Myth-ion Improbable

by Robert Asprin

  "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 bloodthirsty 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 im
portant 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.