Robert Asprin - Myth-ion Improbable

"More than likely coming from the energy in the moun tain," Aahz said.

I thought about the map on the ceiling, and how Aahz hadn't mentioned it to either Harold or Glenda. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I sure didn't want to mess up what he was doing by blurting something out. I'd done enough of that in the past.

"Our second option is to just find a way out of the castle."

"Right," I said, "and sneak all the way through Donner and past the posse."

"Posse?" Harold asked.

"Mounted riders who knew we were coming far outside of town."

"They picked me up as well," Glenda said.

"So they have some magik that tells them enemies are com ing," Aahz said. "We could be screened against that."

"If we knew what kind of magik it was," Tanda said.

"I'm stuck here anyway," Harold said. He pointed to what I had assumed was the front door to the suite. "It's like walking into a wall trying to go through there."

"And the same for how we came in?" Tanda asked.

"Oh, I can go all the way to the entrance into the ballroom through the skull room," Harold said. "Then I hit the screen."

"How about through the floor, or the window?" I asked.

"Haven't tried either," he said.

"I doubt it would work," Aahz said.

"Yeah," Tanda said, "captive spells, which I think this sounds like, are all-around prisons. It's like being in an invisible, unbreakable bubble."

"So to get Harold out with us," I said, "we have to break that spell as well."

"You're coming with us?" Glenda asked.

"I'm going to try," Harold said. He didn't add that there was gold for getting him out, and none of the rest of us filled her in either.

"So, old mentor," I said to Aahz, "how do we go about breaking the spells, since it seems to me that both our main ways of escape are blocked by them?"

He looked at me with a harsh look, then answered my question. "A couple of ways to break a spell. Either put a counter-spell on it, or cut off the source of power to the spell."

"Since this place is flowing with energy, the second doesn't sound likely. How does a counter-spell work?"

"I've tried every one I know," Harold said.

I glanced at Aahz. "My mentor hasn't even taught me any yet."

"When you gain enough self-control to use them," Aahz said, "I might think about it."

"I tried a number of them the first day I was here," Glenda said. "Didn't even dent the dimension-hopping shield."

"I tried all the ones I knew as well," Tanda said, frowning. Since we were all still here, I assumed she had had the same result as Glenda.

"And I saw nothing in any of the books back there to give us any help either," Aahz said. "In fact, I think it's worse than we are assuming. I think the spell that keeps all the vampires as cows, and your people under their spell and not killing the cows every month, is tied up with the very spells we are trying to break."

"If that's the case," Harold said, sounding defeated, "to free me, I must release all my people from the spell that has held them for centuries, and free all the vampires to kill them at the same time. I can't do that."

"Actually," Aahz said, smiling, "there might be a way that it would work, if we could shut everything down at once and at an exact time."

"How?" Harold asked.

"I wouldn't mind knowing the same thing," I said.

Tanda laughed with Aahz. "Do it during the middle of the day."

I frowned and looked at Aahz, who was nodding and laugh ing at me. Harold was frowning as well.

Glenda was laughing, but not very much.

"All the cows are out in pastures," Aahz said, his voice taking on the tone he got when I was being so stupid he couldn't believe I could be that stupid.

"Daylight," Tanda said. "Vampires?"

"Oh," Harold said. "Of course. Sunlight kills vampires."

"Of course," I said out loud, pretending I had just forgot ten, even though I had never known that fact about vampires. Why would I have? Until I came to this stupid dimension, I had never seen or even heard of a vampire. I just figured they had something to do with full moons.

"So if we shut off the power to the big spell somehow," Harold said, "all the vampires on one half of the planet would die."

"Exactly," Aahz said, "And the ones on the night side would have to find shelter by sunrise, giving your people time to kill many of them."

"Aahz, I just have one question."

He looked at me and said nothing.

"How do you propose to shut off the energy flowing in this area?"

Aahz smiled. "That's our problem, isn't it?"

"Why do I think I'm not going to like what you're thinking at this moment?"

"Oh, maybe because I'm thinking that's where you're going to come in."

Tanda laughed.

"It's not funny," I said.

"Sure it is," Tanda said.

I just stared at Aahz. Someday I'd love to figure out a way to get him his powers back so I wasn't the one doing the dirty work all the time. I had a hunch, from the look on his face, that this was going to get really dirty for me. Center-of-the-mountain-kill-the-energy-at-its-source dirty.

"Before we can figure out how to block the energy for the spells," Aahz said, "we have to know how it flows through the castle."

He said that and I just shuddered.

I could feel how much of the energy flowed in this place any time I opened my mind to it. It came from down in the mountain, flowing up and out. Usually energy for magik was in lines flowing through the sky that I had to reach up and tap to work a disguise spell, or a flying spell. Or, if there was no air energy, I went for ground energy flowing deep under the surface and rocks. Air energy was easier to get, and Aahz had taught me to always go for it first.

But this castle was built right on a place where energy flowed up from below and out into the sky in all directions. Mapping meant someone who could read energy lines had to somehow get above the castle and look down at it all.

"So what do we do?" Tanda asked. "How do we start doing that?"

"First," Aahz said, "we try to figure out how the energy flows into that skull room. It was strong and getting stronger in there right before all the cows turned to vampires the other night."

"Really?" Harold asked.

I was surprised that Aahz had wanted to start there, but it made sense. We had to map the energy patterns, and starting where we knew a lot was being tapped seemed logical.

Suddenly I realized what I had been thinking about.

"Map," I said aloud.

Everyone sort of turned and stared at me.

"Map," I said again, smiling at them. I reached into my pouch and pulled out the magik map we had used so often to get into this fix. If it got us here, it just might be able to get us out.

"Oh, heavens, yes," Aahz said, smiling at me. "Great think ing, Skeeve."

That was the third time he had complimented me on some thing to do with the map. I was going to have to keep this parchment with me at all times. Aahz hadn't given me that many compliments in the last year.

I opened up the map. It was completely blank. Nothing on it at all. For some reason, that wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but a blank parch ment just flat wasn't it.

"Perfect," Aahz said, looking at the empty sheet.

I handed it to him, flashing it so the others could tell it was blank as well. If he liked a map with no lines, he could have a map with no lines.

"Was that the map the cartographer did?" Harold asked. "The one that got you here?"

"Sure was," I said.

"What happened to it?" Harold asked.

"It got us here," Tanda said.

"Oh," Harold said.

"Tanda," Aahz said, "do you know how to do a mapping spell?"

Tananda shook her head. "Beyond me, I'm afraid."

"Glenda?"