Myth-Told Tales

by Robert Asprin

  “Is that allowed?” a Klahd female demanded furiously, though I could tell by the aura around her that she was wearing magikal enhancements, too, to lift up and add perkiness to a wide bottom, her best feature.

  “You see what I’m up against,” Bunny murmured. I concurred. Trofi contests were no game for the fainthearted.

  The Deveel made it almost all the way to the exit when her salamanders started belching fire. Battering at the multicolored blazes burning in her hair, the Deveel made a hasty retreat. I leaped forward to help, but as soon as she hit the stairs she put out the fire with a dampening spell.

  Bunny was seventeenth in line. I kept an eye out for ill-wishes and attack spells until she was in the hands of the host. Applause broke out as she stepped gracefully around the stage, the light flashing against her long, smooth legs. The audience hooted and whistled. She smiled, and a thousand little bursts of light broke out in the darkness.

  I felt disturbance brewing in the lines of force from not one, but several points. Thankfully most of them were amateurish. I blocked many of them with a turnaround spell that I’d learned from Tananda, causing the effect to rebound upon the caster. An Imper woman three back in line jumped up and down, her shoes burning from the hot-foot she’d meant for my friend. An eight-legged arachnid girl stumbled on all eight feet, falling on her fur-covered derriere. Her mandibles clicked angrily.

  A hand picked me up by my throat and turned me in mid-air.

  “Gack!” I exclaimed to the Troll glaring into my face. I flailed with both hands, trying to signal that I wanted him to put me down. He paid no attention.

  “Hey, youse,” he said, bringing a shard-toothed mouth close. “Take girl and go home! Not go, you be sorry!”

  I knew from long association with Chumley, a friendly Troll who worked under the nom de guerre Big Crunch, that most Trolls were more intelligent than they sounded. I kneed him in the nose and braced myself as he dropped me.

  “Do you know who I am?” I hissed, glaring up at him. “I’m the Great Skeeve. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? Bunny there is under my protection. You leave us alone, or you’ll never be able to set foot in the Bazaar on Deva again! Do you know what I mean?” I gave him a gimlet-eyed stare that I’d seen Aahz use to quail opponents.

  It worked. The Troll, while not completely stupid, was no dragon-poker player. He’d heard about me, though obviously not the latest news.

  “So sorry,” he said, backing away. “I . . . don’t hurt me, huh?”

  Behind him was a Trollop, the female of the species, in a moss gray-velvet bathing suit, who gave me a glare. I kept my guard up, not wanting her to get close enough to read me. Tananda, Chumley’s sister, was a powerful magician in her own right. This Trollop could probably wipe up the floor with me. I counted on my reputation, plus the fact that she was going to have to go onstage in a moment. We locked eyes, but I won. She dipped her gaze, and turned away, pretending she didn’t see me.

  “Awww!”

  The cry from the audience told me I’d missed something. Bunny returned, her hands over her face. Her makeup had taken a direct hit from a malicious spell, and was running down her face in dark streaks. Her hair was soaking wet, and her bathing suit was beginning to shrink. Someone had cast a quick Rainshower on her while my back was turned. I threw her robe around her and hustled her out of the arena.

  “I’m so sorry,” I apologized, escorting her hastily past her grinning co-contestants. The next female, a granite-skinned being in a solid steel bikini, stepped up onstage, with a look that dared anyone to interfere with her. “I wasn’t expecting so many attacks at once.”

  Bunny walked along smiling, with her head held high, as if nothing was wrong in the entire world. Night had fallen over the town. I followed the torches toward the inn where Bunny had taken rooms for us. Once we were out of sight of anyone involved with the contest, she allowed her shoulders to sag.

  “I should have warned you,” she said. “No one’s fighting fair. If they’re not using spells to puff themselves up, they’re using them to knock others down.”

  I frowned. “What do the rules say?”

  “Strictly forbidden,” she told me. “No magik of any kind to enhance your talent or beauty, or to attack others. But they’re not stopping it. In fact, I think the judges are enjoying it.”

  “What about protective spells?” I asked.

  “Not mentioned,” Bunny said. “I guess they’d never believe that anyone capable of using enchantments wouldn’t use everything they’ve got. A lot is at stake here. The Bub Tube is unique throughout the dimensions. At least now.”

  “Well, if they’re not enforcing the rule, then we’re free to use magick, too,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can, and leave you free to concentrate on winning.”

  “Touuuuu-cccchhhh meeeee, it’s so eeeasy to leeeee-eeve meeeee . . .”

  An Imper female in a tight evening dress belted out the climactic melody of her song, sounding like a dragon in heat. The sound went right through my head and out the other side. I gritted my teeth but applauded politely, because her entourage was watching the audience carefully, and I didn’t want to draw negative attention to Bunny.

  “Cats,” Bunny murmured, half to herself.

  “Not a chance,” I whispered back. “They never sound as horrible as that.”

  Day Two was the talent contest. So far we’d seen contestants juggle—fire, plates, clubs, balls, and themselves—dance, in every style from slow country dancing to spastic jerking that I thought signaled mass magikal attack on the woman onstage; art; acting; declamation; twirling a shiny metal stick; bird song imitations; bird flight imitations; stand-up comedy; dragon-taming; knife-throwing; and a thinly disguised strip-tease act in which the Pervect female started a seductive dance fully clothed while a salamander crawled along the hem of her dress, burning it away in a spiraling strip. The Gnomish female did conjuring, an act that caused smug grins among the contestants until the judges determined that she wasn’t using any power at all. Each of her tricks was pure prestidigitation, sleight of hand. I was really impressed. If anyone was serious competition for Bunny, it was she. Maybe, once this was over, I could find her and ask her to teach me some of those illusions—useful to impress one’s opponent in situations where lines of force were scarce.

  The judges were as stonefaced a group as I’d ever met on the other side of a card table, or, I ought to say, metal-faced. Trofians resembled Klahds but with shiny skin in metallic hues. A copper man, a bronze woman, a silver man, and a platinum woman flanked a slender gold-skinned female who was the chief adjudicator. When a question arose, the four all deferred to her. Ushers and assistants of every metal I’d ever seen ran back and forth to the dais with scoring sheets, beverages, and messages. A brassy young female seemed to have taken a shine to me, and winked a gleaming eyelid every time she went by our seats.

  This competition wasn’t free of sorcerous interference, either. Just as the Imper woman reached her high note, she developed a cough, and the orchestra had to finish the maudlin tune without her. She looked furious as she stalked off the stage. The gold judge shook her head and made a mark on her sheet. The silver man and platinum woman exchanged glances and entered their own scores. The next act went on.

  Bunny clutched my hand. I held it tightly while watching the next act. The Klahd female who tripped up onstage kept on going, tripping over her feet with a wild yell and sliding face first all the way across into the opposite wings. She never reappeared. I sensed at least six spells that pushed her over. The pent-up force of so many enchantments was what drove her so far. A Deveelish dancer appeared next in a tiered lace dress, hard metal plates bolted to the bottom of her hooves. The tapping as she stepped rhythmically grew louder and louder until the judges themselves called a halt to her performance. She stomped deafeningly off stage, snarling at her fellow contestants.

  Bad will escalated from there. The next Imper woman attempted to draw caricatures of the judges. First her pa
intbrushes caught fire, then the lines she produced with a charcoal pencil rearranged themselves into such scurrilously rude drawings that the judges’ faces glowed with embarrassment. So did the contestant’s. She burst into tears and fled off stage. She was succeeded by a multi-limbed creature with a small dummy that she set on one of her many knees and tried to throw her voice. By the look on her face, the things it said were not in the script. A tiny Salamander girl writing poetry in flames on the air was extinguished by the sudden descent from the catwalk of the fire bucket and its contents. It hissed its way off stage while the judges scribbled their notes down.

  Bunny was next. She’d rehearsed her act with me in my room at the inn the night before, and if nothing went wrong she’d knock the judges off her feet. I’d never known she was so talented. She danced with a partner who was no more than a broomstick in men’s clothes. The bristly end was the figure’s head, gloves were attached to the end of the tunic’s sleeves, and shoes were sewn onto the bottom of the hose. And as they danced, they sang a duet. Bunny did both parts, singing in her normal tone for her lines, and pitching her voice down low for her partner’s.

  “It was the closest to boys we had at Madam Beezel’s Academy for Girls,” she said apologetically. “My parents were very strict.” I thought it was a terrific act, and I told her so. She squeezed my arm for good luck before the host called her name.

  She swirled out onto the stage with her partner in her arms, and the music began.

  “We two,” Bunny sang. “We two are like one / When we’re on the dance floor / Out on the town having fun / You are me and I am you / Whenever we are close I see you and me / we two, we two are like one . . .”

  I enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of what Aahz called “vawd-vil.” I even saw one or two of the judges moving their heads in time with the music.

  It took a little while for the others to catch on to what her act was about, but when they did, the attacks came from every direction. Gusts of wind blew her long skirt up over her head, showing tiny blue unmentionables underneath. Her feet slipped on invisible oil slicks or white patches of ice that appeared on the stage floor, then vanished without a trace. I threw defensive spell after defensive spell around her. They were bombarded by hostile magik. A few spells slipped through my protection. Bunny’s “partner” grew extra arms and legs. Its face changed into a hideous mask and started to sing.

  “Boo hoo, you hopeless dum-dum! / You dance with a pushbroom / we all assume you’re insane / *&%$ you . . .” Bunny flagged, not knowing what to do next.

  This I could help with. I tore energy from every force line I could reach, and covered the horrible face with a handsome male visage, and filled in the raucous noise with my own voice. Suddenly, instead of dancing with a broom, Bunny seemed to be in the arms of a handsome man.

  “Do you mind if I cut in? / Go on with your song / you’re beautiful . . .”

  Over its shoulder she shot me a look of such gratitude I could feel my ears burning. I let her go on singing. Now the contestants turned their attention to me, but I was ready for them. I’d had to concentrate on doing spells while a baby dragon licked my face or while an angry Pervect yelled or while armies of heavily armed men and horses charged straight at me. What had I to fear from a thousand angry women?

  Plenty, it turned out. Since I wasn’t onstage, out of reach, they mobbed me, scratching, kicking, and even punching. A swipe from a felinoid female drew blood from my cheek. The Salamander burned through my boot top and singed my feet. The Perv woman cocked her arm back to throw an uppercut. I dodged her fist, and tumbled straight into the claws of the Deveel contingent, who got in a few licks of their own. Floor stewards came hurrying over to see what was the matter, but they were thrown back across the room. I hunched over in a tight ball, protecting my eyes with my arms. Whatever else happened, I couldn’t let the illusion drop. Bunny’s score, and her mission, depended on it.

  “All right, enough!” a man’s voice over my head shouted. “Ladies, back to your places or you’ll be disqualified!”

  The feet kicking my back withdrew, and I uncurled. A hand grabbed my arm and helped me get to my feet.

  “You’re not the only one who can throw your voice,” Bunny said. Faces glared at me over Bunny’s shoulder, but hers was the only one I cared about. She looked tired.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  She held out her other arm. Her erstwhile partner lay across it. When I let the illusion drop, nothing remained but a few tatters of cloth and some ashes. They crumbled to the floor.

  “Thank you for what you did,” she said. “But I don’t think it’ll be enough to help.”

  I glanced over at the judges’ table. The brass girl I knew was standing behind the gold judge, pouring molten liquid into a glass. She caught my eye with a sad look and shook her head. Bunny saw it, too.

  “I can’t win this,” Bunny said. “I’m ready to give up.”

  “No,” I insisted. “You can win it. There’s still tomorrow.”

  “And that is what I’d do with the Bub Tube if I am so fortunate to win it,” Bunny said. She put down the parchment on which her speech was written. “This is awful, Skeeve. It sounds so phony. The Bub Tube won’t go to assure world peace, or harmony among the dimensions. I’m not going to be using it, my uncle is. And you know his business.”

  I sighed and thrust my hands into my hair. The talent contest had been a disaster. The Pervect had won, with one-fifth of a point more than the Gnome. Bunny was near the bottom of the ranking, about the same as she’d gotten from the beauty parade. This was her last chance to make good.

  “This is what you’d do with it if you got it,” I said, hopefully. “Or you could tell the truth. The honest answer might be such a novelty that it might surprise them into giving you the title.”

  “If I got it,” Bunny said. “This part of the contest is worth fifty percent of the total. At best I’ll come in somewhere in the middle.”

  I thought hard. “But you’d move up if your best competition moved down, wouldn’t you? It’s still possible.”

  “It’s still possible to win,” Bunny began, “but they all cheat so much. And they play dirtier than I ever dreamed.” She leaned forward and touched my cheek. “Does that still hurt?”

  “A little,” I admitted, enjoying the play of her gentle fingers. “What if I could persuade them not to cheat?”

  Bunny brightened. “Do you think you can?”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” I said, approaching a cluster of Klahdish women. They were helping one another fasten dresses and tidy their hairstyles. They straightened and eyed me warily. “Since I come from your dimension I wanted to start with you. Do you think it’s fair that everyone has been using magik or technical devices during this contest?”

  “Well, no,” said a tall woman with red hair. “But what about it? If we don’t, we’ll lose for certain.”

  “My father is a grand wizard in Bream,” said a tiny woman with black hair. “He wants the Bub Tube, and he gave me plenty of spells to make sure I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll get it,” a buxom girl insisted, tossing her long blond tresses over her shoulder, “if I have to seduce every single judge on the panel.”

  “But you’re all beautiful, and all intelligent,” I said. “Why not play it straight and see who wins fairly and squarely?”

  “Because we want to win,” they chorused.

  “Those Deveels all use magik,” the wizard’s daughter said. “If we didn’t cheat, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “What if I could get them to agree to compete honestly?” I asked.

  “Well . . .” the redhead appeared to consider. “But everybody would have to do it.”

  “All right,” I said, overjoyed that my plan was going so well. All my years with Aahz, the master negotiator, were paying off. “I’ll get them to agree.”

  But my plan hit a snag in phase two.

  “Are you crazy?” th
e tallest Deveel women asked. “Honest! You all say that. One of you Klahds asked for a fair fight last time there was a contest on Trofi, and she cheated. We’re not going to fall for that again.”

  “But the Klahds have given me their word they’ll follow the rules,” I said.

  Fiery red eyes bored into mine. “You don’t look that stupid. Either you believe them, or you’re in on it with them. In any case, get lost!”

  She snatched a pot of rouge off the table and threw it at me. Out of reflex I trapped it in mid-air with a tendril of power. The Deveel’s eyes widened.

  “Who are you?” she hissed.

  “Uh, my name’s Skeeve,” I said. The way her face closed I knew she had heard of me. I grabbed the jar and set it gently down on the table. “Look, this is not about me. My friend Bunny . . .”

  “Forget it!” she said. The others sneered down their long noses at me. “She has Skeeve the Magnificent working for her? And you want us to give up our advantage? You’re insane. We’re going to do whatever we have to to win. What are you going to do about that?”

  Shoulders sagging, I went back to where Bunny was sitting, reading through her much-revised script. What would I do? What could I do?

  The force line under the arena was big enough for me to use if I wanted to enforce honesty in the remaining phase of the competition, but did I have the right to impose my views on the others? If I had no stake in the contest, perhaps, but I was there as a partisan for one contestant who would benefit if everyone stopped interfering with one another.

  “How did it go?” Bunny asked, then interrupted me before I could speak. “Never mind, let me tell you: they all told you to go peddle your papers. But thank you for trying. I’m proud of you for wanting to stay on the straight path. With your powers you could outstrip every one of them. That wouldn’t be fair. I’ve decided I’m going to be honest in my essay, and face the judges on my own merits. Crom knows what they’ll do to me—anything is possible, from throwing tomatoes to transformation spells.”