Robot Adept

“She be safe for now,” he reported, vastly relieved. “She has a harpy friend.”

“Fleta made that friend,” Stile agreed. “I think I learned from my experience with Trool the Troll that any species, no matter how vile seeming, can have good representatives, if correctly approached.”

“I think I be ready now to spy on the Adepts,” Bane said. “The test was a success.”

“First rest a day,” Stile said. “Then we’ll send you out in the morning.”

Bane realized that much had happened recently, and he was tired. “The morning,” he agreed.

Thus it was that the next day he found himself in butterfly form—the flying mode of this creature was easier to relate to than that of the bee—near the Orange Demesnes. He had taken the precaution of becoming well adapted to his form before being conjured to this vicinity, so that he would not nutter about inadequately and perhaps call attention to himself. But in getting that practice he had used energy, and now in the presence of the many exotic blooms of the Orange Demesnes he was hungry. So he flitted from flower to flower, sampling as many as he could and thoroughly enjoying himself.

However, he did not forget his mission. He wanted to spy on the Orange Adept, and learn if he could what mischief the Adverse Adepts were plotting. Stile was not paranoid; if he suspected trouble, then trouble was surely in the making.

The Adept lived in a tiny shack in the center of an overgrown vale in a jungle forest. Bane fluttered closer to the shack, but it showed no sign of life. The Adept was either asleep or absent. In either event, Bane was not accomplishing much. It had not occurred to him that spying would be this dull!

Then a bird swooped down. Oops! Bane plunged for the tangled ground, avoiding the predator. But the bird swerved to follow, with marvelous accuracy. It had far more speed and power than Bane did, and was evidently determined to snap up this morsel.

Bane could not do other magic in this form. As the bird took his body, he invoked the conversion spell in butterfly language, and became a man.

The bird, startled, winged immediately for distant parts. Bane was safe—except that he now stood in his normal form in the heart of the Orange Demesnes. That was dangerous!

He took a step—and encountered ferocious brambles the butterfly hadn’t noticed. Indeed, they were coiling about his legs, nudging their thorns into position for best effect. No easy way out of this!

There was no help for it: he would have to conjure himself out, and hope that the Adept was absent, because magic of this magnitude would surely alert him otherwise. That could make him, and therefore all the Adverse Adepts, aware that they were being spied on by someone, and it would not take them long to guess whom.

He conjured himself to the center of the Purple Mountain range. He hoped that if Orange were aware of the conjuration, and traced it, he would assume that another Adept had stopped by. This might not be the best of ploys, but it was all he could think of in the pressure of the moment.

He was tempted to check on Agape and the harpy, if they remained together, but resisted the impulse. If an Adept were tracing his course, he hardly wanted to lead that hostile man to Agape!

He conjured himself to the White Mountain range, and finally home. He had expended a number of valuable spells, but it seemed a necessary precaution, doubly hiding his true destination.

“I think he was asleep,” Stile said. “My magic indicates he is at home; he seldom leaves it. I don’t think you alerted him. What happened?”

“A bird,” Bane said, disgruntled.

“Next time make it a poisonous species.”

“Aye.” Bane grimaced. “I be not much good at spying, methinks.”

“Who among us is? Evidently there was not much to be learned there.”

Bane resolved to do better next time. That afternoon he transformed into a brightly colored, highly toxic species of butterfly, whose blue and yellow wings advertised its nature; no sensible bird would touch it. Stile conjured him to the Tan Demesnes.

He fluttered near a monstrous banyan tree, whose branches spread so far horizontally that they could not support their weight and dropped new trunks to the ground as buttresses. Thus this single tree seemed rather like a forest, with lesser plants growing in the shadows and arches of it. Bane studied it with his butterfly senses, but could not fathom its extent; it was a labyrinth!

Odd that the Adept whose magic related to plants lived in a wilderness hovel, while the one whose magic related to people lived in the most elaborate vegetative structure. The Adepts as a whole seemed to honor no sensible pattern.

He fluttered into the shadows of the tree, seeking flowers, but there were few here; the light was too dim. He flew up to see whether there was more above the lower branches, for he needed flowers as a cover for his presence.