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automatically and poorly. “Maybe sometimes a bitch stayed in her dog-form, just for the novelty?”
    Stile wondered just what sort of bestiality lurked in the secret dreams of this nasty man. Perhaps this was the phenomenon of projection, in which a person with illicit desires projected the realization of certain acts onto others.   The Citizen was giving himself away without realizing it.   Stile continued to parry him verbally, taking the worst of it, though he had the ability to reverse the onus at any time. He was tacitly egging the man on. Meanwhile, he exploited the rolls of the dice skillfully, and soon had gained a net advantage. The Citizen could have prevented this, had he been paying similar attention. But his morbid fascination with Stile’s supposed exploits with shape-changing females had done him in. By the time he became aware of the trap, it was too late; even his amazing luck could not make up for his squandered opportunities.   They entered the final stage, and both resumed bearing off men. For once Stile had better throws of the dice, and finished two men ahead.
    It took a moment for the Citizen to absorb the significance. He had been so far ahead, he knew subjectively that it would take a prohibitively massive turn of fortune to deprive him of victory. No such turn had occurred.   Now his eyes fixed on the number 64 at the top of the doubling cube, and he saw that this narrow margin of two pieces had at one stroke washed him out of the Tourney.  
    “You must visit Phaze some day, sir,” Stile said brightly.   “I know just the bitch for you.”

CHAPTER 3 - Honeymoon
    Stile crossed the curtain at the usual place, emerging from the food-servicing hall to the deep forest of Phaze. In a moment a unicorn trotted up. But it wasn’t Neysa. This one was slightly larger, male, and his coat was deep dark blue except for the two red socks on his hind feet.
    “Clip!” Stile exclaimed, surprised. “I expected—“ The unicorn metamorphosed into a young man garbed in blue shirt, furry trousers, red socks, floppy hat, gloves, and boots. His resemblance to the unicorn was clear to anyone conversant with the forms.
    “She’s off getting bred, at long last. The Herd Stallion’s keeping her with the herd until she foals. That’s S.O.P.”
    “Yes, of course,” Stile agreed, disappointed. He found his hidden clothes and dressed quickly; it would not do to travel naked here, though there was really no firm convention. He wanted only the best for Neysa, his best friend in this frame, yet he felt empty without her company. But he had made a deal with the Herd Stallion to release her for breeding when his mission of vengeance was finished; now that he had dispatched the Red Adept, it was time.   Time for relaxation, recovery, and love. Time to be with the lovely Lady Blue.
    “That was the funniest thing,” Clip said, evidently following the thrust of Stile’s thoughts. “Thou didst marry the Lady, then skipped off without even—“
    “An idiosyncracy of the situation,” Stile said shortly.   He had departed without consummating the marriage be cause of a prophecy that he would have a son by the Lady Blue; he knew he would survive the dangerous mission ahead of him if he only waited to generate that child thereafter, since such prophecies had the force of law. But now the barbs of the ugly Citizen were fresh in his mind, making this subject sensitive. “You’re volunteering to be my mount?”
    “Neysa intimated gently that I’d get homed at the wrong end if I didn’t,” Clip admitted. “Besides, thou dost have interesting adventures.”
    “I’m only going to honeymoon with my wife.”
      “That’s what I mean.” Clip shifted to his natural form, his horn playing with the sound of a saxophone—a bar of the wedding march, trailing into a tune with risqué connotations.
    Stile jumped on the unicorn’s back, landing deliberately hard. Clip blew out one more startled note and took off.