Robert Asprin - Class Dis-Mythed

Just because it looks pretty doesn't mean you can laugh off the results. See?" She picked up a ring with a glittering opal in the bezel. "Watch this. I got this one for saving a merchant from an Ogre he had cheated."

She turned it toward the open window and pressed inward with her fingers. A bolt of blue-white lightning shot out of the window.

"Ho-hum, another lightning ring," Freezia yawned. "I got one for my twelfth birthday. You got taken by the merchant, too, lady. You should have negotiated better. Those cost about three gold pieces brand new. Five with the decoder wheel."

Massha looked crestfallen. I was furious.

"That's enough," I said. "I shouldn't have to tell you that the Lady Magician deserves respect from you whether or not you're impressed."

I raised my eyebrows meaningfully.

They took the threat. Jinetta reached for a bangle bracelet studded with rubies and began to examine it closely.

"Make music," Massha suggested. "Touch the jewels."

Jinetta tried one tentatively then broke into a wide grin at the tinkly sound. She began to play a tune with her fingernails. Freezia and Pologne looked over a cloisonne vase with a long neck, laughing when a snake jumped out of it. Massha showed them how to reload it.

"I left that one in the queen's boudoir last week. She just howled. I think she wants to plant it on visiting ambassadors."

"What about this?" Tolk asked, offering her a long purple plume.

"It writes romance stories," Massha said. "Dunk it in hot water if you want it to get really steamy."

"Ooh," Freezia cooed, reaching for it. "I adore love stories."

"You would," Melvine sneered. "I bet you've read all of Loebis Nasus's novels."

Freezia eyed him. "How in Perv would you know about her?"

"I don't," Melvine said hastily. "Never read a single word."

"Uh-huh," Freezia said skeptically. "How about this belt, Massha?" She dangled a gaudy strip of gold leather studded with rutilated quartzes.

The Lady Magician of Possiltum settled back on her cushions with a hearty laugh. "There's a story attached to this one, kiddies! That belonged to a wizard named Polik who used it to make himself look thinner than he really was. Trouble is, it's only an illusion, and no one told the doors to believe it. He got stuck in Hemlock's privy during a state banquet, and traded it off to me in exchange for keeping silent about having to extract him."

Bunny howled with laughter. "That little blue powder room behind her throne?"

"That's the one!"

"What do you do with it?" Pologne asked pointedly.

"Trade goods," Massha shrugged, refusing to take offense. "If I find someone who's got a treasure they don't need, we swap. It's fun. Listen, I had an idea to make this interesting. I won't tell you any more about my hoard. You take an item and figure out what it does without killing yourself or your fellow classmates here. How about it? Skeeve wanted you to try out what it's like to be working magicians. We have to do this with mystery items all the time, especially in the Bazaar at Deva. Of course, about 90% of the stuff you can buy there are fakes or toys. It's a contest. Whoever identifies the most items gets a prize. Bunny can keep score."

"I'm on it!" my assistant declared, reaching for a pencil and a pad of paper.

Pologne grinned, showing what had to have been a few hundred gold pieces' worth of orthodontia in her mouthful of gleaming white, four-inch-long fangs. "That sounds like fun."

"It can be," Massha smiled back. Her teeth were nowhere as impressive, but the feral expression more than made up for it. "Go on, give it a try!" She spilled the baubles out on the floating cloth.

Bee goggled at the array of treasures. Gingerly, he picked up a skinny silver wand. Carefully pointing it away from all of us, he invoked it. Nothing happened. He shook it and listened to it. Still nothing. Tolk gave an excited bark and immediately ran his shiny wet nose up its length.

"Cures poison," he said at once.

"How do you know that?" Bee asked.

"Unicornium," Tolk said, grinning. "Only element in the universe that can counteract poisons. Besides, it smells like Buttercup out there."

Bee put the wand to his nose. "I guess it kinda smells like a horse. It's kinda hard to tell past the dragon smell. No offense, Gleep."

"Gleep!" my pet said, the friendly expression in his wide blue eyes asserting that no offense was taken.

"If it gets rid of poison, you ought to use it on that food of yours," Jinetta sneered.

"Just because I don't eat live vermin?" Bee countered.

"At least I know my food is fresh!"

Bee almost retorted then, seeing my pointed glare, reached for another gadget, an egg-shaped chunk of glass.

"Whoops!" Freezia exclaimed as she invoked a silver medallion and vanished from our sight.

"Invisibility amulet," Pologne said immediately.

"Nope," Massha said. "Give her a chance."

In a moment, Freezia reappeared. "Dressing room," she said, tossing the disk back onto the cushion. "I was in a kind of enclosure with hooks on the wall."

"You went invisible all of a sudden," Bee said. The glass egg in his hands lit up. He gave it a speculative glance. "You were gone for hours." The egg turned black. "Lie detector," he said quickly, forestalling the others.

"Good guess," Massha praised him.

The contest got going into high gear. All of my students reached for items from Massha's bag of toys, the females oohing and aahing over the jewelry. The males seemed to go for the less-adorned gadgets. Massha had generously brought dozens of pieces. Each student played with an object for a while, turning it over looking for clues as to its function without actually invoking it, but sometimes they couldn't help it. A few of the magik items went off by themselves. At one point everyone in the room had purple fingernails, orange lipstick and screaming scarlet rouge, thanks to a powder puff that exuded a cloud of dust. The plain walls had become festooned with pairs of shoes, flowers, racks of knives and crossbows, and a huge poster of four long-haired males holding musical instruments with a signature in the corner that said, "Love is all you need forever." I was fascinated with the rest; I had never appreciated the range of her collection of swag. Massha always forestalled a student from using dangerous items, but let them have free range with the harmless stuff.

"Some of these things you just invoke," Massha warned them. "Others are triggered by controls. A few have got safety catches. Be careful. Those are the most dangerous."

Of the six, Bee was the most cautious. He had seen a few of her treasures before, and identified them instantly, earning him points right off the bat. Since then he had fallen behind his companions, who could do more advanced magik-sniffing than he could. In Tolk's case, the sniffing was literal. His sensitive nose picked out obscure compounds and alloys that smelled all alike to me under a mask of Massha's powerful cologne. The Canidian was also capable of making shrewd guesses that turned out frequently to be correct. Melvine was good at figuring out some pretty obscure things like joke toys.

The Pervects could reel off IDs for every mass-produced trinket, from the Bazaar to some upscale manufactories in the far reaches of distant dimensions, and fought to be the first to call out its name. Once they exhausted those pieces, they were left almost as clueless as Bee. With regard to jewelry custom-made for Massha, almost everyone had to cry uncle.

"What's this?" Melvine asked crankily, holding up a platinum-banded ring with a moss green, egg-shaped bezel.

Massha's full cheeks turned scarlet. "That was a special present to me from my sweetie, Hugh, on our first anniversary."

"But you haven't been married for a year yet," I said.