“Hah. Two silver pieces at the Bazaar, tops. Forget the furniture. That was an ordinary hotel room, not a storage facility or a treasury for collectible artifacts.”
“That doesn’t mean she is a thief!” I exclaimed.
“You give me another good reason why she was throwing everything on the floor.”
“She wanted something at the bottom of her drawer.”
“All the clothes in that room were for a man. A tall man.”
“Uh . . . her husband?”
I heard sniffing sounds near me.
“Haroon, what are you smelling?”
“I ain’t doin’ the smellin’, son. Somethin’ else is smellin’ us.”
I’m not very proficient at many forms of magik, but making light was something I was good at. I reached for some power from a dark red force line deep below us and made a globe between my hands. With a mere thought, I illuminated it. I had meant only to create a candle flame, but instead I got a ball of light half as tall as I was.
Dozens of pairs of red eyes glowed back at us.
I dropped the globe. It flickered, but I lifted it again. Whatever the eyes belonged to began to growl low in their throats. More threatening rumbles rose from behind them. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of beasts surrounding us. The creatures near us lifted their front lips, revealing long, sharp white teeth embedded in black gums. Those teeth weren’t as impressive as Aahz’s four-inch fangs, but he and we were completely outnumbered.
“This,” Aahz declared, “this, kid, is why I told you that dimension traveling was dangerous!”
“What do we do?” I asked, trying not to panic.
Aahz stood up, moving very, very slowly. He turned his hands palm out toward the creatures of the night.
“Not trying to hurt anyone,” Aahz said. “We’re strangers here. We come in peace. I want to talk to whoever is in charge.”
GRRRRRRR! came the sound from a thousand throats.
“Are you growling at me? ME?” Aahz demanded, thrusting his face into the nearest cluster of red lights. “Do you know who I am? I’ll tear your faces off and glue them into my scrapbook! Now, back off and take me to your leader!”
To my amazement, the glowing eyes did recede slightly.
“Good,” Aahz said, folding his arms.
Then they charged.
There was nowhere to run, since the beasts surrounded us completely. I struck at the bodies that leaped on me, finding them covered with wiry, greasy pelts too thick to land a punch. The beasts bit and tore at my arms, my legs, and my face. I howled with pain. They rammed me with their skulls. My ribs were bruised, but I couldn’t get out of their way. Gleep practically wound himself around my body to protect me, but we were overwhelmed.
“Use the force, kid!” Aahz bellowed.
I reached for the line of magikal power not far below the ground. It was jagged and deep purple, the kind that Aahz had always warned me against, but it was the only one within reach. I filled my internal reserves. Unlike Winslow, this magik flowed freely into me. I felt powerful and dangerous, like an evil overlord. Imperiously, I willed the creatures to go away from us and stop biting me.
Immediately, they all flew backward. Yelping, they vanished into the darkness. I picked myself up from the ground, feeling the sting of ripped skin underneath the shredded sleeves of my favorite tunic. I dashed blood off my cheek with the back of my hand. Those cuts hurt. I hoped I wasn’t going to catch something from them.
Of the five of us, I was the most scratched up. My left arm had been bitten several times, though it didn’t feel as if anything was broken. One of Haroon’s ears had a half circle of puncture marks along the edge. Aahz’s tunic had been half torn from his back. Markie looked almost entirely untouched, though her hair was mussed up. Gleep seemed unmarked and unperturbed. He licked my face. I ruffled his ears and tried not to wince at the smell of his breath.
Markie glanced at me with respect.
“You’ve come a long way since I saw you last,” she said. “I was ready to toss those creatures into next week, but you beat me to it.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “I mean, I threw a spell at them, but it was a dozen times more powerful than I expected. I thought I’d gain us some space, not clear the whole area.”
“Really?” Aahz said, tugging the rags of his shirt up over his shoulders. “Where’d you get the magik from?”
I described the line of force. Aahz’s scaly eye ridges rose.
“I warned you about those lines for a good reason, kid,” he said, “but if you can control the megalomaniacal impulses, or if they don’t poison you outright, the power shouldn’t amp you up any more than magik from other force lines.”
“But it does,” I said, pointing to my light globe. “That was supposed to be a candle.”
Markie turned away from us and thrust her small hand outward. A lightning bolt shot out. It lit up a bleak landscape before exploding into a grove of trees at least a mile away from us. She looked up at me with shocked eyes.
“Don’t try any spells,” she said. “Not a thing. Don’t use any magik at all unless it’s a matter of life or death. I was at the top of my class in Elemental School. That,” she added, aiming a small thumb over her shoulder, “was the Dancing Sparks demonstration I did to earn my Fairy Tales badge in Magik Sprouts. It shouldn’t have tickled a fly’s behind. There’s something about this dimension that amplifies power to the nth degree.”
I gulped. With magik flowing freely, I had filled up my internal reserves. I was a walking arsenal.
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Control,” she said. “Try not to get into a situation where you have to use magik at all until we can get out of this dimension.”
“That might be easier said than done, little missy,” Haroon said, one ear cocked high. “We’re about to get some company.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Aahz said. “Markie, can you hop us back to Winslow?”
“I don’t dare, without a whole lot more experimentation,” Markie said, worriedly. “A transference spell could shoot us all the way through the dimensional vortex, or blow us to pieces right here.”
“What about your D-hopper?” I asked Aahz.
“Same problem, kid,” Aahz said, reluctantly. “Two problems, in fact: It’s not that great a model to start with. This place could overload it like a Christmas shopper’s husband.”
“And the second?” I asked.
“It’s back in the hotel room,” Aahz said, sourly. “It’s too big to keep on me all the time. It never occurred to me that I would need it exploring a luxury resort!”
“Then let’s start runnin’,” Haroon suggested. “I’m in no hurry to meet any more locals.”
“Me, either,” Aahz said. “Come on!”
With my globe of light bobbing ahead of us like a drunken Fairy, we ran. The plain ahead of us was fairly level, though the ground was a scree of small, loose stones that made running tricky. Gleep galloped ahead, then doubled back to run with us, covering twice the distance the rest of us did.
“Here they come!” Haroon announced.
The Canidian’s ears were as keen as his eyes. Soon, even I could hear the clink of bridle tack and the distant hammering of hooves on the stony ground. Within moments, a line of black-coated steeds appeared to either side of us and cut off our escape route. We thudded to a halt. The riders trotted around us in a circle. I readied a wisp of magik—all I hoped I would need.
“Who are you?” the lead rider asked. His voice was deep and gravelly, laden with menace and power. A scarf hid the lower part of his face, as a wide-brimmed hat concealed the upper. All I could see was a pair of burning silver eyes.
“Just travelers,” Aahz said, casually, gesturing to me to keep silent.
“Gleep!” added my dragon, refusing to be suppressed.<
br />
Swords crackling with blue energy zinged as they were swept out of their scabbards. One nudged toward my throat.
“You don’t belong here.”
“We know!” I said. “We’ll get out of here just as soon as we can. Please, just let us go.”
“You’re trespassing,” the lead rider said. The swords drew close enough to us to nick flesh. “And trespassing in Maire means death.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Welcome to my nightmare!”
—H. P. LOVECRAFT
It did no good to try to reason with the dark strangers.
“We came here by accident,” I said, hopping along behind the leader’s steed as best I could in the pitch darkness. His minions had tied ropes around our wrists and the necks of Gleep and Haroon. My foot hit a rock and I stumbled. “All we want to do is go back to our dimension. If you’d just help us, we wouldn’t be trespassing anymore.”
The rider on the dark steed didn’t reply, but a whip lashed out and flicked me on the cheek with deadly accuracy. The sinister clink of metal hooves striking the stones was the only sound. He had extinguished my candle-globe with a single pinch of his gloved thumb and forefinger. No one else spoke to us, either. Any time I tried to speak, I got another lash to the face.
The riders seemed to have no trouble at all in the blackness. I kept imagining I saw darker shapes in the darkness. None of them were real, though. I tripped over things I couldn’t see, and those that I thought I saw had no substance.
A faint amber glow arose on the horizon. I thought for a long time I was imagining that, too, until a jagged line appeared beneath the glow. Buildings. Big ones, from the look of them. Not a city, but perhaps a citadel.
We crested a stony rise and began a descent into a broad valley. Small cottages, which we could see by the lamps and torches that burned in their windows and at their doorposts, dotted the landscape. The area was dominated, though, by an immense castle surrounded by a circular shield wall. Flaring torches burned on the signal towers. It looked as though there was only one way in—and we were heading toward it.
* * *
The silver-eyed man towed us all through the high portcullis. I peered up inside the arch and saw more glowing eyes looking down at me. Our captor rode up to the stone keep and around to the left side, where the main door was situated. Guards in full plate armor breastplates and chain-mail trews crossed their spears in front of the door. The rider dismounted and swept off his hat. The guards shouldered their spears and stood waiting. The rider tugged on a braided rope that hung down beside the massive iron-bound timber door. In the distance I could hear the ting-a-ling-a-ling of a bell.
The portal creaked open. More guards on the inside flanked a silent woman with a pale oval of a face and long black hair that flowed over the shoulders of her long black dress. The sockets of her eyes looked as if she had been weeping ink. In fact, everyone in this dimension had the same marking. She beckoned to us, then turned to glide gracefully toward a hallway that opened to her right. We stumbled in and followed her.
I could see the resemblance to Limbo in the style of construction and decorating. Though sturdy, the iron bolts and thick wooden pegs holding together the furniture seemed crude. The ceilings of the corridors were pointed archways, ornamented with gruesome battle scenes picked out in mosaic tiles. The pointed shape was echoed in the doorways and window slits, each of which had a mailed archer standing beside it.
“Whoever lives here doesn’t like surprises,” Aahz said.
The guards must not have cared for sightseers; they poked us in the back with their spears to get us moving faster. The woman glided to a high doorway. Inside the room, I could see a vast, slate-lined fireplace containing a huge fire large enough to immolate a small village. The enormous room contained oversized settees and chairs, the largest and most striking of which was arranged before the fireplace. The posts and legs of this throne were carved of a dark red wood and gilded at the feet and tips. Chains were fastened from the top of the posts to the front edge of the arms, where I swore I saw manacles. Thick, black leather formed the back and seat. As we entered, a man rose from the chair. He stood about my height, but narrow of build, with long, shoulder-length black hair that looked as if it had been shocked into its current style, but in an artful manner. He wore a leather jerkin and tight leather trousers. A chain encircled his waist, and more chains jangled around the wrists of his fingerless gloves. His long fingers stuck out like white worms attempting to escape.
The most striking thing about him was his face. It was pale as the woman’s, with high cheekbones that stuck out like knobs. The pits of his eyes dripped with black. The irises, like those of the riders and the guards, gleamed silver from the depths of the hollows. I was repulsed yet fascinated at the same time. He smiled, making his cheeks look yet more gaunt. He resembled my Skeeve the Magnificent disguise, though altogether more impressive. He just had the aura. It came naturally to him. He loped over to us.
“Hey, welcome to my humble little hovel.”
“Hovel? If this is a hovel, I’d love to see someplace you really like,” Aahz said, looking around admiringly. “I’m Aahz.” He held out a hand. The man took it without hesitation and shook it enthusiastically. “This is my partner, Skeeve. Markie. Haroon.”
“Gleep!” my dragon interjected, with an annoyed stare at Aahz.
“Oh, yeah,” Aahz said, resigned to the inevitable. “And Gleep.”
“I am Wince,” the man announced, throwing his arms out. He waited, still poised. “Ahem.”
He seemed to expect a reaction. I wondered if we were supposed to show obeisance.
“Oh, Wince!” I said, as if the memory had struck me.
I bowed deeply. Haroon immediately followed suit, planting his two front paws ahead of him on the floor and lowering his head to meet them. The rest of my friends followed our example. Wince beamed.
“Come on in,” he said. “I was just about to have dinner.” He gestured toward a long, rough-hewn table on which enormous iron candelabra, also hung with chains, blazed. At the end, one place had been laid with a bloodred plate and a cut crystal goblet. A chair, similar to the throne before the fire, hulked behind it. “Join me. I love company.”
As he spoke, gaunt males and females, dressed in black, began to stream in, carrying platters and pitchers. Two males carried in a massive oval dish covered by a high silver dome and placed it with a THUD! in the center of the table. I sniffed the air, appreciating the aromas of cooked meat, roasted vegetables, melted cheese, and other delicious ingredients.
“We don’t want to impose,” I offered, though my stomach rumbled happily.
“No problem,” Wince said. “I like a feast, so there’s always plenty. Would you like wine? I never drink it myself, but I keep it for guests.”
Aahz leaned close to Haroon.
“Is this guy a Vampire?” he whispered.
“Nossir,” Haroon said. “He’s warm and he’s got all his own blood, though I can smell plenty from a whole bunch of other people who came through here.”
“Whew!”
“All right,” I said. “We would be glad to join you.”
“Terrific!” Wince said. He snapped his fingers. “Minions!”
The black-clad servants hurried out of the room. They returned immediately, with armloads of china, linens, silver, and crystal. Floating behind them was a quartet of chairs much like Wince’s but smaller and less ostentatious. They set four places on the table, two to either side of their master’s seat, and one on the floor for Gleep. My dragon had a big bowl instead of a plate and cutlery. The chairs thumped down at the table. Wince waved a hand, and they screeched outward as if awaiting us.
“Let’s eat!”
We waited for him to seat himself, then took our places.
“So, who sent you here?” Wince asked. He signed to the servers, who mov
ed back to the table and lifted the dish covers all at once. The biggest dish concealed a roast boar, its skin crackling and golden. It had its jaws clenched around a fruit in its mouth and an expression of terror in its eyes. It made me uncomfortable to look at it, so I kept my gaze moving. The room impressed me. It alone was larger than the inn that I owned and occasionally occupied in Klah. Even the royal chambers that I had visited, such as the throne room of Queen Hemlock of Possiltum, were smaller.
“Um, we’re kind of here by accident,” I said. “We’re just travelers. Harmless ones. We didn’t mean to come.”
Wince shook his head. “No one gets here by accident. This country’s got magikal barriers you just wouldn’t believe around it to prevent accidental arrivals. The laws are really strict.”
“We noticed,” Aahz said.
Wince’s servants brought the food around to each of us, except the roast boar, which he carved himself onto a silver platter. I had never seen anyone so deft with a knife. Every slice was exactly the same width. The platter slid to the edge of the table, where a female minion received it and brought it to Markie’s side. Wince took a few slices for himself, examining them as if checking his own work.
“You seem like really nice people. So, who’d you tick off?”
“A magician,” I said, not really wanting to go into details. I took a bite of meat. It was delicious. “She transported us when we, uh, surprised her.”
“You fell afoul of a fellow magician?” He looked apologetic. “Sorry. I couldn’t help but notice the air of magik about you and this little lady here. One of my little talents. And she sent you here? Whew! Do you happen to know her name?”
“Never had the chance to ask,” Aahz said.
“Well, since you can see it was just an accident that we came here,” I continued, “we’d appreciate it if you’d help us out.”
“We usually don’t get walk-ins,” Wince said, shaking his head. “Normally interlopers are brought here by local law enforcement. But we can cope,” he assured us, waving his hands in excitement. “I’ll make the experience spectacular for you. You can rely on me. I’m famous across the dimensions.”
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