Out of Phaze

“Aye, a day ago. I put her on the way to the Blue Demesnes.”

Confirmation! “I’m going there now.”

“Thou wilt ne’er catch her, at the rate thou art going. She was charging north on the hoof, last I saw her.”

“I’ll keep going, though. Thank you for your information, Phoebe.”

“Nobody thanks a harpy,” she grumbled. “It be just not done.”

“Sorry.” He waved to her, and went on.

“And when thou dost catch her, ne’er let her go!” she screeched after him.

It was advice he intended to follow. He moved on down the slope, and in due course came to the level plain. Here he made better progress, finding the approximate route they had traveled before. He knew this was unicorn country, so would be free of most predators.

He was mistaken. In midafternoon, as he was trudging tiredly along, a great shadow cut across the plain. He looked up, and spied a dragon.

He hoped the monster was just passing by. But it wasn’t. Evidently it had spotted him trudging, and decided that this was suitable prey. It wasn’t a large dragon, compared to the one they had encountered south of the mountains; this might be a scavenger, seeking prey that was too weak to defend itself well.

Well, he fit the description. He was not only tired, he was exposed, for there were no trees nearby and no other cover. He had no weapon. He could neither fight nor flee effectively.

The dragon swooped. Its talons were spread; it planned to snatch him up and carry him away, perhaps biting off his head to keep him passive.

Magic! He had to use a spell to protect himself!

But what? He had only seconds to come up with one. The dragon was diving toward him at an awesome rate, its little eyes and big teeth gleaming.

Something to make it too small to harm him! “Dragon fall, become small!” he sang as it closed on him. And knew that it wasn’t going to work.

The dragon seemed to hesitate. It lost control, passing over Mach’s head, the downdraft from its wings almost blasting him off his feet. It lifted, and wobbled, seeming huge.

Huge? The thing was growing!

Mach realized that he had really blown his spell this time. It had not merely failed, it had had the opposite of the intended effect! Instead of making the dragon fall and get small, it was rising and getting larger. He had made things even worse for himself than they had been.

He scrambled through his mind, trying to come up with a better spell, trying to concentrate to make it work, trying to generate some more substantial music and having no success at any of these efforts. He watched, morbidly fascinated, as the dragon lifted and grew.

Then the monster stalled out and dropped. It flapped its wings desperately, but could not find enough purchase for them, and crashed into the ground. The contact was a hard one; Mach felt the earth shudder.

The dragon lay still. It was either dead or close to it. Mach decided not to investigate closely; the thing might not be as badly off as it seemed He took the opportunity to get himself as far from it as possible.

But he pondered. Granted that his spell had been another disaster, confirming his caution in avoiding magic where possible —why had the dragon crashed? It had gotten larger, so should have been even more formidable.

Larger? Did that mean it also increased its mass? Surely so; here in Phaze mass had no relevance, as was evident when Fleta changed from unicorn form to hummingbird form. If it got heavier as well as larger, the dynamics of its flight would change; it would require a proportionally greater wingspan to do the same job. Many of the laws of physics did not apply in the magic realm, but it seemed that some did—those not specifically countered by magic. So the dragon’s ratios had gotten wrong; it was unable to fly, because though its wings had grown with the rest of it, they needed to grow faster than the rest of it, to keep it aloft. Thus it had stalled and crashed.

His spell had done the job after all. But through no great wit or magic of his! He had once again blundered to a kind of success. He was not phenomenally pleased.

At the rate he was going, he was surely losing headway. If Fleta had galloped by here a day ago, he would be two days behind by the time he reached the Blue Demesnes. But he remained reluctant to try too much magic. Magic seemed, to him, to be fraught with the same kind of dangers as would be working with complex equipment a person did not properly understand: the consequences of some seemingly minor misjudgment could be magnified disastrously.

Still, there were dangers here, as the recent episode of the dragon showed, and if he wanted to remain long in Phaze he would need to sharpen his survival skills. So it was necessary that he tackle magic, so as to be able to use it effectively at need. And his first need was travel.

He sat down and pondered. He didn’t want to risk transporting himself; the fate of the dragon made that all too worrisome. But he could conjure something that would help him travel—