Free Out of Phaze by Piers Anthony Page A

demesnes! Here there be monsters, and as we be—we cannot travel through the fell swamp.”
    Mach remembered the swamp. He realized what she meant. If it had not been for the unicorn, he would have been lost.
    That unicorn! What had been its intent—and where had it gone? What would it do when it returned and found him gone? “Is there any other route? One that doesn’t go through the swamp?”
    “None we would care to take,” she said.
    “Worse than the swamp?”
    She nodded soberly.
    “But how did you get here, last night?”
    ‘Thou really dost not know!” she said, as if verifying something she couldn’t quite believe.
    “All I know is that I slept, and when I woke, you were beside me. You must have had some safe route.”
    “Not one I care to use at the moment.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Surely thou dost not,” she agreed. “But mayhap we have another way.”
    “Another path?”
    “Another way. Thou must use thy magic.”
    “But I told you, I have no magic!”
    “How dost thou know?”
    “I come from a scientific frame. I don’t even believe in magic!”
    “Well, I don’t believe in thy science,” she retorted. “But if I were in thy land, I would at least try thy way.”
    Mach realized that there was some justice in her position. “Very well, tell me how to do magic. We’ll see what happens.”
    “Always before, thou hast sung a ditty.”
    “Sung a ditty?” he asked incredulously.
    “A little rhyme, and it happens.”
    “This is ridiculous!”
    ‘Thou didst promise to try,” she reminded him, pouting.  
    So he had. “What ditty do you want me to sing?”
    She shrugged. ‘Try some simple spell, first.”
    “No spell is simple, to my way of thinking!”
    “Conjure a sword, mayhap. That can slay a monster.”
    “A sword.” Now Mach shrugged. “I just make a rhyme, and sing it?”
    “About what thou dost want.”
    Mach’s experience in the Game on Proton had made him apt at quick challenges. He could sing well, and he could write poetry, including nonsense verse. That last was an achievement he was proud of, for no other robot he knew of could do it. In a moment he had fashioned some doggerel verse: “I’ll be bored, without a sword,” he said.
    Nothing happened. “Nay, thou must sing it,” Fleta reminded him. “And I think thou must concentrate, make a picture of it in thy mind.”
    Mach pictured an immense broadsword. “I’ll be bored, without a sword!” he sang.
    There was a puff of smoke and an acrid smell. Something was in his hand. As the air cleared, he looked at it.
    It was a toy sword.
    “Dost thou still mock me?” Fleta demanded. “What canst thou fight with that?”
    But Mach was amazed. “I conjured it!” he said. “I actually did conjure it!”
    “Of course thou didst conjure it!” Fleta agreed acidly, stamping a foot in rather cute frustration. “But I did mean a real sword!”
    “I tried for a real sword,” Mach said. “But I really didn’t believe it would work.”
    “It did not work, numbskull! In years of yore, thou wouldst have wrought a truly adequate blade.”
    “In just a day of yore, I wasn’t even here,” he retorted, nettled.
    She softened. “Aye, sirrah, I forget! Well, try again.”
    That seemed sensible. Mach set down the toy, concentrated on an image of a yard-long blade formed of stainless steel, and sang: “I’ll be bored without a sword!”
    There was a swirl of fog before him. It dissipated, leaving—nothing. Not even a toy sword.
    “Art sure thou art really trying?” Fleta asked.
    “I thought I was,” Mach said, baffled. ‘The first must have been a fluke.”
    “Canst not get through without a weapon,” Fleta said.
    “I could make a weapon.”
    “And conjure another toy? This be tiresome!”
    “I mean by hand.”
    “By hand?”
    “To craft it from a natural object. A stone, or a pie of wood.” He looked about as he spoke. There were many stones along the slope they had just descended, and old