MA11-12 Myth-ion Improbable Something Myth-Inc

by Robert Asprin

  “Gold,” Glenda said, her voice sounding tired and worn. “Gold would stop the flow, if you could focus enough of it.”

  Aahz seemed to be off somewhere inside his head, thinking. Tananda was doing the same thing.

  Harold and I looked at each other. Clearly, as apprentice magicians, neither of us even had a clue what the other three were considering.

  “I think it might be done,” Aahz said, nodding. He looked at Glenda. “Good idea.”

  She said nothing in return. It seemed that as the closer we got to a possible answer, the more sullen and reserved she became. I was still so angry at her for what she did to me that I didn’t care enough to even ask what was happening.

  “Okay, to the next problem,” I said. “How do we get down there with enough gold to stop the energy stream?”

  “We won’t need much gold,” Tananda said. “Just enough, with a good connection spell, to hook other nearby gold into the blockage. Maybe something gold-plated and flat.”

  “A golden shovel?” I asked.

  Tananda nodded. “That would do it, I’m sure.”

  Harold moved over toward the front door of the suite, near where the grass was planted. He tapped a spot on the wall and a closet door opened. He reached inside and pulled out a golden shovel, just like the ones the palace guys had. It seemed that, in the palace, no cow droppings could be picked up with anything but a golden shovel.

  “Okay, we’re set for the gold part,” Aahz said. “Tananda, when we’re ready to try this, can you do the connection spell to hook enough gold into the shovel?”

  She nodded. “I’ve done a number of them over the years to build shields and walls.”

  “So back to my problem,” I said. “How do we get down there without being run over by the mounted posse?”

  Aahz pointed to a spot on the map. At first I couldn’t see what he was pointing at, and then I saw it. The very same tunnel I had been afraid I was going to end up down in.

  “Follow where it leads,” Aahz said. “Starting with the secret opening back in the library.”

  I did as he suggested, focusing on the map as it changed, showing me the different levels of the secret passageway as it dropped through the mountain behind the castle, curved under everything, and came out in the very room where the big energy flow had been taken off for the spell.

  “Looks like there was a reason that tunnel was built,” Aahz said, smiling at me.

  “Count Bovine used it to get to his main power source when he lived here full-time,” Harold said.

  “What do you know?”

  “So we’re going underground,” I said, reaching over and taking the heavy shovel from Harold. “I just hope I don’t have to dig my way out.”

  “You and me both,” Aahz said, staring at the map.

  My mentor had a way of making everything seem so positive that it was a wonder I could even move most mornings.

  It took a little longer than I had expected to find the hidden passageway into the tunnel in the old library. We had to move pile of furniture, old books, and more rolled-up scrolls than I could count. The scrolls were the hardest, since Harold wouldn’t let us just kick them aside. Finally, we got to the spot where the passage should be and faced a stone wall.

  “I didn’t think there was anything back here,” he said. “After all these years, I know this room.”

  I didn’t want to mention to him that he really didn’t, since he hadn’t even noticed the map painted on the ceiling.

  “Oh, it’s here all right,” Aahz said.

  All five of us were standing there in the dusty place. I had the shovel, Tananda had the map.

  “Glenda?” Aahz said.

  She stepped up to him.

  Quicker than I had seen my mentor move in a long, long time, Aahz had the rope out of his pouch, over her head, and tied.

  She dropped to the ground, sound asleep, before she could even get a complaint out of her mouth. I was stunned.

  “Harold,” Aahz said, “pick up her feet and let’s move her to a couch.”

  Harold looked as stunned as I felt. Tananda seemed to again know exactly what was happening. Aahz moved Glenda to the couch, made sure the rope was tied, and then looked at Harold. “No matter what you do, what you think, what happens around you, do not untie her until we get back. Understand?”

  Harold nodded. “But I don’t see why.”

  “The map,” Aahz said.

  Tananda held it up and pointed to a spot on it.

  “Right here,” she said. “See this tiny thin line coming up out of the basement and into this suite?”

  I looked real close. For a moment I thought she was making it up, and then I saw the blue line. It went right to a spot in the suite where the chair was, where Glenda had been sitting when I did the map.

  “Glenda’s hooked up somehow,” Aahz said. “I didn’t see that until we had already made our plans.”

  “You mean they might know we’re coming?”

  “Possible,” Aahz said.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” I said. I wondered how many of that posse I could hit with the golden shovel before they took it away from me.

  “Are you ready?” Aahz asked.

  “You want me to lead?” I asked, still not seeing where we were going to go.

  “I’ve got it for the moment,” Aahz said. He picked up the torch we had brought with us from the first tunnel, held it out and said to me, “A light might help.”

  I eased some energy out of the stream, just enough to start the torch on fire. Not long ago I had had trouble with that spell as well. And a year ago I might have set the entire library on fire trying to light that torch.

  “Follow me,” Aahz said, and stepped at the stone wall.

  And right through it.

  “This place could give a guy a headache,” I said, moving at the stone wall behind him. I had the shovel slightly in front of me in case the stone decided to be stone for me.

  I went right through, just as Aahz had done.

  Tananda came through behind me.

  The tunnel was narrow and carved out of solid rock. Steps led down into the bowels of the earth. More steps than I could see in the torchlight. The place was cold and very dusty. It was clear that no one had been in here in a very, very long time, as our footsteps kicked up a cloud of dust that swirled in the flickering light of the torch.

  “Are we shielded?” Aahz asked Tananda.

  “Same as in the library,” Tananda said. “Count Bovine didn’t want this tunnel found, that’s for sure.”

  “That helps us,” I said.

  Aahz nodded, made sure we were both ready, then, holding the torch up so that we could see the steps as well as he could in the dust, he started down.

  And we went down for a very, very long time, kicking up thick clouds of dust with every step. I could not imagine how anyone could have carved the tunnel. I could barely walk the steps, and we were going down. Climbing this must be next to impossible for anyone not in top shape.

  Finally, after what seemed like a nightmarish eternity, we reached an area of the tunnel that flattened out.

  “Map,” Aahz said.

  Tananda moved up and the two of us crowded with Aahz so that we could see the map in the torchlight and swirling dust. It showed that we had reached the bottom of the tunnel. I glanced around at the rock walls and ceiling. We were under thousands and thousands of body-lengths of rock. I couldn’t imagine how much weight was pressing down on the ceiling of the tunnel above us right at that moment.

  The thought sent a shiver through me, and a touch of panic.

  “Can we keep going?” I asked.

  Tananda took the map and Aahz smiled at me, his green scales covered in dust, his eyes yellow holes in the dirt. I must have looked as bad as he did, maybe worse.

 
“A little claustrophobia?” he asked.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, not having a clue what the big word meant. Sometimes Aahz just didn’t remember what a backward part of a backward world I came from.

  “Feeling the pressure of all this weight over us?” Tananda asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “more than I want to think about right now, thank you very much.”

  Aahz laughed. “We don’t have that much farther to go.”

  “Then let’s go,” I said, fighting against the panic at the walls closing in.

  Aahz gave me a long look, then turned and headed along the flat part of the tunnel. I kept the golden shovel clutched in front of me. At least if the tunnel came down, I’d be buried with something worth digging up. After a hundred paces the tunnel started back up. Stair after stair after stair. Up and up and up.

  I forgot to be afraid of the tunnel coming down on me because I was so tired from the climbing.

  “Wait,” Aahz said, stopping to pant for a moment. “The air’s bad in here.”

  I realized when he said that that I was also having trouble getting enough air. Now not only was the roof about to fall and crush me, I was going to die from lack of air.

  “Almost there,” Tananda said from behind me. I could hear the rustling of the map. Aahz nodded and pushed upward, taking one step at a time.

  I used the shovel as a sort of crutch. Step. Clunk. Step. Clunk.

  The sound echoed down the tunnel behind us. If this plan didn’t work, I couldn’t imagine having to go back to the suite using this tunnel. I’d try it if I had to, but I sure didn’t want to.

  Step. Clunk. Step. Clunk.

  We kept climbing. Forever. How could this be? Had we gotten turned around and were headed back to the suite?

  My lungs burned like the time I had stayed underwater too long in the pond when I was a kid. My eyes stung with the dust, and I could feel the grit in my mouth.

  “We’re here,” Aahz said, his voice barely a whisper. I glanced back. Tananda was a few steps behind me, her face covered in dust, mud caked around her mouth and nose. She looked as if she was about to pass out.

  Ahead of me Aahz slid back a wooden panel and stepped through.

  Cool, fresh air hit me like a hammer as I stepped up to follow him. In all my life I couldn’t remember anything feeling that good before.

  We were in a good-sized room, at least fifty paces across, that was completely empty of every stick of furniture. It was simply four walls of stone, a stone floor, and a stone ceiling. From the looks of it, the door we had come through was the only door in the place. And there were no windows. Where the wonderful fresh air was coming from I had no idea.

  “Oh, my,” Tananda said, coming up out of the tunnel and taking big gulping breaths of air. I gulped right along with her.

  Aahz came over and took the map from Tananda, studying it as we caught our breath. After a moment he moved around the room, staying to the outside.

  I knew why he stayed to the outside. In the center of the room was a massive energy flow coming up through the floor and going out through the ceiling. It wouldn’t hurt him to walk through it, but Aahz was taking no chances.

  About halfway around the room he stopped, studied the map again, and then came back toward us a few steps.

  “Right here,” he said, pointing into the empty air. “Right here is where the energy flow is diverted.”

  He pointed in the direction of the empty wall beside him, indicating how the energy flow moved off the main one.

  I took a deep breath and let my mind open slightly to see the flow.

  “Wow!” I said, staggering backwards from the sight.

  Beside me Tananda did the same.

  “It’s huge!” she said.

  Not more than a few paces in front of me was a torrent of pure blue energy, flowing like a fast-moving river up out of the ground and through the ceiling. It was a good forty or more paces across. I could see Aahz through it, but just barely. About halfway up, in the center of the room about head high, the flow seemed to decrease in size significantly, from forty paces across to less than thirty. I could see where the other energy was going sideways and then vanishing in the direction that Aahz had pointed. That energy was powering the spell that held this dimension in the strange state it was in. How Count Bovine had managed to divert so much energy into one spell was also beyond my apprentice’s level of understanding. I glanced down at the little gold shovel I held in my hand, then back at the raging torrent of blue energy in front of me. The silliness of even thinking of trying to change that torrent with my little shovel made me laugh.

  Aahz, staying to the outside, came back around to where we were standing.

  “This isn’t possible,” I said, holding up the shovel.

  “It fills this room, Aahz,” Tananda said, the awe in her voice clear. “I’ve never seen an energy stream anything like it.”

  “We can do it,” Aahz said. Again I looked at my little gold shovel, then at the torrent of blue energy and just shook my head. Sometimes my mentor was smart, sometimes angry, but right now he was just plain crazy.

  “SKEEVE,” AAHZ SAID, “can you see where the flow for Count Bovine’s spell leaves the main energy?”

  We had moved around to the side of the room where Count Bovine’s spell took its energy from the river of flowing energy pouring out of the ground.

  “Yes, right in front of us,” I said.

  I pointed out where it left and how high it was to Aahz, who nodded.

  I was using a part of my mind that allowed me to reach out for energy and do spells myself. That part allowed me to see the energy, where Aahz, who had lost his powers, could not.

  Where the energy for Count Bovine’s spell left the main stream was like a branch on a big tree. It sort of cut it off of one side of the main flow, moving up and sideways. The moment the secondary flow was sideways to the main one, it vanished into the spell it was being used for. We had about a body length, right above where I stood, to cut that side-flow off and send it along in the main flow. At least, that was the theory on what we were going to try. Sort of like trying to dam up the side branch of a river in one quick move, without getting wet. But even that side-branch of this energy, where I could see it, had to be ten paces across. Far, far wider than my little gold shovel. Yet from what I understood, Aahz wanted me to try to divert or even stop that energy with my shovel. Not a chance in a Bovine hell.

  Aahz moved over behind me. “We’re going to have to do this together,” he said. “Tananda, when I say ‘ready’ you connect the gold in this shovel to whatever gold you can sense nearby. Pull in as much as you can.”

  “Oh, so you’re going to make the shovel bigger?” I asked, starting to understand his plan.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  Tananda nodded. “I’m going to have to make the gold wide, at least ten feet around.”

  Tananda could see the giant flow of energy as well as I could. She also knew how insane this attempt was.

  “I know,” Aahz said, nodding.

  “Can you hold that much?” I asked. “I sure can’t.”

  “We’re both going to try,” Aahz said. “You steer, I’ll lift. I’m going to get under the shovel. When Tananda connects other gold to it and starts expanding it, it’s going to get really, really heavy very quickly, so be ready the moment I say go. I don’t want to drop it.”

  I nodded. This gold-plated shovel wasn’t that light as it was. I couldn’t imagine how Aahz and I could even try to hold up a gold block ten feet across, even a thin one.

  “We have to keep it out of the flow until it’s big enough,” Aahz said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this and get on to the next life.”

  Aahz laughed. “That’s what I like about you, apprentice. Always a good mental attitude.”
<
br />   “Give me something to be positive about,” I said.

  Aahz moved around and got under me, bracing himself solidly as I held the shovel up in position next to the side-flow of energy. When the gold got big enough for what Tananda was going to do, we were going to simply let the shovel fall to our right and cut off the side-flow to the spell. However, if we let the shovel fall forward into the main flow, there was no telling what would happen.

  Aahz said he wasn’t even sure what was going to happen when we cut the side-flow. He hoped nothing, but he didn’t know for sure when I had asked him.

  “Ready!” Aahz shouted, even though the room was empty and there were only the three of us in it.

  To an outsider watching us who couldn’t see the energy flow, we would have looked darned silly. Aahz crouched in front of me, holding onto the shovel I was holding in the air. Tananda beside us, her head tilted back, staring up into nothingness.

  “Ready,” she said.

  I knew she was sending her mind out, linking gold, pulling it in to add to our shield.

  “Now!” Aahz shouted again.

  Instantly the shovel started growing in size and in weight. I braced myself as Aahz did the same. I was stunned at how heavy it got so quickly.

  The shovel grew and I strained against dropping it, trying to do my job of just holding it steady.

  “About half!” Aahz said, his voice strained from holding up the ever-heavier shovel. Aahz was one of the strongest demons I knew, and he was having problems. I did my best to help lift at the same time as holding the shovel in position. I doubted I was doing much good, but I knew for a fact the effort was going to cost me later.

  The shovel was getting bigger and bigger, growing quicker and quicker.

  “Almost!” Aahz said, his voice barely a croak under the weight.

  Above me the shovel looked like a massive gold coin.

  “Now!” Aahz said.

  I pushed sideways, letting the shovel fall toward the side-flow of energy as Tananda kept adding more and more gold to it.