.”