Astonishment was manifest among Neysa and all the wolves. There were growls and yips of confusion, and Ney-sa blew a volley of startled notes. “Not right at this hour!”
Kurrelgyre protested. “Tomorrow, mayhap—“
“Right this minute,” Stile said, vaulting to Neysa’s back.
“I shall see thee anon, wife.”
“Anon,” she agreed, smiling.
Neysa, responsive to his unspoken directive, set off at a canter eastward, toward the Red Demesnes. When they were well clear of the Castle, Neysa blew an insistent note of query. Stile laughed. “Since thou wilt have it from me at the point of thy horn if I tell thee not, I will answer. The Oracle told the Lady ‘None by One, Son by Two.’ Now I be Two, her second husband, and—“ Neysa’s laughter pealed musically forth. How readily she understood! How many Adepts could arrange the Oracle’s assurance that they would survive a life-and-death encounter to sire a son? Stile had cleverly made the prophecy work for him.
As they settled into the hours of travel. Stile concentrated on his spells. He needed a variety of general-purpose defenses and counters. He should survive this encounter, but he had no guarantee that he would win it. He could emerge crippled or blind, able to sire a son but then unable to live in health and independence. Oracle prophecies tended to be slippery, and he had to be on guard against some loophole he had not anticipated. Yet he understood why such predictions were often devious. A person fated to die at a certain place at a certain time would strive to avoid that situation if he could, so the prophecy would be self-negating if clearly stated. Absolute clarity and hundred percent accuracy could not always be simultaneously accommodated, by the very nature of it. Also, there could be a certain flexibility in a situation; a man could die in a dozen different ways, or survive at an expense worse than death. The Oracle had to make a brief statement that covered all prospects, and that was often necessarily ambiguous. So Stile fully intended to fight for the best possible interpretation of this particular prediction. The Oracle had not truly pronounced his fate; it had merely defined the broadest parameters. Interpretation was the essence of his specific fate.
Send this spell straight to Hell, he thought, careful not to vocalize. Would that work against an amulet? It should, if he willed it properly. As he understood it, from his limited experience, an amulet was a solidified spell, quiescent until invoked. Some, like the healing or clothing amulets, worked on a slow, sustained basis. Others, like the throttle-demon, took a few seconds to achieve full strength. Just so long as he had time enough to sing a prepared counterspell.
Maybe he could work out a number of easy variants that would lack full force but would suffice in a pinch. Send this spell into a dell, make this spell into a smell, make this spell fail to jell, banish this spell when I yell—all doggerel, but that was the way his magic worked. What he considered real poetry, where form, style and significance were more important than rhyme or meter, took time to create, and he was not sure how much time he would have. There 2was some evidence that better verse had more potent effect, for he deemed his verse-form oath of friendship to Neysa to have been a cut above doggerel—but he hardly had need of such potency in routine magic. So he kept working out his cheap spot rhymes, hoping to cover every contingency. They passed the Unolympic site, now deserted. “Thou didst put on a fine show, Neysa,” Stile murmured. “Thou didst do credit to thy Herd.” And she snorted contentedly. Winning was less important to her than recognition of her right to compete.
They were nearing the Red Demesnes by nightfall. Stile considered where they might camp, since he did not want to engage his enemy by night. There were too many imponderables. He could conjure a suitable shelter, but hesitated to employ his magic here. The Red Adept might be alert to magic in the vicinity, and he wanted his arrival to be as much of a surprise as possible.
But Neysa was already zeroing in on a location. She drew up before a large cave and blew a note. Bats sailed out of it to swirl around the visitors. Then they dropped to the ground and converted to men and women. “The vampires!” Stile exclaimed. “I didn’t realize they lived here!” But obviously Neysa had known; that was another reason he needed her along.
One came forward. It was Vodlevile, the one who had come to Stile during the Unolympics. “Adept! How goes my friend Hulk?”
Wrong question! “Alas, he was murdered in Proton-frame,” Stile said. “I seek vengeance of the Red Adept.”
“Dead?” the vampire asked, shocked. “But I met him only so recently! He was the nicest ogre I knew!”
“He was that,” Stile agreed. “Red killed him, in lieu of me.”
