MA11-12 Myth-ion Improbable Something Myth-Inc

by Robert Asprin

  “Leila took me dimension-hopping with her, showed me hundreds of different places, taught me some basics of magik, and 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, intended 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,” Tananda said, “you started the war again.”

  Harold nodded at Tananda’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. Tananda 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?” Tananda asked.

  “Not worried about it at all,” Harold said. “He told me that there was 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,” Tananda 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 that 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,” Tananda 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 Tananda’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?” Tananda 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 Tananda. Tananda 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, and 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,” Tananda 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, and 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.

  “I figure you can be of help to all of us, something you haven’t done much of up to now.”

  “You know I’m going to have to wear that rope for the rest of my life,” she said, “on every full moon, every time I hop dimensions, every night?”

  “I know,” Aahz said, his voice cold and low and sounding just about as mean as I had ever heard him sound. “And if you don’t help us, I’m going to free you into the countryside here, in this dimension, without the rope. You’ll be a cow for most of the rest of your life.”

  I stared at him, seeing a side of my mentor I didn’t often see. It seemed that, as always, he had known more than he was telling me, and that helping her had just been a ruse to keep her with us and under his control. He tucked the rope into his pouch and crossed his arms.

  “And if you want the rope to stay alive tonight, you’re going to work with us and not pull any of your tricks. Understand?”

  Glenda glared at him, and then slowly nodded. “I understand.”

  Well, I didn’t, but I didn’t want anyone trying to explain it to me with all the anger flowing around at the moment.

  SOMETIMES IN GRAND adventures, there are times when just nothing happens. The rest of the third day of the full-moon cycle was one of those times.

  Aahz, Tananda, Harold, and Glenda spent the entire day poring over books and old scrolls, trying to find answers on how to get out. I mostly sat and listened, falling asleep every few minutes until my head bobbed enough to wake me up enough to listen until I fell asleep again.

  And over and over that pattern went. My neck was sore by the time the day was over.

  About thirty minutes before the sun set Aahz had Glenda lie down on a couch, and then he tied the gold-laced magikal rope around her. She fell asleep instantly. That rope was the best sleep aid I had ever seen. Aahz should take it back with us to Possiltum to make money. On bad nights, I bet the king would pay a ransom for it.

  If it had been up to me, I’d have sent Glenda out into the hallway to be a cow, eating grass and being followed around by a guy in a white hat with a shovel. But it wasn’t up to me, so Aahz put her to sleep.

  About twenty minutes before the sun set Harold shut us into the library again and went to his grass to become a cow for the night.

  I slept off and on all night. Aahz and Tananda did as well, reading while they were awake. By morning, when Harold opened the door and let in a few wonderful rays of sunlight from the living area, I was well-rested and bored to tears.

  Aahz untied Glenda to wake her up, pouched the rope, and we all went out into the kitchen area to have Harold cook us horse steaks covered in tomatoes. He called it his celebration breakfast. He said he had it every month after the last full moon night.

  I had to admit, it was surprisingly good.

  After breakfast the talk turned to escape, which, after the boring day and the fear of cow vampires all night, was the most interesting topic I could imagine.

  Aahz took charge of the discussion and ticked off our options. “First chance we have is to lower the dimension-hopping screen. If we could do that for even an instant, we’d be out of here.”

  “I’ve never run into a screen like it,” Tananda said, “even in all my years of being an assassin. It’s more solid than a rock.”

  “More than likely coming from the energy in the mountain,” Aahz said.

  I thought about the map on the ceiling, and how Aahz hadn’t mentioned it to either Harold or Glenda. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I sure didn’t want to mess up what he was doing by blurting something out. I’d done enough of that in the past.

  “Our second option is to just find a way out of the castle.”

  “Right,” I said, “and sneak all the way through Donner and past the posse.”

  “Posse?” Harold asked.

  “Mounted riders who knew we were coming far outside of town.”

  “They picked me up as well,” Glenda said.

  “So they have some magik that tells them enemies are coming,” Aahz said. “We could be screened against that.”

  “If we knew what kind of magik it was,” Tananda said.

  “I’m stuck here anyway,” Harold said. He pointed to what I had assumed was the front door to the suite. “It’s like walking into a wall trying to go through there.”

  “And the same for how we came in?” Tananda asked.

  “Oh, I can go all the way to the entrance into the ballroom through the skull room,” Harold said. “Then I hit the screen.”

  “How about through the floor or the window?” I asked.

  “Haven’t tried either,”
he said.

  “I doubt it would work,” Aahz said.

  “Yeah,” Tananda said, “captive spells, which I think this sounds like, are all-around prisons. It’s like being in an invisible, unbreakable bubble.”

  “So to get Harold out with us,” I said, “we have to break that spell as well.”

  “You’re coming with us?” Glenda asked.

  “I’m going to try,” Harold said. He didn’t add that there was gold for getting him out, and none of the rest of us filled her in either.

  “So, old mentor,” I said to Aahz, “how do we go about breaking the spells, since it seems to me that both our main ways of escape are blocked by them?”

  He looked at me with a harsh look, and then answered my question. “A couple of ways to break a spell. Either put a counter-spell on it, or cut off the source of power to the spell.”

  “Since this place is flowing with energy, the second doesn’t sound likely. How does a counter-spell work?”

  “I’ve tried everyone I know,” Harold said.

  I glanced at Aahz. “My mentor hasn’t even taught me any yet.”

  “When you gain enough self-control to use them,” Aahz said, “I might think about it.”

  “I tried a number of them the first day I was here,” Glenda said. “Didn’t even dent the dimension-hopping shield.”

  “I tried all the ones I knew as well,” Tananda said, frowning. Since we were all still here, I assumed she had had the same result as Glenda.

  “And I saw nothing in any of the books back there to give us any help either,” Aahz said. “In fact, I think it’s worse than we are assuming. I think the spell that keeps all the vampires as cows, and your people under their spell and not killing the cows every month, is tied up with the very spells we are trying to break.”

  “If that’s the case,” Harold said, sounding defeated, “to free me, I must release all my people from the spell that has held them for centuries, and free all the vampires to kill them at the same time. I can’t do that.”

  “Actually,” Aahz said, smiling, “there might be a way that it would work, if we could shut everything down at once and at an exact time.”

  “How?” Harold asked.