“I tell thee this to show that I know the extent to which thy magic has acted on me—and thus am assured it does not account for the fullness of my feeling. I love thee in part because I have experienced the depth of thy love for Neysa, and hard it is to deny feeling of that sincerity. Thou lovest well. Adept, and thereby thou dost become lovable thyself. But I do love thee more than I can blame on magic.”
She paused, and this time Stile had the wit not to interrupt her. “When thou didst take me along on thy trip to the Mound Folk,” she continued, “and the Sidhe toyed with us, and thou didst dance with the Faerie-maid, then did I suffer pangs of jealousy. Then when thou didst dance with me, as my Lord used to do—“ She broke off and walked around the room.
“Ever was I a fool. I thought I could withstand thy appeal. But when I heard thee play the magic Flute—0 my Lord, that sound!—not since the days of mine other courtship have I heard the like! But then thou didst go to fight the Worm, and I cursed myself for my callousness to thee, swearing to make it up to thee an I should ever see thee again alive—and yet I hardened again when thou didst survive, telling myself it could not be. The lie was on me, and I could not cast it off. Then at the Unolympics when thou didst so readily defend me against the seeming slur of Yellow—alas, I am woman, I am weak, my heart swelled with gratitude and guilt. And I could not help myself, I had to hear thee play again, and so I betrayed thy possession of the Flute to Yellow. And saw thee nearly killed by the Herd Stallion. Yet again had I played the fool, even as Yellow knew. And then at last, when thou didst come to me suffering from thy loss of thy Game and of thy friend Hulk—I longed to comfort thee with all my being, but the lie lay between us like a festering corpse, making foul what would have been fair, adding to thy grief, making of me a fishwife—and yet in that adversity didst thou steer thy narrow course exactly as he would have done, and I knew that I was lost. And I feared that thou wouldst die before ever I had chance to beg the forgiveness I deserved not—“
“I forgive thee that lie!” Stile cried, and again the air shimmered and the things of the room rippled and the breath of breeze shook out her tresses. Now again she faced away from him, as though ashamed of what she had to say.
“I was a girlish fool when first the Blue Adept courted me. Somehow I took him not seriously, for that he resembled to my ignorant eye a child or one of the Little Folk. Even when I married him I withheld somewhat my love from him. When I learned of the geas against his siring a child by me, I mourned more for the lack of the child than for my Lord’s deprival. For years I dallied, and only slowly did I learn to love him truly—and only when he died did I realize how deep that love had grown. Fool I was; I loved him not with abandon until he was gone. I swore, once it was too late, never to be that kind of fool again. Yet was I trying to be that kind of fool with thee, even as I was with him. Now thou dost go yet again perhaps to thy doom, and I will deceive my-self or thee no longer. An thou must die, thou must suffer my love first. And that is the scene we must have.”
Now at last she gave him leave to speak unfettered. Stile could not doubt her sincerity. He loved her, of course; they had both known that all along. Yet he was not sure he wanted her love this way. “How did he die?” he asked. If this question struck her as irrelevant, she did not treat it so. “The golem in thy likeness walked to the Blue Castle during my Lord’s absence. At first I thought it was Blue, but very soon knew I better.
*I bring an amulet for Blue,’ the golem said, and gave me a little demon on a chain, the kind employed by frame-travelers to mock clothing when they have none.
“I encountered one of those!” Stile exclaimed. “When I invoked it, it tried to choke me with the chain!”
“Even so,” she agreed grimly. “All innocently did I relay it to my Lord, who took it for a message-amulet, perhaps an exchange for some favor. I begged him to invoke it with caution, lest there be some error, but he heeded me not. He put the chain about his neck and invoked it—“ She was unable to continue.
“And it strangled him so that he could utter no spell in self-defense,” Stile concluded. “He depended on magic to foil magic, and this time could not. Had he used physical means—“
“I could not heal a dead man,” the Lady sobbed. “Nor could I let it be known he was lost, lest the Demesnes suffer. The golem took his place, the hateful thing, and I had to cooperate—“ So nothing further was known about the motive for the murder. The Red Adept had dealt with the Brown Adept to obtain the golem, and used it without Brown’s knowledge for evil. Perhaps she had even been responsible for the original Brown’s death, to prevent him from interfering, leaving the innocent child as the new Brown Adept. The golem itself had not committed the murder of Blue; it had not been made for that. Probably Brown had been told it would serve as a double for Blue when the latter was indisposed to expose himself to public scrutiny, or when he wished to conceal his absence from the Castle. Exactly as the robot in Stile’s likeness had served in the frame of Proton.
“This curse of infertility—what of it?”
“After I married Blue, I went to the Oracle to inquire what kind of children I would have, wasting my lone question in girlish curiosity. The Oracle replied ‘None by One, Son by Two.’ I understood that not until my Lord died: that I would bear children not by my first husband. Oh, I grasped it in part, but did not realize that it was not truly a geas against fertility, but that he would die too soon. I thought he was cursed by sterility—“ Again she broke down, but almost immediately fought out of it. “Thou art my second husband—and before thou dost suicide in this awful mission of vengeance, thou must give me that son!” she concluded with determination.
“My son shall not be raised by a widow!” Stile said.
The Lady turned at last to face him. “I love thee. I have at last confessed it. Shame me not further by this denial. I must have at least this much of thee.”
But already Stile’s mind was working. He loved the Lady Blue, but this sudden force of her return love was too much for his immediate assimilation. He would be ready for it after due reflection; but now, this instant, it was too much like a windfall gift. He somehow feared it would be taken from him as rapidly as it had been bequeathed, and he wanted to protect himself against such loss before getting committed. Love did not make Stile blind; he had learned caution the hard way. So now he looked for the catch. He did not doubt the Lady’s sincerity, or question her desirability; he simply didn’t trust the magic vicissitudes of fate.
“The Oracle always speaks correctly.”
“Aye.” She looked at him questioningly. He was not reacting as her experience of him in two selves had led her to expect.
“Then I will not die until I have given thee thy son. Allow me to wait until I have disposed of the Red Adept, that I may have child and life with thee.”
Her lovely face was transformed by realization. “Yes! Thou must survive! There be no guarantee that thou mayest live one day after thou dost sire a child, unless the threat to thy life be abated before.”