That brought him back to the manner in which he had secured his own fortune by postponing his fathering of a son. He was eager to get on with it. He had loved the Lady Blue from the first time he had encountered her. He had never before met such a regal, intelligent and desirable woman. But she was the widow of his other self, and that had made things awkward. Now she was his, and he would never leave her - except for one more necessary trip to the frame of Proton, to try for the final Round of the Tourney. It really was not as important to him as it once had seemed, but he had to give it his best try.
They galloped up to the prettily moated little castle. Stile vaulted off as they entered the courtyard. The Lady Blue, his vision of delight rushed to his arms. She was of course garbed in blue: headdress, gown, slippers. She was all that he desired.
'Are we ready?' he inquired when the initial sweetness of the embrace eased.
'I have been ready since we wed, but thou didst depart in haste,' she said, teasing him.
'Never again, Lady!'
'Hinblue is saddled.'
'We have already traveled much of the eastern curtain. Shall we pick up at the Platinum Demesnes?'
She did not reproach him about his concern for Clef's welfare, the obvious reason to pass the region of the Little Folk. 'As my Lord Blue desires.'
'Wilt thou condone magic for the start?'
She nodded radiantly. 'Magic is the substance of my Lord Adept.'
They mounted their steeds, and Stile played his good harmonica, summoning his magic. His Adept talent was governed by music and words, the music shaping the power, the words the application. Actually, his mind was the most important factor; the words mainly fixed the time of implementation. 'Conduct us four,' he sang, 'to the platinum shore.'
Clip snorted through his horn:
But the magic was already taking hold. The four of them seemed to dissolve into liquid, sink into the ground, and flow rapidly along and through it south-southeast. In a moment they re-formed beside the Mound of the Platinum Elves. There was the fresh cairn of Serrilryan the werebitch, exactly as his vision-dream had shown it.
'Anything I visualize as a shore, is a shore,' Stile explained. 'There does not have to be water.' But as it happened, there was some cloud cover here, thickest in the lower reaches, so that the descending forest disappeared into a sealike expanse of mist. They stood on a kind of shore. Almost, he thought he saw wolf shapes playing on the surface of that lake of mist.
'And we were conducted - like the electricity of Proton-frame,' the Lady commented. 'Methought thou wouldst provide us with wings to fly.'
A dusky elf, garbed in platinum armor to shield his body from a possible ray of sunlight, appeared. He glanced up at Stile. 'Welcome, Blue Adept and Lady,' he said.
'Thy manner of greeting has improved since last we visited,' the Lady Blue murmured mischievously.
He showed them into the Mound. Stile noted that the structure had been hastily repaired, with special shorings. Evidently the destruction wrought by the Foreordained's Flute had not entirely demolished it. Stile hoped there had not been much loss of life in the collapse. Clip and Hinblue remained outside to graze the verdant, purple-tinted turf.
A deeply darkened and wrinkled elf awaited them inside. This was Pyreforge, chief of this tribe of Dark Elves. 'Thy friend is indeed the Foreordained,' he said gravely. 'Our trust in thee has been amply justified.'
'Now wilt thou tell the meaning?' Stile inquired. 'We are on our honeymoon. Yet my curiosity compels.'
'Because thou art on thy honeymoon, I will tell thee only part,' the old elf said. 'Too soon wilt thou learn the rest.'
'Nay! If it is to be the end of Phaze, I must know now.'
'It be not necessarily the end, but perhaps only a significant transition. That much remains opaque. But the decision is near - a fortnight hence, perhaps, no more than two. Take thy pleasure now, for there will come thy greatest challenge.'
'There is danger to my Lord Blue?' the Lady asked worriedly.
'To us all, Lady. How could we survive if our frame be doomed?'
'We can not head it off?' Stile asked.
'It will come in its own time. Therefore put it from thy mind; other powers are moving.'
Stile saw that Pyreforge would not answer directly on this subject, and the elf could not be pushed. 'The Foreordained - what is his part in this? A title like that-'
'Our titles hardly relate to conventional human mythology or religion. This one merely means he was destined to appear at this time, when the curtain grows visible and tension mounts between the frames. The great Adepts of the past foresaw this crisis and foreordained this duty.'
'What duty?' Stile asked. 'Clef is merely a musician. A fine one, granted, the best I know - but no warrior, no Adept. What can he do?'
'No Adept?' Pyreforge snorted. 'As well claim the Platinum Flute be no instrument! He can play the dead to Heaven and crumble mountains by his melody - and these be only the fringes of his untrained power. Once we have trained him to full expertise - he is the Foreordained!'
So Earth mythology might not relate, but the implication of significance did. 'So he is, after all, Adept? He seemed ordinary to me - but perhaps I did not hear him play in Phaze.'
Pyreforge smiled wryly. 'Thou didst hear him, Adept. Music relates most intimately to magic, as thou shouldst know.'
So the elf knew of Stile's vision! 'And Clef is the finest musician to come to Phaze,' Stile said, seeing it. 'But what exactly is he to do? May we say hello to him?'
'You may not,' the old elf said. This usage always sounded incongruous to Stile here, where 'thee' and 'thou' were standard - but of course it was the correct plural form. 'His power be enormous, but he be quite new to it and has much to learn and little time ere he master his art. We need no more shaking of our mountains! He be deep in study for the occasion he must attend and may not be disturbed.'
'What occasion?' Stile asked with growing frustration.
But still the elf would not respond directly. 'Thou shalt meet him when it be time, Lord Blue, and all will be clarified. Leave us to teach the Foreordained his music. Go now on thy honeymoon; thou must recuperate and restore thine own powers for the effort to come.'
So it seemed. They were teaching Clef music? This was either humor or amazing vanity! Disgruntled, Stile thanked the diminutive, wrinkled elf and departed. 'I don't feel comfortable being ignorant of great events, especially when there are hints they relate intimately to me,' he muttered to the Lady.
'How dost thou think I felt, cooped up in the Blue Demesnes whilst thou didst go out to live or die?'
'I don't recall thy staying cooped long-'
'Let's ride, my Lord.'
Stile smiled. She had the feminine way of changing the subject when pressed. She was not a woman to let fate roll over her unchallenged, and her present deference to him was merely part of the honeymoon. Had he desired a creature to honor his every foible, he would have loved Sheen. The Lady Blue would always be someone to reckon with.
They mounted and rode. Pyreforge was right: the curtain was brighter now, faintly scintillating as it angled across the slopes of the Purple Mountains . It followed the contours of the terrain in its fashion; the curtain extended vertically until it became too faint for them to see, and evidently continued below the ground similarly. As the land fell away, it exposed more of the curtain. There was no gap; the curtain was continuous.
That was what intrigued Stile - that ubiquitous transition between frames. The landscapes of Proton and Phaze were identical, except that Proton was a barren, polluted world where science was operative, while Phaze was a fresh, verdant world of magic. Only those people who lacked alternate selves in the other frame could cross between them. No one seemed to know why or how the curtain was there, or what its mode of operation was. It just served as the transition between frames, responsive to a wish from one side, a spell from the other.
They intended to follow the curtain in its generally westward extension until it terminated at the West Pole. Stile had been increasingly curious about the curtain, and the West Pole held a special fascination for him because it
