Masters of Fantasy

by Bill Fawcett

  The efficient aide returned pushing a tray of dishes. She set before Gleep a bowl of something that looked disgusting but was evidently what every dragon wishes he was served every day. My pet lolloped over and began to slurp his way through the wriggling contents. My stomach lurched, but it was soon soothed by the fantastic food that Aahz's assistant served me.

  "This is absolutely terrific," I said. "With all the information you've gathered, have you figured out a way to get us back to Deva?"

  Aahz shook his head.

  "I'm not going back."

  "We'll tell everyone about this place, and . . . what?" I stopped short to stare at him. "What do you mean you're not going back?"

  "For what?" Aahz asked, sneering. "So I can be the magic-free Pervert again?"

  "You've always been Pervect without them," I said, hopefully trying to raise his spirits with a bad joke.

  It didn't work. Aahz's expression was grim. "You don't have a clue how humiliating it is when I can't do the smallest thing. I relied on those abilities for centuries. It's been like having my arm cut off to be without them. I don't blame Garkin. I'd have done the same thing to him for a joke. It was just my bad luck that Isstvan's assassin happened to have picked that day to put in the hit. But now I've found a place I can do everything I used to."

  "Except D-hop," I pointed out, slyly, I hoped. "You're stuck in one dimension for good."

  "So what?" Aahz demanded. "Most people live out their whole lives in one dimension."

  " . . . Or hang out with your old buddies."

  Aahz made a sour face. "They know me the way I was before I went through the mirror. Powerless." He straightened his back. "I won't miss 'em."

  I could tell he was lying. I pushed. "You won't? What about Tanda and Chumley? And Massha? What about the other people who'll miss you? Like me?"

  "You can visit me in here," Aahz said. "Get the mirror from Bezel, and don't let anyone else know you've got it."

  "You'll get bored."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. I've got a long time to get over being powerless. I can't do anything out there without magikal devices or help from apprentices. I'm tired of having people feel sorry for me. Here no one pities me. They respect what I can do."

  "But you don't belong here. This is the world of dreams."

  "My dream, as you pointed out, apprentice!"

  "Partner," I said stiffly. "Unless you're breaking up the partnership."

  Aahz looked a little hurt for the moment. "This can be a new branch office," he suggested. "You can run the one on Deva. You already do, for all practical purposes."

  "Well, sure, we can do that, but you won't get much outside business," I said. "Only customers with access to Bezel's mirror will ever come looking for you, and you already said not to let anyone know we've got it."

  "I can stand it," Aahz assured me. "I'm pretty busy already. I'm important here. I like it. The king and I—we're buddies." Aahz grinned, tipping me a wink. "He said I was an asset to the community. I solve a few little problems for him now and then." The efficient aide leaned in the door. "'Scuse me, partner." He picked up a curved horn made of metal and held it to his ear. "Hey, your majesty! How's it going?"

  If there was ever a Frustration dream, I was living it. For every reason I presented as to why Aahz should return to Deva, Aahz had a counterargument. I didn't believe for a moment he didn't care about the people he would be leaving behind, but I did understand how he felt about having his powers restored to him. He'd get over the novelty in time.

  Or would he? He'd been a powerful magician for centuries before Garkin's unluckily timed gag. Would I be able to stand the thought of losing my talents twice? He did seem so happy here. He was talking with the local royalty like an old friend. Could I pull him away from that? But I had to. This was wrong.

  "I'd better leave, sonny," Alder said, standing up. "This sounds like an argument between friends."

  "No, don't go," I pleaded, following him out into the hallway. "This isn't the Aahz I know. I have got to get him through the portal again, but I don't know how to find it."

  Alder cocked his shaggy head at me. "If he's half the investigator he seems to be, he already knows where it is, friend. The problem you're going to have is not getting him to the water, but making him drink. Right now, things are too cushy for him. He's got no reason to leave."

  I felt as though a light had come on. "You mean, he hasn't had enough nuisances?"

  Alder's rough-skinned face creased a million times in a sly grin. "I think that's just what I do mean, youngster. Best of luck to you." He turned his back and vanished.

  "Thanks!" I called out. Using every bit of influence that was in me, I sent roots down into the deepest wells of magikal force I could find, spreading them out all over the Dreamland. I didn't try to dampen Aahz's light. I brightened it. I made every scale on the building gleam with power, both actual and perceived. Anyone with a problem to solve would know that this was the guy to come to. Aahz would be inundated with cases, important, unimportant and trivially banal. There would be people looking for lost keychains. There'd be little girls with kittens up trees. There'd be old ladies coming to Aahz to help them find the eye of a needle they were trying to thread.

  Most important, unless I had missed something on my journey here, with that much influence flying around, every nuisance in the kingdom would converge on the building. If there was one thing my partner hated, and had lectured me on over and over again, it was wasting time. If I couldn't persuade Aahz to leave the Dreamland, maybe nuisances could.

  My gigantic injection of magik took effect almost immediately. While I watched, things started to go wrong with the running of Aahz, Unlimited. The files the efficient employees were carrying to and fro grew so top-heavy that they collapsed on the floor, growing into haystacks of paper. Some of the employees got buried in the mass. Others ran for shovels to get them out, and ended up tangled with dozens of other people who came in to help. Framed letters began to pop off the wall, falling to the floor in a crash of glass.

  Then the entire building seemed to sway slightly to the right.

  "What's going on here?" I could hear Aahz bellow. He emerged from his office, and clutched the door frame as the building took a mighty lurch to the left. I grabbed for the nearest support, which happened to be Gleep. He had become a giant green bird with a striped head and a flat beak and curved talons which he drove deep into the wooden parquet floor. "Why is everything swaying?"

  Miss Teddybear flew to the eye-windows and looked down.

  "Sir, giant beavers are eating the leg of the building!"

  "What?" Aahz ran to join her, with Gleep and me in close pursuit. We stared down out of the huge yellow oval.

  Sure enough, enormous brown-black creatures with flat tails and huge square front teeth were gnawing away at the left leg of Aahz Unlimited. As each support in the pylon snapped, the building teetered further.

  Aahz leaned out of the window. "Scram!" he shouted. The attackers ignored him.

  "Everyone get down there and stop them!" Aahz commanded. Miss Teddybear hurried away, following the flood of employees into the moving-box chamber.

  As Aahz and I watched, his people poured out of the building. They climbed the leg, clinging to it in an effort to keep the monsters from burrowing any further. The beavers turned, and swatted them off with flips of their flat tails. Wailing, the employees whirled out of sight like playing cards on the wind. The monsters went on chewing. I felt bad about the people, though Alder has assured me that Dreamlanders were not easily hurt or killed.

  "Call for reinforcements!" Aahz bellowed. I stared in amazement as white circles whirled out of the air, plastering themselves all over the leg, but the beavers chewed right through them. In no time they'd whittled the leg down to a green stick. The building was going to fall. Aahz's empire was crumbling before our eyes. Gleep seized each of us in one mighty claw and flew with us to the elevator. The floor split under us as we crowded into the small cabinet.


  The ride down seemed to take forever and ever. Aahz paced up and back in irritation, dying to get out there and do something to stop the destruction. I could tell he was trying to focus his magik on driving the monsters away and keeping his newfounded empire intact. I concentrated all my magik on keeping us from getting hurt. The forces I had stirred up scared me. I didn't know if I'd get us killed trying to bring Aahz home.

  "Come on," he snarled, leaping out of the chamber as it ground to a stop. "We've got to hurry."

  It was too late. Just as we emerged from the front door, the enormous Aahz-shaped structure wobbled back and forth, and crashed to lie flat in the park. I gulped. One second sooner, and we'd have been inside when it fell. Aahz stared at the wreckage in dismay.

  "Oh, well," I said, trying to look innocent. "Easy come, easy go."

  "Yeah," Aahz said, with a heavy sigh. "It was just a dream. There's always more where that came from."

  A boy in a tight-fitting uniform with a pillbox hat strapped to his head came rushing up. He handed Aahz a small package the size of his hand. Aahz gave the boy a coin and tore open the paper. Inside was a small mirror. I recognized the frame. "It's the portal back to Deva," I said in surprise. "You were looking for it after all."

  "This was supposed to be for you," Aahz mumbled, not meeting my eyes. "If you had wanted to use it. If you had wanted to stay, I wouldn't be upset about it."

  The change of tense made me hopeful. "But now you want to go back?" I asked encouragingly.

  "I don't need to be bashed over the head with it," Aahz said, then looked at the fallen building, which was already beginning to be overgrown with vines. "But I almost was. I can take a hint. Come on." He took hold of the edges of the mirror. With a grunt of effort, he stretched the frame until the mirror was big enough for all of us.

  Through it, instead of the reflection of our dreams, I could see Massha, my apprentice, my bodyguards Nunzio and Guido, and Tananda, our friend all surrounding the hapless Bezel. The Deveel, scared pale pink instead of his usual deep red, held his hands up to his shoulders, and his face was the picture of denial. Terrified denial. He might not be guilty for setting us off on this little adventure after all.

  Aahz grinned, fearsomely.

  "C'mon. Let's let him off the hook." He took a deep breath and stepped through the mirror.

  "Hey, what's all this?" Aahz asked, very casually. "You trying to raise the roof?" He lifted a hand. In the Dreamland the gesture would have sent the tent flying. In this case, it was merely a dramatic flourish. Aahz looked disappointed for less than a second before recovering his composure. I experienced the loss he must have felt, and I was upset on his behalf, but relieved to have gotten him home. He didn't belong in the world of dreams. Some day we'd find a way to undo Garkin's spell.

  "Aahz!" Tananda squealed, throwing herself into his arms. "You've been gone for days! We were worried about you."

  "You, too, big-timer," Massha said, putting a meaty arm around me and squeezing just as hard. The embrace was a lot more thorough coming from her.

  "Thanks," I gasped out.

  "Gleep!" my pet exclaimed, wiggling through behind us. The trip through the mirror restored him to dragon-shape. In his joy he slimed all of us, including the trembling Bezel, who was being prevented from decamping by the firm grip Nunzio had on the back of his neck.

  "Honest, I swear, Aahz," Bezel stammered. "It wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything."

  "Altabarak across the way let the dragon loose, boss," Guido said, peering at me from under his fedora brim.

  "Okay, Bezel," I said, nodding to my bodyguard. If he was positive I was positive. "I believe you. No hard feelings. Ready to go get a drink, partner?" I said. "Everyone want to join me for a strawberry milkshake?"

  "Now you're talking," Aahz said, rubbing his hands together. "A guy can have too much dream food." Bezel tottered after us toward the door flap.

  "I don't suppose, honored persons," the Deveel said hopefully, the pale pink coloring slightly as he dared to bring business back to usual, "that you would like to purchase the mirror. Seeing as you have already used it once?"

  "What?" I demanded, turning on my heel.

  "They ought to get a discount," Massha said.

  "Throw him through it," Guido advised. Bezel paled to shell-pink and almost passed out.

  "Smash the mirror," Aahz barked, showing every tooth. Then he paused. "No. On second thought, buy it. A guy can dream a little, can't he?"

  He stalked out of the tent. My friends looked puzzled. I smiled at Bezel and reached for my belt pouch.

  Race for the Sky

  A Bifrost Story

  Mickey Zucker Reichert

  The warm, green fragrance of spring filled Al Larson's nose, a smell he had not appreciated for what seemed to him like decades; but, through the quirk of a time loop, was actually no time at all. A desperate year of combat in Vietnam haunted his memory yet did not exist in the annals of his family or the records of the United States Army. Dragged from death by a god, he subsequently spent at least a year in an elven body in a warped version of ancient Europe. Little remained from that time: just a lot of hairy recollections, his strikingly beautiful fiancée, Silme, and his best friend, Taziar Medakan the Shadow Climber.

  Glad to be back in New York, as well as April of 1969, Larson savored the fresh, earthy aroma, even tainted by car exhaust. A Frisbee thunked against his skull, smacking pain through his right ear and driving him a step sideways. Unable to escape his war training, he hurled himself flat to the ground.

  Taziar's not-quite German accent followed, "No fun play ambush-Frisbee when you make it so easy."

  Larson clambered to his feet and turned toward the voice. Taziar peered at him from between the branches of a twisted maple. Its spattering of leaves did not conceal even his small form. He was dressed in his usual black, a habit from his days living on the brutal streets of an archaic, anti-historical Germany; though now his wardrobe consisted mostly of jeans and t-shirts. Blue eyes peered out from behind a scraggle of overlong ebony hair that well-suited the sixties style. Fine-boned and barely five feet tall, he tipped the scales at nearly a hundred pounds. He had grown to love American fast food, Ovaltine, and Milky Ways; but he remained as active as a squirrel, a tiny bundle of sinew without a visible ounce of fat.

  Without a word in return, Larson headed after the Frisbee. A recent haircut kept his own blond locks in check, parted on the left and perched atop his baby-round face. Daily workouts at the gym kept him as muscular at twenty-one as in his soccer-playing teens. Deliberately active, a foot taller than his little companion, he, too, could eat as he wished without worrying about his weight—a constant consternation to his sister and fiancée.

  Larson snatched up the Frisbee, then flung it at the tree in the same motion. The plastic disk flew true, smacking the branch where Taziar had crouched moments earlier. Now on the ground, the little Climber watched it rebound from the branches amid a shower of leaves and plummet in an awkward arc. Displaying the stagnant calm of a man who had never moved, he said, "Good shot."

  Standing on a concrete walkway near a line of grass, Larson's nine-year-old brother, Tim, laughed.

  Larson dove for the Frisbee, planning to wing it toward the kid. Taziar's small hand darted out to claim the Frisbee first, and Larson's came up empty.

  Tim laughed harder.

  "Very funny, Shadow." Larson planted his blue gaze on Taziar. "Now what you going to do?"

  Taziar shrugged, tucking the toy under his arm. "Wait you get daydreamy again, then . . . " He slapped the heel of his empty palm against his forehead. "Smack you in head."

  "You just want to give me a concussion," Larson grumped.

  "You pick game."

  Tim howled until he grew breathless, strangers staring at him as they passed.

  Larson glanced at his doubled up brother. Sandy hair tousled around features that had finally lost their baby softness. Bell-bottom jeans flared around his ankles, hidin
g all but a glimpse of his filthy black and white sneakers. "Timmy's incapacitated. Why not bean him for a change?"

  Warned by a faint whistle of plastic cutting air, Larson flung up an arm just in time to rescue his forehead from another attack. The Frisbee stung his inner forearm, then caromed toward Tim.

  "More easy to surprise you." Taziar grinned at the boy and winked. "More fun, too."

  Larson could not help smiling. He liked the camaraderie that had developed between his brother and his best friend, though he occasionally felt a twinge of jealousy. Once the sole object of Timmy's hero worship, he now had to share the limelight with the Mets, the Giants, the '76ers, and a quick, dexterous little irritation he had inflicted upon himself.

  When Taziar made no move for the Frisbee, Larson headed toward it. He had taken only a step, when a pressure touched his mind. He froze. Only one person could contact him in that manner. Forced to surrender her sorceress's powers to stay in twentieth-century America, Silme still maintained her ability to touch the surface thoughts of anyone without mind barriers. Since those evolved only in worlds with magic, no one born of Larson's era had them, the very reason Frey had rescued him from a firefight in Vietnam and thrust him into the body of an elf.

  Silme. Larson concentrated on his fiancée's name.

  Allerum. Silme resorted to what she had called him in his elf-form, though she now knew it had come from a stammered introduction. Don't panic.

  Few words could so suddenly and certainly achieve the very opposite of what they intended. Larson stiffened, the Frisbee forgotten. He cast his gaze on the blue expanse of sky, heart rate quickening to fretful pounding. Silme, what's wrong? What's happening? Is everyone all right? She, his sister, Pam, and his mother had planned to spend the day sightseeing and wedding shopping. Car accident, he guessed, wondering why cabbies seemed to feel this compulsive need to drive like maniacs. If anyone's hurt, I'll kill him.

  Everyone's all right, Silme sent back, a touch of terror filling her sending. For the moment.

  The Frisbee bonked hollowly against Larson's head. He barely noticed. What's going on, Silme? Tell me.