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.
He took the harmonica and played a brooding, powerful theme. For this job the Platinum Flute might have been better, but that had never really been his. He hoped Clef was getting along with the Mound Folk all right, and wondered whether the musician really could be the Foreordained they wanted, and if so, in what manner he was destined to save Phaze. Sometimes Stile had the feeling that he was just one thread in a complex skein, doing whatever it was he was fated to do, with no more free will than a robot had. So many seemingly coincidental things had happened to him—but of course he could be manufacturing a pattern for nothing. Clef might not be the Foreordained; the mountain might not tremble when he played the Flute. So Stile’s encounter with him would have been no more than the randomness it appeared to be.
His magic was now intense. He concentrated on the Red Castle. “Make of this, the Red Demesne, a holocaust, a wreck obscene.”
They watched. The entire structure shimmered. Smoke appeared. The remaining creatures associated with it scrambled out as if fleeing something horrible. Behind them licked tongues of greenish flame. The smoke expanded, bursting out windows in its urgency to breathe free. Gouts of it roiled up in burgeoning masses resembling the grotesque heads of goblins.
Then the explosions came. Whole walls shoved outward. Partitions sailed flaming in wide arcs, to crash and splinter in minor puffs of fire. Rockets of light shot out, and sprays of burning fog. All colors were represented, but gradually red predominated: this was the home of the Red Adept, after all.
“That should give her something to think about,” Stile said. “I really don’t like such destruction, but I must destroy the entire works of the Red Adept. I mean to leave no springboard for her to wreak her mischief again.” He thought once more of Hulk and Bluette. Had she survived? He hoped so, though he did not want to deal with her 2 directly. What grief Red had brought upon her, merely to try to trap him. Stile. Yes, Red had to be destroyed. The pyrotechnics continued at the castle, reducing it steadily to the obscene wreck specified by the spell. Mean-while, Stile stepped back across the curtain, checking to see whether Sheen had arrived. He avoided the gassed station, knowing that Sheen would check for him outside. He came back to Phaze for air, then checked Proton again. On his third crossover, he spied her. She ran to him, opening her chest compartment to bring out an oxygen mask for him so that he could handle the Proton outdoor air. Quickly he explained the situation. “So what I have in mind is to interrupt the power to the dome-field generator,” he concluded. “Can you get me a heavy-duty cutting laser?” Sheen smiled. She opened her compartment again, and presented him with a compact Protonite-powered portable metal-cutting laser unit and a power-cable locator.
“Bless you!” Stile exclaimed, kissing her, then replacing the mask. They walked across the desert, searching out the cable. Stile was apprehensive that someone would think to look outside the dome, and would spot them, but that was a chance they had to take. Citizens and serfs of Proton were very much dome-oriented, and simply ignored the outer world as if it did not exist. That might help. This should not take long; the force-fields that formed the air-enclosing domes drew a lot of power. Such heavy-duty cables were easy to locate. Soon they found it.