“Could it be another Adept?” Stile asked. He was not letting down his guard, but he did not expect an attack until this was worked out. Enemies could, it seemed, have common interests. He had operated in ignorance of the forces that moved against him for so long that he was determined to discover whatever truth he could. “One who coveted thy power or mine?”
“Unlikely. Most Adepts cannot cross the curtain. I labored hard to cross myself, and paid a price others would not pay. I arranged to have mine other self dispatched, then I crossed over and took her place, hoping to be designated the heir to our mother the Citizen. But the wretch designated another, an adoptee, and I had to take tenure and practice for the Tourney.”
Stile was appalled at her methodology, but concealed it.
Her mode had always been to do unto others before they did unto her. That was why she had struck at the Blue Adept. Probably her Proton-self had been conspiring to do the same to Red. And, possibly. Red was now trying to put Stile offguard so she could gain an advantage. “Thou playest the Game?”
“That I do, excellently—and well I know thou art my most formidable opponent in the current Tourney.”
“I know not of thee on any ladder.”
“Never did I enter any ladder until the final moment. I practiced privately, in my Proton-Citizen mother’s facilities.”
“Even if the Oracle referred to my defeating thee in the Tourney, and thus destroying thy remaining chance for Citizenship,” Stile said slowly, “I had three years tenure remaining, and would not have entered this year’s Tourney but for thy intercession.”
“The Oracle betrayed me on many levels, it seems,” she said.
How right he had been to analyze the nature of the Oracle’s statements carefully! Yet the mischief of the Oracle was only in its confusing answers; it did not initiate things. Someone must have taken this into account. But what a devious plot this was! “Could anyone in Proton-frame seek revenge? A friend of thine other self, perhaps, avenging her demise?”
“She had no friends; she was like me. That was why she was disinherited. And no one knows she’s gone; they think I’m her.”
That had been a neat operation! “Someone in Phaze, then. Unable to attack an Adept here, so he interferes with thee there? Perhaps a vampire, able to cross the curtain in human guise—“ Suddenly Stile wondered whether Neysa, now hovering behind him, would be able to cross the curtain in girl-form. Had she ever tried it? Unicorns did not exist in Proton, but girls did, and if there was no girl parallel to—
“Why send a robot to defend thee, then? Why not simply send it to attack me? That’s one expensive robot thou hast; for that value, it would have been easy to send a competent execution squad after me. It is as likely that the attack was directed at thee, at thy magic self, with protection sent to thy Proton-self so that it could come after me.”
Food for thought! “There is that,” Stile agreed. “The Oracle must have known that despite thy attack on the Blue Adept, his alternate self would find thee. The key seems to lie in the unknown party who sent the robot. Find that party, and we may be on the trail of the true enemy. There does seem to be more afoot here than merely my convenience or thy demise; the plot be too convoluted to account for these.”
“That’s for sure! It isn’t much, but it will have to do.” She raised her right hand. “On thy mark, get set, go! End of truce.” And she threw an object at him. Stile dodged the object. It looked like a small knife, a stiletto—which it could be. But it was also an amulet, and he didn’t want to invoke it. It stuck in the wall behind him and remained there, a bomb awaiting detonation. Red threw another object. This one resembled a ball. When Stile dodged it, the thing bounced off the wall and settled to a stop near his feet. He was floating a few inches off the floor, since his flying spell remained in operation, so the ball did not touch him.
She threw a third. It was like a beanbag, dropping dead behind him. But none of them could hurt him as long as he didn’t invoke them.
Then Red invoked one herself. She held the amulet in her hand, spoke to it, and dropped it on the floor. It formed into a hissing snake with glistening fangs. “Go for that man,” she told it.
The snake crawled rapidly toward him. Rather than flying upward as Red might want. Stile drew his sword and decapitated the reptile.
Already she was activating another amulet—a bat. Stile did not want to kill it, because it might be a member of the vampire tribe who had given him safe lodging for the night. A captive of the cruel Adept, bound to do her bid-ding. Yet if it attacked him—
It did. Its little eyes gleamed insanely, and droplets of viscous saliva fell from its teeth. It could be rabid. There was no help for it; he had to use magic.
“Bat—scat!” he sang. The bat vanished.
