I nodded, wishing I hadn’t almost at once. She had taken away the pain, but the rest of the problems—upset stomach and spinning world—were still with me.
She brought me a glass of water, helping me sit up to drink it.
“Well, hangovers are sure fun, aren’t they, apprentice?” Aahz asked.
“No,” I managed to croak out after I took a small drink, “They are not.”
“Good thing to remember next time you go bingeing.”
The thought of even seeing another carrot made my stomach twist.
“Was there alcohol in the carrot juice?”
“No, but it had other stuff in it,” Aahz said, “Stuff I’m guessing make the people of those towns good eating for the vampires.”
My stomach twisted.
“And maybe help keep them under control,” Tananda said, looking at me. “Think you can come to the table and try to eat a little something?”
“I can try,” I said, “but no promises.”
“Good enough. You need to eat.”
“How long was I sleeping?” I asked as I stood and shuffled my way to the table.
I dropped into a chair and then tried to remain still while the world spun for a moment.
“About twelve hours,” Aahz said. “We were just getting ready to head back to Kowtow when you started to wake up.”
“Without me?” I asked, staring into the eyes of my mentor.
He smiled at what must have been my shocked expression.
“Just to explore and get a little closer to Donner while the vampires were back being cows. We would have left you shielded and been back in a few hours.”
“You still want to see if you can get to the treasure?” I asked, not believing that Aahz would even want to go back to the place again, let alone try to get a golden-milk-giving cow that turned into a vampire.
“Sure,” he said. “We’re too close to turn back now.”
“And just what are you going to do when you find this golden cow?”
“I asked him the same thing,” Tananda said.
“I’ll figure that out when we find it,” Aahz said.
I nodded. “Glad I woke up then.”
“I doubt you’re going to be up for coming along just yet,” Tananda said, putting a little sandwich and another glass of water in front of me.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just a little carrot juice and I can fly a long ways.”
The silence in the cabin was intense.
I looked at Aahz, then at Tananda and smiled. “Just kidding.”
For some reason, neither of them laughed.
ALONG THE WAY there were more and more cattle, bigger herds than we had seen at any other place. I was just glad that none of them were lined up along the road watching us.
The countryside was becoming pretty hilly, and the road looked like it was headed right at a fairly large mountain range. I hoped Donner was on this side of the range and not the other. My question was answered almost at once as we topped a slight ridge and could see off ahead.
I somehow managed to bring us to a stop and lower us to the ground. Considering what we were facing, I thought that was pretty good concentration.
From the top of this hill we could see Donner. It had been built going up the side of a gentle hill. From here it looked as if the buildings down low were all like the ones in the towns we had already seen, but the farther up the hill you went, the larger the buildings, the more ornate.
At the top was the palace. Only this wasn’t like anything on this planet. It was made of stone and inlaid with gold that shimmered in the afternoon sun. It was like a second sun, only golden.
“Oh, my,” Tananda said softly.
“No wonder there’s a treasure map to this place,” Aahz said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Neither have I,” Tananda said.
Well, if the two experienced dimension travelers in the group had never seen anything like the golden palace we were staring at, I sure hadn’t either.
After a moment I asked what I thought was the obvious next question.
“So now what do we do?”
“We go take a closer look,” Aahz said, laughing. “See what we can see.”
I glanced at my mentor. He was always happy when there was a chance we might end up with a lot of money. I didn’t want to ask him how he thought we were going to get any of the gold we could see from here, but clearly he had ideas, and the ideas were enough to make him smile.
All his smile did was worry me.
I flew us two more small hills closer to the city before Aahz said we had better walk the rest of the way. There was so much energy in this area that I didn’t even feel tired from the effort of flying. It had come easy, which meant that all magik was easy in this place. That was both good and bad.
Ahead of us on the road were some walkers, plus a wagon full of vegetables being pulled by two horses. Cows filled the fields, paying no attention to anything.
Up closer, the town of Donner was even bigger than I had first thought, with a very wide, boulevard-like main road heading straight through everything. The golden castle on the top of the hill was massive. It looked like it could swallow the entire royal palace and courtyard of Possiltum and not even burp. I wonder if this place had a royal magician. Maybe I could apply for the job, but I doubted I would pass the cow physical.
We had just crested the last small hill and were starting down toward the edge of the city when a dozen men on horseback came galloping out of the city, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them. A few people ahead of us on the road stepped out of the way. And the wagonload of veggies had to move almost off the road and into a small ditch.
The thundering horses came on, riding hard, the men’s black hats pulled down tight on their heads. I didn’t have a good feeling about this, but at the same time there was no reason to think they were after us.
We moved to the side of the road as they neared, but instead of riding past, then stopped, sort of forming a circle around us, pinning us against a pasture full of cows. I clearly should have trusted my bad feeling.
“You are under arrest,” a man sitting on a big black horse said. “Please come with us into the city.”
“It’s a posse,” Tananda said, the surprise in her voice clear. “Never thought I’d ever see one.”
“A what?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she said.
“Under arrest for what?” Aahz demanded of the guy on the big horse.
The guy, whose face looked very similar to the guy who had been the bartender in Audry’s, smiled. I didn’t like the look of his little teeth at all.
“You have been charged with not complying with round-up procedures,” he said, “and the unlawful use of magik.”
I glanced at Aahz, then at Tananda. Now we knew for sure that this dimension knew about magik. As far as I was concerned, right about now would be a great time to beat a hasty retreat to the wonderful dust of Vortex #6. But it seemed Aahz had other ideas.
“We demand to be taken to your leader,” Aahz said, stepping toward the man. “We are powerful magicians from another dimension with important information your leader will want.”
The guy actually laughed, which rocked Aahz back on his heels. Not too many people actually laughed at my mentor and got away with it.
“Drop my disguise,” Aahz said, whispering to me.
I shrugged. At this point, it couldn’t get any worse, so I did as he asked.
Not a one of the men on the horses even seemed to notice that there was now a green-scaled ugly Pervect standing in front of them. Not even their horses cared.
That was not what Aahz was expecting.
The guy again just laughed.
“You can drop the act,” he said. “Our leader knows exactly why you are here.”
“Now please come with us,” he said.
He turned his horse and started at a slow pace toward the city.
I glanced at Aahz, who was looking almost stunned, then at Tananda.
“Don’t you think this might be a good time to head for home?” I asked.
“I wish we could,” Tananda said.
Sweat dripped off her forehead as we all stepped back onto the road to follow the guy who had done the talking. The rest of his group of riders waited and fell in behind us.
“Excuse me?” I said. “How about jumping us to the dust storm?”
“Trust me,” she said, “I tried.”
“You what?” I couldn’t believe she couldn’t get us out of this mess.
“We’re blocked?” Aahz asked.
“Tighter than a vault,” she said. “Best block I’ve ever run up against.”
“How about I try to fly us out of here?”
“Won’t work either,” Tananda said. “At the moment there’s a block over all our magik.”
“Oh,” was all I could say.
Ahead, just over the head of the horse in front of me, I could see the golden palace. It was the place, the treasure, we had been working and fighting so hard to reach. Right now it was the last place in any dimension I wanted to go.
NO ONE IN the city seemed to pay us any attention at all as we were marched into Donner and right up the wide Main Street of the city toward the golden palace on the hill. I saw at least a dozen Audry’s-like places along the road, and this town had three guys in white hats and shovels cleaning up after the hundreds of horses. As we passed, all three of them tipped their hats and said, “Howdy.”
What really made this town different from all the others we had gone through, besides the golden palace towering over it, were the pastures between the buildings. About halfway up to the palace, on the right side of the road, was a beautiful, green pasture about the size of one building.
It had one lone cow in it, grazing on the perfectly tended grass.
A little farther up the hill there were more small pastures between buildings on both sides of the street, each with just one cow. And the higher we went, the more beautiful the pastures became, with ornate decorations and well-trimmed grass.
Just under the palace were five pastures on both sides of the main boulevard, and in each of those manicured and ornately decorated lawns was one cow, and off to one side a guy wearing a white hat and carrying a shovel. Waiting. Now I knew what all the other shovel-carrying guys working the streets of all the towns were trying to advance their way up to.
The guys on horses dismounted at a massive gate made of stone pillars and gold bars. The palace itself was surrounded by a tall stone wall that looked too high to even try to climb. The stone was highly polished and there looked to be gold lining the top.
The guy in charge pointed us at the gate, but didn’t follow us in. Instead, five other men in white robes with gold trim met us just inside the gate and indicated we should follow. Each carried a golden shovel like a cane, using it to walk. It was clear that a person who worked outside the palace and didn’t have a golden shovel couldn’t get into the palace. Why were we so lucky?
“Would you look at all the gold!” Aahz said, his head whipping back and forth as he tried to take it all in.
“Amazing,” Tananda said, her voice soft and carrying the awe she felt.
I couldn’t say anything. The sight that greeted us inside that gate was beyond anything I had ever imagined. There was nothing but beautiful trimmed lawns, gold ornaments, strangely shaped shrubs, and guys in white robes and white hats with golden shovels. Maybe a dozen different cows grazed on the beautiful lawns, clearly without a care in the world, all tended by guys in white robes with golden shovels.
Our robed jailers herded us up the stone staircase, climbing through manicured lawn after manicured lawn, all surrounded by gold statues of different animals and gold artwork. The walls of the castle itself towered over us, the white stone and shining gold walls higher than anything I had ever seen before.
We were finally taken through a big double door and headed down flights of stone steps. From there I got completely lost as we went through tunnels, down steps, around corners, down more tunnels, down more steps, all the time going deeper and farther under the castle. I didn’t much like the idea of being trapped down under such a massive building, but the idea that we were being held prisoner by cows controlling guys with golden shovels bothered me even more. Especially since they were vampire cows.
Finally we were herded into a big room with stone walls and left, a golden-barred door slamming closed behind us. There were five others in the big room, all looking tattered and exhausted. Ten beds were spaced around the walls and all the previous prisoners were lying on the beds, sleeping.
“Glenda,” Aahz said.
It took me a second to recognize the figure on the bed across the room. It was Glenda all right, but not the alive, beautiful, and powerful woman I had remembered from just a few days before. This woman wore tattered clothing, had dirt and deep circles under her eyes, and a huge red mark on her neck.
All three of us moved over to her. As we did her eyes fluttered open and she saw Aahz, then Tananda and me.
“Found the treasure, I see,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Then she was back asleep, her breathing heavy, and her mouth hanging open. The red marks on her neck pulsed with the beat of her heart.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” I said.
“Any chance we can get out of here?” Aahz asked, glancing around the room.
I did the same. None of the other prisoners in the place looked to be in any better shape than Glenda. And all of them had the red marks on their necks and were sleeping heavily, almost dead.
Tananda shook her head.
“Not a chance at all. The energy is back flowing to us, but the dimension hopping is still blocked completely. I’ve been trying to D-hop ever since we were captured.”
“Well,” Aahz said, “we’re just going to have to find another way out, and grab a little gold along the way.”
“How about the D-Hopper?” I asked. “They didn’t search us. Maybe it would work.”
Aahz pulled the D-Hopper out, made sure the setting was right, and then triggered it.
We stayed right where we were.
“Worth a try,” I said as he put it back in his shirt.
“I think we need some answers,” Aahz said.
He sat down on the edge of Glenda’s bunk and then not so gently shook her awake.
“No! No!” she said as she woke.
Her hands went to her neck and then flinched away. Again it took a moment for her to recognize us. She blinked, then said, “Go away,” and closed her eyes again.
“We need some answers,” Aahz said.
He grabbed her by the shoulders, twisted her around, and sat her upright on the bed, her back against the wall.
“Easy there, big fella,” Glenda said, her voice hoarse. “We’re all in this together.”
“I’m not in anything with you,” Aahz said.
Looking at the wreck she had become, it was hard for me to even remember why I had been interested in her in the first place. Could I be that superficial that she had to remain beautiful for me to care? Or did I no longer find her attractive or have any interest in her because she had betrayed us? It was an interesting question I’d have to talk to Aahz about once we were safely back home.
“Oh,” Glenda said, “trust me. If you’re here, in this cell, then we’re all in this together.”
“How’d you end up here?” Aahz asked. “How’d you find the place without the map?”
She laughed. “I went to Dodge City, didn’t find anything, so I asked this guy running a bar where the golden cow was, and he told me here.”
I shook my head. How simple that would have been. Why hadn’t we thought of it?
“Then what happened?” Tananda asked.
“Didn’t even make it into town,” she said. “Got picked up by a bunch of guys on horses yesterday and tossed in here. Then last night I got hauled out to be a snack at the big party upstairs.”
Her hand again went to her neck and she flinched. The red marks there didn’t look like they were healing very well. And I didn’t much like the sound of being a snack like those people lined up on the road had been.
“It was like a bad dream,” Glenda said, her eyes distant. “They kept forcing glass after glass of carrot juice down me while taking turns sucking on my neck. By morning I couldn’t even walk. I don’t remember how I got back down here.”
The thought of carrot juice ripped my stomach into a knot.
“Who were they?” Tananda asked.
Glenda shrugged. “Hundreds of beautiful naked people in this gold-covered ballroom way up in the castle somewhere.”
Aahz nodded. “Vampire cows.”
“What?” Glenda asked.
“We saw a field of cows change into beautiful naked people last night,” I said, “and snack on the townspeople who were waiting to be used.”
She looked at me, then at Aahz. “The kid’s not kidding, is he?”
Aahz shook his head.
Glenda shook her head and then closed her eyes.
“Drunk dry by bovine vampires. How ironic.”
She didn’t say anything else, and Aahz didn’t push her. She looked as if she had lost twenty pounds in one night. She had managed to outsmart us, find her way to the castle, and still get captured. If she couldn’t get away, how were we going to do it before we became a full-moon snack?
“We’ve got to get out of here before the sun goes down,” Aahz said, standing and moving to the door.
He gave it a couple hard hits, but it didn’t move, and no one came because of the noise. Clearly none of the golden-shoveled guards were worried about a prisoner escape.
MA11-12 Myth-ion Improbable Something Myth-Inc Page 11
