"Anthony, Piers - Adept - 02 - Blue Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

of music sounded. Clip had been unable to hold back his
mirth any longer.

Neysa fired back an angry concatenation of notes, then
galloped harder. They fairly flew across the slope. Soon
they were well away. "Just for that, thou shouldst make
him participate in the Unolympics too," Stile suggested,
and she snorted affirmatively.

But now his own problem came to the fore. "Maybe I
can ask the Oracle how to handle the Stallion," Stile mused
aloud. But that was no good; he had used up his single
Oracular query before, in the process of discovering his
Phaze identity.

"One other thing bothers me," Stile remarked after a bit,
as they galloped across the lovely plain. "Why is the Herd
Stallion being so polite about it? He could easily have
insisted that I fight him today, and he surely would have
won. He has no special brief for me, yet he treated me with
extraordinary fairness."

Neysa veered to approach an island copse of oat trees.
Safely inside the tangle of growth, she made a shrug that
hinted he should dismount. When he did, she shifted to
girl-form again. "It is thy spell," she said. "All the herd is
oath-friend to me, and if he took me unfairly, humiliating
thee, they would turn against him."

Stile struck his head with the heel of his unseen hand.




18 Blue Adept

"Of course! Even a king must consider how far his subjects
can be pushed." So his magic had indeed affected the Stal-
lion, albeit circuitously, by affecting those the Stallion had

to deal with.

Neysa stood, not yet shifting back, looking at him ex-
pectantly though of course her eyes could not focus on
him. Stile took her in his arms. "I believe these are more
words than thou has spoken to me in thy life before," he

said, and kissed her.

He turned her loose, but still she waited. He knew why,