Robert Asprin: M.Y.T.H.-Interpretations: The Worlds of Robert Asprin

“Well, sure, we can do that, but you won’t get much outside business,” I said. “Only customers with access to Bezel’s mirror will ever come looking for you, and you already said not to let anyone know we’ve got it.”

“I can stand it,” Aahz assured me. “I’m pretty busy already. I’m important here. I like it. The king and I — we’re buddies,” Aahz grinned, tipping me a wink, “he said I was an asset to the community. I solve a few little problems for him now and then.” The efficient aide leaned in the door. “ ’Scuse me, partner.” He picked up a curved horn made of metal and held it to his ear. “Hey, your majesty! How’s it going?”

If there was ever a Frustration dream, I was living it. For every reason I presented as to why Aahz should return to Deva, Aahz had a counterargument. I didn’t believe for a moment he didn’t care about the people he would be leaving behind, but I did understand how he felt about having his powers restored to him. He’d get over the novelty in time.

Or would he? He’d been a powerful magician for centuries before Garkin’s unluckily timed gag. Would I be able to stand the thought of losing my talents twice? He did seem so happy here. He was talking with the local royalty like an old friend. Could I pull him away from that? But I had to. This was wrong.

“I’d better leave, sonny,” Alder said, standing up. “This sounds like an argument between friends.”

“No, don’t go,” I pleaded, following him out into the hallway. “This isn’t the Aahz I knows. I have got to get him through the portal again, but I don’t know how to find it.”

Alder cocked his shaggy head at me. “If he’s half the investigator he seems to be, he already knows where it is, friend. The problem you’re going to have is not getting him to the water, but making him drink. Right now, things are too cushy for him. He’s got no reason to leave.”

I felt as though a light had come on. “You mean, he hasn’t had enough nuisances?”

Alder’s rough-skinned face creased a million times in a sly grin. “I think that’s just what I do mean, youngster. Best of luck to you.” He turned his back and vanished.

“Thanks!” I called out. Using every bit of influence that was in me, I sent roots down into the deepest wells of magikal force I could find, spreading them out all over the Dreamland. I didn’t try to dampen Aahz’s light. I brightened it. I made every scale on the building gleam with power, both actual and perceived. Anyone with a problem to solve would know that this was the guy to come to. Aahz would be inundated with cases, important, unimportant and trivially banal. There would be people looking for lost keychains. There’d be little girls with kittens up trees. There’d be old ladies coming to Aahz to help them find the eye of a needle they were trying to thread.

Most important, unless I had missed something on my journey here, with tht much influence flying around, every nuisance in the kingdom would converge on the building. If there was one thing my partner hated, and had lectured me on over and over again, it was wasting time. If I couldn’t persuade Aahz to leave the Dreamland, maybe nuisances could.

My gigantic injection of magik took effect almost immediately While I watched, things started to go wrong with the running of Aahz, Unlimited. The files the efficient employees were carrying to and fro grew so top-heavy that they collapsed on the floor, growing into haystacks of paper. Some of the employees got buried in the mass. Others ran for shovels to get them out, and ended up tangled with dozens of other people who came in to help. Framed letters began to pop off the wall, falling to the floor in a crash of glass.

Then the entire building seemed to sway slightly to the right.

“What’s going on here?” I could hear Aahz bellow. He emerged from his office, and clutched the door frame as the building took a mighty lurch to the left. I grabbed for the nearest support, which happened to be Gleep. He had become a giant green bird with a striped head and a flat beak and curved talons which he drove deep into the wooden parquet floor. “Why is everything swaying?”

Miss Teddybear flew to the eye-windows and looked down.

“Sir, giant beavers are eating the leg of the building!”

“What?” Aahz ran to join her, with Gleep and me in close pursuit. We stared down out of the huge yellow oval.

Sure enough, enormous brown-black creatures with flat tails and huge square front teeth were gnawing away at the left leg of Aahz, Unlimited. As each support in the pylon snapped, the building teetered further.

Aahz leaned out of the window. “SCRAM!” he shouted. The attackers ignored him.

“Everyone get down there and stop them!” Aahz commanded. Miss Teddybear hurried away, following the flood of employees into the moving-box chamber.

As Aahz and I watched, his people poured out of the building. They climbed the leg, clinging to it in an effort to keep the monsters from burrowing any further. The beavers turned, and swatted them off with flips of their flat tails. Wailing, the employees whirled out of sight like playing cards on the wind. The monsters went on chewing. I felt bad about the people, though Alder has assured me that Dreamlanders were not easily hurt or killed.

“Call for reinforcements!” Aahz bellowed. I stared in amazement as white circles whirled out of the air, plastering themselves all over the leg, but the beavers chewed right through them. In no time they’d whittled the leg down to a green stick. The building was going to fall. Aahz’s empire was crumbling before our eyes. Gleep seized each of us in one mighty claw and flew with us to the elevator. The floor split under us as we crowded into the small cabinet.

The ride down seemed to take forever and ever. Aahz paced up and back in irritation, dying to get out there and do something to stop the destruction. I could tell he was trying to focus his magik on driving the monsters away and keeping his newfounded empire intact. I concentrated all my magik on keeping us from getting hurt. The forces I had stirred up scared me. I didn’t know if I’d get us killed trying to bring Aahz home.

“Come on,” he snarled, leaping out of the chamber as it ground to a stop. “We’ve got to hurry.”

It was too late. Just as we emerged from the front door, the enormous Aahz-shaped structure wobbled back and forth, and crashed to lie flat in the park. I gulped. One second sooner, and we’d have been inside when it fell. Aahz stared at the wreckage in dismay.

“Oh, well,” I said, trying to look innocent. “Easy come, easy go.”

“Yeah,” Aahz said, with a heavy sigh. “It was just a dream. There’s always more where that came from.”

A boy in a tight-fitting uniform with a pillbox hat strapped to his head came rushing up. He handed Aahz a small package the size of his hand. Aahz gave the boy a coin and tore open the paper. Inside was a small mirror. I recognized the frame. “It’s the portal back to Deva,” I said in surprise. “You were looking for it after all.”

“This was supposed to be for you,” Aahz mumbled, not meeting my eyes. “If you had wanted to use it. If you had wanted to stay, I wouldn’t be upset about it.”

The change of tense made me hopeful. “But now you want to go back?” I asked encouragingly.

“I don’t need to be bashed over the head with it,” Aahz said, then looked at the fallen building, which was already beginning to be overgrown with vines. “But I almost was. I can take a hint. Come on.” He took hold of the edges of the mirror. With a grunt of effort, he stretched the frame until the mirror was big enough for all of us.

Through it, instead of the reflection of our dreams, I could see Massha, my apprentice, my bodyguards Nunzio and Guido, and Tananda, our friend all surrounding the hapless Bezel. The Deveel, scared pale pink instead of his usual deep red, held his hands up to his shoulders, and his face was the picture of denial. Terrified denial. He might not be guilty for setting us off on this little adventure after all.