“Isn’t this nice, Skeeve?” Bunny asked. Her eyes sparkled over the rim of the glass.
“I can see why you like it here,” I said. “Where should we start looking for the Loving Cup?”
I heard a gasp. I turned to look around.
A girl in a rather modest blue sun costume sat on a towel only a few feet away. I noticed her legs before I noticed anything else. The part of their length that was revealed below the midthigh pantaloons was shapely. I followed the line of her body upward, past the stout book she held clutched against her chest. She had long, wavy hair the color of syrup and large blue eyes with long, thick brown eyelashes. I couldn’t stop myself from staring. She had high, prominent cheekbones and a little pointed chin, so her face resembled an inverted triangle, one of such perfect proportions that my mind demanded I take the time to marvel at it. She was very pretty. Her lips were parted over small and very white teeth. I couldn’t stop staring at her. I realized that she was staring at me, too.
I felt I had to explain myself.
“You have eyes just like my dragon,” I blurted out.
Her lips closed, and she turned the beautiful eyes away from me. She looked so unhappy. I felt my heart sink. Quickly, I tried to think of something else to say. A heavy hand clapped down upon my shoulder.
“Smooth, partner,” Aahz said, laughing as he hauled me away. “You have a lot to learn about pickup lines.”
I kept glancing back as we walked toward the crest of the hill.
CHAPTER THREE
“Here’s looking at you, kid.”
—THE NSA
On the other side of the slope, a small city seemed to be waiting for us. Each building, low or high, large, small, round, square, peaked, or crenellated, had been painted in pastel colors trimmed with white or pale gray. Flower gardens with hovering butterflies and bees filled almost all the land in between the structures. I had visited numerous places that felt unwelcoming, even hostile. The majority of dimensions and cities I had been to were indifferent as to whether I came or went. Winslow was different. The very buildings had an air of anticipation, even eagerness. They were eager to please. I felt as if it were impossible for me to live up to their expectations, even if I understood what they were.
Over the tops of the buildings near us, I could see towers and other structures created out of metal girders. While I watched, a train of carts ascended along one of the artificial slopes of metal. It was filled with people. All of them threw their hands in the air and screamed happily as the carts crested the top and began a rapid descent. I lost sight of them.
A female of the local species came out to meet us. She wore a loose robe of the usual gleaming white and had a bow in her puffy, light-pink hair. A plain white tablet and a blue metal pen hung from a broad belt around her tiny waist. Around her were a group of her fellow Winslovaks, all of them holding square, covered baskets in their arms.
“Greetings, visitors!” she exclaimed, shaking our hands. “I am Fedda, your personal concierge during your stay. Anything you want, anything at all, please ask me. Here are your welcome gifts! Please enjoy them.”
Her companions stepped forward. I steeled myself. Now came the sales pitch. I shook my head as a petite blue-skinned girl offered me her basket.
“Please take it,” she said, with a winning smile. “It’s just a gift.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I really don’t want to buy anything else.”
“Come on, Skeeve,” Bunny said. She had already opened her basket. Inside were colored glass bottles, a folded fuzzy cloth of brilliant pink, and a gizmo that looked like a cross between a bath brush and a multilashed whip. I winced and held out my arms. My greeter plunked the container into them. It clanked and rattled, and I felt its center of gravity shift as if something sloshed inside.
“Can I ask what this costs?” I asked.
“It is all included in your resort fee, Mr. Skeeve,” the girl assured me.
“Don’t be a stick-in-the-mud, kid,” Aahz said. He had flipped the lid on his gift and was rooting among the contents. The fuzzy thing in his basket was a full-length bathrobe of ochre yellow that just about matched the veins in his eyes. “Just play along, all right?”
“I suppose so,” I said, uncertainly. The basket felt as if it weighed as much as I did.
Fedda beamed at us.
“Now, if you would like to follow me, I will show you your suite.”
“Gleep!”
Gleep, the fastest of us, zipped right up beside Fedda and put his head underneath her hand. She patted him as she padded down the slope toward the cluster of buildings. She wasn’t afraid of him at all, even though dragons were one of the fiercest species that existed across the dimensions.
I noticed that every one of the buildings had been freshly painted, and the flagstone walks that led through the trees and flower beds to each was swept clean. Not a leaf or a speck of dust was evident anywhere. I felt even more uncomfortable than I had before. I was used to a much more casual way of living. The thought that an invisible army of workers, even if they were magicians, spent all day doing a host of menial chores for me made me feel, well, unworthy.
Fedda came to a halt at a two-story, round building that had been painted lavender. Its peaked roof was overlapped shingles of light gray. A pair of clean but worn blue shoes stood beside the white-painted door. Fedda looked down at them with a frown creasing the smooth blueness of her face. Suddenly, the shoes vanished. I glanced around for the invisible magicians. Somewhere, someone was going to get in trouble for that lapse. I felt sorry for them.
“Look at that,” Bunny said, beaming.
She pointed to the upper panel of the door. A small brass plaque had been affixed, I suspected in the last few moments, with the words Welcome, M.Y.T.H., Inc.
Even though the door had a shiny brass knob, Fedda touched the plaque, and the door swung open.
“Please, come in,” she said.
I almost gasped at the extent of the interior she revealed.
The Winslovaks, like the Deveels, were experts at using interdimensional space to make the best use of an area. When we passed inside the door of our suite, we found ourselves in a castle. To either side were two sets of massive double doors of translucent white that opened onto beautifully decorated rooms that would have held a thousand people. The enormous blue marble staircase that met us just inside the antechamber rose to a gallery fifteen feet above our heads, then split into six curving or spiraling flights that led off in different directions.
“Your bedrooms are upstairs,” Fedda said, gesturing gracefully upward. “Let me show each of you where you’ll be.”
“Gleep!” exclaimed my dragon. He took off running up the set of steps that was third from the right and vanished along a landing.
“No, Gleep!” I shouted. I dropped my basket and sprinted in his wake, but no Klahd on foot can catch a galloping dragon. Drawing on my supply of magik, I pushed off the ground and took to the air.
Gleep thundered ahead of me, throwing playful glances over his shoulder occasionally to let me know he was teasing me. He flicked his tail from side to side, smashing vases and statues on stands as he went. I dodged shards of priceless porcelain. The longer he stayed out of reach, the higher my temper rose.
“Come on, Gleep! We’re here for business! Don’t destroy everything!”
Corridor after corridor opened up before us. Myriad doors to either side stood open to chambers set up for a multiplicity of purposes: bath, massage, bedrooms, sitting rooms, torture chambers, dining rooms, music rooms, libraries, and so on. It could have held hundreds, maybe thousands of guests, instead of the seven of us.
Gleep turned right or left as further passages appeared. He wove down hallway after hallway. The only way I could guess which way he had gone was to listen for the destruction of crockery in his path.
I flew
above a couple of wooden pedestals that had lately held plaster busts, now strewn across the floor of the corridor, and spotted the end of his tail going around the corner ahead on the right. Fuming, I put on a magikally enhanced burst of speed. As he galloped down the middle of a red-patterned carpet strip that buckled under his charging feet, I caught up with him. Before he could dash down a flight of stairs that appeared on his left, I threw myself at him. I landed on his back with my arms around his neck. Gleep tossed up his head and crashed into a newel post. We tumbled head over heels down the hall, narrowly missing the bumpy drop.
When we came to a halt, we were rolled up in the hall carpet and he was lying on my chest. He raised his head on his long, sinuous neck and slurped me with his pink tongue. I gagged at the smell.
“Gleep!” he proclaimed, his round blue eyes shining.
“Why did you do that?” I panted. I was out of breath.
“Skeeve . . . have fun . . . here,” Gleep said. He looked worried. “Be . . . careful.”
Did I mention my dragon can talk? None of my other friends know it. I looked down the hall that we had just dashed down, in case any of them had followed us.
“Why did you run away?” I whispered.
“Felt . . . listeners.”
He felt listeners? I opened my mouth to ask how he could feel someone hearing him, when Tananda came hurtling through the air toward us. She landed lightly on our roll of carpet and peered down at me.
“Starting the fun without us?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. I tried to disentangle myself from dragon and rug. Tananda levitated neatly a few feet higher. Gleep flipped over onto all fours. He shook mightily. The length of rug unwound itself, flinging me into the air. I caught myself with a handful of magik and settled to the floor on my feet.
“Aren’t you cute?” Tanda said, kneeling down beside Gleep. I had to admit he did look kind of cute, with the strip of carpet draped over his head and looped over his back.
“Gleep!” he exclaimed, slurping for her face with his tongue. Tanda avoided him nimbly but kept scratching.
“I guess he wanted to see the place on his own,” I said. If Gleep suspected someone was overhearing us, I would have to find a secure location where I could tell the others.
“I say, Little Sister!” Chumley’s stentorian voice rang in our ears from somewhere in the labyrinth we had just left. “Where have you gone?”
“Over here!” Tanda called. She put both little fingers in her mouth and blew a shrill whistle. The sound provided enough of a guide for the rest of our party to find us.
“That stupid dragon of yours made one unholy mess,” Aahz grumbled.
I hung my head.
“I know. I’ll pay for the damages,” I told Fedda.
“Not to worry!” she assured us with a blithe expression. “It’s all included. Please, let me show you your rooms. I am sure you would like to get out and enjoy the beach. Or the music center. There is a Snoonian concert in the pavilion during lunch.”
“I can’t think of anything I would rather miss,” Aahz said.
Fedda smiled.
“There is also Wyvern wrestling in the mud pits just before sunset. Listen for the horn to let you know it’s about to start. You are also welcome to visit our casino. All chips and drinks are free! We have a guided safari of beasts from ninety-nine dimensions, balloon rides, cliff diving, the finest water park anywhere, and riding trails for every level from beginner to expert.”
“That’s more like it,” Tananda said, with a slow smile.
“This way, please!”
* * *
I’d barely had time to look around in the sumptuous rooms that I shared with Gleep before Markie shoved her way inside. Gleep galloped up to her and rolled on his back, waggling his feet in the air. She tickled in between his toe claws. He kicked at the air, his eyes rolling with bliss.
“This is awesome!” she said, her eyes bright. “I love those tapestries! And the bed!” She flounced over to the six-poster and plopped down on it. She kicked her short legs against the edge of the mattress. “It’s big enough for a party! Everything here is big!”
“I know,” I said. “Do you think it’s deliberate, to make patrons feel, well, small?”
I knew Markie well enough to understand she wouldn’t consider my question a comment on her diminutive size.
“Didn’t you see the doll’s house I’m staying in? Everything’s exactly to scale for me, from the personal facilities down to the books on the shelf. The management must just think you like huge rooms.”
“How would they know?” I asked.
Markie shrugged her small shoulders. “No one asks how they do it here in Winslow. The fact is, they’re successful at it. All the visitors seem to like it. I think it’s against the rules to be unhappy.”
Her words made me think of the pretty girl I had seen on the beach. She had been unhappy. I wondered why.
Too-too-too tooooooo!
A brass trumpet appeared in the air between us and blared out a fanfare. From it, a scroll dropped and unrolled. I leaned forward to read it.
“Pleafe fee our activitief director at once to create a cuftom program for your ftay!”
As soon as I had read it, the scroll snapped up into a roll again, and the trumpet arrowed toward the door. When I did not follow immediately, it halted and beckoned to me. Gleep growled at it.
“I got one of those, too,” Markie said. She put out a finger. A small lightning bolt shot from the tip. It caught the trumpet in the bell. The horn exploded in a shower of brass shavings. I threw up a defensive shell of magik to protect us, but all the shards vanished before they hit it. “The only thing I don’t like about this place is that they like to organize your fun for you.”
“Well, we’re not here on vacation,” I said. “We’re on a job. You’ve been here before; where should we start to find the Loving Cup?”
“Asking around, of course,” Markie said. “Best place to try is the main tavern near the reception center. The others are already there. C’mon.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Always read the fine print.”
—FAUST
We located the Rusty Hinge by its sign. On the outside, it looked no different than the countless pastel buildings in the complex: bland, boring, and pleasant. The white shutters on the windows framed boxes of pink flowers. I hesitated.
“This isn’t an inn,” I protested.
“It is,” Markie said. She took hold of my hand and towed me over the threshold. I felt a momentary pressure, as if I were penetrating a magikal barrier. “You can’t stumble in here by accident. You have to know what it is. It’s an inn. A real one.”
When I looked around, I felt completely at home.
“Hark, card shark!”
A huge Troll rose from a rickety wooden table and threw down the cards in his hand. His chair flew backward and hit a pair of Deveels in the tail. They rounded on him, eyes flashing with anger. One pointed a finger at the chair. Its legs came to life. It flew at the Troll and threw its limbs about him.
“Aaarrggggh!” the Troll bellowed. He flexed his limbs, and the chair burst into pieces. A rung hurtled end over end at my head. With a wisp of magik, I caught it before it struck me. The Troll thundered toward the Deveels, grabbing one in each furry arm. They vanished from his grip, only to reappear behind him. One of them raised a shiny hoof and booted him in the rear end. The Troll staggered forward, slamming into a pillar. The room shook. The Troll steadied himself and tore the pillar loose. Showered with pieces of plaster from the ceiling, he advanced on the Deveels. Suddenly, the pillar shrank to the size of a toothpick. The Deveels laughed and slapped one another on the back. The Troll growled.
“Odds on the Deveels!” shouted a pink-faced Imp, waving a silver piece in the air. A Hag on a bar stool flipped him her coin.
/> “The Troll can take ’em!”
Even if they had been cheating him, the others at the card table came to the Troll’s defense.
“Hey, leave my friend alone!” bellowed a gray Gargoyle with a curved nose and chin that nearly met in front of its stone mouth. It threw a roundhouse punch at one of the Deveels, catching it in the jaw. The red-skinned male flew flat on its back into a tableful of Kobolds who had been exchanging some nice, quiet code over glasses of beer. They rose, spewing characters, and joined in the fray.
I smiled. Nothing like a nice brawl to give a tavern some character. Maybe Winslow wasn’t so stuffy after all.
Markie pointed and tugged at my arm. Tananda sat at a high, round table near the serving door with the rest of our friends. I followed her around the perimeter, dodging flying crockery and hurled insults.
“Look out!” a voice shouted.
I ducked just in time. A stoneware wine pitcher splattered against the wall. Chunks of pottery exploded outward. I got sprayed in the face with wine. I ran my tongue over my lips. A cheap vintage, but drinkable. I wiped my face with my handkerchief. Waving Markie and Gleep ahead, I went to lean over the bar and speak to the man in the apron polishing glasses with a dirty towel. Over the business of pouring me some of the local vintage, I asked him to inquire about the Loving Cup for me. I handed over a tip—not too generous but high enough to be memorable, then joined my friends.
I clambered onto a bar stool beside Aahz and set my glass on the table.
“Pretty good floor show,” Aahz said.
“Nice place,” I said, holding up my glass. “The wine’s a little thin, though.”
“Fewer additives,” Aahz said. “If you knew what was in a typical bottle of Deveelish wine, you probably would never drink again.”
I winced. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Have you gotten any leads yet?”
Robert Asprin's Myth-Fits Page 3
