“A fortnight,” he agreed. The Stallion extended his hand, and Stile took it. His own hand was engulfed by the huge and calloused extremity with hooflike nails. Stile fought off his automatic resentment and feeling of inadequacy. He was not inadequate, and the Stallion was being honorable. It was a fair compromise.
The Stallion shifted back to his natural form. He blew another chord on his horn. The unicorn circle opened. Stile began to feel lighter. His body faded. His spells were re-turning, as the anti-magic power of the unicorns diffused. That also was worth noting: his spells had never ceased operating, they had merely been damped out temporarily. Neysa stepped forward hesitantly. “The Stallion invites thee to participate in the Unolympics in two weeks,” Stile told her as he mounted.
She was so surprised she almost shifted into girl-form, which would have been awkward for him at the moment. She blew a querying note, hardly daring to believe the news. But the Stallion made a chord of affirmation. “And I will go there too, to meet the Stallion on the field of honor,” Stile added, as though this were an after-thought.
This time she did change shape. Stile found himself riding the girl-form piggy-back, his legs around her tiny waist. Hastily he dismounted. “Nay—“ she said. “Neigh indeed! If I weren’t invisible and featherlight, thou wouldst have been borne to the ground by my weight in most indelicate fashion. Get back to thy proper form, mare!” Hastily she complied. He remounted, and she galloped away from the herd. It seemed that none of the unicorns had noticed anything—until one mocking saxophone peal of music sounded. Clip had been unable to hold back his mirth any longer.
Neysa fired back an angry concatenation of notes, then galloped harder. They fairly flew across the slope. Soon they were well away. “Just for that, thou shouldst make him participate in the Unolympics too,” Stile suggested, and she snorted affirmatively.
But now his own problem came to the fore. “Maybe I can ask the Oracle how to handle the Stallion,” Stile mused aloud. But that was no good; he had used up his single Oracular query before, in the process of discovering his Phaze identity.
“One other thing bothers me,” Stile remarked after a bit, as they galloped across the lovely plain. “Why is the Herd Stallion being so polite about it? He could easily have insisted that I fight him today, and he surely would have won. He has no special brief for me, yet he treated me with extraordinary fairness.”
Neysa veered to approach an island copse of oat trees. Safely inside the tangle of growth, she made a shrug that hinted he should dismount. When he did, she shifted to girl-form again. “It is thy spell,” she said. “All the herd is oath-friend to me, and if he took me unfairly, humiliating thee, they would turn against him.”
Stile struck his head with the heel of his unseen hand. “Of course! Even a king must consider how far his subjects can be pushed.” So his magic had indeed affected the Stallion, albeit circuitously, by affecting those the Stallion had to deal with.
Neysa stood, not yet shifting back, looking at him expectantly though of course her eyes could not focus on him. Stile took her in his arms. “I believe these are more words than thou has spoken to me in thy life before,” he said, and kissed her.
He turned her loose, but still she waited. He knew why, yet could not act. They had been lovers, and she remained, in girl-form, the nicest and prettiest girl he knew, and he was not turned off by the knowledge that she was in fact a unicorn. But their relationship had changed when he met the Lady Blue. He found himself not constitutionally geared to have more than one lover at a time in a given frame. The irony was that he did not have the Lady Blue as lover or anything else, though he wanted everything else. If companionship, loyalty, and yes, sex sufficed, Neysa was his resource.
And there it was. His aspirations had made a dimensional expansion. He was not certain that he could ever have all of what he wanted, yet he had to proceed as if it were possible. And he had to explain this to Neysa without hurting her feelings.
“What we had before was good,” he said. “But now I must look forward to a female of mine own kind, just as thou must look forward to the breeding and foal that only a male of thine own kind can give thee. Our friendship endures, for it is greater than this; it has merely changed its nature. Had we any continuing sexual claim on each other, it would complicate my friendship to thy foal, when it comes, or thine to my baby, if ever it comes.”
Neysa looked startled. It was almost as if her human ears perked forward. She had not thought of this aspect. To her, friendship had been merely a complete trusting and giving, uncomplicated by interacting relationships of others. Stile hoped she was able to understand and accept the new reality.
Then she leaned forward to kiss him again, locating him with uncanny accuracy—or was his spell weakening?—and as their lips touched, she shifted back to equine form. Stile found himself kissing the unicorn. He threw his arms about her neck and yanked at her lustrous black mane, laughing.
Then he mounted, hugged her again, and rode on. It was all right.
CHAPTER 2 - Lady
Back at the Blue Demesnes, Stile uninvoked the spells, became visible and full-weight, and turned Neysa out to graze. Then he talked to Hulk and the Lady Blue. “I must meet the Stallion in ritual battle a fortnight hence,” Stile said. “At their Unolympic celebration. This is for honor, and for the use of Neysa this season—yet I know not how I can match him, and am bound to suffer humiliation,”
“Which is what he wants,” Hulk said wisely. “Not thy blood, but thy pride. He wants to take a thing of value from the Blue Adept, in public, not by theft or by technicality but by right.”
The Lady’s blue eyes flashed. In this frame, it was literaclass="underline" a momentary glare of light came from them. She was no Adept, but she did have some magic of her own. Stile remained new enough to Phaze to be intrigued by such little effects. “No creature humiliates the Blue Adept!” she cried.
“I am not really he, as the Stallion knows,” Stile re-minded her unnecessarily.
“Thou hast the image and the power and the office,” she said firmly. “It is not thy fault that thou’rt not truly he. For the sake of the Demesnes, thou canst not let the unicorn prevail in this manner.”
The preservation of the Blue Demesnes was of course what this was all about, to her mind. Stile was merely the figurehead. “I am open to suggestions,” he said mildly. “I would ask the Oracle how I might prevail, had I not ex-pended my question in the course of achieving my present status.”
“The Oracle,” Hull; said. “It answers one question for any person?”
“Only one,” Stile agreed.
“Then I could ask it!”
“Thou shouldst not waste thine only question on a concern not thine,” Stile said. “Ask instead about thine own future here in Phaze. There may be an ideal situation awaiting thee, if thou dost but inquire as to its where-abouts.”
“Nay, I want to do it,” Hulk insisted. “Neysa is my friend too, and it was thou who showed me how to cross the curtain into this marvelous and not-to-be-believed world. The least I can do is help thee in this matter.” “Let him go,” the Lady murmured.
Stile spread his hands. “If thou truly dost feel this way, go with my blessing. Hulk. I shall be in thy debt. I will arrange for thee a magic conveyance—“
“Nay, I can walk.”
“Not that far, and return in time to be of much help. I need to know how to prepare as soon as possible. If I must master a special skill—“
“Okay,” Hulk agreed. “But I’m not good at riding unicorns.”
The Lady smiled, and there seemed to be a momentary glow in the room. “Only two I know of have ever ridden a unicorn, except at the unicorn’s behest: my lord Stile and I. The Adept will summon for thee a traveling carpet—“