Robert Asprin - Myth-ion Improbable

"I didn't think there was anything back here," he said. "After all these years, I know this room."

I didn't want to mention to him that he really didn't, since he hadn't even noticed the map painted on the ceiling.

"Oh, it's here all right," Aahz said.

All five of us were standing there in the dusty place. I had the shovel, Tanda had the map.

"Glenda?" Aahz said.

She stepped up to him.

Quicker than I had seen my mentor move in a long, long time, Aahz had the rope out of his pouch, over her head, and tied.

She dropped to the ground, sound asleep, before she could even get a complaint out of her mouth. I was stunned.

"Harold," Aahz said, "pick up her feet and let's move her to a couch."

Harold looked as stunned as I felt. Tanda seemed to again know exactly what was happening. Aahz moved Glenda to the couch, made sure the rope was tied, then looked at Harold. "No matter what you do, what you think, what happens around you, do not untie her until we get back. Understand?"

Harold nodded. "But I don't see why."

"The map," Aahz said.

Tanda held it up and pointed to a spot on it.

"Right here," she said. "See this tiny thin line coming up out of the basement and into this suite?"

I looked real close. For a moment I thought she was mak ing it up, then I saw the blue line. It went right to a spot in the suite where the chair was, where Glenda had been sitting when I did the map.

"Glenda's hooked up somehow," Aahz said. "I didn't see that until we had already made our plans."

"You mean they might know we're coming?"

"Possible," Aahz said.

"Oh, that's nice," I said. I wondered how many of that posse I could hit with the golden shovel before they took it away from me.

"Are you ready?" Aahz asked.

"You want me to lead?" I asked, still not seeing where we were going to go.

"I've got it for the moment," Aahz said. He picked up the torch we had brought with us from the first tunnel, held it out and said to me, "A light might help."

I eased some energy out of the stream, just enough to start the torch on fire. Not long ago I had had trouble with that spell as well. And a year ago I might have set the entire library on fire trying to light that torch.

"Follow me," Aahz said, and stepped at the stone wall.

And right through it.

"This place could give a guy a headache," I said, moving at the stone wall behind him. I had the shovel slightly in front of me in case the stone decided to be stone for me.

I went right through, just as Aahz had done.

Tanda came through behind me.

The tunnel was narrow and carved out of solid rock. Steps led down into the bowels of the earth. More steps than I could see in the torchlight. The place was cold and very dusty. It was clear that no one had been in here in a very, very long time, as our footsteps kicked up a cloud of dust that swirled in the flickering light of the torch.

"Are we shielded?" Aahz asked Tanda.

"Same as in the library," Tanda said. "Count Bovine didn't want this tunnel found, that's for sure."

"That helps us," I said.

Aahz nodded, made sure we were both ready, then, hold ing the torch up so that we could see the steps as well as he could in the dust, he started down.

And we went down for a very, very long time, kicking up thick clouds of dust with every step. I could not imagine how anyone could have carved the tunnel. I could barely walk the steps, and we were going down. Climbing this must be next to impossible for anyone not in top shape.

Finally, after what seemed like a nightmarish eternity, we reached an area of the tunnel that flattened out.

"Map," Aahz said.

Tanda moved up and the two of us crowded with Aahz so that we could see the map in the torchlight and swirling dust. It showed that we had reached the bottom of the tunnel. I glanced around at the rock walls and ceiling. We were under thousands and thousands of body-lengths of rock. I couldn't imagine how much weight was pressing down on the ceiling of the tunnel above us right at that moment.

The thought sent a shiver through me, and a touch of panic. "Can we keep going?" I asked.

Tanda took the map and Aahz smiled at me, his green scales covered in dust, his eyes yellow holes in the dirt. I must have looked as bad as he did, maybe worse. "A little claustrophobia?" he asked.

"I don't know about that," I said, not having a clue what the big word meant. Sometimes Aahz just didn't remember what a backward part of a backward world I came from.

"Feeling the pressure of all this weight over us?" Tanda asked.

"Yeah," I said, "more than I want to think about right now, thank you very much."

Aahz laughed. "We don't have that much farther to go."

"Then let's go," I said, fighting against the panic at the walls closing in.

Aahz gave me a long look, then turned and headed along the flat part of the tunnel. I kept the golden shovel clutched in front of me. At least if the tunnel came down, I'd be buried with some thing worth digging up. After a hundred paces the tunnel started back up. Stair after stair after stair. Up and up and up.

I forgot to be afraid of the tunnel coming down on me because I was so tired from the climbing.

"Wait," Aahz said, stopping to pant for a moment. "The air's bad in here."

I realized when he said that that I was also having trouble getting enough air. Now not only was the roof about to fall and crush me, I was going to die from lack of air.

"Almost there," Tanda said from behind me. I could hear the rustling of the map. Aahz nodded and pushed upward, taking one step at a time.

I used the shovel as a sort of crutch. Step. Clunk. Step. Clunk.

The sound echoed down the tunnel behind us. If this plan didn't work, I couldn't imagine having to go back to the suite using this tunnel. I'd try it if I had to, but I sure didn't want to.

Step. Clunk. Step. Clunk.

We kept climbing. Forever. How could this be? Had we gotten turned around and were headed back to the suite?

My lungs burned like the time I had stayed underwater too long in the pond when I was a kid. My eyes stung with the dust, and I could feel the grit in my mouth.

"We're here," Aahz said, his voice barely a whisper. I glanced back. Tanda was a few steps behind me, her face covered in dust, mud caked around her mouth and nose. She looked as if she was about to pass out.

Ahead of me Aahz slid back a wooden panel and stepped through.

Cool, fresh air hit me like a hammer as I stepped up to follow him. In all my life I couldn't remember anything feeling that good before.

We were in a good-sized room, at least fifty paces across, that was completely empty of every stick of furniture. It was simply four walls of stone, a stone floor, and a stone ceiling. From the looks of it, the door we had come through was the only door in the place. And there were no windows. Where the wonderful fresh air was coming from I had no idea.

"Oh, my," Tanda said, coming up out of the tunnel and taking big gulping breaths of air. I gulped right along with her.

Aahz came over and took the map from Tanda, studying it as we caught our breath. After a moment he moved around the room, staying to the outside.

I knew why he stayed to the outside. In the center of the room was a massive energy flow coming up through the floor and going out through the ceiling. It wouldn't hurt him to walk through it, but Aahz was taking no chances.

About halfway around the room he stopped, studied the map again, and then came back toward us a few steps.

"Right here," he said, pointing into the empty air. "Right here is where the energy flow is diverted."

He pointed in the direction of the empty wall beside him, indicating how the energy flow moved off the main one.