Little Myth Marker

by Robert Asprin

  "Really? Say, thanks, Skeeve. A girl always likes to hear a few appreciative noises about how she looks."

  I had narrowly sidestepped that booby-trap and cast about frantically for a new subject before the other interpretation of my statement occurred to her.

  "Umm...hasn't Markie been well-behaved?"

  "I'll say. I'll admit I was a little worried when you first brought her in, but she's been an angel. I don't think I've ever known a kid this patient and obedient."

  "Undemanding, too," I said. "I've been thinking of getting her something while we're out, but I'm having trouble coming up with anything appropriate. The Bazaar isn't big on toy shops."

  "Are you kidding? It's one big toy shop!"

  "Massha..."

  "Okay, okay. So they're mostly toys for adults. Let me think. How old is she, anyway?"

  "I'm not really sure. She said she was in the third grade at Elementary School...even though she calls it Elemental School...so that would make her..."

  I realized that Massha was staring at me in wide-eyed horror.

  "Elemental School!?"

  "That's what she called it. Cute, huh? Why, what does..."

  My apprentice interrupted me by grabbing my arm so hard that it hurt. "Skeeve. We've got to get her back home...QUICK!!"

  "But I don't see..."

  "I'll explain later! Just get her and go! I'll round up Bunny and get her back, but you've got to get moving!"

  To say the least, I found her manner puzzling. I had never seen Massha so upset. This was obviously not the time for questions, though, so I looked around for Markie.

  She was standing, fists clenched, glaring at a tent with a closed flap.

  All of a sudden everyone was getting uptight. First Massha, and now Markie.

  "What's with the kid?" I said, tapping Guide on the shoulder.

  "Bunny's in trying on some peek-a-boo nighties, and the owner chased Markie out," my bodyguard explained. "She don't like it much, but she'll get over it. It's part of bein' a kid, I guess."

  "I see. Well, I was just going to take her back home anyway. Could one of you stay here with..."

  "SKEEVE! STOP HER!!"

  Massha was shouting at me. I was turning toward her to see what she was talking about when it happened, so I didn't see all the details.

  There was a sudden WHOOSH followed by the sounds of ripping canvas, wood splintering, and assorted screams and curses.

  I whipped my head back around, and my jaw dropped in astonishment.

  The booth that Bunny was in was in tatters. The entire stock of the place was sailing off over the Bazaar, as was what was left of the tent. Bunny was trying to cover herself with her hands and screaming her head off. The proprietor, a particularly greasy-looking Deveel, was also screaming his head off, but his emotions were being vented in our general direction instead of at the world in general.

  I would say it was a major dilemma except for one thing. The displays on either side of Bunny's tent and for two rows behind it were in a similar state. That is a major dilemma, making the destruction of a single booth pale in comparison.

  A voice sprang into my head, drowning out the clamor of the enraged merchants. "If you break it, you bought it!" the voice said, and it spoke with a Devan accent.

  "What happened?" I gasped, though whether to myself or to the gods, I wasn't sure.

  Massha answered.

  "What happened was Markie!" she said grimly. "She blew her cork and summoned up an air elemental...you know, like you learn to do at Elemental School? It appears that when the kid throws a tantrum, she's going to do it with magic!"

  My mind grasped the meaning of her words instantly, just as fast as it leaped on to the next plateau. Aahz! I wasn't sure which was going to be worse: breaking the news to Aahz, or telling him how much it had cost us to learn about it!

  Chapter Seven

  "There's a time to fight, and a time to hide out!"

  -B. Cassidy

  I'VE heard that when some people get depressed, they retire to their neighborhood bar and tell their troubles to a sympathetic bartender. The problem with the Bazaar at Deva (a problem I had never noticed before) is that there are no sympathetic bartenders!

  Consequently, I had to settle for the next best thing and holed up in the Yellow Crescent Inn.

  Now, a fast-food joint may seem to you to be a poor substitute for a bar. It is. This particular fast-food joint, however, is owned and managed by my only friend at the Bazaar who isn't living with me. This last part was especially important at the moment, since I didn't think I was apt to get much sympathy in my own home.

  Gus is a gargoyle, but despite his fierce appearance he's one of the friendliest beings I've ever met. He's helped Aahz and me out on some of our more dubious assignments, so he's less inclined to ask "How did you get yourself into this?" than most. Usually, he's more interested in "How did you get out of it?"

  "How did you get yourself into this one?" he said, shaking his head.

  Well, nobody's perfect...especially friends.

  "I told you, Gus. One lousy card game where I expected to lose. If I had known it was going to backfire like this, so help me I would have folded every hand!"

  "You see, there's your problem," the gargoyle said, flashing a grin toothier than normal. "Instead of sitting in and losing, you'd be better off not sitting in at all!"

  I rewarded his sound advice by rolling my eyes.

  "It's all hypothetical anyway. What's done is done. The question is, 'What do I do now?' "

  "Not so fast. Let's stick with the card game for a minute. Why did you sit in if you were expecting to lose?"

  "Look. Can we drop the card game? I was wrong. Okay? Is that what you want to hear?"

  "No-o-o," Gus said slowly. "I still want to hear why you went in the first place. Humor me."

  I stared at him for a moment, but he seemed perfectly serious.

  I shrugged. "The Geek sent me an invitation. Frankly, it was quite flattering to get one. I just thought it would be sociable to..."

  "Stop!" the gargoyle interrupted, raising his hand. "There's your problem."

  "What is?"

  "Trying to be sociable. What's the matter? Aren't your current round of friends good enough for you?"

  That made me a little bit nervous. I was having enough problems without having Gus get his nose out of joint.

  "It isn't that, Gus. Really. The whole crew--yourself included--is closer to me than my family ever was. It's just...I don't know..."

  "...you want to be liked. Right?"

  "Yeah. I guess that's it."

  "And that's your problem!"

  That one threw me.

  "I don't get it," I admitted.

  The gargoyle sighed, then ducked behind the counter. "Have another milkshake," he said, shoving one toward me. "This might take a while, but I'll try to explain."

  I like to think it's a sign of my growing savoir-faire that I now enjoy strawberry milkshakes. When I first visited the Bazaar, I rejected them out of hand because they looked like pink swamp muck. I was now moderately addicted to them, though I still wouldn't eat the food here. Then again, maybe it was a sign of something else completely if I thought a taste for strawberry milkshakes was a sign of savoir-faire!

  "Look, Skeeve," Gus began, sipping at a milkshake of his own, "you're a nice guy...one of the nicest I've ever known. You go out of your way to 'do the right thing'...to be nice to people. The key phrase there is 'go out of your way.' You're in a 'trouble-heavy' profession anyway. Nobody hires a magician because things are going well. Then you add to that your chosen lifestyle. Because you want to be liked, you place yourself in situations you wouldn't go near if it was for your own personal satisfaction. Case in point: the card game. If you had been out for personal gain, i.e., wealth, you wouldn't have gone near it, since you don't know the game. But you wanted to be friendly, so you went expecting to lose. That's not normal, and it resulted in a not-normal outcome, to wit, Markie. That's w
hy you get into trouble."

  I chewed my lip slightly as I thought over what he was saying.

  "So if I want to stay out of trouble, I've got to stop being a nice guy? I'm not sure I can do that, Gus."

  "Neither am I," the gargoyle agreed cheerfully. "What's more, if you could, I don't think I or any of your other friends would like you any more. I don't even think you'd like yourself."

  "Then why are you recommending that I change?"

  "I'm not! I'm just pointing out that it's the way you are, not any outside circumstances, that keeps getting you into trouble. In short, since you aren't going to change, get used to being in trouble. It's going to be your constant state for a long while.''

  I found myself massaging my forehead again.

  "Thanks, Gus," I said. "I knew I could count on you to cheer me up."

  "Don't knock it. Now you can focus on solving your current problem instead of wasting time wondering why it exists."

  "Funny. I thought I was doing just that. Someone else wanted to talk about what was causing my problems."

  My sarcasm didn't faze the gargoyle in the least.

  "Right," he nodded. "That brings us to your current problem."

  "Now you're talking. What do you think I should do, Gus?"

  "Beats me. I'd say you've got a real dilemma on your hands."

  I closed my eyes as my headache hammered anew.

  "I don't know what I'd do without you, Gus."

  "Hey. Don't mention it. What are friends for? Whoops! Here comes Tananda!"

  The other disadvantage to holing up at the Yellow Crescent Inn, besides the fact that it isn't a bar, is that it's located right across the street from my home. This is not good for someone who's trying to avoid his housemates.

  Fortunately, this was one situation I could handle with relative ease.

  "Don't tell her I'm here, Gus," I instructed.

  "But..."

  Not waiting to hear the rest of his protest, I grabbed my milkshake, slipped into a chair at a nearby table, and set to work with a fast disguise spell. By the time Tananda hit the door, the only one she could see in the place besides Gus was a potbellied Deveel sipping on a strawberry milkshake.

  "Hi, Gus!" she sang. "Have you seen Skeeve around?"

  "He...aahh...was in earlier." The gargoyle carefully avoided the lie.

  "Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to leave without saying goodbye to him then. Too bad. We weren't on particularly good terms the last time I saw him."

  "You're leaving?"

  Gus said it before the words burst out of my own mouth, saving me from blowing my disguise.

  "Yea. I figure it's about time I moved on."

  "I...umm...have been hearing some strange things about my neighbors, but I've never been sure how much to believe," the gargoyle said thoughtfully. "This sudden departure wouldn't have anything to do with the new moll that's been foisted off on Skeeve, would it?"

  "Bunny? Naw. I'll admit I was a bit out of sorts when I first heard about it, but Chumley explained the whole thing to me."

  "Then what's the problem?"

  Gus was doing a terrific job of beating me to my lines. As long as he kept it up, I'd be able to get all my questions answered without revealing myself.

  It had occurred to me to confront Tananda directly as soon as I heard what she was up to, but then I realized that this was a rare chance to hear her thoughts when she didn't think I was around.

  "Well, it's something Markie said..."

  Markie again. I definitely owed Aahz an apology.

  "...She made some crack about her daddy, that's Skeeve, letting me live there, and it got me to thinking. Things have been nice these last couple years...almost too nice. Since we haven't had to worry about overhead, Chumley and I haven't been working much. More important, we haven't been working at working. It's too easy to hang around the place and wait for something to come to us."

  "Getting fat and lazy, huh?" Gus grinned.

  "Something like that. Now, you know me, Gus. I've always been footloose and fancy free. Ready to follow a job or a whim at the drop of a hat. If anyone had suggested to me that I should settle down, I would have punched their lights out. Now all of a sudden, I've got a permanent address and family...family beyond Chumley, I mean. I hadn't realized how domestic I was getting until Skeeve showed up with Markie. A kid, even. When I first saw her, my first thought was that it would be nice to have a kid around the place! Now I ask you, Gus, does that sound like me?"

  "No, it doesn't."

  The gargoyle's voice was so quiet I scarcely recognized it as his.

  "Right then I saw the handwriting on the wall. If I don't start moving again, I'm going to take root...permanently. You know, the worst thing is that I don't really want to go. That's the scariest part of all."

  "I don't think Aahz or Skeeve want you to go either."

  "Now don't you start on me, Gus. This is hard enough for me as it is. Like I said, they're family, but they're stifling me. I've got to get away, even if it's only for a little while, or I'm going to lose a part of me...forever."

  "Well, if you've made up your mind...good luck."

  "Thanks, Gus. I'll be in touch from time to time. Keep an eye on the boys in case they buy more trouble than they can sell."

  "I don't think you have to worry about Chumley. He's pretty levelheaded."

  "Chumley's not the one I'm worried about." I thought that was going to be her parting shot, but she paused with one hand on the door.

  "You know, it's probably just as well that I couldn't find Skeeve. I'm not sure I could have stuck to my guns in a face-to-face...but then again, maybe that's why I was looking for him."

  I could feel Gus's eyes on me as she slipped out.

  "I suppose it's pointless to ask why you didn't say something. Mister Skeeve."

  Even though I had worried earlier about getting Gus angry with me, somehow it didn't matter anymore.

  "At first it was curiosity," I said, letting my disguise slip away. "Then, I didn't want to embarrass her."

  "And at the end there? When she flat-out said that you could talk her out of going? Why didn't you speak up then? Do you want her to disappear?"

  I couldn't even manage a spark of anger. "You know better than that, Gus," I said quietly. "You're hurting and lashing out at whoever's handy, which happens to be me. I didn't try to get her to stay for the same reason you didn't try harder. She feels we're stifling her, and if she wants out, it'd be pretty small of us to try to keep her for our own sakes, wouldn't it?"

  There was prolonged silence, which was fine by me. I didn't feel much like talking anymore.

  Rising, I started for the door.

  "You were looking the other way when she left," the gargoyle said. "You might like to know there were tears in her eyes."

  "Mine too," I replied without turning. "That's why I was looking the other way."

  Chapter Eight

  "What did I do wrong?"

  -Leak, Rex

  WITH a heavy heart, I headed back home. I was no longer worried about Aahz yelling at me. If anything, I was rather hoping he would. If he did, I decided that for a change I wouldn't argue back. In short, I felt terrible and was in the mood to do a little penance.

  Sliding through the tent flap, I cocked an ear and listened for Aahz. Actually, I was a little surprised that I couldn't hear him from the street, but I was sure I would be able to locate his position in the house with no difficulty. As I've said before, my partner has no problem expressing his moods, particularly anger.

  The house was silent.

  From the lack of reverberations and/or falling plaster, I assumed that Aahz was out...probably looking for me with blood in his eye. I debated going out to look for him, but decided that it would be better to wait right here. He'd be back eventually, so I headed for the garden to make myself comfortable until he showed up.

  What I call the garden is actually our courtyard. It has a fountain and an abundance of plants, so
I tend to think of it as a piece of the outdoors rather than as an enclosed area. I had been spending more and more time there lately, especially when I wanted time to think. It reminded me of some of the quieter spots I would find from time to time back when I was living on my own in the woods...back before I met Garkin, and, through him, Aahz.

  That memory led me to ponder a curious point: Were there other successful beings, like myself, who used their new prosperity to recreate the setting or atmosphere of their pre-success days? If so, it made for a curious cycle.

  I was so preoccupied with this thought as I entered the garden that I almost missed the fact that I wasn't alone. Someone else was using my retreat...specifically, Aahz.

  He was sitting on one of the stone benches, chin in his hands and elbows on his knees, staring blankly into the water as it flowed through the fountain.

  To say the least, I was surprised. Aahz has never been the meditative type, particularly in times of crisis. He's more the "beat on someone or something until the problem goes away" type. Still, here he was, not agitated, not pacing, just sitting and staring. It was enough out of character for him to unnerve me completely.

  "Umm...Hi, Aahz," I said hesitantly. "Hello, Skeeve," he replied without looking around. I waited for a few moments for him to say something else. He didn't. Finally I sat down on the bench next to him and stared at the water myself a bit.

  We sat that way for a while, neither of us saying anything. The trickling water began to have a tranquilizing, hypnotic effect on me, and I found my mind starting to relax and drift.

  "It's been quite a day, hasn't it, partner?" My mind reflexively recoiled into a full defensive posture before it dawned on me that Aahz was still speaking quietly.

  "Y...Yes."

  I waited, but he seemed off in his own thoughts again. My nerves shot, I decided to take the initiative.

  "Look, Aahz. About Markie..."

  "Yes?"

  "I knew about the Elemental School thing. She told me on the way back from the Geek's. I just didn't know enough to realize it was important."

  "I know," Aahz sighed, not looking at me. "I hadn't bothered to teach you about elemental magic...just like I hadn't taught you about dragon poker."