Myth-ion Improbable

by Robert Asprin

  Myth-ion Improbable

  Robert Asprin

  Content

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  "Here we go again!"

  C-3P0

  When my teacher/mentor Aahz grumbles or rants about my being stupid or having done something stupid, I make a big show of being apologetic, but it really doesn't bother me all that much. I figure it goes with the territory and is part of the price of learning magik.

  I mean, first of all, there's the point that Aahz is older than I am and has been around more. A lot more. He's an experienced dimension traveler, or 'demon' for short, and compared to his knowledge and experience I really am stupid and naive.

  Then, too, the dimension he hails from, Perv, is noted for its short-tempered, hostile inhabitants. Other dimension travelers tend to avoid Perv whenever possible, and give the green, scaly Pervects a wide berth when encountering them in other dimensions.

  To cap it all off, while he was once an accomplished magician himself, Aahz lost his powers when we met (See Another Fine Myth). Watching me fumble and stutter while learning what are, to him, some of the simplest, most rudimentary spells, all the while being aware that, at least for the time being, he's dependent on me in the magik department, is bound to make him a bit testy from time to time.

  I can understand and accept it when I do something he thinks is stupid. When I do something that, in hindsight, I think is stupid... that's another matter entirely.

  We were ensconced in the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Possiltum, enjoying my cushy position as the Royal Court Magician, a job that Aahz had coached me through the auditions for. That is, Aahz was enjoying it. For him it was comfortable surroundings and a steady, generous salary. For me, it was living in constant close contact with a grouchy demon who seemed determined that I practice my magik lessons night and day.

  Needless to say, this gets boring after a while. The few adventures I had been on since I had apprenticed myself to Aahz had whetted my appetite for travel, and I was eager for more. Unfortunately, Aahz steadfastly refused to even start teaching me how to dimension-travel on my own, saying it was far too dangerous for someone with my meager magikal abilities.

  That's when I decided to try something really stupid. I decided to try to outwit Aahz and trick him into taking me dimension traveling again.

  An item had come to hand that I thought might be just the ticket, so one afternoon when he seemed a bit bored himself, I sprang it on him.

  "Aahz," I said, holding out a folded piece of parchment to him, "I think you should take a look at this."

  Aahz glared at the paper in my hand as if it might bite him. And when someone from Perv glares, it is really something to see.

  "And just what is that?"

  "It looks Like a map." I shrugged.

  Actually, I knew it was a map. While Tanda and I had been jumping dimensions, shopping for a birthday present for Aahz, I had been offered this map by a beggar on a street corner. Since Tanda had been, at that moment, off talking to some sort of businessmen of that dimension, I had bought the map for a few coins, thinking it would be a fun small gift. I had stuck the map in my belt pouch, and then proceeded to forget about it because of all the problems with the Big Game three dimensions later. Actually, forgetting about the map was entirely understandable, since Tanda ended up captured and our main focus was on freeing her. And the only way we could free her was by winning the game. So forgetting the map was reasonable. I had had enough on my mind.

  But today, while searching through my pouch for something else, I found the map. While I honestly didn't know what it was, I thought it might be what I needed to bait Aahz into taking me dimension traveling again.

  Aahz still wasn't about to touch the parchment. He motioned to the fire.

  "Throw it in there and then get back to your practice."

  "I'm done with my practice," I said.

  "You're never done with your practice."

  I ignored him and pushed on.

  "Besides, I paid good coins for this map."

  That was my trump card. If there's anything Aahz hates, it's wasting money. He got angry with me every time my dragon, Gleep, tore up something while playing, and the cost of repairs were taken from my wages. When it came to my money, Aahz was in complete control. And by the way he talked, we were always broke and about to go hungry.

  "A scam, I'm sure," Aahz said, turning away. "Just like you to waste money."

  I frowned. This was going to be harder than I thought. Normally, if there was any chance of making money at anything, he jumped at it.

  Then it dawned on me I hadn't told him what the map led to.

  "Aahz," I said to his back.

  He didn't move. Instead he just kept staring out the window at the courtyard.

  "Aahz, you might really want to look at this. It's a map to a creature called a cow."

  "So?" Aahz said, shaking his head. "Remember the last time we were at the Bazaar at Deva? Where do you think that steak you ate came from?"

  I stared at him. I had no idea steaks came from creatures called cows. I had just assumed they came from creatures called steaks. Trout came from trout, salmon came from salmon, and duck came from duck. It was logical. Besides, there were no cows in this dimension. At least, none that I had ever met.

  "Well," I said, glancing at the parchment in my hand, "this is a map to a golden cow that lives in a golden palace and gives gold-laced milk."

  Aahz slowly turned to stare at me, his eyes slit as if he were trying to figure out if I was actually joking or not. Then, in two steps, he was in front of me, snatching the map from my grasp.

  "So there really is such a golden beast?" I asked while he studied the paper.

  He didn't respond, so I stood and watched him stare at the map. The writing on it was odd, actually. It didn't show roads, but more like dimensions, energy points, and vortexes. Most of it I didn't understand, and almost none of the map had any names on it, but there was a massive amount about jumping from dimension to dimension that I didn't understand.

  Aahz had told me once there were so many dimensions, no one knew the total number, and it was easy to get lost and never make it back when jumping from dimension to dimension. After my shopping trip with Tanda to thirty or forty different dimensions, I was starting to believe him.

  Finally he looked down at me, a frown on his ugly face. And when Aahz frowned, which was a great deal of the time, he looked like an animal snarling. His greenskin and bright eyes and sharp teeth could be very intimidating if a person wasn't used to it. Luckily, I was.

  "So where exactly did you get this?" He fluttered the parchment in my face as he asked the question.

  "Bought it from a man on a street corner," I said. "I think it might have been some beggar."

  "What dimension?"

  "Not a clue." I shrugged. "One of the many Tanda and I visited. You could ask her."

  Aahz frowned even more at that.

  "What made you buy it?"

  Again I shrugged.

  "I honestly don't know. I thought you'd have fun with it for your birthday, and the guy said I was the first traveler he'd seen in a long time who might be able to use it and live to tell the tale."


  "Could he see through your disguises?" Aahz asked, staring at me.

  I tried to remember back to the day. I had used my standard disguise spell, and on that dimension, the spell had not been hard. Most of the residents stood four feet tall, and had two feet. Compared to disguising Tanda and me as slugs on one of the previous dimensions, that had been easy. But the beggar had clearly picked me out of a crowd, and he seemed out of place among the short people, being almost five feet tall.

  I looked at Aahz and nodded.

  "Maybe. But I don't know how he could have."

  Aahz waved his hand in disgust.

  "Apprentice, there are a thousand ways, especially with someone so unpracticed as you."

  I said nothing. No point in even trying to defend my talents. Aahz always won those conversations by making me try something I couldn't yet do. And that was just about everything when it came to magik. But making disguises is my best ability.

  Aahz spun around and moved back to the window, keeping the map with him. He stood there, staring outover the courtyard, letting the silence in the room just build and build. And if there was one thing I hated more than anything, it was the sound of someone thinking, without telling me what they were thinking about.

  "So, is there such a golden cow?" I asked, moving over and standing beside him in the big window so he couldn't ignore me.

  In the courtyard below the window, Gleep was running in circles chasing his tail. Thank heavens he wasn't near anything, because when a dragon started chasing his tail, things got knocked down, trampled, and just flat destroyed. Especially when it was a young dragon.

  What was even more amazing was that Aahz didn't seem to be noticing what Gleep -was doing. Clearly the map meant something to him.

  "The golden cow?" I asked again, "Is it real?"

  Aahz slowly turned and looked at me.

  "A myth. There are a lot of them in the different dimensions."

  "You're kidding! You mean there is more than one golden-milk-giving-cow myth?" Considering that I had never heard of a cow before today, I found that a little hard to imagine. I'm not sure exactly why I thought even one golden cow was easy to imagine, but dozens of them were just too much. Maybe there was an entire dimension with a race of them.

  Aahz sighed. When he sighed like that, it usually meant I was being extra stupid or dense.

  "Every tenth dimension has a myth about an animal or person doing something with gold. One has a goose laying golden eggs, another has a fish touching things and turning them to gold, another has a duck with golden feathers."

  "One heavy bird," I said, trying to imagine the duck covered in gold.

  Aahz sighed again.

  "The feathers become gold when they fall off."

  "Got you," I said. "You ever been near or seen one of these golden animals?"

  Aahz laughed, his demon-sound shaking the room.

  "If I had, would I be here, in this dump of a palace, with an apprentice as stupid as you?"

  I had to admit he had a good point, but I didn't really want to agree with him.

  "So that is a sham map," I said.

  "Most likely," Aahz said, staring out at the courtyard where Gleep had now managed to catch his tail. He bit it so hard, the poor dragon jumped and looked around, startled. Gleep was smart in many ways, but not about his own tail.

  I glanced over at Aahz. When he said 'most likely,' and didn't look at me, it meant he thought there might be a slight chance the map was real.

  "Why only most likely?" I asked.

  "Because," Aahz said, "I saw a golden deer-dropping once."

  "Deer dropping?" Again I had no idea what he meant.

  "Deer poop," Aahz said, his voice showing he was getting very tired of my stupid questions. "Deer turds. Deer crap. Deer excrement. One dimension has a myth about a deer that drops gold. I saw one of the droppings. And..."

  He stopped, still not looking at me. In all the time we had been together, I had never seen him like this before.

  "And what?" I asked.

  "And I saw part of a solid-gold elk antler at the Bazaar at Deva."

  I was stunned. A deer that pooped gold and an elk that had golden antlers.

  "So the map might actually be real?"

  "I doubt it," Aahz said, glancing at it.

  "But you don't know for sure, do you?"

  He shook his head.

  "Not for sure."

  "So we're going to check it out?"

  He looked down at the map in his hand, then folded it and stuffed it in his pocket.

  "I'll be back in an hour."

  He pulled out the D-Hopper and twisted it to a setting. Back before he met me and lost his powers, he used to be able to jump through the dimensions without the use of a D-Hopper. Now he needed the help and he hated it.

  "Wait!" I shouted. "You can't go looking for it without me."

  "I'm not," Aahz said. "And get that dragon of yours under control before he breaks something again and we have to pay for it. Be ready to go. One hour. And the dragon doesn't come with us."

  With that Aahz was gone, vanished off to another dimension with a faint BAMF.

  By the time Aahz got back I had Gleep in his stall in the stables and had arranged for someone to feed and walk him until I returned from wherever we were going.

  I was standing near the foot of the bed in my room when suddenly the air next to me sort of went BAMF again. Not real loud, but startling when it happened two feet from you. I jumped. Aahz was back, and he had my favorite demon in the entire universe of demons with him.

  'Tananda!" I shouted, stepping toward the beautiful creature with the long green hair and a body that, with a deep breath, could stop a parade.

  "Skeeve!" she shouted back, laughing.

  Then she pulled me into a hug that I hoped would never, ever stop. Now, granted, it had only been a month since I had last seen her, drunk as a skunk at Aahz's birthday party. But every time I saw her I figured it was a great excuse for a very long hug. And she sure didn't seem to mind, either.

  Tanda was a former assassin and member of the guild. I wasn't sure what she did now besides shop and go on adventures. What's more, I didn't really want to know. We were friends, and that was enough for me.

  Aahz cleared his throat after far too short a time in her wonderful hug. He did seem to mind that she didn't mind. Oh, well. I still believed she liked me better than him, and that was all that mattered.

  She pushed me back and looked at me sternly, her wonderful eyes glaring at me with mock anger.

  "Why didn't you tell me you had bought a treasure map?"

  "Actually, I was going to when we stopped for the night," I said with a shrug, "but then the game and you getting captured and everything sort of pushed the map out of my mind."

  "So do you remember how many dimensions before Jahk you bought it?" she asked.

  I knew exactly how many, since I had done the disguises in every dimension on the trip. "Three," I said,

  "You're absolutely sure?" Aahz asked, his golden eyes staring at me like they were about to shoot daggers.

  I held up my hand.

  "Jahk, the dimension with the Big Game."

  I pointed at my thumb.

  Tanda nodded and Aahz just glared, his expression of annoyance making me take my time.

  "Counting backwards," I said, pointing at my index finger, "the dimension before that was where we had to look like a form of a three-nosed pig."

  I wiggled my index finger at both of them.

  Tanda nodded. "Yeah, fun place."

  "Not really," I said.

  Aahz's glare got deeper, so I went on.

  "Before that was the dimension where we had to be eight feet tall and have three legs." I pointed at my middle ringer.

  Tanda laughed. "That was a fun dimension, too. Wasn't it?"

  It hadn't been, since walking on three legs is something that is a factor harder than trying to fly by flapping your arms and jumping off a cliff. But I ignored he
r this time and went on.

  I pointed to my next finger.

  "Dimension where we had to be four feet tall and where I bought the map." I held up the three fingers. "That many in front of the game dimension."

  I wanted to add that I could go over them again if Aahz wanted, but he was clearly not happy with me, so I didn't offer.

  Tanda smiled. "I thought so. Mini."

  "So what's so special about that dimension?" I asked.

  It hadn't seemed like much to me, although Tanda had not wanted to stay there long on our shopping trip.

  "Actually," Aahz said, "it makes this map more likely to be real."

  "Almost certain," Tanda laughed.

  "You're kidding?" I asked. "You really think there is a golden cow out there?"

  "I didn't say that," Aahz said. "I just said the map was likely to be real."

  I frowned and Tanda laughed.

  "Mini is populated by Minikins, who have this awful power of never telling a lie about anything. They do not do well at the Bazaar at Deva, for obvious reasons."

  "But what happens if the guy who sold it to me wasn't a Minikin?"

  "If he had been there for more than a day, he had to tell the truth about the map as well. That's why we got out of there so fast. Truth is not a good influence when you are shopping."

  At that I had no firsthand knowledge, but I figured Tanda was the expert.

  "Come on," she said to Aahz. "Dig out the map. We're wasting time. Let's do this."

  "Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Aahz asked as he pulled out the parchment, unfolded it, and put it on the bed so all three of us could look at it.

  I had no idea what I was looking at, but Tanda seemed to. She pointed at the upper left comer.

  "That's Minikins' Dimension."

  Even I knew that, since it was labeled Mini.

  "So we start there?"

  Aahz nodded. So did Tanda, for which I was grateful. If they both agreed, at least we had something solid.

  Tanda ran her finger along the only line leading from Minikin. It ended at a dot that was labeled Vortex #1. She studied that for a moment, then glanced at Aahz.

  "You have any idea what that means? Or where it's at?"

  "Not a clue," he said.

  Now I was stunned. It wasn't often that my mentor admitted he didn't know something. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time that it had happened, if ever. I wanted to point that out to him, but this just didn't seem to be the right time, so I went back to studying the map.