"Well, perhaps if you had told me what you needed me to cure. I could have told you that it wouldn't work," the Cup said suddenly, in perfect Walt. "Silly Pervert."
"Pervect," I corrected automatically, then did a double-take.
"My apologies. All the people from your dimension I have known were such lowlifes that "Pervert" comes automatically to my lips."
We all gazed at the golden goblet.
"It talks!" Calypsa said, starting forward. The chains jerked her back.
"All of the Golden Hoard can talk," Tananda said. "You know that."
"But it did not say anything before!" Calypsa said.
"I didn't have to defend myself until that Pervert maligned my talents," the Cup said in a ringing contralto female voice. The two rubies facing us were sharp with reproof.
"That's Pervect! I may have swallowed your potion, but I don't have to swallow insults. What if I stomp you into a solid gold floor tile?"
"Nonsense," she said. The engraving around the bottom of the bowl curved upward into a grin. "You can't reach me from there, and we both know it."
"Besides, it was Kelsa who said you would be able to restore his powers," Calypsa said.
"Did she?" the Cup asked. "She sees accurately, but I wouldn't give you dregs for any of her interpretations."
"Fair cup, then what is it that Aahz felt when he drank from you?"
"My name is Asti, you polite child," the Cup said. "I have a lot of talents. I can cure poison. I heal. I nourish — and by the way, I can tell from here you're not getting enough vitamin C. You'll get rickets in those long legs of yours. I create harmony between parties, weddings and peace treaties a specialty. And I brew some dandy hooch. Catch me in a good mood some evening when the moon is shining over my bowl. How'd you lose your powers, Pervect?"
"Joke powder."
"From the Bazaar at Deva?"
"Yeah." I had no wish to go further into my misadventures.
"Ah," Asti said, knowingly. I could imagine her nodding her head, if she had one. "Sorry. Not in my playbook. Ask the Book or the Ring. That's more up their street."
"What DID you do to me? I thought I felt my powers return!"
"Oh, that's just general purpose healing," Asti said. "You have fifty-five bones that have been broken at least once each over the course of your life, including all of your fingers and toes. You had Scarolzzi fever, can't say when, messed up part of your circulatory system. You're lucky it's not contagious any longer. You had lost about 30% of your hearing, normal wear and tear for someone your age. Your liver has been run over by some pretty bad booze, lots of it. There were a dozen or more other minor conditions I won't bother to name. All that's gone. You've got a clean slate, but I suppose you'll just go back to your bad habits again. I can only cure. I can't make you stay healed."
"I like my bad habits," I said, sulkily.
I glanced sideways at Tanda, who was grinning at the long list of ailments as Asti reeled them off. I didn't like the cup mentioning the Scarolzzi fever. It was a little condition I'd picked up on Zimwod from a female there who'd been very friendly, and not at all forthcoming about her past…but I digress.
"Everyone does," Asti said, with a sigh. "I never deny healing to anyone who needs it, but I often regret that my talents are wasted on some people."
"So," I summed up, "I'm perfectly healthy, but I still have no magik."
"That's my diagnosis. You can thank me at your leisure." Asti's mouth settled back into a line of tarnished engraving. I snorted and began to pick at the locks with a talon.
"Then, we are trapped here," Calypsa wailed. "Trapped here until that horrible man chooses to come back and torture us! To death! No food, no water, no comfort! And all this vermin!" She began to drum her toes on the insects milling around us, only scoring on two or three out of every hundred.
"C'mon, cupcake," I chided her. "That's no way to stamp out roaches. You need to do it like this." I brought the flat of my foot down on the nearest cluster of wildlife, smashing it flat. "Put some body English into it." I kicked away a few more rats. One of them took a nip out of my left foot, and I launched the critter into the water barrel. It surfaced, gasping, and slunk over the side toward the hole in the base of the wall.
"But we are prisoners! Prisoners!" Calypsa exclaimed.
"Maybe…not…for long," Tananda panted. I glanced her way, and my jaw dropped. You think you know someone, then, even after more than a hundred years they can surprise you. She had bent one of her legs up behind her, and was pulling her pointed toe upward toward between her shoulder blades, a feat of elasticity that I didn't think even a Trollop was capable of. With both thumbs she peeled back the tip of her boot. Holding the foot steady with one hand, she pulled a long, skinny pick out from between the upper and shin of her boot. Triumphantly, she let her leg drop and brandished the shaft of metal at me.
"I can't get it out by reaching forward," she explained. "That's how it goes undetected if I'm ever searched."
"Tanda," I said, grinning, "you're the best."
"That's why they pay me the gold pieces," she said. "Give me a moment. These old locks are stiff."
Tanda bent her head over the chain on her left wrist. I heard rather than saw the noise of the pick scratching away at years of rust and who knew what else caking up the mechanism of the fist-sized locks. I kept my eye on the door. Groans, shrieks and wails for mercy the guards would ignore. The sounds of an attempted escape were more likely to attract their attention. My keen ears, made more keen than I could recall in a lot of years by Asti's charm, were open to the noise of returning footsteps.
While Calypsa and I watched in fascination, Tananda popped the hasp of the first lock. The thick wristlet sagged open with the creaking sigh of a disappointed torturer. She let the chain down very gently so it did no more than jingle against her skirt hem as she started in on the other chain. The tip of her tongue stuck out between her teeth as she probed around in the keyhole. The pick scratched less certainly here. Tananda's forehead creased.
"Would an anti-rust cantrip help?" I asked. It's impossible not to kibbitz when you're watching an expert at work.
She shook her head. "The lock's bespelled," she said. "I'd have to drop the disguise spell to absorb enough power from the force lines."
I glanced at the door. "Do it," I advised. "I don't want Highboy coming back and deciding he wants to get a head start on his torture program."
The fetching form of a female Klahd vanished, and the familiar shape of Tananda in her working clothes emerged.
"Ahhh!" Tananda shook out her hand and held it over the recalcitrant lock. It started quivering, not an uncommon reaction when Tanda gets close.
"What's the problem?"
"This is an old spell," she said. "They don't get wizards around here much, but this one — whew! He knew his torture devices."
"I bet he was fun at parties," I said, keeping my ear open for any interest by the guards. My keen Pervish hearing picked up conversation beyond the door about the latest serving wench and who was likely to get between her plackets first.
"Darn!" Tananda whispered.
The pick jumped out of her fingers. She made a swipe for it, but the point bounced off her fingertips. It tinkled on the floor and rolled, sounding louder than an electric guitar in the silence of the dungeon. On the other side of the door, footsteps hustled in our direction. The door sprang open.
"Hey, fellahs, we were just gettin' lonely," I said. They gasped. Our disguise-free state evidently turned them off.
"Monsters!" one of the guards exclaimed.
"Kill them!" the captain of the guard bellowed.
"Now, come on, fellows," I said, spreading out my hands with a friendly grin on my face. The guards blanched. They leveled their crossbows at us and prepared to fire.
"La di dah! La di dee! La de da daddle daddle dah!" a soft voice began to croon by my right ear. I turned to gawk. How could Calypsa think about singing at a moment like this?
She wasn't just singing. I don't know how she was doing what she was doing, but her long, skinny body undulated back and forth, setting a fascinating tempo. Her arms lifted and began to weave backwards and forwards. I found myself taking a helpless step in her direction. Her long neck curved bewitch-ingly from side to side. I felt transfixed but divinely happy, like a fly caught in a jar of grape jelly. How come I hadn't noticed before how large and lustrous her eyes were? The fans of thick, black-and-white fluffy plumes spread between her arms and the sides of her body concealed and revealed, leaving me gasping for another glimpse of her half-smile. The guards were similarly agog. Their crossbows drooped toward the ground like…crossbows drooping. In no time at all they had forgotten that we were demons, dangerous prisoners of their employer. All they could see was Calypsa.
She lifted her chin and nodded in the direction of the fallen lock pick. I snapped out of the half-trance, but not as fast as Tananda, who flicked a finger at the length of steel. It leaped up into her hand, summoned by a burst of 'come-hither' magik. I forced my eyes toward her. The guards never turned to look. Tanda scraped at the wards of her lock. With a screech, it popped open. She dumped it on the floor. She bent and unfastened the chains around her feet, then sprang over to free me. The guards weren't about to interrupt her. They couldn't take their eyes off Calypsa. I had to work hard to avoid falling into the spell again.
Tananda undulated toward the Walt, steering the pick through the air with a tickle of magik. It nosed into the keyholes of the locks on Calypsa's wrists and ankles, until the chains fell to the floor with a THUNK! The slender girl whirled in place, her hands flashing. Tananda and I hurried to stuff our possessions back into our pockets and other hiding places, and to gather up the Cup and the wrapped crystal ball.
"Talented girl," Asti stated, one of her jeweled eyes watching her critically over my shoulder.
"Shut up," I growled, shoving my purse back into my pocket. Good thing I never carried a credit card. In an effort to stave off fraud, the modern ones issued by the Gnomes of Zoorik bore the owner's picture. If Highboy'd had any brains, he would have realized the coins were just as much a giveaway that neither I nor my companions were from around there.
"How are you going to extract her from here? If she stops dancing, they'll snap out of it."
"No problem," I said. I edged around behind the fascinated chief guard and lifted the heavy ring of keys out of his belt. He never budged. "Hey, doll," I called to Calypsa. "Let's play peek-a-boo with your new admirers."
She looked a question at me, so I jerked my head toward the heavy dungeon door. She nodded, and worked the gesture into a sexy spin. The girl was brighter than I had given her credit for. Tananda might be right about the promise she showed. Too bad about her impulse control problems, but most of that would probably work out over time. If we all lived that long.
Tananda had already caught on to my idea. With the lightness of someone who was accustomed to moving in and out of a location undetected, she had edged past the guards and backed up the stairs. In one hand she had a dagger by the point; in the other she cradled the muffled form of Kelsa. I didn't need any other armament than I had been furnished by nature, but I was hampered with Asti, who, being made of solid gold, was a heck of a lot heavier she looked, and squealed whenever she was tipped sideways. How no one in that pathetic little town had failed to cotton on to the metal, let alone the quality of her workmanship, made me despair of Klahds ever entering seriously into the realm of advanced commerce. I stuffed her into one of our carry sacks and ignored her complaints. Too bad we didn't have a second silence scarf like the one around Kelsa.
As Calypsa undulated around her admirers, I edged out of the dungeon. Except for Tananda, I couldn't hear anyone else breathing within about twenty yards. I recalled that the door through which we had been hauled wasn't far from the dungeon — all the easier to make deliveries. I could smell fresh air, or what passed for it around here, redolent of cow manure and kitchen garbage.
The Walt wriggled her way up each of the stone stairs. The guards followed her, tongues hanging out. She stopped to pirouette on the top step, with a cute little boom-sha movement that would have been worth its weight in gold pieces at any of the quality strip clubs on Perv, like Gawker's or Irv's Red Hotsies, and gave them a little toss of her head as if to say "here's one for the boys in the back row." When she got in range, I snaked my arm in, yanked her out, and slammed the door.
It took a moment for the spell to break. By the time the guards realized they'd been tricked, I'd locked the big door on them. Tananda beckoned over her shoulder and fled into the dark hallway. I hauled Calypsa along behind me.
"But I was not finished!" she protested. The guards started pounding on the door and yelling, from frustration or anger, I couldn't tell.
"We don't hang around for curtain calls," I snarled, hustling her toward the disappearing green figure of the Trollop. "What was that?"
"The Dance of Fascination," Calypsa said, tossing her head proudly. "My great-great aunt, the dancer Rumba, was the first to perform it."
Chapter 7
I WISHED WE could have used the D-hopper and bamfed out without all the fancy footwork, but we still had to retrieve Ersatz. I was regretting leaving him behind in the woods, but it was better to have to backtrack and get him than to have to search the castle for whatever armory in which Highboy would have stashed an obviously valuable sword after he confiscated it from us. I didn't know whether Calypsa's hips would have held out for that long.
We paused at the door while Tananda whipped us up a new disguise spell, then plunged out of the castle, disguised as Highboy and two generic soldiers. The guards on duty outside threw me a grand salute, which I returned, looking harried. Not a bad imitation, if I do say so myself.
Ersatz spotted us long before we could see him. He was hidden at just above eye level in a hollow branch of a big tree overhanging the forest path.
"Well, friend?" the sardonic voice asked. "Is all well? Are your powers restored to you?"
"Don't ask," I grunted, as I yanked him out of his post.
"Have you the old beaker with you? She has not yet poisoned you, at any rate."
"I would know that rusty garden gate of a voice across the universe," Asti shrilled. "Let me out of this rag bag at once!"
I looked around to make sure no one was coming, then I brought Asti out of my rucksack. The jeweled eyes and the reflected ones regarded each other with expressions of mutual dislike.
"So, there you are, you cake spatula," Asti said. "The last time I saw you, you ruined a perfectly good peace accord I was overseeing on Jahk!"
"An assassin of the Bruhns bid fair to stab the ambassador of the Bhuls in the back!" Ersatz replied. "A good peace accord signifies that all have agreed to down weapons, not plunge them into the other party's representatives."
"And no one would have, if you hadn't bellowed out, Ware assassins!' Suddenly both armies whipped out knives, knouts, brass knuckles — you name it — and the table went over as the Bruhns shoved it onto the Bhuls' ambassador's toe. In no time the place was a shambles. That's where I got this dent," she added, the ruby eyes rolling up toward a bulge at the rim.
"And added more since," Ersatz said, with less tact than I would have expected out of him. "You look rather the worse for wear."
"No thanks to you! No one even thought of tapping it out. My beautiful roundness, marred, and it's all your fault!"
"Wait a minute," I said, raising my hands. "How long ago was this?"
"Five hundred twenty years, nine months and three days," they said in virtual unison.
"And four days," Kelsa piped up, as Calypsa unwrapped her. The face appeared in the ball. "You forget about universal drift and daylight savings time!"
"Be quiet," Ersatz said. "You were not there."
"I don't have to be, my dear," Kelsa reminded him. "I know all, see all, remember!"
"You told them I could bring back his powers!" Asti burst o
ut.
Kelsa's face changed until she looked like a goblet herself, but with the turban and glasses over a couple of jewels shaped like eyes.
"Why, I never did. I only told them what I saw."
"Aha. And you believed her?" the cup asked me, shocked. "When she hasn't had a clearheaded moment in centuries?"
"Clearheaded?" Kelsa asked, the image thinning in the golden crystal until it was almost transparent with fury. "I am always clearheaded. Look at me? Why shouldn't they believe me! I told them the future! Everything I said came to pass. They didn't interpret it correctly."
"And you didn't interpret it for them?"
"My dear, my job is to predict! If I was known for interpretation, there would be many more usurpers taken to the block and many more crowned heads safe on their pillows at night. Fewer little girls would take chancy trips through the woods unescorted, and the divorce courts would be full since no cheaters could possibly go undetected. My facts are undisputed to the open mind. You're the one who's full of alcohol all the time!"
"Not all the time," Asti said, sulkily. "I make other potions than alcohol. All kinds. Anything that purports to 'know all,' should know that."
"Why, Asti, I didn't say you couldn't. I simply inferred that you didn't" Kelsa said. She looked smug.
"You silicon implant, you have no right to blare people's private business all over the cosmos!"
"Certainly I do. My job is to predict, inform, provide light in the darkness, give a head's up to my possessor as to events which will shape his future and that of the rest of the dimensions. By the way, dear," she said, turning to me and winking an eye, "you might want to pick your feet up. There's a hunting party on the way. Horses, lots of sharp, pointy objects. Ersatz can't possibly take them on all by himself."
"Who says that I cannot, wench?" the sword fumed.
"Knock it off!" I said, not wanting to deal with his ego at the moment. "Who is it?"
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