The Stallion shook a brick off his back. Neither he nor Kurrelgyre had flinched, either. All three of them were powdered with reddish brick dust. But some of that red was sticky: whose blood was it?
“They’re playing for keeps,” Hulk murmured, awed.
“It is the way, in Phaze,” Kurrelgyre assured him.
But now Neysa was tiring. She had extended herself for a day and a night to bring Stile here, and the intervening day had not been enough to restore her to full vitality. Her maneuvers were becoming less extreme. Her brushoff pitch against the wall had been her last fling. The Lady’s head lifted, her gaze triumphant—and at the same time her mouth was sad. Had she, in her secret heart, wanted Stile to be vindicated, though it cost her her life? What kind of existence did this indomitable woman face with her husband gone, and her vulnerability now known to the world? Had she lost, she would have been dead—but would have died with the knowledge that the Blue Demesnes would survive.
Then, desperately, without real hope, Neysa experimented with alternate gaits. The one-, two-, three-, and four-beat gaits gave the Lady no trouble—but evidently she had not before encountered the unicorn specialty of the five-beat. Immediately Neysa felt the uncertainty in her rider; she picked up the pace, exaggerating the peculiar step. Her strength returned, for this last fling.
“What is that?” Hulk asked, amazed.
The Stallion snorted with satisfaction. “That is the unicorn strut,” Clip answered. “We use it mostly in special harmonies, for counterpoint cadence. We had no idea she could do it so well.”
Suddenly the tables had been turned. The Lady clung to the mane, but her body bounced about with increasing roughness, unable to accommodate this unfamiliar motion. Stile knew exactly how it felt. Riding was not simply a matter of holding on; the rider had to make constant adjustments of balance and position, most of them automatic, based on ingrained experience. A completely unfamiliar gait made these automatic corrections only aggravate the problem. Stile himself had analyzed the gait in time, but the Lady-One of the Lady Blue’s hands tore away from the mane. Her body slid half off. One good lunge, now, and Neysa would dump her. “Kill her!” Clip breathed.
Abruptly Neysa halted. The Lady recovered her grip, hung on for a moment—then released the mane and slid to the ground. The ride was over.
“The little fool!” Clip exclaimed. “She had the win! Why didn’t she finish it?” And the Stallion snorted in deep disgust.
“She has forfeited her place in the herd,” Kurrelgyre said sadly. “In thy parlance, she threw the game.”
Stile jumped off the wall and walked toward the unicorn and Lady, who both stood as if frozen, facing away from each other. As he walked, understanding came to him. Stile played his harmonica as he worked it out, gathering the magic to him.
Neysa, after the specter of defeat, had had the victory in range. But Neysa wanted Stile’s welfare more than she wanted her own. She had finally, unwillingly, recognized the fact that he could fulfill his destiny only as the Blue Adept, complete with magic. Once she had proven that he alone could ride the unicorn, what could she gain by killing or even humbling the Lady—who was his natural mate? Neysa had ceded him to the Lady, so that he could have it all, knowing himself and his Demesnes exactly as the Oracle had decreed. She had understood that he was already half-smitten with his alternate’s wife, and understood further that the Lady Blue was indeed worthy of him.
Neysa had sacrificed her own love for Stile’s. She had shown the one person she had to, the Lady Blue, that Stile was no impostor; wolves and unicorns could doubt it if they wished, but the Lady could not. For Stile had mastered the unicorn strut without being thrown; he really was the better rider. That was Neysa’s gift to Stile. And he—had to accept it. Neysa was his ultimate steed, but the Lady was his ultimate woman. He hardly knew her yet, but he knew his other self would have chosen wisely, and everything he had observed so far confirmed this. He also knew his alternate self of Phaze would have wanted Stile to take over—for the Blue Adept was him, in other guise.
The Lady Blue, however, was not yet his woman. Stile had merely qualified for the Tourney, in this sense, and had won the right to court her. He would have to prove himself in other ways than magical and in riding ability, showing that he was worthy of her love. He would have to demonstrate convincingly to her that he was as good as her husband had been. Perhaps he would not succeed, for she was so steadfastly loyal to her first love that a second love might be impossible. But in the interim, he knew she would accept him as the master of the Blue Demesnes, and support him publicly as she had the golem—for the sake of the reputation and works of Blue. That was all he had a right to expect. It was, for the moment, more than enough.
It was Neysa he had to deal with. She who had made it all possible—and now would go, excluded from the herd, departing in shame to fling herself off the same cliff where they had first come to terms. She had lived always with the hope that eventually the Herd Stallion would relent and allow her full membership in the herd. He would have, had she destroyed the Lady in approved fashion. But for a creature who yielded a draw in a contest she could have won, shaming the vanity of the herd, there would be no forgiveness. The rigors of species pride were harsh.
Stile had, in the naivete of his conscience, turned Neysa loose when he had conquered her, making a sacrifice no other man would have—and won a better friend than he had known. Now she had returned the favor.
Stile’s head turned as he walked, his gaze passing over the unicorns and werewolves. All were somber, watching him, knowing what had to be, knowing this was his parting with his most loyal friend. They felt sympathy for him, and for the mare, and it was a minor tragedy, but this was the way of it—in Phaze.
Damn it! he thought. He was not truly of this world, and this proved it. He had been raised to a different order of integrity, where blood sacrifices were not re-quired. How could he tolerate this senseless loss? Yet he knew it was not senseless, here. The laws of this society were harsh but valid.
The magic gathered close as he played. The strange cloud of it spread about him—and, as he approached, about the Lady and the unicorn. But what good was magic, in an ethical dilemma? What spell could he make, to eliminate the need for what he knew had to be?
Stile came to stand before Neysa, playing the music that had been inspired by the sound of her horn. Her body was heaving with the recent extremity of her effort. Her mane was disheveled, with dry leaves in it and several strands hanging over the left side. There were flecks of blood on her back; she must have scratched herself when she did the back-smash against the castle wall. He wished he could make a little spell to heal it for her, but knew this was not proper now.
Her gaze met his, dully; she was waiting only for him to bid her farewell.
File-well? What irony! It was death he would bid her.
This reminded Stile obscurely of his race in the marathon, in the other frame. He had been almost dead on his feet, as Neysa was now, but he had won—as she had—and then tried to give it back to an opponent he respected. Again, he had made a friend. Surely he could salvage his relationship with Neysa, if only he had the wit to find the way!
What had the werewolf said about oaths? They superseded all relationships, conflicting with none, not even the male-female ones. Kunrelgyre’s oath-friend could do no wrong by Kurrelgyre’s bitch; the oath made that irrelevant. The marathon. The oath. What had passed through his mind, when ... ?