MA11-12 Myth-ion Improbable Something Myth-Inc

by Robert Asprin

  “And your people agreed?” Glenda asked, sounding as stunned as I was feeling.

  “I don’t think my ancestors had a choice,” Harold said. “Using the magik of this area, Count Bovine put a spell on the rest of my people. Then, using an even more powerful magik spell, he changed his people to cows.”

  “So while they were cows,” Aahz asked, “why didn’t your people just kill them all? Seems like it would have been easy.”

  “It would have been,” Harold said, “if not for the magik that keeps us from doing just that, and keeps us from advancing. The magik allows us to do nothing but prepare for the round-up. Month in and month out, for centuries now, we have done nothing else.” Harold just shook his head and went on. “Bovine’s people became contented cows, careful how they treated us during the full-moon nights when they regained their normal form and had parties. We became the feed animals, content to do nothing but prepare constantly to serve our cow masters. It was survival for us, but not much of one.”

  Harold glanced once more out the window. The sun was just a minute from leaving the top of the distant mountaintop. “Quickly, follow me,” he said, moving toward the bathroom area of his living quarters.

  “What happens now?” Tananda asked.

  “I become a cow for the night, the vampires roam the castle feeding and killing like the history says happened, and if you don’t hide in a magically protected area, they will find you.”

  I was right behind him when Harold led us into his bathroom, opened a cabinet on the wall, touched a place inside the cabinet, and stepped back as a wall behind a toilet started moving inwards.

  “This is the most magically protected room in all the castle,” Harold said. “Stay in there until I open the door. Under no circumstances come out. Understand?”

  “We understand,” Aahz said.

  I was the first one through the door, with Tananda and Glenda right behind me. Aahz took a moment longer, talking about something with Harold for a moment, and then he joined us.

  Behind the wall the space had been carved out of solid stone that was streaked in gold. It was warm and lit by the golden glow of the gold from the walls. The entire room was filled with old books, scrolls, desks, chairs, and more antiques than I had ever seen in one place. We were all inside when the guy slid the wall panel closed behind us without another word.

  “Not even a wave goodnight,” Tananda said.

  Glenda moved inside and right to an antique couch against one wall.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, lying down and closing her eyes.

  “I think I need a nap.”

  “Good idea,” Aahz said. Then he looked at me and held up a gold-threaded rope that he had gotten somewhere. He put his finger to his mouth to indicate that we should all be quiet. Then he moved over and took an old blanket from another antique.

  “I got a blanket here to cover you,” Aahz said to Glenda. “Keep you warm for the night.”

  “Thanks,” Glenda murmured, clearly almost asleep.

  Aahz moved over to her, motioning for Tananda and me to follow silently. I had no idea what he wanted me to do. Aahz put the blanket over her, wrapping the rope over her as well. Smooth move. She would never know it was there.

  He pointed that I should pull the end of the rope that had dropped down against the wall under the couch.

  I got on my knees and did just that, then gave the end to him as Aahz pretended to tuck the blanket around her. With a quick knot he tied the rope and stepped back.

  Tananda and I both stepped back with him. I didn’t know how one loop would hold someone like Glenda, or why she even needed to be held. But clearly Aahz had known something I hadn’t, which was normal.

  Glenda started thrashing, back and forth, back and forth, clearly trying to get out of the bind, yet the golden rope never seemed to tighten or strain in holding her. Then her eyes opened as if seeing a terror I sure didn’t want to see.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered.

  Aahz motioned for me to be silent as Glenda’s mouth opened into a scream that never really came. Her back arched her up against the blanket and rope, and she held that pose for a good thirty seconds.

  It was the longest thirty seconds I had experienced. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her and the look of pure terror on her face. Then whatever she was going through was over. She slumped back, closed her eyes, and began to snore.

  Aahz motioned that we should move away through the books and old papers and scrolls.

  “Okay, what just happened there?” Tananda asked a half-second before I asked the same question.

  “Harold gave me the rope to save her from becoming a vampire,” Aahz said. “It seems that those left alive last night were the ones they liked.”

  “So that was why Glenda’s body wasn’t in that morgue with the others,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Aahz said. “They were trying to turn her, have her join them.”

  I glanced back at where Glenda was snoring. “So she’s not going to be a vampire now?”

  Aahz shrugged. “We’ll keep the rope on her until morning just to make sure.”

  “How about for two days?” Tananda asked.

  Aahz laughed and said, “Maybe.”

  As far as I was concerned, we could keep the rope on her for the next month. When it came to Glenda, my motto was better safe than sorry.

  Spending the night trapped in the middle of a culture’s entire history, afraid that at any moment I might get taken and have my blood sucked, is an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The room we were trapped in was huge, with a high, domed ceiling and row after row of shelves full of old books alternating with piles of ancient furniture. Unlike Aahz and Tananda, I was not the scrounge-through-old-things kind of person. Old stuff was dusty and usually boring, as far as I was concerned. I thumbed through a few books and blew the dust off some old scrolls that looked like cookbooks. I decided I didn’t want to know what they were trying to tell me about how to cook, so I wandered over to another aisle, found an antique couch tucked off to one side of a pile of furniture, managed to get most of the dust off of it, and lay down.

  Tananda and Aahz were reading, whispering to each other about their finds, clearly excited about what they were seeing. I was beyond being excited about anything at this point. I was just tired. Yet for some strange reason (namely vampire cows and fear of getting my blood drained and ending up naked on a metal table in a morgue), I couldn’t get to sleep. Instead I lay there, finally turning onto my back and staring at the high ceiling.

  Maybe an hour into the attempt at sleep, it finally dawned on me what I was looking at every time I opened my eyes. On the smooth, stone ceiling surface someone had painted something a long, long time ago. Now, in the weird light from the glowing walls, and all the dust of the years, it was faded and almost invisible. But it was still there.

  And the more I lay on my back staring at it, the more I realized that what I was seeing was the most important thing in the room as far as we were concerned. It was a map of the entire castle, only it wasn’t a map of the current castle, but the layout of Count Bovine’s castle.

  The more I studied the drawing, the more I could see in the faint outlines. I found Harold’s living area, which at one point must have been Bovine’s royal suite.

  The room we were now in was shown as a private library. And the skull room was there as well, labeled as “royal storage.” But what was really interesting was the passageway that led from this room down into the mountain, away from the Royal Suite, down to a point that seemed to show an energy focal point of some sort in a large room. The energy point was drawn on the very center of the dome, which I also found interesting.

  After another hour I was sure I had the important areas of the map pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn’t think any vampire c
ow would know about.

  I stood and moved over to where Aahz and Tananda were sitting at desks pouring over books. Glenda was still asleep on her couch, the golden rope tied around her.

  “Have a good nap?” Aahz asked.

  “A productive one,” I said.

  He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and then pointed at the book he had open in front of him.

  “Says here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of the entire dimension. Before Count Bovine took it over, it was a spa area where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated magik forces and become rejuvenated.”

  “Powerful stuff,” I said.

  “More than anything I’ve seen before,” Aahz said.

  Tananda pointed at what she had been reading. “This book says that the war between the vampires and the normal folks lasted for over two hundred years and killed almost everything. This was one of the last books put in here before the exodus.”

  “Exodus?” I asked.

  Aahz nodded. “It seems, from what we can gather, that when the compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people left this area, this castle, putting a shield up around it to keep everyone out of the magik.”

  “It seems the count didn’t trust his own people with this kind of power,” Tananda said.

  “So what became of this count?” I asked.

  Aahz shrugged. “Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning.”

  “Well, before that I’ve got something to show you.”

  I had them follow me back to my couch.

  “I really don’t feel like a nap,” Aahz said.

  “Just trust me,” I said, pointing to a pile of furniture ten paces away. “Pull that other couch over here.”

  He shook his head, but did as I suggested.

  “Now both of you lie on that couch,” I said, dropping onto the one I had been on for hours earlier. “And lie on your backs.”

  Neither of them moved, and both looked annoyed. “What, can’t trust me for five seconds?” I asked, smiling up at them.

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

  I pointed upward. “What do you see?”

  “A dark ceiling and a lot of dust,” Tananda 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?” Tananda 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 Tananda’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,” Tananda 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?” Tananda 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 Tananda and Aahz looked at me.

  “Like nothing you could ever imagine, apprentice,” Aahz said.

  “True,” Tananda 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 lost my powers, Tananda 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.

  THE REST OF the night just crawled past. Aahz and Tananda 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 than never.

  Aahz was sitting at one of the desks while Tananda 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?” Tananda 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,” Tananda 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,” Tananda 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 Tananda 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,” Tananda 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.