Myth-ion Improbable

by Robert Asprin

  Aahz snorted and then lay down, scooting over enough to give Tanda a little room as well.

  I pointed upward. "What do you see?"

  "A dark ceiling and a lot of dust," Tanda said.

  "I see myself wasting my time," Aahz said. "There's a lot of information here that we need to—"

  Silence filled the old library. After a few long seconds I said, "Interesting, isn't it?"

  "What?" Tanda demanded. "Would you stop playing games and just tell me what is going on?"

  To me the map was now as clear as if it were printed on a white piece of parchment. "It's a drawing," I said, pointing to the clearest lines to Tanda's right.

  "It's a map," Aahz said.

  "Exactly," I said. "And if you study it long enough, you can see where we are."

  "Oh, my heavens," Tanda said to herself, now clearly seeing the drawing of the castle.

  "After a few minutes of looking at it, the lines become clearer," I said. "Take a look to the right of the room we're in."

  I didn't say anything else, giving them both time to study what I had been looking at for hours. Then finally Aahz said, "It looks like there's a corridor there."

  "Where?" Tanda demanded.

  "Off the room shown as a private library," I said. "On the opposite side from the royal suite."

  "And it leads downward," Aahz said.

  "To this area's power," I said. "Do you have any idea what standing in the middle of that kind of energy focal point would feel like?"

  Both Tanda and Aahz looked at me.

  "Like nothing you could ever imagine, apprentice," Aahz said.

  "True," Tanda said, going back to staring at the drawings on the ceiling, "but Skeeve might be the only one who can go down there."

  "I know," Aahz said, also going back to studying the roof over his head.

  "Exactly what do you mean by that?" I asked, not liking the idea that I might have to take that old corridor alone into the middle of the mountain.

  Aahz sighed. "I've tost my powers; Tanda is an assassin, not a magician, and we can't trust Glenda. You're it, apprentice. If one of us has to go down there, it has to be you."

  I stared at the roof, following the ancient corridor down into the center of the mountain to a place of unimaginable power. For the moment, the idea of getting my blood sucked by a vampire cow didn't seem so bad.

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Things are looking up."

  Michelangelo

  The rest of the night just crawled past. Aahz and Tanda stayed on the couches with me for the longest time, studying the map and trying to figure out how we were going to get out of here. I noticed that, once Aahz discovered there was no golden cow, and that the map had been a sham to get someone to save Harold, he became very interested in just leaving. I supposed that was better late then never.

  Aahz was sitting at one of the desks while Tanda and I stood beside him when the wall opened up and Harold stepped in. Through the opening I could see daylight flooding into the main area beyond the bathroom. It seemed we had survived another full-moon night in the land of cow vampires.

  Harold stepped in and glanced at where Glenda was still sleeping. She hadn't moved at all during the night.

  "Did she try to get away?" Harold asked.

  "Only when the sun went down, and only for a few seconds," Aahz said. "The rope held her."

  "Then she's safe," Harold said.

  "What did the rope do?" I asked, not really clear on the concept that a simple rope like that could hold even a child, let alone a person who wanted to be a vampire.

  "Basically, the magik in the rope stopped her from changing," Harold said. "And leaving it on her all night cleaned her system of any chance of it ever happening. Check her neck if you want to make sure."

  I moved over to Glenda. Drool had run out of her mouth and formed a wet spot on the blanket. And she was snoring

  lightly. I put a finger on her temple and eased her head over so I could see the vampire bite marks on her neck. Where her skin had been red and inflamed, it had now returned to normal. Only a few faint marks that looked more like freckles were left of the infection.

  "Amazing," I said.

  Aahz had moved up behind me. "It sure is."

  "Leave the rope on her for a while longer and let her sleep," Harold said. "It will do her good, give her body time to replace the blood drained from it."

  I glanced at Glenda again. For a moment I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Then I remembered she had stranded me in this world with no thought of ever coming back for me, and the feeling-sorry emotion left quickly.

  "So how did you survive the night?" Tanda asked.

  Harold just shrugged. "The same way I have survived every full-moon night for more years than I want to think about. I turned into a cow, ate grass, and slept standing up."

  "Oh," Tanda said. "You going to explain that to us in the rest of your story?"

  Harold laughed. "It's a part of it." Then he looked around. "This is a pretty amazing room, isn't it?"

  "It is," Aahz said. "We learned some interesting history from some of these books."

  I noticed that Aahz didn't say anything about the ceiling map, and I sure wasn't going to either. I wondered if Harold even knew about it.

  "Good," Harold said. "That will give you some more background on what happened with me, and how we got like this. Shall we go back out into the sunlight?"

  "What about her?" I asked, motioning toward the sleeping Glenda.

  Harold shrugged. "She won't wake up as long as the rope is on her. She'll be fine right there."

  We followed him out into the main room. It felt great to see light again. Spending the night in a dusty room worrying about what might happen at any moment wasn't my ideal evening.

  "Anyone like something to eat?" he asked, moving into the kitchen area. We stood around the counter, watching him.

  "Anything but carrot juice," Aahz said, smiling at me.

  "Not funny," I said.

  Harold looked at both of us and shrugged, clearly having no idea what we were talking about. "I can make you a horse-steak sandwich, a cucumber sandwich, or a salad with fresh tomatoes. And I've got either orange juice or water to drink."

  "Wow, you eat better than the rest of your people," Tanda said.

  "I do?" he asked, surprised. "It's been so long since I've been out of these rooms, I wouldn't know."

  "A lot better," I said, "but at the moment I'd just like a glass of water."

  Aahz and Tanda agreed and as he got the water Aahz prompted him to start his story again. "You got up to the point where your people and Count Bovine's people had come to an agreement, his people were changed to cows for most of the month, and this place was sealed off. What changed?"

  "Actually," Harold said, "I changed it."

  "Why?" Aahz asked, a fraction of a second before I could.

  "Because I thought I knew better, knew what was best for my people, knew how to change things back to a better world."

  "Better back up and tell us how that kind of thinking got started," Tanda said.

  Harold nodded. "I met a dimension traveler named Leila. I was running this little restaurant and bar just down the road from here when Leila walked in. We got talking, she told me about the big world outside of this dimension, and then offered to let me be her apprentice. She said I had great magical potential."

  I glanced at Aahz, who ignored me. Not once had Aahz ever said I had great magical potential, and I certainly wasn't going to ask him if I did. He'd just say no and laugh. Mostly laugh.

  "Leila took me dimension-hopping with her, showed me hundreds of different places, taught me some basics of magik, then got killed by an assassin."

  I could tell from the look in Harold's eyes that even though that had been some time ago, he still missed her. And might even have been in love with her.

  "So after she was killed I got a D-Hopper and came back here. The magik block over this old castle was pretty basic, inte
nded to just keep Count Bovine and my people out. But I had been trained in some magik, so I got in, knocking the block down.

  "A little knowledge can be dangerous," Aahz said, glancing at me.

  It was my turn to ignore him.

  "It sure can be," Harold said. "I sat up house right here and found the room you stayed in last night, and started learning about what had happened to my people. And the more I read, the more convinced I became to try to save my people and wipe out the vampires once and for all."

  "In other words," Tanda said, "you started the war again."

  Harold nodded at Tanda's blunt statement. "Basically, I did. Yes."

  "So what went wrong?" Aahz asked.

  "Count Bovine came back," Harold said.

  "What?" I said. "How could he? He'd have to be thousands and thousands of years old."

  "He is," Harold said.

  Aahz stared at me. "When are you going to get it through your head that powerful vampires, like powerful magicians, live a very long time?"

  "Okay, okay," I said. "Go on with your story."

  "I actually didn't know that Count Bovine could be alive either," Harold said. "Since I was free from the magical spell that kept the cows safe, I started gathering up help. One by one, I gathered a gang, broke the spell over them, and started planning. When there were about fifty of us, all trained and on horseback, we set about rounding up cows and killing them."

  No one said a word, so Harold went on. "As we went, on our army got bigger and bigger, and more and more cows died. Every skull of every cow we brought back here to make us stronger. It was a heady time."

  Harold looked like an old man, thinking back to his party days.

  "When did Count Bovine show up?"

  "Oh, about four months into our little war. He and five of his most powerful vampires walked in here one night and killed every one of my men without so much as a fight."

  "Bet you thought you had it shielded, didn't you?" Aahz said.

  "I did," Harold said. "I was so confident of the shielding that I didn't even have guards posted."

  "Wouldn't have done any good," Aahz said. Tanda nodded. I didn't have a clue why he said that, but Harold seemed to agree as well.

  "Needless to say, Count Bovine was angry. He imprisoned me up here, and put a spell on me so that every month, when he and his people are dining on my people, I'm a cow eating grass."

  "How long ago was that?" I asked.

  "I don't know exactly," Harold said. "No real reason to keep track. At least thirty years, maybe more."

  "And Bovine and his people have been killing your people ever since?" Aahz asked, looking puzzled.

  "Actually, no," Harold said. "That just started a few years back, when Count Bovine was killed and his second-in-command, Ubald, took over."

  "Ubald's not one for keeping things in balance, is he?" Tanda asked.

  "Not worried about it at all," Harold said. "He told me that there were enough of my kind around for his people to party for centuries."

  "At least he didn't undo the cow spell," I said.

  "Neither he nor Count Bovine could," Harold said. "Ubald keeps trying, though. He's using the cow skulls in the other room there to funnel energy into breaking it."

  "Makes sense," Aahz said. "A spell that major, in place for that long, would be almost impossible to remove. But not completely impossible."

  "He's got time," Harold said.

  "So how did the map come about?" I asked.

  "When Count Bovine was still alive, and had me locked up here, none of them lived anywhere near here. One day, this cartographer showed up. I wanted him to help me escape and he said he couldn't."

  "He can't," Tanda said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "He told me that, as long as he didn't involve himself in any activity in any dimension," Harold said, "he was free to use his magik to move anywhere he wanted, map anything he wanted, including through the magik that Count Bovine had put up to hold me here in this castle."

  "I'm puzzled," Aahz said, "How did you get him to lie that there was a cow here who gave gold milk and draw a treasure map to it?"

  "It never says anything about a cow giving gold milk," Harold said, laughing. "I'm the cow the map leads to, and I was willing to give anyone a lot of gold if they found me."

  "Makes sense to me," Tanda said, laughing.

  I was enjoying the different emotions playing over my mentor's face. We had deciphered the map, found the cow, and were entitled to the gold. That made Aahz's mouth water, I could tell. But, at the same time, getting the gold out of here, with all our blood still inside our bodies, was going to be another matter.

  Harold noticed Aahz's face. "You're a Pervert, right?"

  "Pervect," Aahz said, showing all his teeth.

  He hated being called a Pervert, and often was, since that was the reputation of the demons from his dimension.

  "Sorry," Harold said. "But you love money and gold, don't you?"

  Now it was Tanda's and my turn to laugh. Aahz just gave us both a dirty look and then said, "Of course."

  "You are welcome to all the treasure-gold if you want- you can carry from here," Harold said. "There's tons of the stuff in the back. The rocks of this mountain are full of it. All you have to do is help me escape."

  I knew there wasn't a sunbeam's chance on Vortex #6 that Aahz would turn down that offer. But I didn't really mind. I

  sort of liked Harold. And besides, I'd lost a mentor once myself, and we apprentices needed to stick together.

  "You know of a way to escape from here?" Tanda asked Harold, staring at how Aahz's eyes had glazed over at just the idea of a lot of gold.

  "If I did, would I still be here?" he said, his voice sad.

  Aahz looked at me and I shrugged. "Why not?"

  Aahz looked at Tanda. Tanda sighed. "Sure. As you've been saying all along, we've come this far."

  "Great," Aahz said. "We'll help you."

  I knew for a fact that Aahz didn't have a clue how we were going to help Harold escape, but the promise sure cheered up our host.

  After another hour of talking with Harold to make sure we hadn't missed anything important, I knew enough about this Ubald vampire guy to make me want another shot of carrot juice. The guy was just plain mean, almost as old as Count Bovine had been, and not at all happy with the situation as it stood.

  On top of that, he liked to party, and party hard. By the time the sun was ready to come up on the last morning of the full moon, Harold said, Ubald and his group were stumbling idiots. Still very dangerous, but stumbling, and it often took the men with the golden shovels days to round up all the cattle from the different rooms of the castle and take them back to their private pastures.

  The idea of coming into a huge bedroom suite to find two cows standing on a rumpled bed was too much for me. To­night was that night, the most dangerous night of the full moon according to Harold. I could hardly wait.

  Finally Aahz decided we had talked enough and we all headed back into the library area. Aahz wanted to have Harold show us the books about the spells put over this castle, the spells put on everyone by Count Bovine, and what Harold knew of the magik energy surrounding this castle.

  But first we had to wake up Glenda. Snoring, drooling Glenda. As far as I was concerned, she could just stay right there, sleeping for the next hundred years, or until she died of hunger in her sleep, whichever came first.

  But it seemed that Harold and Aahz had other ideas for her which they were not sharing with me.

  "Are you confident she's cured?" I asked Harold as we stood staring at her.

  "Completely," Harold said. "The magik rope there does the trick."

  "Well, just to be sure," I said, "can we put the rope around her again tonight, before the sun sets?"

  Aahz laughed. "Trust me, she'll have the rope on tonight. You can count on it."

  I stared at him as he moved to her and untied the knot in the golden rope, then pulled it free, wrapping it in
his hand.

  After what Glenda had done to us, I figured it would have served her right to become a cow for most of every month for the rest of her life. She was already a self-centered bloodsucker; why shouldn't she have the entire cow package?

  After Aahz pulled the rope off of her, she awoke, groaned and somehow managed to sit up, her face pale and her eyes glazed. "What happened?"

  "You slept through the night just fine," Aahz said.

  "Snoring like a horse," Tanda said.

  I wanted to ask her how she knew horses snored, but figured this wasn't the time to push too much into her personal life.

  Glenda's hand went to her neck, where there was now no sign of the vampire bites. I could tell that she was surprised when she touched her neck and it didn't hurt. Surprised and confused. Then she noticed the gold laced rope Aahz was holding. For a moment she looked into his eyes. Then she asked, "Was I going to turn?"

  "You were," Harold said. "It was why Ubald and his vampire friends let you live."

  "And the rope is what I think it is?" Glenda asked, not taking her eyes from Aahz.

  Aahz held it up. "Just to be safe, you're going to wear it tonight as well. I promised my apprentice there for his peace of mind."

  She stared at the rope for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose I should thank you."

  "Just help us all get out of here and we can call it even," Aahz said.

  "I'll do what I can," she said, "but first, can I have a glass of water?"

  Harold laughed. "You are cured. I'll get it for you."

  I had no idea why Harold thought that Glenda getting a glass of water meant she was cured. Seemed like a somewhat silly sign to me. Or maybe vampires were only thirsty for blood?

  Harold headed out the panel toward his kitchen area. When he was safely gone Glenda looked up at Aahz, the anger clear and at full force in her eyes.

  "Why didn't you just stake me when you had the chance?"

  I was stunned by the question. And her anger at Aahz for not killing her.

  "I thought about it," Aahz said.

  He pointed to a sharp stake on top of an antique dresser beside the couch she was sitting on. I hadn't noticed it before. Again I was stunned. Aahz went on.