Myth-Told Tales m-13

by Robert Asprin

  I was astonished. “You have respect. We respect you. And people in the Bazaar, they definitely respect you. The Great Aahz! You're feared in a hundred dimensions. You know that.”

  “It's not like in the old days,” Aahz insisted, his gaze fixed on the distance, and I knew he wasn't seeing the endless trees. “Time was we'd never have been stuck up here on a bare mountaintop like two cats on a refrigerator …”

  I opened my mouth to ask what a refrigerator was, then decided I didn't want to interrupt the flow. Aahz seldom opened up his private thoughts to me. If he felt like he wanted to unload, I considered it a privilege to listen.

  “I mean, it ain't nothing showy, but time was I could have just flicked my wrist, and a bridge would've appeared, like that!”

  He flicked his wrist.

  I gawked. A suspension bridge stretched out from the peak on which we were standing all the way to the next mountain. It was made completely out of playing cards, from its high arches down the cables to the spans and pylons that disappeared down into the trees. We stared at each other and gulped.

  “That wasn't there before,” I ventured. But Aahz was no longer looking at the bridge or at me. He was staring at his finger as if it had gone off, which in a sense it had.

  “After all these years,” he said softly. “It's impossible.” He raised his head, feeling around for force lines. I did the same.

  The place was full of them. I don't mean full, I mean full. Running through the ground like powerful subterranean rivers, and overhead like highly charged rainbows, lines of force were everywhere. Whatever dimension we'd stepped into was chockablock with magik. Aahz threw back his head and laughed. A pretty little yellow songbird flew overhead, twittering. He pointed a finger at it. The bird, now the size of a mature dragon, emitted a basso profundo chirp. It looked surprised.

  It had nothing on me. For years I had thought only my late magik teacher Garkin could have removed the spell that robbed Aahz of his abilities. I didn't know a dimension existed where the laws of magik as I had learned them didn't apply. It seems I was wrong.

  Aahz took off running toward the bridge.

  “Hey, Skeeve, watch this!” he shouted. His hands darted out. Thick, fragrant snow began to fall, melting into a perfumed mist before it touched me. Rainbows darted through the sky. Rivers of jewels sprang up, rolling between hills of gold. I tripped over one and ended up in a pool of rubies.

  “Aahz, wait!” I cried, galloping after him as fast as I could. Gleep lolloped along with me, but we couldn't catch him. As soon as Aahz's foot hit the bridge, it began to shrink away from the mountainside, carrying him with it He was so excited he didn't notice. Once when I hadn't really been listening he had told me about contract bridge. This must be what he meant. This bridge was contracting before my eyes.

  “Aahz! Come back!” I called. There was nothing I could do. Gleep and I would have to jump for it. I grabbed his collar, and we leaped into space.

  I was pushing with every lick of magik in my body, but we missed the end of the bridge by a hand's length. A card peeled itself up off the rear of the span. It was a joker. The motley figure put its thumbs in its ears and stuck out its tongue at me, just before the bridge receded out of sight. I didn't have time to be offended by its audacity, since I was too busy falling.

  “Gleeeeeeeep!” my dragon wailed, as he thudded onto the steep slope beside me. “Gle-ee-ee-eep!”

  “Gr-ra-ab so-ome-thi-ing,” I stuttered, as we rolled helplessly down the hill. Where had all those force lines gone? I should have been able to anchor myself to the earth with a bolt of magik. We tumbled a good long way until my pet, showing the resourcefulness I knew was in him, snaked his long neck around a passing tree stump, and his tail around my leg. We jerked to an abrupt halt I hung upside down with my head resting on a shallow ledge that overlooked a deep ravine. We'd only just missed falling into it As soon as I caught my breath, I crawled up the slope to praise Gleep. He shot out his long tongue and affectionately planted a line of slime across my face. I didn't flinch as I usually did. I figured he deserved to lick me if he wanted to. He'd saved both of us.

  I studied my surroundings. If there was a middle to nowhere, I had unerringly managed to locate it.

  The remote scraps of blue visible through the forest roof were all that was left of the sky. Once my heart had slowed from its frantic “That's it, we're all going to die now” pounding to its normal, “Well, maybe not yet” pace I realized that the ledge we almost fell off was wide enough to walk on. I had no idea where it led, but sitting there wasn't going to help me find Aahz or the jokers who had carried him off.

  “You lost, friend?” a male voice asked.

  I jumped up, looking around for its source. I could see nothing but underbrush around me. Out of reflex I threw a disguise spell on me and Gleep, covering my strawberry-blond hair with slicked-back black and throwing my normally round and innocent-looking blue eyes into slanted, sinister pits. Gleep became a gigantic red dragon, flames licking out from underneath every scale.

  “No! I'm just… getting my bearings.”

  A clump of trees stood up and turned around. I couldn't help but stare. On the other side of the mobile copse was the form of a man.

  “Well, you sure look lost to me,” said the man, squinting at me in a friendly fashion. He was dressed in a fringed jacket and trousers, with a striped fur cap perched on his head and matching boots on his feet. His skin was as rough as bark, and his small, dark eyes peered at me out of crevices. Hair and eyebrows alike were twiglike thickets. The eyebrows climbed high on his craggy forehead. “Say, that's pretty good illusion-making, friend! You an artist?”

  “Huh?” I goggled, taken aback. How could he have spotted it so readily? “No. I'm a master magician. I am … the Great Skeeve.”

  The man stuck out a huge hand and clenched my fingers. I withdrew them and counted them carefully to make sure none had broken off in his solid grip. “Pleased to meet you. Name's Alder. I'm a backwoodsman. I live around these parts. I only ask because illusion's a major art form around here. You're pretty good.”

  “Thanks,” I said dejectedly. An illusion was no good if it was obvious. I let it drop. “I only use it because I don't look very impressive in person.”

  Alder tutted and waved a hand. “It don't matter what you look like. It's only your personality anybody pays attention to. Things change around here so often.” He lifted his old face, sniffed, and squinted one eye. He raised a crooked finger. “Like now, for example.”

  Alder was right. While I watched, his leathery skin smoothed out a little and grew paler. Instead of resembling a gnarled old oak he looked like a silver-haired birch instead. I was alarmed to discover the transformation was happening to me, too. Some force curled around my legs, winding its way up my body. The sensation wasn't unpleasant, but I couldn't escape from it. I didn't struggle, but something was happening to my body, my face.

  “Gleep!” exclaimed my dragon. I glanced over at him. Instead of a blue dragon with vestigal wings, a large, brown fluffy dog sat looking at me with huge blue eyes. Once I got past the shock I realized the transformation really rather suited him. I pulled a knife out of my pocket and looked at my reflection in the shiny blade. The face looking back at me was tawny skinned with topaz-yellow eyes like a snake and a crest of bright red hair. I shuddered.

  “What if I don't like the changes?” I asked Alder.

  Meditatively he peeled a strip of bark off the back of one arm and began to shred it between his fingers. “Well, there are those who can't do anything about it, but I'm betting you can, friend. Seeing as how you have a lot of influence.”

  “Who with?” I demanded. “What's the name of this dimension? I've never been here before.”

  “It ain't a dimension. This is the Dreamland. It's common to all people in all dimensions. Every mind in the Waking World comes here, every time they go to sleep. You don't recognize it consciously, but you already know how to behave here. It's instinc
tive for you. You're bending dreamstuff, exerting influence, just as if you lived here all the time. You must have pretty vivid dreams.”

  “This is a dream? But it all seems so real.”

  “It don't mean it ain't real, sonny,” Alder whistled through his teeth “Look, there's rules. The smarter you are, the more focused, the better you get on in this world. Lots of people are subject to the whims of others, particularly of the Sleepers themselves, but the better you know your own mind, the more control over your own destiny you've got. Me, I know what I like and what I don't. I like it out in the wilderness. Whenever the space I'm in turns into a city, I just move on until I find me a space where there ain't no people. Pretty soon it quiets down and I have things my own way again. Now, if I didn't know what I wanted, I'd be stuck in a big Frustration dream all the time.”

  “I just had a Frustration Dream,” I said, staring off in the general direction in which Aahz had disappeared. “How is it that if I have so much power here I couldn't catch up with my friend?”

  “He's gone off on a toot,” Alder said, knowingly. “It happens a lot to you Waking Worlders. You get here and you go a little crazy. He got a taste of what he wants, and he's gone after more of it.”

  “He doesn't need anything,” I insisted. “He's got everything back at home.” But I paused.

  “There's got to be something,” Alder smiled. “Everyone wants one thing they can't get at home. So what does your friend want?”

  That was easy, Aahz had told me himself. “Respect.”

  Alder shook his head. “Respect, eh? Well, I don't have a lot of respect for someone who abandons his partner like he did.”

  I leaped immediately to Aahz's defense. “He didn't abandon me on purpose.”

  “You call a fifty-mile bridge an accident?”

  I tried to explain. “He was excited. I mean, who wouldn't be? He had his powers back. It was like… magik.”

  “Been without influence a long time, has he?” Alder asked, with squint-eyed sympathy.

  “Well, not exactly. He's very powerful where we come from,” I insisted, wondering why I was unburdening myself to a strange old coot in the wilderness, but it was either that or talk to myself. “But he hasn't been able to do magik in years. Not since my old mentor, er, put a curse on him. But I guess that doesn't apply here.”

  “It wouldn't,” Alder assured me, grinning. “Your friend seems to have a strong personality, and that's what matters. So we're likely to find your friend in a place he'd get what he wanted. Come on. We'll find him.”

  “Thanks,” I said dubiously. “I'm sure I'll be able to find him. I know him pretty well. Thanks.”

  “Don't you want me to come along?”

  I didn't want him to know how helpless I felt. Aahz and I had been in worse situations than this. Besides, I had Gleep, my trusty … dog … with me. “No, thanks,”

  I said, brightly. “I'm such a powerful wizard I don't really need your help.”

  “Okay, friend, whatever you want,” Alder said. He stood up and turned around. Suddenly, I was alone, completely surrounded by trees. I couldn't even see the sky.

  “Hey!” I yelled. I sought about vainly. Not only couldn't I see the backwoodsman, but I'd lost sight of the cliffside path, the hillside, and even what remained of the sky. I gave in. “Well, maybe I need a little help,” I admitted sheepishly. A clearing appeared around me, and Alder stood beside me with a big grin on his face. “Come on, then, youngster. We've got a trail to pick up.”

  Alder talked all the way through the woods. Normally the hum of sound would have helped me to focus my mind on the problem at hand, but I just could not concentrate. I'm happiest in the middle of a town, not out in the wilderness. Back when I was an apprentice magician and an opportunistic but largely unsuccessful thief, the bigger the population into which I could disappear after grabbing the valuables out of someone's bedroom, the better to escape detection. Alder's rural accent reminded me of my parents' farm that I had run away from to work for Garkin. I hated it. I forced myself to remember he was a nice guy who was helping us find Aahz.

  “Now, looky-look here,” he said, glancing down as we came to a place where six or seven paths crossed in a knot of confusion. I couldn't tell which one Aahz and his moving bridge had taken, but I was about to bolt down the nearest turning, just out of sheer frustration. “Isn't this the most interesting thing?… What's the matter?” he asked, noticing the dumb suffering on my face. “I'm talking too much, am I?”

  “Sorry,” I said, hiding my expression too late. “I'm worrying about my partner. He was so excited about getting his powers back that he didn't notice he was getting carried away — literally. I'm concerned that when he notices he's going to try to come back and find me.”

  “If what you say is true it's going to take him a little time to get used to wielding influence again,” Alder said. I started to correct him, but if this was the way the locals referred to magik, I wouldn't argue. “Right now we're on the trail of that bridge. Something that big doesn't pass through without leaving its marks, and it didn't.” He lifted a handful of chocolate-colored pebbles from the convergence, and went on lecturing me.

  “Now, this here trail mix is a clear blind. Those jokers must have strewn it to try and confuse us, but I'm too old a hand for that. I'm guessing that bridge is on its way to the capital, but I'd rather trust following the signs than my guesses. We have to hurry to see them before the winds of change blow through and mess up the tracks. I don't have enough strength myself to keep them back.”

  “Can I help?” I asked. “I'm pretty good at ma — I mean influence. And if my partner packs a kick here, I should, too.”

  Alder's branchlike eyebrows rose. “Maybe you could, at that. Let's give it a try!”

  Let's just say I wasn't an unqualified success to start. Dreamish influence behaved like magik in that one concentrated hard picturing what one wanted to achieve, used the force lines to shape it, then hoped the committee running the place let one's plans pass. Like any committee they made some changes, the eventual result resembling, but not being completely like my original intention, but close enough. Over the several days it took us to walk out of the forest, I attained a certain amount of mastery over my surroundings, but never enough to pop us to the capital city of Celestia or locate Aahz. I did learn to tell when the winds of change were coming through. They felt like the gentle alteration that had hit me and Gleep the first day, but far stronger. They were difficult to resist, and I had to protect the entire path we were following. This I did by picturing it, even the parts we couldn't see, as a long rope stretched out in front of us. It could have knots in it, but we didn't want it breaking off unexpectedly. I might never find Aahz if we lost this trail. I did other little tasks around the campground, just to learn the skill of doing two things at once. Alder was a great help. He was a gentler teacher than either Garkin or Aahz. For someone who had little influence of his own, he sure knew how to bring out the best in other magicians.

  “Control's the most important thing,” he said, as I struggled to contain a thicket fire I had started by accident when I tried to make a campfire one night. “Consider yourself at a distance from the action, and think smaller. What you can do with just a suggestion is more than most people can with their best whole efforts. Pull back and concentrate on getting the job done. A little effort sometimes pays off better than a whole parade with a brass band.”

  I chuckled. “You sound like Aahz.”

  “What?” Alder shouted.

  “I said …” but my words were drowned out by deafening noise. The trees around us were suddenly thrust apart by hordes of men in colorful uniforms. I shouldn't say “horde,” though they were dressed in red, black, and gold, because they marched in orderly ranks, shoving me and Alder a dozen yards apart. Each of them carried a musical instrument from which blared music the likes of which I hadn't heard since halftime at the Big Game on the world of Jahk.

  I picked myself up off the
ground. “What,” I asked as soon as my hearing returned, “was that?”

  “That was a nuisance,” Alder said, getting to his feet and brushing confetti off his clothes.

  “No kidding,” I agreed, “but what was it?”

  “A nuisance,” Alder repeated. “That's what it's called. It's one of the perils of the Dreamland. Oh, they're not really dangerous. They're mostly harmless, but they waste your time. They're a big pain in the sitter. Sometimes I think the Sleepers send them to get us to let go of ourselves so they can change us the way they want. Other people just plain attract them, especially those they most irk.”

  I frowned. “I don't want to run into any more of them myself,” I said. “They could slow us down finding Aahz.”

  Alder pointed a finger directly at my nose. “That's exactly what they might do. Stick with me, friend, and I'll see you around the worst of them, or I won't call myself the finest backwoodsman in the Dreamland.”

  Using the virtually infinite reservoir of power available to me, I concentrated on keeping the trail intact so that Alder could find it. I found that the less influence I used, the fewer nuisances troubled us. So long as I kept my power consumption low, we had pretty easy going. It would have been a pleasant journey if I hadn't been concerned.

  It was taking so long to locate Aahz that I began to worry about him. What if the contracted bridge had trapped him somewhere? What if he had the same problems I did with influence? He might have trouble finding enough food, or even enough air! He wasn't as fortunate as I had been, to locate a friendly native guide like Alder. Visions of Aahz in dire straits began to haunt my dreams, and drew my attention away from admiring the handsome, though sometimes bizarre, landscape. Gleep, knowing my moods, tried to cheer me up by romping along and cutting foolish capers, but I could tell that even he was worried. One day Alder stopped short in the middle of a huge forest glade, causing me and Gleep to pile up against the trees growing out of his back. “Ow!” I said, rubbing my bruises. “Gleep!” declared my dragon.