Robert Asprin - Class Dis-Mythed

"Me, too!" Freezia said. "It was worth every penny. More."

Tolk stood up. "Thanks a million! To Skeeve. Wow wow wow!"

The others raised their glasses. "Wow wow wow!" they chorused.

Bunny smiled at them. "I'll be sorry to see you go," she said. "It's been nice to have company. Come back and visit us some time." She started to rise and picked up her bowl.

"We'd be honored," Bee said. "Oh, don't get up, ma'am. I'll do the dishes."

"We all will," Jinetta said.

"Like I said," Bunny said to me, as the self-appointed cleanup committee hustled around us, "I'm going to miss them."

In no time at all, the dining room was swept, wiped, and scrubbed. All of the dishes went back onto the shelves, and the leftovers were scraped into Gleep's bowl. My pet stuck his nose into it with a whiffle of pleasure.

"If that's all we can do," Jinetta said, "then we're going to go up. Is that all right?"

"Of course," I said, smiling. "You're graduates now."

Gravely, the students each shook my hand.

As they were heading for the stairs, Jinetta threw her arm over Bee's shoulders. "Come with me, kid. We need to talk."

I sat at my study table, ostensibly comparing the power capacity of two hunks of magikal crystal from Herkymer. It had been about a week since my students had left. The old inn was quiet again—too quiet. Bunny had taken a few days off to take Buttercup to a unicorn show, leaving me and Gleep to our own devices. Gleep, usually the most ebullient of pets, was depressed at the absence of his best friend, and sat at my feet emitting mournful sighs and the occasional whiff of stench. We were both grateful when they returned earlier this afternoon, Buttercup proudly showing off his medallion for Best War Animal. He and Gleep had charged off into the woods to play. Bunny entertained herself quietly in her sitting room. Having been by myself for several days I was ready to hear all about her trip, but she had forestalled me with an upraised hand.

"Now, don't pay any attention to me, Skeeve," she chirped brightly. "Don't stop your research just because I came home. I brought back a stack of new magazines to read. Just pretend I'm still not here."

After the enforced silence, that was impossible. I found myself glancing up at any little noise, just to have a distraction from the silence. It surprised me how much I missed the class. Or, maybe, I was more sociable than I thought I was. Living like a hermit was not my natural habit and, as soon as I felt more like a master magician than a faker, I'd be back in the thick of things in a blink.

A trill of birdsong brought my attention away from the blue chunk. I had to stop that. Mastering complex magik required concentration, and the best concentration was found in silence. It was one of the reasons that old Garkin had his cottage way out in the woods—that and the penury that often accompanies sincere magikal study. I was enough of a realist to know I was more than fortunate being able to take a sabbatical with a full strongbox. I wouldn't have to scratch, as my old master had, to buy thurifers and censers and candles and all of the paraphernalia that magicians surrounded themselves to assist in their studies. Most of it was unnecessary window dressing, to impress a client. Consecrated salt? I had a barrelful. Rare incense? You name it, I had it. Still another percentage of items only served as another focus for concentration, such as gazing crystals and magik mirrors. The remainder was genuinely useful for certain kinds of magik, storing power or focusing it in some way that might not come naturally to a practitioner, or for use by a non-magician. I had a crate full of such gizmos. Each of them had been fun for a while, but I had put them aside in search of processes I could evoke rather than invoke.

For a moment I was ashamed of the remarkable plenty I enjoyed. Maybe, when I decided to rejoin civilization, I'd endow a scholarship to help poor magicians get a start in their studies. If they couldn't make it after learning the basics, they were on their own.

The bird sang again, its voice echoing in the emptiness. Maybe I should take up bull-wrestling, or foster a houseful of banshees, just to raise the sound level a little. Or maybe I should start a game show.

In the study next door, Bunny had hooked into the Crystal Network again. Voices and music made me strain to hear. In the midst of it all I heard a BAMF!

"Tananda! You made it!"

"Hey, Bunny! I brought popcorn. When's it get started?"

"Soon! Let me pour you some wine."

"Hi, Bunny," a little voice said. I recognized it as belonging to Markie.

I heard a clunk as the wine carafe rang against something solid. Tananda's voice rang, too, with outrage. "What is SHE doing here?"

I stood up, wondering if I should charge out there and get between them. I didn't have to worry. Markie could take care of herself.

"She's—not so bad, Tanda," Bunny said slowly. "She was ready to jump in and help Skeeve out a few weeks ago. It turned out he didn't need her, but I thought it was pretty nice of her to offer."

"Well—that's different from the way she was before."

"She's trying to be different. I'm trying to—accept it."

"I brought some wine," Markie added eagerly. "It's just a little 'thank you' for letting my nephew stay on here. You can't believe the difference it made in him. I'm sure you will like it. Chateau Cupido, extra sec, from my aunt's vineyard."

"I'm not saying that would make everything all right," Tanda said, but her voice started losing that constricted quality.

"No," Markie replied. "I'm not asking for that. Just give me a chance."

"Well, sit down, I suppose. Do you do any crystal-gazing?" Tanda asked.

"When I get a chance. You mean you're a fan, too?"

"Do chocolate bunnies get their ears bitten off? You bet!"

Bunny became positively expansive. "I love it. It's really opened up the world to me, you know? And I've gotten to know so many other people through the ether. Oh, look. It's about to start!"

"Did you see the first three episodes?" Tanda asked.

"Oh, yes!" Bunny said. "Everyone at the unicorn show was a big fan. We spent hours watching!"

I moaned to myself. Crystal-gazing fans. Now they were going to talk about one of their programs until the trivia bled out of my ears.

"Where's Skeeve?" Markie asked.

"Studying," Bunny said. I heard the glug of liquid. "He'll come out later."

Guiltily, I bent over my table to try to make her easy assurance ring true. The three of them laughed and chattered. I peered at my crystals. The pink one held more energy than the blue one, but didn't retain it as long. Would it be possible to transfer power from the pink one to the blue one? Treating the crystal as if it was a force line, I drew on the pink power. It began to fill my inner 'battery.' So far so good. Now, I tried transferring it to the blue crystal. It grew hot. I dropped it on the table and began to rethink my approach. Pernadairy's Treatise on Magikal Crystals listed eighteen different means of releasing power from natural prisms, and only the three messiest made any reference to heat.

A series of crackles, pops and snaps erupted in the next room while Tanda and Bunny sought the connection in the ether they wanted.

Bytina, the little red PDA, was almost as good as a real crystal ball, but being a philosophical device more than a magikal one, she had odd problems of her own. The way she used power tended to build up a static-like charge that attracted nuisance emissions, insubstantial images, which infiltrated the house and appeared suddenly out of closets or other unexpected places. I saw a Troll carrying a sword pop up out of my clothing trunk one day. I nearly blasted my own wardrobe apart until I realized it was just an advertisement for a collectible weapons dealer. Tanda had showed me how to deal with commercial interruptions so I could dispell them for Bunny, but since Tanda was here, she could banish them herself.