Robert Asprin - Myth-ion Improbable

"Anything but carrot juice," Aahz said, smiling at me.

"Not funny," I said.

Harold looked at both of us and shrugged, clearly having no idea what we were talking about. "I can make you a horse- steak sandwich, a cucumber sandwich, or a salad with fresh tomatoes. And I've got either orange juice or water to drink."

"Wow, you eat better than the rest of your people," Tanda said.

"I do?" he asked, surprised. "It's been so long since I've been out of these rooms, I wouldn't know."

"A lot better," I said, "but at the moment I'd just like a glass of water."

Aahz and Tanda agreed and as he got the water Aahz prompted him to start his story again. "You got up to the point where your people and Count Bovine's people had come to an agreement, his people were changed to cows for most of the month, and this place was sealed off. What changed?"

"Actually," Harold said, "I changed it."

"Why?" Aahz asked, a fraction of a second before I could.

"Because I thought I knew better, knew what was best for my people, knew how to change things back to a better world."

"Better back up and tell us how that kind of thinking got started," Tanda said.

Harold nodded. "I met a dimension traveler named Leila. I was running this little restaurant and bar just down the road from here when Leila walked in. We got talking, she told me about the big world outside of this dimension, and then of fered to let me be her apprentice. She said I had great magical potential."

I glanced at Aahz, who ignored me. Not once had Aahz ever said I had great magical potential, and I certainly wasn't going to ask him if I did. He'd just say no and laugh. Mostly laugh.

"Leila took me dimension-hopping with her, showed me hundreds of different places, taught me some basics of magik, 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, glanc ing 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," Tanda said, "you started the war again."

Harold nodded at Tanda'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. Tanda 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?" Tanda asked.

"Not worried about it at all," Harold said. "He told me that there were 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," Tanda 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 who 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," Tanda 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?"

"Per vect ," 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 Tanda'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?" Tanda 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.