Juxtaposition (13 page)

A pack of wolfheads closed in, but the steeds dodged and galloped to the side and got around and through, then put on speed to leave the beasts behind. No more animal heads appeared, and Stile knew that his party had gotten away clean.

Unnoticed in the hurry, the vegetation had changed.
 
They were now forging through a forest of huge old trees —oak, ash, elm, and beech, by the look. But it was not necessarily easy to tell them apart, for the trunks were gnarled and deeply corrugated, and the tops shaded the ground into gloom.

*I like not the look of this,” the Lady Blue said.
 
Stile agreed. Their escape had led them away from the curtain, so that they now had to relocate. It would not be safe to return to their point of divergence from it; the animalheads were there. Stile still preferred to avoid the use of magic in the present situation; this was an annoyance, not a crisis.

All of which meant they would have to search for the curtain the tedious way—slowly, eyes squinting for the almost invisible shimmer. The curtain was easy to follow lengthwise, but difficult to intercept broadside unless one knew exactly where to look.

“Well, it’s all part of the honeymoon,” Stile said. The Lady smiled; she had known there would be this sort of interruption in the schedule.

They looked, riding slowly around the great old trees.
 
The forest was so dense now that even indirect light hardly penetrated, yet there were an increasing number of small plants. They twined up around the bases of the tree trunks and spread across the forest floor. Some were a suspiciously verdant green; others were pallid white. Many were insidiously ugly.

Yet they were plants, not creatures. None of them sent questing tentacles for the intruders; none had poisonous thorns. They flourished in gloom; that seemed to be their only oddity.

There was no sign of the curtain. “It will take forever to find it this way,” Stile said. “I want to be back on it by nightfall.” He jumped down and walked. “We can make a better search on foot,” he said.

Clip blew a warning note. Unicorns were naturally resistant to magic, and this protected the rider. The Blue Adept, Juxtaposition Clip felt, needed protection, and should not be straying from his steed. As if Stile did not have ample magic of his own.

Stile walked on, peering this way and that, searching for the curtain. It had to be somewhere near here; they had not gone all that far and they had not diverged from its path greatly. In this gloom the shimmer should be clear enough.

Clip’s ears turned. He blew a low warning note. Stile paused to listen.

The animalheads were catching up. Stile’s party had to move on before—

Too late. A pigface appeared in front of Stile. A dog face came up behind the Lady. There was rustling in the bushes all around. Perhaps aided by some sort of stealth spell, the animalheads had surrounded them.
 
The Lady called Hinblue, who charged toward her. Stile stepped toward Clip, but already tile pighead was on him.
 
Stile did not use magic. He drew his sword, threatening but not attacking the creature. There was something odd about this, and he did not want to do anything irrevocable until he fathomed it.

The pighead halted its aggression—but three sheepheads were closing from the sides. A spell would freeze them, but Stile still didn’t want to do it. Rather than shed blood, he dodged around the pighead, hurdled a fallen branch—and an offshoot moved up and intercepted his leading ankle, causing him to take a heavy spill into a flowering bush beyond.

There was a kind of zap! as the leaves were disturbed, and Stile felt the presence of magic. Quickly he jumped up, feeling about his body, but he seemed to have suffered no injury.

The animalheads had taken advantage of his fall to surround him. Clip had stopped a short distance away, perceiving that the animalheads could reach Stile before the unicorn could. No sense precipitating an attack by spooking them.

Stile decided to make an honest attempt at communication before resorting reluctantly to magic to freeze them temporarily in place. It wasn’t natural for normally peaceful creatures to attack and pursue strangers like this.
 
Maybe he could establish a yes-no dialogue with one of the more intelligent ones. He really wasn’t looking for trouble on his honeymoon!

He opened his mouth to speak—and nothing but air emerged. He couldn’t talk!

Stile tried again. There was no pain, no constriction in his throat—but he could not vocalize at all. The plant—it had zapped him with a spell of silence! The animalheads did not know about his power of magic, so did not know what he had lost. They thought him an ordinary man—which he was now. They con verged.

Stile quickly brought the harmonica to his mouth. He might not be able to speak or sing, but the instrument’s music would summon some protective magic. He blew—and silence came out.

He stamped his foot on the ground and made no noise.
 
He banged his sword against a root—silently. He whistled—without even a hiss of air.

The spell had rendered him totally quiet. Since he could nullify it only by using his own magic, and that required sound, he was trapped.

These tests had been performed rapidly, and the conclusion drawn in a few seconds, for the animalheads were on him. Still he did not use his sword. He had threatened with it, but remained unwilling actually to shed blood. The mystery of these creatures’ attack bothered him as much as the threat to himself.

A cathead pounced. Stile ducked, reached up, and guided it into a turning fall. He might be silent, but he wasn’t helpless!

But now a tremendously tusked hoarhead came at him from the left and an alligatorhead from the right. There was no question of their intent. He could dodge these two—but how long could he hold out against the converging mob?

Meanwhile, Clip had resumed motion. Now the unicorn arrived. His horn caught the alligatorbead and impaled it.
 
A powerful heave sent the creature flying back over the equine’s shoulder. Then a forehoof knocked the boarhead away.

Clip stood beside Stile, giving him a chance to mount.
 
Then they were away in a great leap. Soon they joined Hinblue and the Lady Blue and galloped clear of the animalheads once again.

The Lady Blue realized what was wrong. “Thou art victim of a silence-spell!” she cried. “We must take thee back to the Blue Demesnes for a counterspell!” But the animalheads were already catching up again, cutting off the return—and of course it would be a long ride all the way back to the Blue Demesnes, even cutting directly across to it. Their only avenue of escape at the moment was north, deeper into the jungle.
 
The steeds plunged on, but the vegetation thickened.
 
Now grasping plants occurred, reaching thorny branches toward them, opening green jawlike processes. This jungle was coming alive—at the time when Stile had lost his power. A single spell could quell every plant—but he could not utter that spell.

The Lady Blue exclaimed as vines twined about her body. Her steed had to halt, lest she be drawn off. Then the vines attacked Hinblue’s legs, seeking to anchor the horse to the ground.

Stile nudged Clip. The unicorn charged back. His horn touched the vines, and they writhed out of the way, repelled by the counternagic. Meanwhile, Stile used his sword to chop at the nether vines, freeing the horse. The weapon normally carried by men in Phaze was the rapier, but Stile felt more comfortable with the broadsword, and now the cutting edge was useful indeed.
 
There was a renewed baying of animalheads, catching up yet again. Stile’s party moved forward once more.
 
The plants got worse. Tree branches dropped down to bar their way, dangling poisonous-looking moss. Stile cut the moss away with his sword, clearing the path for the Lady and steeds. Ichor from the moss soon covered the blade, turning it gray-green. The stuff reeked with a pun gent odor, almost like dragon’s blood. Stile did not like this at all. Yet he had to keep hacking the encroaching growth away, afraid to let any of the party get caught.
 
At last the sounds of pursuit diminished. The animal heads had been foiled by this vicious jungle too.
 
But the trees, bushes, and brambles had closed in be hind, forming a virtually impenetrable barrier. Stile’s sword was already stained and pitted under the ichor, and holes were appearing in his clothing where drops had spattered. He didn’t want to hack through any more of this!
 
Clip blew a musical note. Stile dismounted, and the unicorn phased into the hawk and flew up. The sky was the one open route!

The Lady Blue also dismounted and came to him.
 
“Mayhap I can help thee,” she offered. She laid her hands on his throat, and their healing power warmed skin and muscle deep inside. But the silence was not any constriction in his throat, but a cloud of nonsound that surrounded him. He could not be healed because he wasn’t ill; the spell itself had to be abated, somehow.
 
“Mayhap a potion?” the Lady mused, fishing in her purse. But none of the elixirs she had with her seemed promising, and she did not want to expend them uselessly.
 
“Clip may find something,” she said hopefully. “From the air, more can be seen.”

The jungle was not being idle, however. Plants were visibly growing toward them. This time they were ugly, jointed things, with great brown thorns hooked at each juncture. These things were structured to engage a retreating form, and not to disengage, and they looked as if they had hollow points. Bloodsuckers, surely. Stile brought out his knife and sawed off the nearest thorn stem, severing it with difficulty; the fiber was like cable. By the time he completed the cut, several other tendrils were approaching his boots. He had to draw his sword again, hacking the fibers apart by brute force, clearing a circle around the Lady and horse. He had almost forgotten how formidable nature could be for those who lacked the convenience of magic. It was a reminder in perspective—not that that helped much at the moment.

The hawk returned, changing into man-form. “There is a domicile ahead, and the land is clear around it,” Clip reported. “An old man lives there, a hermit by his look; mayhap he will guide us out, can we but reach him. Or we can follow the curtain; it passes through that clearing. I have scouted the most direct approach to the curtain. I can not cross it, but if thou and the Lady and Hinblue can—the clearing is but a quarter mile from there.” Stile squeezed Clip’s arm in thanks. The unicorn had really come through for them! They could hack their way to the curtain, cross to Proton, hurry forward, and recross to recover breath. It would not be fun, but it should be feasible.

They chopped through the undergrowth with renewed will. This time the plants were rigidly fan-shaped leaves on tough stems, the edges of the leaves as sharp as knives.
 
They did not move to intercept people, but they were extraordinarily difficult to dear from the path because the stems were almost inaccessible behind the leaves. When Stile reached under to sever one stem, the leaves of an other plant were in his way; if he sliced through anyway, he risked brushing the knife-edges along his wrist or fore arm. Without magic to heal cuts, he found this nervous business, though he knew the Lady could help heal him.
 
Progress was slow, and his sword arm grew tired.
 
Clip stepped in, using the tip of his horn to reach past the leaves to break the stems. This enabled them to go faster, and soon they intersected the curtain.
 
Stile could not even perform the simple curtain-crossing spell. The Lady did it for him and Hinblue—and suddenly the three of them were in Proton, on a barren plain, gasping for air. Clip changed to hawk-form and flew directly to their rendezvous in the clearing.

They were able to walk on the bare sands, but breathing was labored, and Hinblue, as the Lady had feared, did not understand at all. The horse’s nostrils flared, and she was skittish, squandering energy better saved for forward progress. Hinblue was a very fine mare, who could have been a prizewinner in Proton, but she had had no experience with this. The Lady led her, though the Lady herself was gasping.

Stile heard his own labored breathing—and realized what it meant. “I’m not silent any more—no magic in this frame!” he exclaimed.

“But when thou retumest—“ the Lady responded.

When he crossed again, the spell would still be on him.
 
He could not escape it this way, except by traveling in this frame back to the region of the Blue Demesnes, where he could cross to get the Lady’s reserve spells. But no Proton dome was near; even if he wanted to risk entering one, the trip wasn’t feasible.

The horse was in increasing trouble. “My Lord, I must take her back,” the Lady gasped. “She does not under stand.”

Stile had handled a horse in these barrens before. He recognized the symptoms of the growing panic. “Take her across; maybe we’re far enough.”

They willed themselves across at what seemed to be a clearing. It was—but also turned out to be no safe resting place. The ground writhed with sucker leaves that sought to fasten to the flesh of human or equine. Hinblue stamped her hooves, trampling down the suckers, but already some were fastening on the sides of the hooves, trying to drink from the hard surface. Stile tried to cut off the plants, but they were too low to the ground, making his blade ineffective.

“We can not stay here,” the Lady said, her feet moving in a dance of avoidance. “We must cross again.” Stile agreed. The horse had recovered her wind. They crossed back to Proton and made a dash for the better clearing ahead. This time they made it.
 
Now they were in sight of the hermit’s hut. Clip re joined them, remaining in hawk-form so as not to betray his nature before the watching hermit. They saw the old man’s eyes peering from the dark window.