But first one concern: “Neysa, I know thou dost not like magic applied to thee—“ She blew him a look of get-on-with-it, as he had known she would. She had once hated his practice of magic, but after she had accepted his status as the Blue Adept she had seemed to revel in the evidences of his power. “Identify the one we scorn, by orienting with thy horn,” Stile sang to her. Neysa, still in girl-form, turned her head with its tiny decoration-horn toward the south, obviously aware of the Red Adept. “And trace thine oath-friend without fail, by orienting with thy tail.” She spun about, slapping her pert derrier with her hand as if stung by a fly. Her lack of a tail in this form was a problem. Then she converted to unicorn, and it worked perfectly. “Let me step across the curtain, and do thou trace me,” Stile said. “Just to be sure.” This was consuming time while Red escaped, but if this operated the way he hoped, that wouldn’t matter.
Stile spelled himself across, ran a hundred meters over the sand, and crossed back, gasping for the good air of Phaze. Neysa was right there, some three hundred feet from her starting point, her pretty black tail facing him. It worked!
“Good enough!” Stile exclaimed. “Thou canst now trace us both—even across the curtain. I will check with thee whenever I lose her. If she recrosses, we will have her. I shall see thee anon!” And he passed through the curtain again, setting off in the direction Neysa had pointed for the Red Adept. No traps out herel But this was Proton, and outside a dome; quickly the rarefied and polluted air affected him. The Red Adept seemed to be within the dome—which of course was her Proton-home. Stile would have no safe access there! He found the curtain and passed back through. Neysa was there, having paced him neatly. “I’ve got to organize for this better,” he said. “It’s certain she’s organized! It’s not safe to go after her in her Proton-home.”
He paced in a circle for a moment. Even his two brief excursions into the atmosphere of Proton had depleted him. Inside the dome the air would be good—but she would have power he lacked. Her Citizen-mother might not like Red, but would act to protect the dome against intrusions by hostile serfs. “I need to smoke her out, then chase her down in neutral territory. I’d better enlist Sheen’s help in the other frame. But I don’t want to take mine eye off the prey. So I’ll need to call her. Yes.” He walked to the spot where he had seen a tube connection to the dome. There would be a communication screen at the transport terminal.
He spelled himself through. Certain spells were elementary; he didn’t even have to rhyme. Just an originally phrased wish sufficed, for him or any eligible person. He had wasted a number of rhymes before catching on to this.
In a moment he was in the station. There was good air here! He called Sheen.
She appeared immediately on the screen. “So soon? Game is tomorrow—“
“Come to this address!” Stile said. “I may need help.” The screen went blank. Red had intercepted the call; he should have known she would not be sitting idle. He might have avoided her little traps along the way, by declining to pursue her directly, but she knew he would come for her here. He had made a tactical error. Stile dived for the curtain.
A nozzle started hissing out vapor as he moved. Some sort of gas, probably stun-gas. Red seemed to like that sort of thing. Had she known precisely where and when he would appear, she could have nailed him. As it was, it was a close call; he got a whiff of it as he crossed the curtain, and reeled as he emerged in Phaze. Neysa steadied him with her solid body, and in a moment his head cleared. “Good thing I stayed close to the curtain,” he said. “I’m going to have to create a distraction, so she won’t spy me next time. The Oracle says Blue will destroy Red; I’ll start the process now. Let me have my harmonica.” Neysa shifted to girl-form. She now wore a little knap-sack over her dress—she manifested clothed or naked at will—in which she carried Stile’s harmonica and other oddments. Stile had never quite fathomed how she was able to carry foreign objects on her human body that disappeared when she changed form, yet were not lost. She could change to firefly-form while carrying his harmonica, though it was far larger than the firefly, and have no trouble. He kept discovering new aspects of magic that made little sense in scientific terms—and of course magic did not make scientific sense. If it did, it wouldn’t be magic. So he just had to accept that impossible things happened magically, and let it be.
