“Ah, now I understand!” she exclaimed. “So life is not entirely easy, even with magic!”
“Not necessarily easy at all,” he agreed. “Because there be also hostile magic.” He paused. “Speaking of which—the White Adept really has never been very friendly with the Blue Adept, not since the separation of frames. Why would she do us this big favor now?”
“Perhaps she is a nicer person than you thought.”
He laughed. “Adepts aren’t nice folk! They are concerned only with their own powers.” Then he reconsidered. “No, some are all right. The Red Adept owes his position to my father, so he’s always friendly, and Brown Adept’s all right too. She helped Fleta and weres a lot. She’s the one who makes the golems.”
“The golems?”
“They be like robots,” he said with a smile. “ look and act like men, but they be dead sticks. Generally.”
They went on. “Mayhap I should conjure us directly there,” Bane said. “So thou dost not have to walk so far.”
“Save your magic,” Agape said with a smile. “I don’t mind walking with you.”
They came to a mountain. There was a large cave visible at its base. “The vampires!” Bane exclaimed.
“Vampires! The kind that suck blood?”
“They do, but not indiscriminately. It be part of special rituals they have for coming-of-age and such. We have nothing to fear from them.” He walked toward the cave-entrance. Agape followed, not at all at ease.
A man in a gray cape stood guarding the cave, though bats wheeled in the sky nearby. He came alert as the two approached. “Who be ye?” he challenged.
“I be the son of Blue,” Bane said. “This be my friend, a shape-changer. I come to see my friends.”
“Who be thy friends?” the man asked.
“Vanneflay,” Bane said.
“Sorry, he be away these three days.”
“Vidselud, then,” Bane said.
“Him, too.”
Bane considered. “Then Suchevane.”
The man shrugged. “That be a coincidence! He, too.”
“All away?” Bane asked, surprised.
“But thou’rt welcome to join us in a meal,” the guard said. “Any son of Blue be welcome here.”
“Uh, Bane—“ Agape whispered uncomfortably.
Bane smiled. “My friend be nervous about vampire viands. Thank thee, but we shall move on.”
The guard made a negligent wave of his hand.
They returned to the forest and walked on toward the west until they were well clear of the vampire’s mountain. Bane was deep in thought.
“I’m glad we didn’t stay there!” Agape said. “The thought of eating blood—“
“That bothers thee? Is blood not easier to imbibe than solid food?”
“We don’t consume flesh,” she said.
“Actually, the vampires wouldn’t have offered us blood. It’s too valuable, and they always take it fresh. That isn’t what bothers me.”
“What bothers you, Bane?”
“This be not Phaze.”
She halted in place. “What?”
“When I changed the color of our clothing, there was a flash. My magic ne’er did that. Be there a way science could have done it?”
“Changed the color? Oh, yes; some material is sensitive to certain types of radiation, so that when it flashes—“
“Methought so. And true goblins bluff not so readily; must always destroy a few ere they give over. But mainly, the vampires. They were not.”
“But the fact that we did not see them change form does not mean—“
“Oh, they might have changed form, by some device. But the friends I named—“ He shook his head.
“But they really could be away,” she said.
“The first, yes. But the second, Vidselud—he be the son of Vodlevile, for whom my father did a favor. Vidselud be six or seven years my senior, but we be friends because with me he can safely travel.”
“He can’t with his own kind?”
“Nay. He has a problem with the assimilation of blood that crops up every so often. They keep a potion in the cave that cures it, and they never let that potion go out, because it cannot be replaced. So he flies ne’er beyond walking distance of the cave, unless with me, because I can conjure him home if need be.”
“But then he should be home!” she said.
“He should be home. Yet the guard said he was not.”
“Still, that’s not proof—“
“And the third one, Suchevane.”
“He could also be—“
“She.” Bane said succinctly.
“Female? But the guard said ‘he’—“
“Precisely.”
“Maybe the guard forgot.”
Bane smiled. “No male forgets Suchevane!”
Agape looked sharply at him. “She is—?”
“Almost as lovely as thee, in girl form. And still married, when I left Phaze. If there be any male he doth not turn when she goes by, that head be blind Even the werewolves howl for her.”
“But how, then—“
“No way,” Bane said with finality. “This cannot the vampire mountain I know, and since there be only one like this, these be other than vampires, and this be other than Phaze.”
“But why would—“
A bat flew down from the sky. As it neared the ground, it changed abruptly into a beautiful woman. “Lovelier than I?” she demanded.
Bane gazed at her. “Nay.” Then, after a pause, “Sir.”
The woman changed appearance, becoming the young-seeming Citizen White, then a woman about twenty years older, still garbed in white. “So you cannot be fooled, young man,” she said.
“No, sir.”
“It is true; this is all a setting. I was able to make it authentic because when I was a child, I did visit Phaze, and knew the vampire colony. But in twenty years the personnel have evidently changed, and without contact, we cannot change with them.”
“True, sir,” Bane agreed.
“So this is pretense, agreed.” She gazed hard at him. “But you are not. You really are from Phaze; you have demonstrated that.”
“But sir, why?” Agape asked, disturbed. “Why bother to play such a cruel game with two serfs who intended you no harm?”
“That you are about to discover,” the Citizen said. She snapped her fingers, and the entire setting disappeared, leaving a large empty chamber. She smiled, and it was not a pretty smile.
“I think we be in trouble,” Bane murmured.
“Not necessarily,” Citizen White said. But the cruel lines that manifested about her mouth gave her words the lie.
8 - Chase
How much time passed Mach could not be sure, but it seemed to him that the sun had shifted in the sky by the time he emerged from his embrace with Fleta. “I suppose we should be on our way,” he said.
“I can carry thee anywhere, rapidly,” she said. “Now that thou dost know my nature.”
“I would prefer to go slowly,” he said.
“My natural form pleases thee not?”
“If you take me to the Blue Demesnes quickly, I shall have little further time with you. Let’s walk.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Mayhap it will take two days to get there.”
“I wish it were two years,” he murmured.
“Sirrah?”
“Nothing. Of course we must go.”
“Of course,” she agreed. “But we can camp the night on the path.”
He liked the notion of camping out with her.
They started out on the east path, the one they had not taken before. They made decent progress, and as night approached Mach judged they were parallel to the spot they had been on the Lattice. Had he realized that the demons would be roused, or what they were…
“Methinks we should camp now,” Fleta said. “But there be something odd about the way the demons came at us. Best I check around ere we sleep.”
“But you’ve been walking all day!” he protested.
She smiled. “In other form, an thou have no objection.”