At last the dread fire burned itself out, its magic consuming flesh as readily as wood. Only mounds and ashes remained. All of the trolls had been destroyed. Except—except there was a stirring in a mound, and from it came a little troll, that must have been deeply buried by its mother, so that it alone survived. Now it looked about and wailed, afraid of the coming day.
The blue lad spied it, and knew that this one could not have killed any people, and he cast a spell of darkness that clothed it, and let the little troll go. “Thou’rt like me,” the blue lad quoth. Then he turned his back on what had been his home, and walked away.
The music stopped and the vision dissipated. I looked across at the blue lad. He had shown me his second major component: his power. Yet I did not realize, or perhaps refused to let myself know, the significance of this deadly ability.
“Thou—thou wast as thou art now!” I exclaimed. “Thou hast not changed, not grown. But the destruction of thy village occurred ten years ago! How could—“ “I was seventeen,” he replied.
“And now thou’rt—twenty-seven?” I asked, realizing it was true. “I thought thee twelve!” “I am small for my size,” he said, smiling. He was as much older than I, than I had thought him younger. No child of twelve, but a full-grown man. “I—“ I began, nonplussed.
“Thou didst ask how a person my age could play the harmonica so well,” he reminded me.
“Aye, that I did,” I agreed ruefully. Now that the joke was turned on me, I felt at ease.
The blue lad—blue man—summoned our steeds, and we proceeded on. We made good progress, and arrived the next day at mine own village. Almost, I had been afraid I would find it a smoking ruin, but of course this was a foolish fantasy born of the horror I had viewed. My folks rushed out to greet me in sheer gladness, and Snowflake was reunited with her dam Starshine, and all was gladness and relief.
Then the blue man said to his blue stallion: “Go service the Hinny; she has completed her pact with me.” And the stallion went off into the privacy of the forest with the Hinny, who must have been in heat—aye, in heat from the first time she spied that stallion!—and I was glad for her. She would have her foal, and well had she earned it. My father’s gaze followed them. “What a stallion! What a mare!” he murmured. “Surely that foal shall be like none known among us.”
The blue man shrugged, and said to me: “Lady, an thou ever needest me, sing these words: ‘Blue to me—I summon thee.’” Then he turned to my father, thinking me distracted by my tearful mother, for that my days-long absence had worried them much. “Sir, may I marry thy daughter?” he asked, as if this were a question about the weather.
My mouth dropped open in sheerest surprise, and I could not speak.
“Art thou the Blue Adept?” my father asked in return. I was stunned again, knowing suddenly the answer. How could I have missed it, I who had seen his power! Then the Blue Adept shook hands with my father and walked in the direction the horses had gone. No answers had been given, for none were needed. Normal people associated not with Adepts, and married them never. The Lady Blue finished her narrative and looked up at Stile. “Now canst thou go about thy business. Adept,” she said.
“I thank thee, Lady,” Stile said, and departed her presence.
CHAPTER 3 - Proton
Neysa carried Stile across the fields to the forest where the nearest usable fold of the curtain passed. “While Hulk remains away, and I am in the other frame, do thou protect the Lady Blue from harm,” Stile murmured as she galloped. “I have no better friend than thee to do this bidding.”
The unicorn snorted musically. He hardly needed to tell her! Were they not oath-friends?
They reached the curtain, where it scintillated faintly in the shadowed glade. “I will try to return in a day,” Stile said. “If I do not—“ Neysa blew a word-note: “Hulk.”
“That’s right. Send Hulk after me. He knows the frame, he knows the Game. Should anything untoward happen to me in Proton-frame—“ She blasted vehement negation. Her horn could sound quite emphatic on occasion.
“Oh, I’ll look out for myself,” he assured her. “And Sheen is my bodyguard there. She has saved me often enough. But in the remote chance that—well, thou canst go and get bred immediately, and raise thy foal—“ Neysa cut him off with a noise-note, and Stile let the subject drop. It had been difficult enough getting her to accept the fact of his Adept status; she was not about to accept the prospect of his demise. He hoped he would not disappoint her.
