Роберт Асприн. Миф - 11. Миффия невыполнима (engl)
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... town full of cow food."Okay, Skeeve," Tanda said, "see if you can find that opening."
I got down on my stomach and crawled partway under the bunk next to
where Glenda sat. It looked like a stone wall, just like all the rest of the
room. But when I went to touch the wall, my hand went through as if nothing
was there.
"A disguised opening," I said.
I crawled under the bunk and right on through the wall, coming out on
the other side. It was pitch black, so I tore a little piece off the bottom
of my shirt and used a magik spell to light it. I was in a tunnel that had
been cut out of stone. It was just tall enough for me to stand, and not much
wider than my shoulders. It clearly hadn't been used in a long time, if
ever. There was an unused torch stuck in a crack in the rocks, so I lit it,
tossing to one side my burning piece of shirt.
A moment later Aahz followed, coming through what looked to be solid
stone near the floor of the tunnel. Then Glenda, breathing hard, pulled
herself into the tunnel and sat with her back against the sidewall, followed
almost instantly by Tanda.
"This tunnel is shielded as well," Tanda said, looking around as she
stood. "A shield so old, it might have been here before the castle."
"I'm impressed," Glenda said, still sitting on the floor. "How'd you
know this was here?"
I pulled the map out of my pouch and held it up in the faint
torchlight. She saw it and nodded. "Of course."
I opened the map and Aahz, Tanda, and I stood under the torch studying
it.
It now showed the tunnel we were in as center, and the location of the
golden cow had changed. Now it was in a dining room ten floors above us. I
didn't believe it for a moment.
The map showed that we had to follow the tunnel for as far as we could,
then climb up a ladder and through the floor of what was called a morgue.
"Seems we don't have much choice," Aahz said, staring at the map. He
pointed to the fact that the map didn't show a way back into the room we had
just left.
I moved over and touched the wall we had just crawled through. It was
solid rock. Weird.
I moved back over to where they were standing under the light.
"We're going to be chasing the cow until we find an exit," Aahz said.
"We could always kill the magik in the map one more time," I said.
"No," Tanda said. "We may end up in a room that we need the map to help
us get out of."
"She's right," Glenda said. "For all we know, the map may be the magik
source that created this tunnel. From the looks of how that wall turned back
to stone, it just might be."
I stared at the paper in my hand, then at Glenda sitting on the floor.
If she was right, and I had killed the magik in the map again, we might have
ended up trapped in stone. I didn't want to think about that at all.
"So we follow the magik," Aahz said.
I folded the map and put it away in my pouch, then took the torch out
of the crack and held it in front of me so that I could see where I was
going. Then, doing my brave routine, I started off down a tunnel so old, or
so magical, that it didn't look as if anyone had ever been in here.
The tunnel sloped upward like a fairly steep ramp. I moved at a steady
pace, making sure that each step was on solid ground. I didn't trust my eyes
at this point, after crawling through solid rock.
After about a hundred paces I looked back. Tanda was right behind me,
Aahz behind her, and Glenda was managing to stay up with us, only because I
was moving so slowly. I didn't feel the slightest bit sorry for her. She had
left me to die, and gotten herself into the mess she faced last night. And
without us, she wouldn't have this chance to escape. As far as I was
concerned, she would either keep up or go out on her own again.
I went back to working my way up the tunnel, testing each step, until
finally I reached the end. A rock ladder had been carved into the stone,
leading straight up through a very narrow hole.
As Aahz stopped beside me I pointed up at the hole.
"Can you squeeze through there?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"I suppose not," I said. I handed him the torch. "Let me get up through
the opening so I can brace my back against the wall, then hand me the
torch."
Without waiting for another idea from my mentor, I started up. The hole
in the roof of the tunnel was big enough that my shoulders touched on both
sides, but not so small that I had to squeeze. Aahz might be able to make
it, but it was going to take some work.
Once I got through the hole, the space got bigger. I stopped and Aahz
handed me the torch, passing it up past me quickly so I wouldn't get burned.
Above I could see the ladder climbing at least twenty or so of my body
lengths before reaching what looked to be a wooden trapdoor in a floor.
"Send Tanda up second," I whispered down to Aahz below me. "We need to
make sure no one is in the room above the trap door up here."
"Good thinking," Tanda said, climbing up under me as I went higher. She
got up just under me, paused, and then nodded. "No one up there at the
moment."
"Good," I said.
"You go next," I heard Aahz say to Glenda down in the tunnel.
"No," Glenda said, her voice firm. "You get stuck in that opening it's
going to take both Tanda pulling and me shoving to get you through."
I couldn't hear what Aahz said, but a moment later his green-scaled
head came through the hole below Tanda.
"No, both arms ahead of you," Tanda said.
Aahz backed down a step, put both his arms over his head, and climbed
back up into the hole. From what I could see, his shoulders were wedged
pretty good in the rock.
Tanda braced herself, grabbed one of his hands, and then said, "Ready
to push, Glenda?"
"Ready," Glenda said, her voice muffled as if she were a long ways
away.
"Now," Tanda said, pulling on Aahz's arm as he pulled on the rock
surface with the other.
With a rip of his shirt, he came through.
Tanda let go and moved up under me. Aahz had his shoulders through the
hole, but he wasn't climbing any higher at the moment.
"Glenda," he said. "Grab a hold of my leg and I'll pull you up."
"I think I can make it," she said.
"Just do it and quit arguing with me," Aahz said.
I stared down at the top of my mentor's head. The old green-scaled guy
had a soft spot after all. Always knew it was there, just hadn't seen it
that often.
As Aahz helped Glenda up the stone ladder, Tanda and I went on up to
the trap door. Since Aahz hadn't taught me a spell yet that could sense if
something was on the other side of a wall, or a floor in this case, I was
leaving that up to Tanda.
"We still in the clear?" I asked.
"We are," Tanda said.
I eased up to the wooden trapdoor and pushed slowly. The wood scraped
as it went up, then the door seemed to catch on something. It took me a
moment to realize it was a rug. From the looks of it, a very old rug.
I pushed even harder, and the rug lifted and pulled aside enough so
that I could get through. I went halfway up through the trapdoor and stood,
torch in the air, lighting the dark room.
Tanda had been right. From what I could see, no one was around. Just a
bunch of tables and a wooden door leading off to the left. But the minute I
stepped up and stood, I knew that Tanda and I had both been wrong. No one
alive was around.
But the place was filled with dead people. Tables full of them.
Chapter Twelve
"There's gotta be a way out of this dungeon."
G. GYGAX
Okay, this was another first for me. I had never had the luck,
opportunity, or bad timing to be in a room full of dead people. And these
weren't just any dead people, but people who had clearly had the life sucked
out of them through their necks just the night before. There had to be at
least fifteen or twenty bodies, all naked, with ugly marks on their necks,
and eyes staring at the ceiling.
I stood, holding the torch in the air, not really wanting to move in
any direction until the others were beside me. Not that I thought the dead
could do anything to me, or that I was superstitious about dead spirits. I
wasn't, I was sure. I just didn't want to make a wrong move until I had
someone beside me, or at least that was what I told myself.
"Looks like you were lucky to survive last night," Aahz said to Glenda
as helped her through the trap door and onto her feet.
"Does seem that way, doesn't it," she said, leaning against a table
with a dead guy on it.
The guy looked a lot like the guy who ran Audry's. I was starting to
think that most of the men on this planet looked like him.
"So much for thinking they didn't kill their food source," Tanda said.
"I don't think most do," Aahz said. "But this is the castle, the
royalty of the planet. I would imagine in here all rules are off."
"Wonderful," I said. "Now we have naked killer vampire cows, one of
which is rumored to give golden milk."
"Strange place, isn't it?" Aahz said.
"You could say that, but you just did."
"We need to put that rug back and close the trap," Tanda said. "Make
sure we cover our tracks as best we can."
I handed Tanda the torch and Aahz and I sat to work. In a few seconds
the room looked like it had before we came up out of the floor.
"Now where?" Glenda asked.
I pulled out the map and opened it, holding it up to the light for Aahz
and Tanda to see. The morgue, the room we were in, was now central on the
map. The golden cow had moved to the kitchen. And our path out of here was
through a panel in the back of the room, not the door. The map showed the
panel leading to a secret passageway that led for a long ways up through the
castle.
"You know," I said, pointing at where the passageway led, "that we are
getting deeper and deeper into the castle and farther from an escape exit."
"Looks that way, doesn't it?" Aahz said, staring at the map.
"That doesn't matter and you know it, Aahz," Glenda said. "At least you
could tell your apprentice the truth."
We all turned and looked at where she was leaning on a table with a
naked dead guy right behind her.
"How's that?" Aahz asked, clearly not happy at Glenda's tone.
"We can't escape this place without beating this map," she said. "And
beating the map means capturing the golden cow, who I assume, is the leader
of this entire dimension. That golden cow is the only one who is going to
let us go, and you know it."
At that point I was convinced that all the blood loss had gotten to her
mind. The only thing I wanted to do was find a way out and run or fly as
fast as we could until we were far enough away that we could hop dimensions
and get away from this insane place.
"Come on," I said, smiling at her. "That would be crazy. Going after
the head of all the cow vampires would be suicide. We'd end up like all
these fine food products around us. Glenda, it's clear you need to rest."
No one said anything. Glenda just kept staring at me and slowly I
realized that neither Aahz or Tanda were telling her how crazy she was
either.
I turned to my mentor, who had a sheepish look on his face.
"She's right," he said. "We wouldn't stand a chance of getting out of
here, against the kind of magik we are facing, without the help of the map."
I looked at Tanda.
She smiled at me. "They're right. I can barely, with Glenda's
assistance, keep us hidden. The magik around here is so powerful, we
wouldn't stand a chance without help from the top. And the map is leading us
to that help."
At that moment I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was as dead
as any of the bodies in the room with us. I just wasn't smart enough yet to
lie down and stop breathing like they had all done.
With one more look at my mentor, then at Glenda, I shrugged and tried
to put on my best death-mask face.
"Why not? Let's get moving before someone comes in and stops our fun
treasure hunt before it really gets started."
With one more look at the map, I folded it and put it back in my pouch.
Then I headed through the tables of bodies to the back wall. As I went
I wanted to talk to the bodies, tell them I'd be right back, tell them to
wait, to reserve a table for me. But I kept my morbid thoughts to myself.
There was a large cabinet of medical supplies filling the back wall and
no hidden panel that I could see. From what the map had shown, the panel was
right behind the cabinet.
I took hold of the back edge of the cabinet and pulled outward. I
expected it to be too heavy for me to move, but it swung easily and
silently, opening up into a passageway behind the panel.
I glanced back at Tanda and Aahz and Glenda, who were silently watching
me.
"Give me the torch and follow me," I said. "We'll check the map again
when we get a ways inside. And pull this closed behind you."
Aahz nodded.
It felt good to be leading, even if I wasn't going in a direction I
wanted to go. At least I'd get to the wrong place first, and more than
likely be killed first.
Tanda handed me the torch and I slipped behind the cabinet.
The passageway was as wide as a small hallway back in the Possiltum
palace. It was mostly made of wood, with some stone walls along the way.
Unlike the passageway cut out of the rock below the morgue, this looked like
it had had regular traffic over the years.
I stayed in the faint path in the dust and moved ten steps down the
secret passageway, then stopped. Aahz pulled the cabinet closed and motioned
that he was ready. I wondered if we could go back that way if we had to, but
I didn't want Aahz to check, simply for the fear of finding out we couldn't.
About a hundred paces along the secret passageway branched into two.
One went to the right and up slightly, while the other went seemingly
straight as far as the light from our torch would show.
Tanda was behind me and I handed her the light, again pulling out the
map.
It had changed again, showing the passageway we were in and the
intersection. The map now wanted us to go right. And up.
I remembered being in front of this castle and looking up as it towered
over us. I had never seen anything so big before. Now it seemed that if this
map had its way, which Aahz and Tanda were determined to give it, we would
end up at the top.
Maybe up there I'd have a good view when all the life was sucked out of
me.
The passageway sloped upwards, sometimes stairs, sometimes just a ramp.
It bent to the right, then in twenty paces to the right again, as if going
around a room. From that point on it just kept turning and twisting and
climbing. After twenty minutes I was so turned around and lost, I couldn't
even begin to tell you what part of the castle we were in. All I knew was
that we had gone up a great deal. Finally the corridor ended at the top of a
short flight of stairs.
I stopped and waited as Tanda caught up. Then, ten steps behind her,
came Aahz helping Glenda. He sure was being nice, for some reason, to a
woman who had betrayed him. That wasn't like Aahz at all. Clearly he needed
her for something, and I was never far enough away from Glenda to ask what
it was.
When they caught up, Glenda slumped to the ground and closed her eyes
and I pulled out the map and looked at where it was taking us. It showed the
end of the secret passageway where we were standing, and a secret door into
a giant ballroom was right in front of me. I glanced at the wall. I couldn't
see where it was, but I assumed that when I needed it, it would be there.
I went back to studying the map again. We had to go into the ballroom
and to the far wall where there was another panel into another passageway.
The golden cow treasure was now marked as being in the throne room a number
of floors above us.
"Looks like we get to go out in the open for the first time," Aahz
said, studying the map.
"There's no one out there at the moment," Tanda said.
"So we need to do it and quickly," I said, folding up the map.
"Keep the map handy," Aahz said. "When we get into the ballroom, you
need to check it again."
"Of course," I said, nodding and acting as if I had known that, even
though I hadn't yet thought of it.
"Can you make it a little farther, Glenda?" Aahz asked.
Glenda jerked and pushed herself to her feet, leaning against the wall.
"I can make it as far as I need to make it."
Aahz just nodded. "Then let's go."
Tanda had the torch, so I went to the wall and pushed where the secret
panel was supposed to be and surprise, surprise, the wall opened. I slid
through. At first I thought there was nothing on the other side of the
panel, that the map had lied to us. Then I realized that the secret door was
pushing out a massive drape or tapestry of some type.
I ducked to the right under the cloth and out into the open, with Tanda
and the torch right behind me.
At the moment we didn't need the light. The room had massive,
two-story-high windows along one side that let in the natural sunlight. The
hills in the distance were like old friends calling to me. I so much wanted
to be out there instead of in here. The sun, from what I could tell, was
within an hour of setting on the other side of the castle. We needed to pick
up speed if we were going to find the golden cow before it became the golden
vampire.
"Wow," Tanda said, looking around at the gold-inlaid panels and golden
ceilings of the massive ballroom.
The floor was a highly polished white stone with streaks of gold
running through it. In my wildest imaginings I could have never come up with
a ballroom as fancy or beautiful as this one.
Aahz and Glenda stopped beside us in the huge room. I bet at least five
hundred people could've danced in this room without even bumping into one
another.
"I remember being in this room last night," Glenda said softly.
The thought of her being here with a bunch of naked vampires chewing on
her neck made me shudder.
"Then let's not wait for the music to start," I said.
I opened up the map and looked at it. Again, just coming through the
secret door had caused the map to change. Now the way out of here wasn't
across the room, but up on what looked like a stage near the back of the
room, directly across from the windows.
"This way," I said, leading the way up a short staircase and onto a
massive wooden stage.
On the back wall was nothing but wood slats. I glanced at the
still-open map in my hand, then moved to what looked to be about the right
area, putting the map back into my pouch as
I went. After just a few seconds of trying, I found the loose boards,
pulled them aside, and we were back out of the light and into what I thought
was another dark passageway.
Tanda came in behind me, holding the torch up so that we could both see
what was ahead.
I froze like a statue at what I saw.
"Well I'll be a grave-digger's monkey," Tanda said.
Ahead of us wasn't another passageway, but a massive, low-ceilinged
room. Rows and rows and rows of shelves lined the walls, and down the middle
of the room, side-by-side, packed close on every inch of every shelf, were
skulls.
Cow skulls.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of white, empty-eyed cow skulls.
Aahz finished making sure the slats were back in place behind us, then
turned and stopped cold beside me. I was glad to see he had the same
reaction I did. It was always good to know my mentor could be shocked.
"Someone want to explain this to me?" Glenda asked, her voice echoing
through the remains of an entire herd.
"Maybe it's a thousand years of former royal family?" Aahz said. "Look
at that one."
He pointed at one skull hung on the wall, ornately decorated with gems.
I knew that wasn't exactly right. I could feel it in the energy in this
place. After a moment I turned to Tanda.
"Can you feel anything odd in here?"
"Power," she said.
"An energy focus?" Aahz asked.
"Sure seems that way," Tanda said. "Or maybe there's something special
about these skulls, something in them that magnifies the magikal power of
this area and turns it into something different."
I found myself, to my own amazement, moving forward toward the closest
shelf of skulls. I reached out and lightly touched the smooth, cool surface
of one. It did have energy, but not energy like I had been taught by Aahz to
use. There was different energy in it, used for something more than just
magik.
"Vampire energy," I said.
Tanda and Glenda came up beside me, each carefully reaching out and
touching a skull.
"He's right," Tanda said. "These skulls seem to take magical energy and
change it, radiating the new energy needed to turn cows into vampires."
"Are you kidding me?" Aahz asked, standing off to one side.
"No, she's not," Glenda said. She waved her hand at the thousands and
thousands of skulls. "Welcome to the energy source of the vampire rulers of
this world."
"And the energy is starting to get stronger," Tanda said. "I can feel
it."
"The sun is going down," I said. "We need to get out of here."
I opened up the map and looked at it. Through the room, against the far
wall, was the door we needed to go through. And on the other side of that
door was something I hadn't expected us to get so close to this fast.
The golden cow.
The treasure we had come so far to find. It was one secret door away,
in a room called the Meadow.
"Take a look at this," I said, spreading the map out for everyone to
see.
"Now what do we do?"
Aahz looked at the map and smiled.
"We go capture us a leader as a hostage and make sure we get our
freedom."
"Sounds good to me," Tanda said.
"Why don't I think it's going to be that easy?" I said.
"Because it never is." Glenda said.
Around me the empty-eyed cow skulls started to hum faintly and vibrate
a little, filling the room with a noise that ate at my very soul.
"Whatever we're going to do," Tanda said, her hands over her ears,
"let's do it fast."
Again I stuffed the map in my pouch and, with my hands over my ears as
well, I headed through the middle of thousands of humming skulls toward the
secret panel in the far wall.
By the time I got there the sound from the skulls in my head was so
painful I didn't even stop. I just went right on through and out onto a
thick carpet of beautiful grass.
Aahz, Tanda, and Glenda followed me, with Aahz shutting the secret
panel behind us, instantly stopping the painful energy pounding at my head.
I would have been relieved if I hadn't been so stunned at what faced me.
There was a guy, sitting in a lounge chair on the other side of the
field of grass, reading a newspaper. If he had had on a white apron, he
would have looked almost exactly like the guy who had waited on us in
Audry's.
The setting sun was pouring through one of the room's giant windows and
turning the nearby hills to a wonderful shade of gold and pink and red.
I glanced around. Except for the patch of grass we were standing on,
the room looked like a large suite, with a big bed, a kitchen against one
wall, and a private bathroom area off to one side.
The guy was sitting in what looked like a livingroom area, except that
there was only one chair. He looked over at us, then shook his head as if
not believing what he was seeing. Then he looked at us again and jumped to
his feet, an expression of sheer joy and happiness on his face.
"My wonderful heavens!" he shouted. "You've finally come!"
"I think he's happy to see us," Tanda whispered.
The guy came toward us, his face almost breaking from the smile filling
it.
"Really happy," I whispered back.
"My friends, my friends, come in," he said, motioning us to come toward
his living area. "Don't be afraid. I'm just so happy you have arrived."
"You are?" Aahz asked.
The guy laughed.
"I am. I honestly am. I can't believe after all this time the map has
finally brought someone to rescue me!"
Chapter Thirteen
"You can't always get what you want."
M. JAGGER
The guy led us off the grass and into what was clearly his home.
"Sorry for the mess," he said, scampering about picking up a book here,
a notebook there, some dishes which he quickly put in the sink. We all just
sort of stood in a group watching him. "My name is Harold. I'm sorry I don't
have enough chairs for you all." "
He looked like a Harold. The name fit him, and all the other guys who
looked a lot like him in all the Audry's-like places we had been in. Harold
pulled his one kitchen chair away from the small table and set it out, then
indicated that one of us should take it and another should take his
recliner. It was beyond clear that he never got guests of any kind-at least
the type of guests he wanted to sit down with. I think at that point we were
all so stunned by what he had said, we really weren't reacting well. I know
I wasn't. I have no real idea what I thought I was going to find when we got
to the "treasure," but a guy waiting to be rescued sure wasn't it. And a guy
who had used the map to bring his rescuers would have never occurred to me.
Only Glenda took his offer of the recliner and settled into it with a deep
sigh. The guy looked at her, worried.
"You were captured and taken last night, were you not?"
"I was," she said.
Harold looked sincerely upset. "I'm so sorry. You're so lucky you
survived it."
"We saw a room full of people who didn't," Aahz said.
The poor guy looked like he might just faint away right there. He was
wringing his hands, shaking his head, and pacing.
"It's all my fault, you know. All my fault."
"Okay," Aahz said, trying to calm the guy a little. "You want to
explain to us what's going on?"
"Actually start from the beginning," I said, leaning against the
kitchen counter.
From where I stood I could see out the two-story-tall windows that
flanked one side of the big room. The valley below was in complete shadow,
but the sun still covered the mountains and streamed in through the window
onto the grass. If this was a prison, it was the nicest jail cell I had seen
in a long time.
Harold nodded. "I'm sorry, I am just so shocked you are here, that the
map worked."
"The beginning," Aahz reminded him.
"Please?" Tanda said. "Right now you are looking at four of the most
confused people you have ever seen."
"Okay," Harold said, his head nodding like it was on a spring. He
glanced at the window and then took a deep breath. "I've only got a
half-hour until sunset and this is a long story. I might have to continue it
in the morning."
"No problem," Aahz said, clearly doing his green-scaled best to calm
the guy. "Just start and we'll go from there."
Again Harold did the nodding routine, his head going up and down so
hard I was sure he was going to have a neck ache. "First off, you're
standing in what centuries ago used to be called Count Bovine's Castle."
Okay, I have to say that I wasn't the one who started the snickering.
Tanda was, with her snort. Then Aahz started shaking his head, clearly
trying to contain himself, and I just couldn't keep the laugh inside
anymore. Thank heavens the guy was so lost in trying to tell us the story he
didn't notice.
"For as long as history recorded," Harold said, gathering speed on his
tale, "Bovine's type and our people lived in an uneasy balance. They fed off
of us; we killed them when we discovered them. Everything was in balance.
The legends go that Count Bovine, a very long-lived and smart vampire, found
this area and took it over. He enslaved the people of Donner and built this
castle."
Harold waved his arms in both directions to make sure, I guess, that we
knew he meant the castle we were sitting in.
"Then Count Bovine led his people in a revolt against my people, using
the power that came from this castle. Over a period of a hundred years he
swept out over everything and was on the verge of wiping my kind from the
face of this planet."
The guy glanced at the window. The sun was on the tops of the
mountains. Sunset was close.
Harold went on. "Of course, during that time Bovine's people also wiped
out almost all other living creatures here as well with their blood thirsty
ways. Day in and day out, they just couldn't get enough blood to satisfy
themselves."
It suddenly dawned on me, that except for horses, we hadn't seen any
other creatures since we had gotten here. No dogs or wild animals. Nothing
but cows, horses, and people.
"Okay, a quick question," I said. Harold nodded with a glance at the
window. "You're saying that Bovine's people were not cows at that point, but
were people like you, just vampires?"
"Yes," Harold said. "In fact, it is rumored that vampires originally
came from our species, but that fact is lost in time, if true."
"It's that way on other dimensions," Aahz said, "so it is more than
likely it was that way here as well."
Harold nodded. "I had heard that as well."
"So what happened?" I asked.
"Count Bovine, who was not a stupid individual, understood that
something had to be changed or his people would wipe out my people, who were
his people's only remaining food source."
"Makes sense," Tanda said. "You lose your food, you die as well."
"Exactly," Harold said. "So he struck a deal with the few remaining of
my people to take his people away for all but the nights of the full moon,
if my people would serve his kind during that time as food."
"And your people agreed?" Glenda asked, sounding as stunned as I was
feeling.
"I don't think my ancestors had a choice," Harold said. "Using the
magik of this area, Count Bovine put a spell on the rest of my people. Then,
using an even more powerful magik spell, he changed his people to cows."
"So while they were cows," Aahz asked, "why didn't your people just
kill them all? Seems like it would have been easy."
"It would have been," Harold said, "if not for the magik that keeps us
from doing just that, and keeps us from advancing. The magik allows us to do
nothing but prepare for the round-up. Month in and month out, for centuries
now, we have done nothing else." Harold just shook his head and went on.
"Bovine's people became contented cows, careful how they treated us during
the full-moon nights when they regained their normal form and had parties.
We became the feed animals, content to do nothing but prepare constantly to
serve our cow masters. It was survival for us, but not much of one."
Harold glanced once more out the window. The sun was just a minute from
leaving the top of the distant mountaintop. "Quickly, follow me," he said,
moving toward the bathroom area of his living quarters.
"What happens now?" Tanda asked.
"I become a cow for the night, the vampires roam the castle feeding and
killing like the history says happened, and if you don't hide in a magically
protected area, they will find you."
I was right behind him when Harold led us into his bathroom, opened a
cabinet on the wall, touched a place inside the cabinet, and stepped back as
a wall behind a toilet started moving inwards.
"This is the most magically protected room in all the castle," Harold
said. "Stay in there until I open the door. Under no circumstances come out.
Understand?"
"We understand," Aahz said.
I was the first one through the door, with Tanda and Glenda right
behind me. Aahz took a moment longer, talking about something with Harold
for a moment, then he joined us.
Behind the wall the space had been carved out of solid stone that was
streaked in gold. It was warm and lit by the golden glow of the gold from
the walls. The entire room was filled with old books, scrolls, desks,
chairs, and more antiques than I had ever seen in one place. We were all
inside when the guy slid the wall panel closed behind us without another
word.
"Not even a wave goodnight," Tanda said.
Glenda moved inside and right to an antique couch against one wall.
"If you don't mind," she said, lying down and closing her eyes. "I
think I need a nap."
"Good idea," Aahz said. Then he looked at me and held up a
gold-threaded rope that he had gotten somewhere. He put his finger to his
mouth to indicate that we should all be quiet. Then he moved over and took
an old blanket from another antique.
"I got a blanket here to cover you," Aahz said to Glenda. "Keep you
warm for the night."
"Thanks," Glenda murmured, clearly almost asleep.
Aahz moved over to her, motioning for Tanda and me to follow silently.
I had no idea what he wanted me to do. Aahz put the blanket over her,
wrapping the rope over her as well. Smooth move. She would never know it was
there.
He pointed that I should pull the end of the rope that had dropped down
against the wall under the couch.
I got on my knees and did just that, then gave the end to him as Aahz
pretended to tuck the blanket around her. With a quick knot he tied the rope
and stepped back.
Tanda and I both stepped back with him. I didn't know how one loop
would hold someone like Glenda, or why she even needed to be held. But
clearly Aahz had known something I hadn't, which was normal.
Glenda started thrashing, back and forth, back and forth, clearly
trying to get out of the bind, yet the golden rope never seemed to tighten
or strain in holding her. Then her eyes opened as if seeing a terror I sure
didn't want to see.
"What's happening?" I whispered.
Aahz motioned for me to be silent as Glenda's mouth opened into a
scream that never really came. Her back arched her up against the blanket
and rope, and she held that pose for a good thirty seconds.
It was the longest thirty seconds I had experienced. I couldn't take my
eyes off of her and the look of pure terror on her face. Then whatever she
was going through was over. She slumped back, closed her eyes, and began to
snore.
Aahz motioned that we should move away through the books and old papers
and scrolls.
"Okay, what just happened there?" Tanda asked a half-second before I
asked the same question.
"Harold gave me the rope to save her from becoming a vampire," Aahz
said. "It seems that those left alive last night were the ones they liked."
"So that was why Glenda's body wasn't in that morgue with the others,"
I said.
"Exactly," Aahz said. "They were trying to turn her, have her join
them."
I glanced back at where Glenda was snoring. "So she's not going to be a
vampire now?"
Aahz shrugged. "We'll keep the rope on her until morning just to make
sure."
"How about for two days?" Tananda asked.
Aahz laughed and said, "Maybe."
As far as I was concerned, we could keep the rope on her for the next
month. When it came to Glenda, my motto was better safe than sorry.
Spending the night trapped in the middle of a culture's entire history,
afraid that at any moment I might get taken and have my blood sucked, is an
experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The room we were trapped in
was huge, with a high, domed ceiling and row after row of shelves full of
old books alternating with piles of ancient furniture. Unlike Aahz and
Tanda, I was not the scrounge-through-old-things kind of person. Old stuff
was dusty and usually boring, as far as I was concerned. I thumbed through a
few books and blew the dust off some old scrolls that looked like cookbooks.
I decided I didn't want to know what they were trying to tell me about how
to cook, so I wandered over to another aisle, found an antique couch tucked
off to one side of a pile of furniture, managed to get most of the dust off
of it, and lay down.
Tanda and Aahz were reading, whispering to each other about their
finds, clearly excited about what they were seeing. I was beyond being
excited about anything at this point. I was just tired. Yet for some strange
reason (namely vampire cows and fear of getting my blood drained and ending
up naked on a metal table in a morgue), I couldn't get to sleep. Instead I
lay there, finally turning onto my back and staring at the high ceiling.
Maybe an hour into the attempt at sleep, it finally dawned on me what I
was looking at every time I opened my eyes. On the smooth, stone ceiling
surface someone had painted something a long, long time ago. Now, in the
weird light from the glowing walls, and all the dust of the years, it was
faded and almost invisible. But it was still there.
And the more I lay on my back staring at it, the more I realized that
what I was seeing was the most important thing in the room as far as we were
concerned. It was a map of the entire castle, only it wasn't a map of the
current castle, but the layout of Count Bovine's castle.
The more I studied the drawing, the more I could see in the faint
outlines. I found Harold's living area, which at one point must have been
Bovine's royal suite.
The room we were now in was shown as a private library. And the skull
room was there as well, labeled as "royal storage." But what was really
interesting was the passageway that led from this room down into the
mountain, away from the Royal Suite, down to a point that seemed to show an
energy focal point of some sort in a large room. The energy point was drawn
on the very center of the dome, which I also found interesting.
After another hour I was sure I had the important areas of the map
pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn't
think any vampire cow would know about.
I stood and moved over to where Aahz and Tanda were sitting at desks
pouring over books. Glenda was still asleep on her couch, the golden rope
tied around her.
"Have a good nap?" Aahz asked.
"A productive one," I said.
He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and then pointed at the
book he had open in front of him.
"Says here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of
the entire dimension. Before Count Bovine took it over, it was a spa area
where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated
magik forces and become rejuvenated."
"Powerful stuff," I said.
"More than anything I've seen before," Aahz said.
Tanda pointed at what she had been reading. "This book says that the
war between the vampires and the normal folks lasted for over two hundred
years and killed almost everything. This was one of the last books put in
here before the exodus."
"Exodus?" I asked.
Aahz nodded. "It seems, from what we can gather, that when the
compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people left
this area, this castle, putting a shield up around it to keep everyone out
of the magik."
"It seems the count didn't trust his own people with this kind of
power," Tanda said.
"So what became of this count?" I asked.
Aahz shrugged. "Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning."
"Well, before that I've got something to show you."
I had them follow me back to my couch.
"I really don't feel like a nap," Aahz said.
"Just trust me," I said, pointing to a pile of furniture ten paces
away. "Pull that other couch over here."
He shook his head, but did as I suggested.
"Now both of you lie on that couch," I said, dropping onto the one I
had been on for hours earlier. "And lie on your backs."
Neither of them moved, and both looked annoyed. "What, can't trust me
for five seconds?" I asked, smiling up at them.
Aahz snorted and then lay down, scooting over enough to give Tanda a
little room as well.
I pointed upward. "What do you see?"
"A dark ceiling and a lot of dust," Tanda said.
"I see myself wasting my time," Aahz said. "There's a lot of
information here that we need to-"
Silence filled the old library. After a few long seconds I said,
"Interesting, isn't it?"
"What?" Tanda demanded. "Would you stop playing games and just tell me
what is going on?"
To me the map was now as clear as if it were printed on a white piece
of parchment. "It's a drawing," I said, pointing to the clearest lines to
Tanda's right.
"It's a map," Aahz said.
"Exactly," I said. "And if you study it long enough, you can see where
we are."
"Oh, my heavens," Tanda said to herself, now clearly seeing the drawing
of the castle.
"After a few minutes of looking at it, the lines become clearer," I
said. "Take a look to the right of the room we're in."
I didn't say anything else, giving them both time to study what I had
been looking at for hours. Then finally Aahz said, "It looks like there's a
corridor there."
"Where?" Tanda demanded.
"Off the room shown as a private library," I said. "On the opposite
side from the royal suite."
"And it leads downward," Aahz said.
"To this area's power," I said. "Do you have any idea what standing in
the middle of that kind of energy focal point would feel like?"
Both Tanda and Aahz looked at me.
"Like nothing you could ever imagine, apprentice," Aahz said.
"True," Tanda said, going back to staring at the drawings on the
ceiling, "but Skeeve might be the only one who can go down there."
"I know," Aahz said, also going back to studying the roof over his
head.
"Exactly what do you mean by that?" I asked, not liking the idea that I
might have to take that old corridor alone into the middle of the mountain.
Aahz sighed. "I've lost my powers; Tanda is an assassin, not a
magician, and we can't trust Glenda. You're it, apprentice. If one of us has
to go down there, it has to be you."
I stared at the roof, following the ancient corridor down into the
center of the mountain to a place of unimaginable power. For the moment, the
idea of getting my blood sucked by a vampire cow didn't seem so bad.
Chapter Fourteen
"Things are looking up."
MICHELANGELO
The rest of the night just crawled past. Aahz and Tanda stayed on the
couches with me for the longest time, studying the map and trying to figure
out how we were going to get out of here. I noticed that, once Aahz
discovered there was no golden cow, and that the map had been a sham to get
someone to save Harold, he became very interested in just leaving. I
supposed that was better late then never.
Aahz was sitting at one of the desks while Tanda and I stood beside him
when the wall opened up and Harold stepped in. Through the opening I could
see daylight flooding into the main area beyond the bathroom. It seemed we
had survived another full-moon night in the land of cow vampires.
Harold stepped in and glanced at where Glenda was still sleeping. She
hadn't moved at all during the night.
"Did she try to get away?" Harold asked.
"Only when the sun went down, and only for a few seconds," Aahz said.
"The rope held her."
"Then she's safe," Harold said.
"What did the rope do?" I asked, not really clear on the concept that a
simple rope like that could hold even a child, let alone a person who wanted
to be a vampire.
"Basically, the magik in the rope stopped her from changing," Harold
said. "And leaving it on her all night cleaned her system of any chance of
it ever happening. Check her neck if you want to make sure."
I moved over to Glenda. Drool had run out of her mouth and formed a wet
spot on the blanket. And she was snoring lightly. I put a finger on her
temple and eased her head over so I could see the vampire bite marks on her
neck. Where her skin had been red and inflamed, it had now returned to
normal. Only a few faint marks that looked more like freckles were left of
the infection.
"Amazing," I said.
Aahz had moved up behind me. "It sure is."
"Leave the rope on her for a while longer and let her sleep," Harold
said. "It will do her good, give her body time to replace the blood drained
from it."
I glanced at Glenda again. For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost. Then I remembered she had stranded me in this world with no thought
of ever coming back for me, and the feeling-sorry emotion left quickly.
"So how did you survive the night?" Tanda asked.
Harold just shrugged. "The same way I have survived every full-moon
night for more years than I want to think about. I turned into a cow, ate
grass, and slept standing up."
"Oh," Tanda said. "You going to explain that to us in the rest of your
story?"
Harold laughed. "It's a part of it." Then he looked around. "This is a
pretty amazing room, isn't it?"
"It is," Aahz said. "We learned some interesting history from some of
these books."
I noticed that Aahz didn't say anything about the ceiling map, and I
sure wasn't going to either. I wondered if Harold even knew about it.
"Good," Harold said. "That will give you some more background on what
happened with me, and how we got like this. Shall we go back out into the
sunlight?"
"What about her?" I asked, motioning toward the sleeping Glenda.
Harold shrugged. "She won't wake up as long as the rope is on her.
She'll be fine right there."
We followed him out into the main room. It felt great to see light
again. Spending the night in a dusty room worrying about what might happen
at any moment wasn't my ideal evening.
"Anyone like something to eat?" he asked, moving into the kitchen area.
We stood around the counter, watching him.
"Anything but carrot juice," Aahz said, smiling at me.
"Not funny," I said.
Harold looked at both of us and shrugged, clearly having no idea what
we were talking about. "I can make you a horse-steak sandwich, a cucumber
sandwich, or a salad with fresh tomatoes. And I've got either orange juice
or water to drink."
"Wow, you eat better than the rest of your people," Tanda said.
"I do?" he asked, surprised. "It's been so long since I've been out of
these rooms, I wouldn't know."
"A lot better," I said, "but at the moment I'd just like a glass of
water."
Aahz and Tanda agreed and as he got the water Aahz prompted him to
start his story again. "You got up to the point where your people and Count
Bovine's people had come to an agreement, his people were changed to cows
for most of the month, and this place was sealed off. What changed?"
"Actually," Harold said, "I changed it."
"Why?" Aahz asked, a fraction of a second before I could.
"Because I thought I knew better, knew what was best for my people,
knew how to change things back to a better world."
"Better back up and tell us how that kind of thinking got started,"
Tanda said.
Harold nodded. "I met a dimension traveler named Leila. I was running
this little restaurant and bar just down the road from here when Leila
walked in. We got talking, she told me about the big world outside of this
dimension, and then offered to let me be her apprentice. She said I had
great magical potential."
I glanced at Aahz, who ignored me. Not once had Aahz ever said I had
great magical potential, and I certainly wasn't going to ask him if I did.
He'd just say no and laugh. Mostly laugh.
"Leila took me dimension-hopping with her, showed me hundreds of
different places, taught me some basics of magik, then got killed by an
assassin."
I could tell from the look in Harold's eyes that even though that had
been some time ago, he still missed her. And might even have been in love
with her.
"So after she was killed I got a D-Hopper and came back here. The magik
block over this old castle was pretty basic, intended to just keep Count
Bovine and my people out. But I had been trained in some magik, so I got in,
knocking the block down.
"A little knowledge can be dangerous," Aahz said, glancing at me.
It was my turn to ignore him.
"It sure can be," Harold said. "I sat up house right here and found the
room you stayed in last night, and started learning about what had happened
to my people. And the more I read, the more convinced I became to try to
save my people and wipe out the vampires once and for all."
"In other words," Tanda said, "you started the war again."
Harold nodded at Tanda's blunt statement. "Basically, I did. Yes."
"So what went wrong?" Aahz asked.
"Count Bovine came back," Harold said.
"What?" I said. "How could he? He'd have to be thousands and thousands
of years old."
"He is," Harold said.
Aahz stared at me. "When are you going to get it through your head that
powerful vampires, like powerful magicians, live a very long time?"
"Okay, okay," I said. "Go on with your story."
"I actually didn't know that Count Bovine could be alive either,"
Harold said. "Since I was free from the magical spell that kept the cows
safe, I started gathering up help. One by one, I gathered a gang, broke the
spell over them, and started planning. When there were about fifty of us,
all trained and on horseback, we set about rounding up cows and killing
them."
No one said a word, so Harold went on. "As we went, on our army got
bigger and bigger, and more and more cows died. Every skull of every cow we
brought back here to make us stronger. It was a heady time."
Harold looked like an old man, thinking back to his party days.
"When did Count Bovine show up?"
"Oh, about four months into our little war. He and five of his most
powerful vampires walked in here one night and killed every one of my men
without so much as a fight."
"Bet you thought you had it shielded, didn't you?" Aahz said.
...
