Myth-Fortunes m-19

by Robert Asprin

  "He originated that phrase about looking at someone cross-eyed," Samwise explained. "He's reputed to have had a really bad temper, so no one ever did anything without his oversight. And he overlooked a lot, I gotta tell you. Shoddy construction in most of his projects, especially this one. This was supposed to be on a gridwork pattern, six storeys high, but it isn't. Don't worry. We'll get out eventually."

  "Don't you have a map?" I asked.

  Samwise shrugged. "It doesn't help. The rooms move around by themselves. No one anchored them where they were. Cost-cutting. You won't find that on my projects. You just keep on walking toward the light." That startled me. Samwise waved a hand. "It's not like a near-death experience. If you see the light, you're actually getting closer to the outside. When you find an open window or a door, hang onto it.

  That's the easiest way out. No one ever died in here unless they panicked. Well, almost no one. Come on. There's almost always an opening off the Grand Gallery."

  Just a few feet beyond the looming portrait, a long corridor stretched off into blackness. The walls here, too, were covered with incised designs.

  "What's all this?" I pointed to the carvings.

  "Tourist rules," Samwise explained. "Ghordon has strict regulations. 'Don't cheat the Ghords, lest you suffer a dire curse. Don't spit on public roads, or a dire curse will follow you. Do not make unwelcome advances to fellow guests in drinking establishments, under pain of dire curse.' You know. Don't worry about reading them. I've been here for years, and no one has ever tried to enforce any of them on me. I get along great with everybody. Come on."

  I peered closely at the minute figures of men in skirts, birds, dogs, lions, and deer and frowned. My facility with spoken languages didn't stretch to written lingo. If I had to, we could hire a local interpreter to translate the rules.

  We trudged along. The corridor was wide enough for us to walk abreast. The smell of cool stone and ancient sweat made my nostrils twitch.

  "Say, Samwise, where'd you get the name?" Aahz asked suddenly.

  The Imp waved a hand. "My mother read the classics."

  "Tough break," Aahz said sympathetically, but there was a big grin on his face. "Hope you don't feel hobbited by it." I didn't know why the name struck him as funny. I made a mental note to ask later.

  "There's one," Samwise said, ignoring Aahz's jibe. I looked up. A square of brilliant blue light beckoned. "Hurry. It's already shifting sideways."

  Indeed it was. The blue square started to narrow as the room to which it was attached ground to the left. I rushed toward it, my long legs eating up the distance faster than my two shorter companions.

  By the time I reached it, the portal had narrowed to a rectangle.

  "What do I do?" I shouted.

  "Hang onto it!" Samwise shouted back.

  I braced my hands against either side of the open window. The heat from outside slammed into me like a charging bull. I gasped. The wall continued to shift sideways, carrying the window and the room with it toward the corner. I hopped up into the casement and shoved my feet against the oncoming wall. The room didn't like having an obstruction in its way. It slammed against the bottoms of my feet a few times, trying to dislodge me so it could move. Samwise and Aahz hurried toward me.

  "Hurry!" I yelled.

  "Hang in there, partner," Aahz called.

  I summoned up all the magik force I was carrying, but I wasn't strong enough to argue with an ancient stone wall. It kicked me loose. I landed on the ground, groaning. The room shifted out of sight, leaving us in darkness. I summoned up another ball of light.

  "Well, you know what they say," Samwise said gamely. "Where a window closes, a door opens."

  "If I find one, I'll throw you out of it first," Aahz said. "Do you have to go through that every time?"

  "It's where my transference spell lands me," Samwise said. "So, yes."

  Aahz looked disgusted. "I knew we should have let the kid here do the transporting. He'd have popped us right into the middle of the action."

  "Why not you?" Samwise asked, with a curious look at my partner. "Or are the rumors about the great Aahz losing his powers true?"

  Aahz waved a hand airily. "C'mon, I've been in the business for centuries. I don't do the penny-ante stuff. That's for apprentices and, er, junior partners."

  I was still so glad to be back with M.Y.T.H., Inc., that I didn't mind Aahz saving face in front of clients—once, anyhow. At least this time he didn't suggest he would step in if I couldn't handle things.

  "I'm pretty good now," I said modestly. "Aahz taught me everything I know."

  "Well, that and a two copper pieces will get you a can of warm ale," Samwise said. Just before Aahz grunted out a retort, we spotted another opening, a door, as the Imp had predicted. Almost as soon as it appeared, it started to head for the floor, and the ceiling of the new room with it.

  My wits were back where they belonged. Instead of running for the gap, I gathered up a large quantity of magik from the deep-rooted black force line and built a nice little frame inside the bright square. It was as strong as I could manage. I could hear the groaning of the stones as they fought against the obstruction. Sparks of magik broke away from the master spell with a ping! I threw more and more force into the gap. Waycross must have been one powerful magician. We ran for the opening, I nursing my bruises and the others panting behind me.

  "It's going to break," I said, gritting my teeth as I rebuilt the spell one more time. I ran toward the hole.

  With a loud report, the spell shattered, sending hot splinters of light shooting outward. I averted them from us with a quick flick of my wrist, but it meant that I wasn't doing anything to prevent the rapid descent of the ceiling of the next room toward the floor of this one. The gap had closed to four feet. I could just make it. Three.

  "Come on, partner, let's fly!" Aahz said. He held out his arms as if he was lifting off. I scooped him up with a hank of magik and dove to join him.

  "Hey, wait for me!" Samwise pleaded. He flapped his arms as he ran to catch up.

  I didn't have time to look behind us. The stone slab of the ceiling was just knee height from the floor. If we misjudged our speed, it could chop our legs off. I didn't want to start off in Ghordon two feet shorter. I threw out a hook of power and wedged it into the doorway at the far end of the shrinking room, tied the other end around Aahz and me, and pulled.

  The magikal cord contracted faster than a Deveel's good will. Aahz and I not only reached the door, but catapulted through it. I hit the sand-dusted flagstones outside Waycross's tomb and rolled to a halt twenty feet beyond. I blinked up at the hot yellow sun. Aahz struck just behind me, bounced and ended up landing across my legs.

  A shadow cut off the blinding sunlight. A face surrounded by a draped cloth headdress peered down at me. The face had the long nose and floppy ears of a hound, but the bare chest and arms of a Klahd. It extended a normal-looking hand to me. I took it, and he helped me to my feet. A lion-faced Klahd

  helped Aahz up.

  "Welcome to Ghordon, wayfarers," the dog-faced man said. He and his lion-headed companion wore pleated white skirts and sandals, but nothing else except their headdresses. "Receive the eight greetings of the Pharaoh Suzal, the eternal hospitality of her people, and the warm regard of the land of the Ghords be always upon . . . oh, no, not you again!"

  I frowned at the unfriendly tone, then relaxed.

  It was not addressed to me or Aahz, but rather to Samwise. The Imp crawled out of the porticoed door through which we had just been propelled.

  The Imp dusted off his loud suit and stumped over to slap the two males on the back. "Hey, Fisal and Chopri, good to see you!" They accepted the gesture with resignation and returned to the posts they had occupied beside the doorway. He turned to us. "I told you I get along great with everybody here."

  Ghordon's climate was similar to Deva's, a dry desert with a hot sun and wispy breezes that did nothing but stir up the dust, but there was something subtly diffe
rent. At first I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized that there was little more noise outside Waycross's tomb than there had been inside it. The sprawling Bazaar at Deva, which covered much of its dimension, was never quiet. During the day, it was filled with the shouts, cries, bellows, and ululations of the Deveel traders who liked to argue at the top of their voices. Adding to the din were street performers, friends and soon-to-be-friends greeting each other, musicians, the entourages of important visitors announcing the name and business of the person they were escorting, the roar of dragons and other beasts for sale, and just the endless audible tumult of thousands of beings all talking at the same time. By extreme contrast, Ghordon was almost silent. I could hear the wind. It reminded me of the bucolic isolation of my parents' farm on Klah. It was unnerving. I felt like singing or shouting just to remind myself what noise sounded like.

  My footsteps made a hushed, shushing noise as I trudged along in the drifting sand behind Samwise and Aahz.

  "Come on, we'll catch a Camel," Samwise said.

  "As long as we don't have to walk a mile for one," Aahz said, and waited for applause. None was forthcoming, since I didn't know what he was talking about.

  Ahead, I spotted long, oval heads bobbing on narrow necks. I couldn't tell what they were, but the humped shapes behind the heads suggested gigantic serpents.

  "What are they?" I asked as we got closer. The heads turned toward us, and large brown eyes with long lashes fluttered at me. They didn't look like snakes, but the necks connected to a lumpy body that lay flat on the desert.

  "Camel, sir, Camel?" the first one, a creature with dark brown fur, inquired in a loud, hoarse voice. "Take you sightseeing around the grand pyramid, Hobokis, the city of Suzal, may she live forever, the Pharoah Isles, or the terrific shopping in the Khazbah? Your choice, reasonable rates! I will give you a most mild ride. You will think you are sailing a sheep."

  "Ship?" I asked, curiously.

  "Sheep," the Camel said. "I am not a boat, I am a living being. Come with me, come, hurry!"

  "I saw them first," exclaimed a pale tan Camel, trying to bump the first one out of the way. "I will convey you safely and well, O tourists . . . oh, Samwise." The Camels' enthusiasm petered out.

  I was beginning to realize that our potential employer, if not actually disliked, had worn out his welcome with the people of Ghordon.

  "We'll walk," Aahz said.

  "You'd never make it," Samwise said. "The quicksands will drag you down in no time. The slowsands are even more dangerous because they have a firmer grip."

  "We could just fly."

  "Er, I prefer to patronize the local businesses," Samwise said hastily.

  "Hmmph!" The local businesspeople—all right, Camels— didn't seem that grateful for his custom. I suspected he wasn't good at keeping up with his bills.

  "It's okay," I said, jingling my belt pouch to show that one of us had money. "My name's Skeeve. Will you take us to . . . ?" I looked at Samwise.

  "To the And Company main office," the Imp said.

  "And Company?" I asked.

  "Well, everyone knows me," the Imp said. We stepped gingerly onto the humps behind the Camel's head and settled in between them. There was barely room for the three of us. I got wedged between Samwise and the rear hump. "But I have partners in some of my projects, so I named the enterprise after them. That way they get the credit they deserve, too."

  Once I was on the Camel's back, I realized that it wasn't a snake or serpent. The beast had limbs at the four corners of its body, but they were submerged beneath the surface of the sand. Instead of running, it swam, gliding as smoothly as a water bird. I looked behind us. Our passage left a V-shaped wake that swirled and settled again into gentle peaks.

  "The hump keeps them afloat in the quicksand," Samwise explained.

  "Hold on, please. No jumping up and down, no music, no photographs," the Camel said, as he swam away from the stand. "Spitting is allowed." As if to demonstrate, he let go of a gob of brown goo that plopped onto the surface of the sand and sank. I felt my stomach turn. "I am Dromad, your driver for today."

  He paddled a distance out from Waycross's tomb and began to circle around to the right. No matter what criticism Samwise had for the ancient architect, I admired the monument's construction and how well it fit into its setting. It looked as if it had just risen out of the desert at the beginning of time and would be there forever. The admonitions and curses I had seen inside continued on around the building in endless rows.

  Waycross sure had a lot of rules.

  Chapter 3

  "I don't want this monument thing to get out of hand."

  —Zoser

  As we cleared the massive square edifice, I goggled in wonder at a new, marvelous structure ahead of us.

  "You didn't tell us that you'd already built one pyramid," Aahz said.

  And an impressive sight it was, too. I had never seen anything like it outside of the storybook or history books in my mother's study. A perfect, smooth triangle of pearlescent white, it loomed above the wide desert floor like a mathematical absolute. It didn't look so large from a distance, but as we glided toward it, I realized what I thought were insects walking on the stones were people my size and larger. As we paddled closer, I studied them. Their bodies were similar to denizens of my dimension, Klah, but their heads and feet resembled those of animals.

  A narrow staircase led up the center of one side of the pyramid to a tiny doorway, a startling rectangle of black in the gleaming white side. The people trudged up and down the steps bearing cloth bundles, jars of colored paints, and rolls of thick parchment.

  "Er, well, that one's not mine," Samwise said, fingering his collar. "That's Diksen's. He built it. I used to work for him."

  "You mean you're copying his blueprints?" Aahz asked suspiciously.

  "Not at all! Not at all! I'll show you my plans as soon as we get to the office. They're completely different. That one's mine."

  Ahead, I could see a pier made of plain slabs of stone. Beyond it was a small square building that looked like an outhouse for Waycross's tomb. Above that were three incomplete rows of enormous, rough rectangular blocks arranged on top of one another.

  Compared with the completed pyramid, Samwise's project was a deep disappointment. On every side, plain blank cubes of pinkish-gray rock were piled higher than the completed portion. Many of these were surrounded by Ghords busy with hammer and chisel. Small objects that caught the light flitted back and forth between them on wisps of magik. I thought this pyramid looked more like the aftermath of a demolition than a building site. Still, more blocks were rolling upwards to the empty spaces on ramps that had been piled up against the outer edge on each side of the building.

  I peered at the stones, but I couldn't see anyone moving them. It wouldn't surprise me if Samwise's people were using magik to do the construction; there was an unbelievable amount of raw power available both above and below ground. I glanced around for wizards. I saw no one whose demeanor said to me "professional magician at work." Instead, at the corners of every level and in prominent stations among the workers, stood large, husky locals. Each held a short whip and a narrow striped, stick with a curled-over top like a shepherd's crook crossed on his chest. These Ghords glared at the tourists on Camel-back who paddled around in the sand at a safe distance to watch the work in progress.

  I paid our Camel when we arrived at the pier and made a mental note to add the small silver coin to the invoice when Samwise started paying M.Y.T.H., Inc., for its expertise. We disembarked. The Camel swam away, muttering and spitting.

  "I thought you said this was a union job," Aahz said, watching one of the massive slabs arrange itself in place and settle down.

  "Absolutely," Samwise said. "No choice, really. I just took the path of least resistance."

  "But these stones are moving all by themselves. Magik!"

  "No magik," Samwise said, wincing. "Scarabs. The Universal Sacred Hegira of the Everlasting Brot
herhood, Teamsters Interdimensional."

  "USHEBTIS?" Aahz whistled. "Powerful group. Tough workers."

  "They've pretty much got a stranglehold on this dimension," Samwise admitted. "I have an ongoing argument with their chief negotiator and shop steward, Beltasar. You'll meet her later. She's always coming by with a complaint."

  "You think they might be causing the problems?" I asked.

  "I don't think so," Samwise said doubtfully. "I hope not. They've had more than their share of accidents. They keep babbling about an ancient curse."

  I raised my eyebrows. It was time for the other shoe to drop. Here it was. I exchanged glances with Aahz. "And is there an ancient curse?"

  Samwise flinched defensively. "No! Or I wouldn't have started this project in the first place."

  "What about the curses in Waycross's tomb?" I asked. "There are probably thousands of them listed on that building."

  "No!" Samwise was adamant. "Those have nothing to do with me. I've kept this enterprise honest . . . well, as honest as any real estate development," he admitted.

  Now that I knew Scarabs were carrying the stones, I could see the tiny black dots as they swarmed toward the next block in line. Amazingly, the massive object rose about an inch, then glided as if under its own power toward the ramps. The overseers stood aside. No need to harry Scarabs with the whip. They were all hustle and go.

  Aahz did some calculations in his head.

  "So, there's three hundred of them per block? How much can one of them carry on its own?"

  Samwise made a dismissive gesture. "Are you kidding? If union rules didn't forbid it, a Scarab would carry a whole block by itself. The only reason there's a crowd under each stone is for safety. If it tips, a Scarab can break a leg or crack a shell, and you don't want to know what my insurance bills are like already."

  "Then, what are all the muscle-men for?" Aahz asked.

  "Security," Samwise said. "Come on in. I'll show you the list of things that have gone wrong. Here's the office." He led us toward the small stone hut on the edge of the building site.