by Rick Cook
“Act inconspicuous,” Jerry hissed. “Us they can arrest.”
Bal-Simba leaned nonchalantly against the side of the building. The effect wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, but it wasn’t that out of place either.
The best thing Moira could think of was to get out of there. Since that accorded perfectly with the dragon’s instincts, she had no trouble commanding the body to run. Moira put her head down and galloped straight at the crowd.
One spectator decided this was the Las Vegas version of the running of the bulls and stepped in front of her waving a jacket with a red lining like a bullfighter’s cape. For his pains he got thrown nearly ten feet by a quick toss of the dragon s head. No one else seemed disposed to follow, not even the police.
Jerry nodded to Bal-Simba and the two of them drifted off around the other side of the building. Once they were out of sight they ran after the disappearing dragon.
They found Moira in an alley a block and a half away, leaning against a fence, her sides heaving.
“Are you all right?” Jerry asked.
With an effort Moira raised the dragon’s drooping head. “I am sorry, My Lord. I could not control this body.”
Jerry looked back at the glow from the burning police car. “Well, thank God no one was killed. Now come on.”
They made their way down the alley and paused in the shadows at the next cross street until there were no cars coming. Then the two men and the dragon sprinted across the street and into the next alley. They did it twice more before they ran out of alley at the blank rear wall of an apartment building.
“I take it we are not yet out of danger,” Bal-Simba said as they made their way back to the mouth of the alley.
“They’ll be searching the whole city for us and we’re not exactly going to be hard to spot. We can’t keep walking around, not with the cops looking for Moira.”
“Is there someplace we can hide?”
“Well, we could stash her among the life-size animated dinosaurs in the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, but we’d have to get her there first.” Jerry frowned. Then his frown cleared and he looked past Bal-Simba out of the mouth of the alley.
“Wait a minute. I think I see the answer to our problem.”
The guy at the truck rental place was remarkably uninterested in his customers. All he wanted was a driver’s license and a cash deposit. Fortunately Jerry’s California license hadn’t expired yet. Gotta find some way to get that renewed, he thought.
“Just make sure you bring it back clean,” the clerk said dubiously, eyeing the dragon.
“Don’t worry, she’s housebroken,” Jerry assured him. Moira only sniffed.
In just a few minutes the contract was signed, Moira was loaded into the back of a twenty-four-foot truck with the slogan “Land of Enchantment” and a picture of New Mexico scenery painted on the side.
“Well, that’s one less problem anyway,” Jerry said as he watched a police car cruise by in the opposite direction.
“Now what?” asked Bal-Simba, who was hunched down on the passenger’s side.
Jerry glanced at the time display in front of a bank. “It’s too late to do much tonight. We’ll have to get some sleep and try again in the morning.”
“At least this place has many inns,” Bal-Simba said as he looked at the row of neon signs stretching away before them.
“Forget it. You can’t get a hotel room in this town this week for love or money.” He paused. “Well, maybe for love, but you’ve got to rent it by the hour and, come to think of it, that’s for money too.”
Bal-Simba looked at him. “I take it that is not practical.”
“Most working girls don’t like threesomes and if we try to bring a dragon into the scene—well, yeah it’s not practical”
The watch commander for the police department was having a hard night as well. Except he knew where he was going to be spending most of it.
“Take over,” he said to his sergeant as he picked up his hat. “I’m going to the scene.”
“What do you want me to do about this thing in the meantime?” his sergeant asked.
“Nothing. We’re not doing anything until I debrief those officers and find out just exactly what the hell we’re dealing with here.”
###
The watch commander knew his men and he trusted them—within broad limits. However, whatever this was pretty clearly went beyond those limits. Obviously something had happened at that mini-market, but equally obviously there was some sort of failure of communication. He was not about to put out an APB for a mythical creature until he’d had a good long talk with the officers and the witnesses.
In the event that proved more difficult than he had anticipated. No one in the crowd would admit to seeing anything, the clerk in the mini-mart could suddenly only communicate in an obscure dialect of Farsi and the tourists in the Mini-Winnie were still hysterical. The physical evidence was impressive enough, what with the turned-out police car and the scorched and dented motorhome, not to mention the scrapes and bruises on the officers who had been knocked around. The testimony of the officers was more equivocal. None of them really liked the idea of what they had seen, or thought they had seen, so they were very careful in their descriptions. The watch commander collected numerous statements about the poor light in the parking lot, the stress of the encounter, the lack of a good view and such. But of the nine officers present not one of them used the word “dragon.”
It was nearly dawn when the watch commander decided that the official story was going to be that someone had a large alligator that was causing trouble. That’s the way it went down on the blotter and incident report where the media would see it. Privately and unofficially he passed the word to the next watch commander and left it to him to pass the word privately and unofficially to his officers. It wasn’t the first time that the official version and the truth had differed significantly in this town.
###
Jerry, Bal-Simba and Moira spent a miserable night parked in a patch of desert a few miles out of town. Moira slept in the back of the truck, Jerry curled up in some old moving pads underneath and Bal-Simba tried to sleep in the cab. Moira was too sick to sleep well and the others were too uncomfortable. The November desert at night is bone chillingly cold and Jerry kept thinking about scorpions.
###
Wiz and the other humans awoke that morning stiff and sore from another night sleeping on the rocks. At least the humans awoke stiff and sore. Glandurg seemed as relaxed and fresh as ever.
Fresh was definitely something the rest of the party wasn’t. Wiz wondered why dungeon-delving games never said anything about what the participants smelled like after a couple of days of hard work and no baths.
After a quick breakfast of vegetable porridge everyone crowded around Wiz while he checked the locator crystal.
“It says we go off this way,” Wiz told the others.
“How close are we?” Malkin asked.
Wiz looked back down at the crystal and frowned. “Still a ways to go.”
Danny looked down at the glowing object in Wiz’s hand. “It doesn’t seem any brighter than it was when we started. Shouldn’t it get brighter as we get closer?”
“We still have some distance to cover. These caverns are big.”
“Are you sure this thing knows where it’s going?” Danny grumbled.
“It’s set to home in on Moira,” Wiz replied with more confidence than he felt. He was developing a nagging suspicion about where the magical compass was leading them. Either these caverns were much bigger than he remembered them or they were being taken on the scenic route. Considering all the stuff they’d run into so far that was a distinct possibility.
Or maybe there’s just a lot more stuff down here, he thought as the party moved along a tunnel as wide as a four-lane highway I wonder how you estimate the monsters per square kilometer in a dungeon. Or should that be per cubic kilometer because the place has so many levels it’s really three dimensional?
The air was getting more humid as they went along. At first there was a nasty, cold clamminess that seemed to cling to them. Then it got warmer until all the humans were sticky with sweat. Finally, after two more turnings into smaller tunnels they were surrounded by a thick, warm mist.
“I hear water up ahead,” Malkin said softly. Wiz nodded and took a better grasp on his staff.
Suddenly the tunnel opened out into a cavern. The far wall and the ceiling alike were lost in billows of mist. The sound of trickling, splashing water was loud before them.
They paused while Danny surveyed the area with his magic detector.
“No sign of anything,” he said at last. “Whatever’s up ahead of us is natural, not magic.”
“Natural hot springs,” Wiz said. With a gesture he increased the intensity of the light from the magical globe and the party stepped into the cave.
They looked around and gasped.
Brightly colored flowstone had congealed like melted candle wax in opalescent patterns. The fog and mist made the place look like a Hollywood soundstage.
“It’s beautiful,” Danny said softly. June said nothing, but clung open-mouthed to Danny’s arm, staring wide-eyed like a child on Christmas morning.
“Quite something,” Malkin said. Wiz looked back and saw her standing arms akimbo and feet spread. She was also eyeing the scene as if she was trying to figure out how to take the place home with her. Wiz decided that where Malkin was concerned, larceny was the sincerest form of flattery.
“Stay close people,” Wiz admonished. “Just because there’s no magic in here doesn’t mean there’s nothing dangerous.”
The room was not as big as it had seemed, being much longer than it was wide. The tunnel they had entered from angled in on the long side and in perhaps fifty paces they were across the room.
“Here’s your hot spring,” Malkin said, gesturing at a place where the water trickled out of the rock wall. From there it ran along the floor of the cavern and gathered in a series of pools before disappearing through a crack in the floor.
Danny mopped his sweaty brow on his wet sleeve. “Whew, this place is like a sauna.”
“Yeah,” Wiz said slowly. “Or a hot tub. Come on, let’s see how hot it really is.”
The water at the seep was scalding, but by three pools down it had cooled until it was just barely tolerable. Wiz stuck his finger in and nodded.
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Danny asked.
Wiz just gestured at the pool. “Looks big enough.”
“Right,” Danny said, dropping his pack and staff and stripping off his outer tunic. Wiz and the other humans followed suit.
Glandurg eyed the water with distaste. “Another of your mortal customs, eh? Fear not. I’ll guard the door while you pollute yon stream.” With that he turned his back and disappeared into the steamy fog.
They kept their shirts on for modesty’s sake, but the thin fabric clung to their bodies as soon as it got wet and the result was more like a wet T-shirt contest than swimming suits. The pool wasn’t even waist deep, but the four lowered themselves into the steaming water with much “oohing” and “aahing” and made themselves comfortable on the smooth flowstone of the bottom.
For several minutes no one said anything, letting the heat and warmth soak into their bodies.
“First time I’ve even been on a quest with a hot tub,” Danny said at last.
Wiz sighed deeply and relaxed further into the steaming water. “Civilized though.”
Malkin ducked under the water and came up with her long dark hair streaming behind her. She was the picture of ease but Wiz noticed she never strayed more than a foot from her rapier. She shook her head vigorously to clear her eyes, splashing everyone else with droplets flung off from her raven hair.
“Jerry told me that in your world you have such things built into your dwellings,” the thief said. “Now I see why.”
“We ought to put one of these in at the Wizards’ Keep,” Danny suggested.
Wiz didn’t say anything. He leaned back, rested his head on the rim and let the hot water drain the tension from every muscle.
A fine sifting of dust was falling from the ceiling. Wiz brushed it out of his hair absently and sneezed as the pungent dust tickled his nose. He wet his finger and caught a speck of the dust on the end. His eyes wrinkled at the sharp taste and then widened as he recognized it. Lemon pepper!
A broom-sized bundle of herbs dropped from above and splashed into the pool next to him.
“Look out! It’s the lobster again.”
There was a mad scramble for weapons and wizards staffs as the pool emptied almost instantly.
“Oh, pshaw!” came a crustacean-accented voice from the misty darkness above.
Glandurg came pounding up through the fog, waving Blind Fury as if to decapitate the foe—or someone—with a single stroke. The others moved around to the opposite side of the pool, well out of range.
“What happened?” the dwarf demanded.
Wiz pointed to the bundle of herbs floating in the pot of would-be Cannibal Soup Mix. “The lobster. He must have come across the roof of the cave.”
Glandurg looked up and snorted. “The craven creature was afraid to face my steel. Little did I expect the foe to crawl along the ceiling like some verminous spider. But never fear. I shall be ready if he returns.”
Wiz glanced at the pool, already filling the steamy air with the spicy aroma of herbs, pepper and lemon.
“Never mind. I think I’ve had all the swimming I want.”
###
“What now?” Bal-Simba asked Jerry after they had stashed the truck with Moira in it in a hotel parking lot.
“Back to the convention, I guess. We’ll start working the outlying halls. That’s where they put the newcomers to the show and Taj is more likely to be hanging around some of the more innovative startups.” He sighed. “This isn’t working very well. I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing to be sorry for,” Bal-Simba said. “The obstacles are clearly very great.”
“Thanks, but we can’t keep going like this. Not with the cops looking for us.”
“I do not believe Moira can continue here either. She grows ever sicker and weaker. It is well that she can sleep the day away, but even so . . .” He shrugged.
“Yeah. Okay, let’s try today, and if we haven’t found him by evening we’ll just head north to the power spot and go home.”
###
Even the smaller halls were jammed and, if anything, the crowds were more colorful than at the main exhibits. There was a higher ponytail-and-T-shirt to suit ratio Jerry noted approvingly, and here and there someone was sitting on the steps or a bench with an open laptop actually hacking code.
Their first stop was the message center, more out of optimism than genuine hope. There was still nothing for Taj, but to his amazement Jerry found a message for him from Elaine Haverford.
Their second stop was the line at a pay phone. After twenty minutes, Jerry paid a scalper twenty dollars to use a cell phone that had been hacked to have a fire marshall’s priority so its calls would get through.
Dr. Haverford answered on the second ring. “Oh yes, Mr. Andrews, I did see Taj last night. He was at the chili cook-off. Were you there?”
“Ah, we were having a hot time of our own,” Jerry told her. “Did you talk to him?”
“Only for a minute. He placed second in the relativistic Tetris competition, you know, and he didn’t have much time. But I did find he’s staying with the people from, ah, Bizarreware at the Paladin.”
Shit! Jerry thought. Right where we started. “The Paladin? Okay, thanks, Dr. Haverford. We’ll get in touch with him right away and set up a meeting with your folks later. Thanks again.”
“We gotta do something nice for that company,” Jerry said as he handed the phone back to the scalper.
“What now?” Bal-Simba asked. “I believe you told me that everyone is at the show all da
y and unreachable at their lodgings until evening.”
“Most people are,” Jerry corrected. “But it’s barely ten. If I know Taj he’s still asleep, especially after a relativistic Tetris tournament. So let’s pick up the truck, head for the Paladin and set up a meet.”
“Why not call him from here?”
“Because,” Jerry said grimly, “if he doesn’t agree to meet us, we’re going to waylay him in the lobby and kidnap him. I don’t want to take a chance on waking him up and letting him get away before we get there.”
###
It took nearly fifteen rings for someone to answer the phone in the Bizarreware suite at the Paladin. All the while Jerry fidgeted and Bal-Simba merely waited.
“Hello,” came a muzzy voice at the other end of the line.
“Is Taj there?”
“This is Taj. Whaddya want?”
“My name is Jerry Andrews, [email protected], and I’ve got to see you right away.”
“Hey, it’s not even noon yet.”
“I know, but this is important.”
Taj’s voice hardened. “And you’ll only take five minutes of my time, right?”
“Actually,” Jerry said, “it’ll probably take a couple of weeks of your time, but you’ll hate yourself if you don’t meet me.”
The voice sighed. “Well, that’s original anyway. Okay, I’ll tell you what. Let me get a shower and some breakfast and I’ll meet you in the lobby, by the bird cage, say, in an hour. Okay?”
“Fine. We’ll be there.”
Thirteen
Making a Deal with the Devil
“It has been longer than an hour, has it not?” Bal-Simba asked nearly two hours later.
“Yeah, but don’t worry. If he said he was coming, he’s coming. Probably. It’s just that time doesn’t mean the same thing to him it does to you or me.” Bal-Simba nodded. “Elven blood.” Jerry didn’t have a chance to respond before someone called out, “Mr. Andrews?” and Jerry turned to see the object of their quest.