Myth-Fortunes m-19

by Robert Asprin

  "It could be your dream come true," I said, keeping my voice low so the other courtiers couldn't hear me. "You said she is your life."

  "It is a nightmare! She is the daughter of kings and queens. I am a bureaucrat. That is the way it must remain. Has he capitulated yet?"

  "Not yet," I said, with a glance toward the distant pavilion.

  "You have only one day." "I know, I know!"

  Gurn stormed away. Chumley took advantage of the fact that everybody's eyes were on the sky to come and murmur down to me.

  "No luck on this end so far," he said. "And I haven't been able to find a copy of that book you were looking for."

  "Never mind," I said. "We found one. I don't know if it's going to work or not."

  "If you need me to, I will speak to the Pharaoh on your behalf. Gurn's not the only advisor she listens to."

  "Thanks."

  The chariot returned. The queen's normally pale skin had a green cast to it, but not as bad as usual. No doubt Aahz's ongoing chatter had kept her mind off her nausea.

  "... Pretty soon we'll be taking bids for the shopping area surrounding this thing," Aahz was saying as the Sphinxes brought the sedan chair in for a landing. "Sacrifices by Nee-Ro wants a prime location. The rent-a-mourner service is already signed up. All the modern conveniences, but quality only. You'll be proud to say you own the top spot."

  "You ease my mind, O noble Pervect," Suzal said, as he handed her down. Aahz tipped me a wink.

  "And all at rock-bottom prices," Samwise cracked. "Get it? Rock . . . never mind," he said, as we all looked at him. He cringed.

  "One more day," Gurn threatened, as the queen ascended her grand conveyance again.

  Chapter 33

  "Curses! Foiled again."

  —S. Whiplash

  I didn't sleep well that night. I kept waking up from dreams of being locked in a tiny, dank, dark chamber with slime dripping down the walls onto me. Then I realized that Gleep was asleep with his long neck and head stretched out on the bed beside me. The slime and the damp breath belonged to him. I breathed in the familiar gagging aroma of sulphur and tried to get some rest.

  We went back to the office on the morning of the seventh day, but not to stay.

  "I see no reason to sit around waiting to go to prison," Aahz said. "I wouldn't have come back at all, but I want a copy of the list of my clients. Either I'll figure out a way to make it up to them, or keep out of their way until this all blows over. Gurn is going to have to chase us if he wants to catch us."

  I concurred. We couldn't do anything locked up in a cell. Aahz and I might have to go on the run for a while, but we had plenty of places we could stay for a few days at a time. Gurn wouldn't be able to tell where we had gone. We would work on lifting the curse at a safe distance from Ghordon.

  As we appeared in the Zyx Valley, I glanced nervously

  over at Diksen's pavilion, worrying about threats from that direction as well. Then I looked back again.

  "Aahz, look!"

  I pointed. He looked.

  The bubble, normally clear and iridescent, was murky and sort of brownish-blue. "Was it like that last night?" "No," I said.

  As we watched, the bubble stretched upward into an ovoid, then compressed into an oblate sphere. It sprang into its normal shape, but the murkiness darkened. Aahz grinned.

  "Maybe there's hope, partner. Come on."

  We opened the Crocofile and started through the papyri of all of Aahz's contacts. I wrote down the names as he read them off. It turned out to be a much longer list than I had ever dreamed. Aahz must have drawn in people he had met as long ago as childhood, or anyone he'd ever chatted with on a street-corner. Miss Tauret was a little miffed that Aahz paid her little attention when she came in frequently with beer, sandwiches, cookies, chili or any other delicacies she thought would tempt him.

  "Not now, honey," he said, holding up a hand without looking up from his stack of papers. "We've got a problem. Maybe later, huh?"

  "Later means never!" Bulbous gray nose in the air, Miss Tauret went sashaying out in a huff. Aahz groaned and rubbed his eyes.

  Mid-morning, we were only halfway through the sheaves of documents, when Samwise came in to wring his hands at us.

  "Has Diksen sent any word yet?" Samwise asked. He had paled from his usual bright pink to a faint shell color.

  "No," Aahz said. "Looks like he's going to tough it out."

  "But Gurn could be here at any moment!"

  "When he is, we won't," Aahz said.

  Samwise's eyes widened. "You're going to abandon me?"

  "We're here under false pretences," Aahz pointed out. "Your false pretences. You want to make something of it?"

  "Well, no, but I thought you would help me!"

  "Here's my last and best piece of advice," Aahz said. "Leave. Now. We're about to."

  "But, I can't!" Samwise wailed. "I thought you believed in my project!"

  "I did. But I also believe in being free to practice my own beliefs. I can't do that if I'm locked in a cell, particularly not with you." He bared his teeth and leaned toward the Imp. "You don't want me reminding you day after day whose fault it is that we're in this situation, do you?"

  "I... I'll let you know if I see him coming," Samwise said, retreating toward the door.

  "Tell him now," Gurn said, peering up at us. We all jumped.

  "Gurn's here," I said unnecessarily.

  The cursedly-handsome minister wasn't alone. Two or three dozen Ghord guards stood behind us, their spears drawn.

  "Kid!" Aahz shouted.

  That was my cue. I was holding a full load of power from the blue force line. I enveloped Aahz and the protesting Samwise in the spell and transferred us out toward one of Aahz's designated safe houses.

  Bamf!

  The architect's office vanished around us. Bamf!

  We were back where we started. I looked at my hands as if trying to figure out if I'd thrown one spell too many, and realized I was looking up toward the ceiling.

  I was lying on the floor with two or three spears at my throat and more pointed at other parts of my anatomy. I held up my hands in surrender. Aahz and Samwise were similarly occupied with their own branches of the queen's guard.

  "You fools," Gurn said, bending down to leer at us. "You forget that I, too, am a magician. Bind them! We will take them to the palace!"

  The Ghords must have been trained by experts in Necropolis, because they wound us all expertly in yards of linen bandages until we were firmly trussed up. I reached into my inner reserves for magik to cut the bands as I had in Necropolis, but they were empty. Gurn must have drained the magik from me when he dragged us back. I reached out to the force lines I could see in my mind's eye, but it was as if they were behind glass. I couldn't touch any of them.

  "Aahz, he's blocking me." "I know, kid. Don't worry."

  The guards rolled us onto flying carpets and steered us out into the main office. The clerks followed, wringing their hands.

  "Let us go," I said. "We'll figure out something else. Maybe you can even stay as you are now ..."

  "No!" Gurn shouted. "Don't even think about that! Take them to the chariot," he directed his force. "We will throw them into the depths of the dungeons. Her majesty is not used to being trifled with!"

  "Who said I offered her trifles?" Aahz asked, as they carried us toward the soaring chariot. There, the Sphinxes stood pawing the ground. "Chocolate melts in this heat."

  "Not truffles, trifles!" Gurn shrieked. "Say no more, or suffer the consequences!"

  "Are you going to say this is going to turn ugly?" Aahz leered.

  "Aahz!"

  "I refuse to kowtow to this miserable gudgeon."

  "That's Gurn," the small minister insisted furiously.

  Aahz was unimpressed. "Whatever. If you're going to shut us up, do it. I don't care. You can't hold us. We're powerful magicians."

  The small minister danced in fury. "One of you is a powerful magician! One of you has
a big mouth! You will all suffer the vengeance of Gurn!"

  "Do you guys get your speeches out of a script?" Aahz asked. "I mean, every two-bit despot and tyrannical prime minister always uses the same syntax. I could almost recite it along with you . . . Yeow!"

  Gurn shot a lightning bolt from his fingertip that burned the end of Aahz's nose, but it didn't wipe the grin off his face. The guards dumped us on the golden steps at the foot of the chariot. The sharp edges bruised my ribs. I tried to use magik to ease my position, but Gurn's spell kept me from reaching any power. The small minister mounted the steps. He pointed downward.

  "Ghords, to your places!"

  "Yeah, he wouldn't want to accidentally overlook you," Aahz added. "He is short-sighted."

  "Why are you provoking him?" Samwise wailed, lying limply in his bandages.

  Aahz looked smug. "Because it's fun, and because it can't last. Look."

  I tilted my head backwards in the direction of Diksen's pavilion. The bubble was no longer round or remotely clear. It had turned completely black and was twisting and deforming into weird, ugly shapes. Fumes seemed to rise from its surface. Black clouds stained the sky overhead, and lightning crackled down, striking the roiling surface. And something came shooting toward us from its direction.

  As it got closer, I could see that it was one Ghord standing on a carpet.

  Diksen.

  The carpet skidded to a halt at the foot of the chariot. Diksen staggered off and strode directly toward us.

  "Get up!" he burbled, gesticulating in the direction of his pavilion. Rain had started pouring down on the shimmering white pyramid. "... Fix . . . terrible mess!"

  "Go away, Diksen," Gurn said, dangerously. "They are prisoners of the Pharaoh Suzal, may she live forever surrounded by beauty, music, and perfume. May every step she takes be on silk and down. May her glorious features be praised ..."

  "Let them up!" Diksen interrupted him.

  Gurn smiled. It was an ugly expression. "Never. They are my prisoners."

  "Let ... go! Undo . . . disgusting . . . misery!"

  The small minister was unmoved. "Let the harm they've done resound upon you a thousandfold! I have every reason to dislike you. You insulted her most sacred majesty, she whose parents were touched by divine inspiration when they begot her, she who ..."

  Diksen wrung his hands. "My Dorsals! Skin disease . . . Ick!"

  "Sorry to hear that," I said sympathetically. "They are fierce fighters. You ought to be proud of them."

  "Algae! Books . . . rotting! My beautiful globe!" Diksen glared down on me, and in the only entire sentence I had ever heard him utter so far, demanded, "Take off the curse!"

  I tried to arrange myself into a dignified position, wrapped as I was from neck to heels, but only succeeded in bumping down one more step.

  "It's your curse," I said haughtily. "I am a powerful magician in my own right. The curse has rebounded on you, with a few little twists of my own."

  "My curse? How . . . ?"

  "You'll never know," Aahz said, grinning.

  "What is it you want?" Diksen asked. In his fury, he was able to produce entire sentences.

  "Samwise has offered his apology," I said. "Accept it. Take off the curse, or we all continue to suffer. Now that will include you. You can see what collateral damage you caused."

  "Never!" Diksen's jowls flapped angrily.

  "Oh, fine," I said. "Then I hope you like living in a hurricane."

  Diksen looked back at the twisting, bounding wreck that had been his beautiful office building. In a plaintive little voice, he said, "Mumsy."

  "What kind of a son are you if you let your mother sit in the dark like that?" Aahz asked.

  "Very well!" Diksen declared. "I accept! But none of you ever dare come near me again!"

  "We can handle that," I said evenly. "How about it? You take off your spell, and I'll take off mine."

  Diksen reached down into the powerful black force line deep under the desert. He spread out his hands. I could feel a blanket of magik settle down over all of us. It sank through my body and seeped into the sands. As it dissipated, I felt cleaner and clearer of mind than I had in weeks. Samwise, tied like a roast a few steps up from me, let out a hefty sigh.

  "Now you," Diksen said.

  Gurn folded his arms. I reached out for magik and found the way clear. I cut myself out of the bandages and stood tall.

  "Thanks," I said. "It's over."

  "But the spell you added to mine . . . ? Undo it!"

  "I didn't have to do anything to you," I said. "You did it all to yourself. I just made sure you felt what you did to other people. I didn't add any magik at all."

  Diksen gave me a furious look, then stalked back to his carpet. It lifted off and sped back toward the globe. As Diksen's dispell spread outward, the ball of water gradually cleared until it was transparent as crystal.

  "Nice job," Aahz said. "Now, get me out of this tourniquet."

  I was happy to oblige, snipping the bandages away with one sweep of my magikal shears. I had help: Tweety shook off his harness to help his old friend to his feet. Samwise I left to the less expert but more eager ministrations of the USHEBTIs.

  "Now, about a nonstandard activity requiring my Scarabs to leave their assigned tasks in favor of a rescue of a member of the management team, employing nonstandard construction materials ..." Beltasar's shrill voice would have gone on and on, but Aahz glared fiercely at her and brought his forefinger and thumb together in a sharp gesture. "Perhaps later." She called her minions together, and they swarmed away.

  "Well played," Gurn said. "I am obliged that you didn't mention her majesty's suffering that was tied up with that curse."

  "No problem," I said. "No need to tell him he'd added injury to insult by refusing to build her a pyramid of her own. Samwise's will be fine, now. Won't it?" I asked the Imp.

  "Absolutely!" Samwise declared. "From now on, every-thing will be on the up and up! Completely!"

  "I shall be checking on you to make certain," Gurn said. He stalked up to the main seat of the chariot and sat down.

  "Am I still ..." He felt his face with one hand, and grimaced.

  "Yes," I said. Even though the curse was gone, he was still handsome. "You'll get used to it. By the way, thanks for the copy of the Magus Sutra."

  "What? Why would you believe I owned a salacious volume like that and would give it away for a handful of gold?"

  That detail just confirmed it for me. "You really didn't think I wouldn't figure out that the one legitimate copy would turn up just when we needed it?" I asked. "It had to hurt to let it go. Nice acting job, too."

  "You are smarter than you look, Klahd." Gurn shook his head. "As I told you, I would do anything for the Pharaoh. But if you tell any of the others, I will visit a new curse on you. A terrible one from which there will be no recourse."

  "Never," I said. "You have my word on it. You can carve it in stone."

  Chapter 34

  "All's well that ends well."

  —Hamlet

  I owed Gleep a thorough head-scratching for being away so much over the past weeks. He lolled on the floor of Bunny's office with his head in my lap, drooling a little as I attacked the scales around his ears with my fingernails.

  Aahz had kicked back in his big easy chair, his feet on the extended rest.

  "It was my fault," he said. "I should have investigated closer. I should have known better."

  "Don't kick yourself," Bunny said. "A lot smarter people than you were tempted by the idea of a kind of immortality, and many of them fell into the trap."

  "Smarter than me?" Aahz asked, his eyes narrowing. "No. Smarter people actually refused to invest in the pyramid to start with. Here's to getting out of the real estate business."

  He raised his repaired goblet to us and took a drink.

  "I'm done with oversized monuments and grand plans for the afterlife. Instead, when I go, I just want to disappear and leave people wondering." He bared tho
se four-inch teeth in a grin that would make anyone cringe.

  "If that's so," Bunny asked, "then why did I just get a bill

  of lading for having to warehouse two giant chunks of rock, F.O.B. Aegis?"

  "Two chunks of rock?" I asked.

  Aahz waved a hand. "Maybe Gurn broke my benben before he transported it here. I like to think of it as a souvenir. I don't intend to need it for a long time to come."

  "So, M.Y.T.H., Inc., no longer has a problem with curses?" Guido asked. "We don't have to worry about unsatisfied customers comin' here lookin' for satisfaction?"

  "No more curses, no more problems," I assured him. "All the stones Aahz sold for Phase Two have been worked into Phase One, giving it a 92% fill rate. Samwise is thrilled. He doesn't really need us any longer. He said he owes us."

  "I already sent him his bill," Bunny said.

  "He had better cough up in a timely fashion, or he is going to require one of his own tombs," Guido said, bringing his eyebrows down over his nose. "He caused us all to waste a lot of very valuable time."

  "You sure gave Gurn a tough time when we were tied up," I said. "Were you really that confident that Diksen would have to ask for help getting rid of the curse?"

  "No," Aahz admitted, "but what good would it have done to start panicking and pleading? Gurn would just have loved that. I keep telling you, kid, reputation is as much a part of being an effective magician as the actual chops."

  "I know," I said.

  "How's the Pharaoh feeling?" I asked Chumley, once again restored to his oversized chair beside that of his sister, Tananda.

  "She is restored to her former glory, thanks to you and Aahz," the Troll said. He had cast aside his linen headdress with a grateful sigh. "Though she will miss seeing Aahz, she has come to insist that Gurn attend her nearly every waking moment."

  "Poor Gurn," I said, "but it'll keep him from turning up when you least expect him."