Myth-Gotten Gains m-17

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  "I know not where most of my companions be," Ersatz admitted, the steel-blue eyes dropping slightly. "Many of us haven't seen one another in over a century. If truth be told, most of us don't care for each other. Kelsa — she is the great scrying crystal, the most accurate viewer of the future ever crafted, and she has never made a direct statement since the day she was carved. When time is of the essence, she cannot get to the point!"

  "That's your specialty." I grinned.

  "You have a sharp wit yourself, my friend."

  "So, what am I supposed to do with you?" I asked. "I don't really need a trophy for my wall, especially not a talking trophy."

  The blue eyes looked alarmed. "Nay, friend, I wouldn't want to be a fixture. For a time I was embedded in the wall of yonder eating establishment," the sword managed to glance in the direction of the street. Out the inn's door I could see a red-walled hut with customers emerging carrying flat, gooey comestibles that were this dimension's equivalent of pizza. "I lived side by side with a wain's worth of junk from all over this dimension. I was only freed from the endless chatter of 'tonight's specials' and 'two-for-one dinners' when the patrons finally decreed that they would no more sit at the table beneath my prisoning brackets. I think they did not like my comments upon the resemblance between their meals and the guts of enemies I have slain. That is when I was vended unceremoniously to yonder merchant."

  "They just didn't appreciate good dinner conversation," I said, grinning. "I know a couple of pretty good swordsmen who would take care of you in your old age. Keep you all buffed up, listen to your stories."

  The sword got huffy. "I do not need shielding! I need to be cast forth into fate's way once again, so that I may end up where I am needed next. Friend, you have proven to be an intelligent being who sees more than a few ducats at the end of the next trade."

  "Who says?" I interrupted him.

  "I need your help."

  "Mine?"

  "Aye, yours."

  "Forget it, bud," I said. "I'm on vacation. I'll take you as far as the next war, then we part company."

  For the first time the eyes bore an expression of appeal.

  "Honorable master Pervect, I beseech you. Listen to my story. Then, if you must place me in the hand of some mudstained lad who is throwing himself into the battle, I will accept it."

  "Fine. Suppose you can't buy me a drink." I glanced around for a likely spot.

  "Nay, such is not my talent. I am sorry. I have been waiting for one such as you. I have heard word from a passing dagger that my fellow Hoard members are being collected. One greedy individual is gathering all of them up. This must not happen. We cannot gather dust upon a shelf for all eternity. We must be free to blow in Fate's wind."

  I chugged the last of my second bucket and signed to the lass for a third one. She delivered it with some dispatch, and retreated. Guess that not many of her customers took a table for the purpose of talking to their weapons. "Sorry, skinny, but I stopped doing freebies, especially big, legendary freebies, not long after I stopped being an apprentice myself."

  "Did I mention that one of our members is the Endless Purse of Money?" the sword asked, the reflected eyes gleaming.

  I stopped in mid-gulp, entranced by the memory of that legend. There wasn't a Pervect child who heard it in school who didn't have itchy palms and avaricious dreams about it. "Well, yes…"

  "Whatever you can get out of her, that shall be your reward."

  "I've heard offers like that phrased before, and not just about money," I said. "Forget it."

  The sword's eyes dipped with understanding. "Very well, I shall persuade her to give you whatever sum you require. On my honor, we will reward you more than adequately. Thousands of gold pieces shall be yours. Tens of thousands. But, first, we must find her."

  The offer sounded better the longer I hesitated. "Well…all right. What do we do first?"

  "You must take me to Kelsa. She is the only one of the Hoard whose location I know, and the only one who could tell us the location of the others. Then we will find each of them and free them from their captivity."

  "Not part of the deal," I said, seeing visions of money bags winging away from me. "Forget it. I'm not going off on a quest just because you want to put the band back together. You wanted out of the flea market, and you're out. From my point of view you owe me a hundred gold pieces. That's all."

  "But…care you nothing for the greater good?"

  "Just because you and your buddies get cabin fever?" I snarled. "I don't think so. I'm just going to hang out here and have a little snack, then I'm…"

  At that moment, the door burst inward. In a flurry of hair, the crowd from the square came rushing inside, the junk merchant at their head.

  "There he is!" the Ittschalkian exclaimed. "The one who cheated me! We'll tear the hairless one apart!"

  I had already sprung to my feet. Somehow the hilt of the sword sprang into my hand.

  "Draw me, friend!" the sword shouted. "Let me drink of their blood. We will be victorious! Have at you, varlets!"

  The mass of Ittschalkians was closing in. As a matter of course I have all the exits from a place scoped out in advance in case of just such a moment as this. I made for the rear of the establishment, only to come face to face with the local gendarmes bounding toward me with purpose in their eyes. One of them was raising a particularly nasty-looking magikal wand from its hip holster. I had no choice. I reached into my pocket for the D-hopper that had brought me there to Ittschalk, and hit RECALL.

  BAMF!

  Chapter 2

  THE INN VANISHED. It was replaced in a magikal second by an equally dimly-lit room, but most of the occupants were already on the floor. Loud music filled the air, along with the indelible stink of stale ale mixed with vomit, fried food and unwashed bodies. The frat party I'd left behind in Bonhomme was still going on. I found myself straddling an upended beer stein and a purple banner reading "Vertebrates Rule!" A couple of the drunks on the carpet lifted their snakelike heads and tasted the air.

  "Aahz!" one of them hissed. His black-bead eyes gleamed with pleasure. "You're back! Have another drink!"

  "No, thanks, Sllisssiik," I said. "Just here to make a pit stop."

  Sllisssiik aimed his tongue toward the doors at the rear of the room. "On the left, but watch your step. Tktktksssni went back to shed his skin and disgorged the prey he'd engulfed all over the floor."

  "Poltroon," the sword said, sulkily. "Not one of those caitiffs back there was armed with anything sharper than a butter knife, and you whisk me away from the only good fight I have seen in ten years."

  I glared. "Shut up, or I'll use you to shave with."

  "Who's your friend?" asked Sllisssiik, blinking at the blue eye that stuck up over the torn edge of the leather scabbard.

  "Ersatz am I," the sword said.

  "Cool." The Bonhommey giggled and slid back to the floor.

  The sword returned its keen gaze to me. "Well, friend Aahz, if you return to Ittschalk you will walk into a fight. I would gladly be at your side, but you say you care not for a hearty battle. Misadventure has thrown us together. What say we cast our lots into fate's wind?"

  "The only 'lots' I'm interested in is the money you owe me," I pointed out.

  The blue eyes were wistful. "Alas, I cannot repay my debt to you if you do not carry me to my friend Kelsa's side. If you'd lief not, I would understand, but we both feel strongly. I care not for being in debt, and you do not care to be owed. Indulge me yet one more time, friend Aahz. You will not regret it."

  "I regret it already." My temper was up. I missed my snack, my third beer, and my quiet walk around the town. I wanted a vacation, and instead I got a sword that speaks fluent Forsooth. If I bent it into paperclips I couldn't get my ten gold pieces back. I stuck my finger at the blade between the eyes where its nose would be, if it had a nose. "All right, I'll give you one chance. How do I find your crystal friend?"

  "She is in Ori."

  BAMF!


  It had been about twenty years since I last visited Ori. Nice enough dimension, but the rice beer didn't have the hit of good sake, and the women weren't interested in a guy with scales. Too bad, because they were a nice bunch of pussycats.

  We appeared at the edge of Perrt, the second-largest town. Getting by the sentry box at the main gate took only a moment. The guards, who resembled enormous, sinewy black leopards, inspected my baggage, which consisted of one talkative sword, cash and the toothbrush in my pocket, and rubbed their jaws along my thigh, scent-marking me to indicate I'd passed inspection.

  "Kelsa has spent the last hundred or so years counseling the great seer Ori Ella," Ersatz explained as I followed his directions through the maze of streets that wound in between the white painted plastered houses. "She is a great wisewoman, who has made good use of my friend's gifts."

  I was a whole lot less interested in her gifts than I was in ridding myself of my talkative companion. We dodged a huge cart full of silver fish each the size of my torso, and the parade of Orion shoppers following behind it with an insane gleam in their eyes. I had the urge — resistible, fortunately — to yell "Here, kitty, kitty! Din-dins!" I quite rightly judged it would be the last thing I ever did. It would have picked the fight of a lifetime with the locals, who were touchy about their resemblance to the small animal that was a house pet in over a hundred other dimensions. Ersatz would have been thrilled about it. While I walked he told me tales of his past derring-do, and he had a million of them, literally. Still, as I watched those long tails switching avidly on those furry behinds as they followed the fish cart, it would have been fun.

  "…It was a sight you might have relished, friend Aahz. There they were before us, sixteen black-masked ruffians, each with six swords clutched in their many hands. They moved in upon us. I guided the hand of my young ward. Up, to guard in prime! Over hand, stabbing downward, into the vital midsection of the first attacker. My blade passed right through the body and out the back into the lowest right wrist of another villein, severing the hand. Back out! My wielder drew me over his head in a two-handed stance and brought me down and around, spinning. I turned my blade so my sharpest edge was outward, and we severed the necks of three of them on the spot. Hah!"

  I held up a hand to put an end to the spate. "Are we going the right way?" I asked.

  The keen eyes surveyed the streets. "Aye. We are within a street's length. Do you turn left at the clock tower which yon felinoids are stropping their talons upon, and we will be upon Ella's doorstep in no more than a dozen paces."

  I have good eyesight, but it took another hundred feet before I focused on the shapes at the base of the tower. He was right. The clock tower looked like a popular meeting spot for the citizens of Perrt, a hundred or so of whom were spaced out around its square base, claws out and raking hard at the surface, which seemed to be made of a soft stone. From hundreds of years of wear it had been carved into long narrow ridges like corduroy. The Orions gossiped as they clawed, and came away from the walls with their fingernails honed to fine points and ears full of the latest news, the local variation on the old water cooler. I skirted them and counted twelve paces to the second doorstep.

  "Mount here, good Aahz," Ersatz said. "Kelsa is within."

  Ori Ella's tabby housemaid answered the door and left us in the hallway. I had given her my name, but told her I'd state my business to the mistress of the house. She took that without question. I would have bet that over 80% of visitors did the same thing. Either the seer would know all about us without having to be told, or she was a charlatan, and she'd get out of me what she could read from my body language when we met.

  Apparently, Kelsa was good at choosing the company she kept. The arched door at the end of the hall burst open, and an Orion with pure white fur came bustling toward me, shimmering blue and green robes fluttering in her wake. She had huge blue-green eyes with vertical pupils that were open into wide ovals.

  "Oh, Mr. Aahz, Kelsa has talked of nothing but you for the last two hours! Where is he? Oh, yes, I forgot!" She tittered, and put a coy paw to her breast. "You don't know me, and you don't trust me. I'm Ella. Welcome! Where is Ersatz?"

  She was the real thing. I was impressed. In my experience, fortune tellers were either deluded sensitives who thought the voices in their head had some mystical significance, or scam artists who used a combination of psychology, body reading and shrewd guesses to tell the customers what they wanted to hear. I hadn't mentioned the sword's name since we hit the dimension, so she could not have heard it from an agent or a spy-eye. I hiked Ersatz a foot or so out of his scabbard. His eyes gleamed.

  "Honored, my lady," the sword said.

  "A pleasure," the seer replied, beaming down at him. "Both of you, come right this way! Oh, we have felt for weeks that monumental changes were upon us. I am only glad that you were able to get here so quickly. I've had a dreadful feeling that something was going to go wrong, but I'd rather be wrong about being wrong. Don't you agree?"

  Still babbling, she swept around and led us toward the door from which she had emerged. I followed in her wake, rolling my eyes.

  The house might have been a mansion, but the room she led us to could have been any gimcrack psychic's tent anywhere in the cosmos. The room was lit with candles in sconces. The wicks all smoked like sportscasters. The air was thick and tasted of cheap paraffin. All the furniture was covered with loud-colored silk throws, three or four to an item, so that a customer had to plant his feet firmly on the floor to keep from sliding off. There was lots of it. I had to watch my step in the dimness to avoid bumping into little tables filled with useless knickknacks that would have made any Victorian auntie beam with pride of ownership, like a clock shaped like a tarantula that told time with two of the arms, and a bronze ceramic vase so ugly I was surprised it hadn't scared the petals off the flowers in it. Amid the tables were four or five bureaus and a dozen upholstered chairs with stiffly upright backs. The portraits on the walls were of the Angry Ancestors school of art. I got glared at by assorted curmudgeonly Orions of both genders in various weird costumes, informing me that Ella wasn't the first one in her family to lack dress sense. I glared back.

  All the kitschy decor faded into a dim setting as my eye was caught by a blaze of pure golden light. In the center of the room, on a little round table with a purple, star-spangled cloth, was a sphere. It was so perfectly shaped it reminded me of a soap bubble. It glowed like a movie sunrise. My feet started moving toward it under their own power. I hauled back, reminding my body to whom it belonged, but I kept my eyes on the gleaming orb.

  "Kelsa!" Ersatz said.

  "Ersatz!" the globe squealed. As I got closer I could see a face in the sphere, that of a female Orion wearing a turban adorned with a big gold aigrette and a backward-curving ostrich plume and jeweled spectacles whose corners angled upward. Her whiskers pricked out with delight. "The portents have come to pass. The energies have aligned themselves in the order I foretold as of old. I knew you were coming."

  "Indeed she did," Ella said, gliding over and settling down on the ottoman beside the table. She gestured me to a small chair opposite her. "Why we have been talking about it for some time. I am pleased that you are here. Why, your exploits have absolutely thrilled me to the core of my soul!"

  I preened. "Thanks, Ella. I don't talk about myself much, but it's nice to be appreciated."

  "And, you, too, of course, Mr. Aahz," Ella added, with an apologetic inclination of her head. "Your past has been a most interesting tale. We didn't know until a very short time ago that you were the one who was going to convey the Great Sword Ersatz here to this place!"

  I scowled. The face in the globe turned to face me, and became that of a female Pervect.

  "Your fate has been foretold many times," Kelsa said, "and it changes as frequently as the weather. I believe that the Elements who govern chance send you to tumble like the dice they throw, yet you constantly turn up with a winning number. Oft and oft your future has
altered. A benevolent power must be in your stars. How confusing it must be to constantly turn this way and that!"

  "I take care of myself," I said curtly.

  "I'm going to miss her so much," Ella said, stroking the crystal fondly with her paw. "We've had such marvelous times together! We've gotten to be good friends over these last few years, haven't we, dear?" She leaned fondly toward the globe, and the face within it became an Orion again. "And we've had our fun."

  "Oh, we certainly have," Kelsa exclaimed. "Do you recall when the governor of Perrt came to ask — was it the first time, or the second time? No! It was the third visit after the great festival of Wheeleaf five years ago. Or was it six? About the three women he was keeping behind his wife's back?"

  Ella tittered. "And one of them had sent a spy along in his entourage. How foolish of him to think he could come incognito to US. Why, you saw through her at once."

  "Ah, yes," Kelsa said. "And he was having an affair with her, too. Silly girl. She didn't know whom she was going to betray first. Well, she DID, since she was there to betray the governor first, but then she was going to turn her coat on the mistress, but she wasn't sure in what order she was going to do the betraying!"

  I began to see what Ersatz meant by Kelsa's inability to get to the point. Ella was a perfect match for her.

  "Never mind that," I said, waving a hand to get their attention. "The sword here came for some advice. He wants to know the location the Endless Purse of Money. Give it to him so I can get out of here and get back to my vacation."

  "Oh, your vacation!" Kelsa said, turning the Pervect face to me. She beamed, showing rows of razor-sharp teeth. "Why, you won't have to worry about your vacation. Not at all."

  "Good," I said. "Okay, Ersatz, say your piece and let's get out of here."

  "Fair Kelsa," Ersatz began, "I have suffered idleness for the last many months. I wish to return to battle in the hands of warriors, but I have also heard a disturbing rumor concerning the fate of our fellow Hoard members. Is it true?"