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percentages of a possible fortune were taken from him and he didn't destroy
something. Aahz and money were not easily parted, and if we did find this
golden cow, there was no doubt in my mind that Aahz would not want to part
with much of the golden milk. But now he would have no choice, for at least
ten percent of the find.
And I had no doubt we were going to be back here a number more times
before this little venture was over.
"What is your destination now?" it asked.
"Bumppp," Tanda said.
For a moment the creature hesitated, and I thought I saw the morphing
hesitate as well. Then it said, almost sadly, "Very well."
A moment later we ended up in the middle of a wide meadow filled with
thick plants and orange flowers. The sky overhead was a faint blue and pink.
Dark-green trees surrounded the meadow, and in the distance there were pink
mountains. I had been ready to use my disguise spell on us to protect us
from any storm, but the air was warm and humid, just the way I liked it.
Actually, all in all, this was one of the most beautiful dimensions I
had visited. I wondered what kind of lucky people lived here.
Tanda turned a full circle, her sharp eyes taking in things I knew I
didn't see.
"Ten percent?" Aahz said, his teeth still grinding.
Tanda put her finger to her mouth for Aahz to be silent. I instantly
started searching the tree-line for any sign of danger. There was nothing
that I could see. No natives with weapons, no crouching tigers, no charging
bears.
Nothing.
But clearly from Tanda's actions and the attitude and hesitation of the
Shifter, this wasn't a friendly place. Beautiful, but not friendly.
"The map," she whispered to Aahz. "Quickly."
Then she motioned that we should all crouch down.
The weeds and flowers covering the meadow were no more than knee-high
and would give us no cover at all. They smelled like my dragon when he got
wet.
I figured we should move to the edge of the trees. At least there we
might have a fighting chance if something came at us. But Tanda was the
ex-assassin among us. She knew what she was doing. Or at least I hoped she
did.
Aahz opened the map and laid it out carefully on top of the weeds. It
was clear instantly that the map had again changed. Bumppp, the dimension we
were in, showed clearly, with only one path leading from this world toward
the dream of our very own golden cow. And that path led to Vortex #4.
Not #2, as I would have expected, or even #3, but #4.
Tanda nodded and motioned for Aahz to quickly fold up the parchment and
put it away. Then she stood.
I stood right with her, and the moment I did I saw movement. Not just
some movement, but all around the edges of the meadow the weeds and flowers
were jerking and swaying as if something was running under them at us.
Then a head poked up about a hundred paces from us. A massive snake
head that was larger than my head, with yellow, swirling slits for eyes and
huge fangs. There was no telling how long the snake's body was, and I really
didn't want to wait around and find out.
And then another stuck its head up to the right of the first one. And
another and another.
I spun like a dancer. We were surrounded by giant snakes with very
nasty-looking fangs. If we didn't do something quickly we were going to end
up the main course for lunch.
"Nice place," Aahz said as the moving grass got closer and closer
around us.
"Any time now," I tried to suggest, but the only thing that came out of
my still sealed mouth was "Aggghhh tgggghhhh."
.
What's the matter?" Tanda asked, smiling at me. "Afraid Of a little
snake?"
I nodded vigorously as another monster snake head popped up not more
than fifty paces from us. It looked not only hungry, but angry.
"Yeah," she said, "me, too."
With that we were back in the dust storm on Vortex #1.
"Skeeve!" Aahz yelled as the dust pounded into us.
Before I could even act, Tanda said, "Don't bother."
Then we were back in the Shifter's tent, staring at the creature who
now looked just a little too much like the snakes we had just left.
"I am glad for my percentage to see that you have returned," it said.
"I'll bet," Aahz said.
"Vortex #4 please," Tanda said, getting right to business.
"The total is now fifteen percent."
"I understand our agreement," Tanda said before Aahz could say a word.
"Vortex #4 please."
The snakelike-shaped Shifter nodded, and again we were whisked through
to another dimension.
And right back into the same stupid dust storm.
Okay, I have to admit that when we dimension-hopped back into the dust
storm, I was shocked.
Tanda motioned that we should follow her. It took me almost all the way
to our destination before I realized where we were. Now granted, I had the
excuse that it was blowing heavily. And to me, one dust storm looks just
like another. But it wasn't until the old log cabin loomed up out of the
dust like a ship in the fog that it dawned on me that we were back in the
same place.
Only it wasn't the same place. This was supposed to be Vortex #4, not
Vortex #1.
Inside the old building it became clear that we were in a slightly
different place. This time, instead of being bare, the inside of the log
cabin was filled with branches and some old furniture, and there was no sign
of the fire I had built.
"Did you see them this time?" Tanda demanded.
"See what?" Aahz frowned.
"Out there in the storm." she said. "This time I got a good look at
them."
"What was it?"
"Dust bunnies. A whole pack of them." She wrapped her arms tightly
around herself and shuddered.
Aahz and I looked at each other and shrugged. Again we seemed to be
oblivious to whatever it was that was setting Tanda on edge.
By the time I got a new fire going and Tanda had put a containment
protection around the cabin to keep the wind out, my lips had unsealed. They
were chapped and sore, but at least they were loose.
"So Vortex #4 is a lot like Vortex #1," I said.
"Makes sense," Tanda said. "Otherwise, why give them the same names
with only different numbers?"
"Any other dimensions so similar that they could be numbered like
this?"
"More than likely," Tanda said, "but I've never seen or heard about
any."
"So we paid another five percent to that thief for this?" Aahz said,
dearly disgusted. "We could have found this on our own."
I had no idea how he thought we could have done that, but since I
didn't know much about dimension-hopping, I said nothing.
"Not likely," Tanda said. "We are a long, long way from Vortex #1.
We're farther away in number of dimensions from the Bazaar at Deva than I
have ever been before."
"Oh," Aahz said.
"And you know that how?" I asked. "Is there some sort of mileage marker
I keep missing in the blink of eye it takes to hop to a new dimension?"
Tanda laughed. "Don't we wish."
"When a person is dimension-hopping," Aahz said, "and they have powers
to do it, like Tanda does, you get a sense of how many dimensions away you
have jumped. Not precise, but just a sense of distance."
Tanda nodded. "And the farther away in number of dimensions, the harder
the jump. And the greater the chance of missing the target and getting
lost."
"So that's why you took us back through Vortex #1 from Bumppp?"
"Safer that way," she said.
"And each of our jumps following this map is getting us farther and
farther away from home?" I didn't much like the idea of that happening. My
job as the Royal Court Magician wasn't much, but at the moment it was better
than this place.
"So far," Tanda said. "But this is a treasure map we're following. It
isn't supposed to be so easy that just anyone could do it."
I didn't like the sound of that, either.
Aahz pulled off his gloves and took out the map, spreading it on the
floor so we could all see it by the light of the fire. As expected, the map
had changed again. There were now six lines leading from Vortex #4, all to
points that now had names. All six lines headed in the general direction of
the point marked as the treasure, but none directly. This map wasn't making
anything easy, that was for sure.
The names on each dimension this time were stranger than normal. All
were combinations of the same five letters. Starting from the left, the
names were Et, Cet, Era, Etc, Etc, and Ra.
"You know any of those dimensions?" Aahz asked.
"No," Tanda said. "You?"
"No," Aahz said. "There goes another five percent."
Tanda shrugged. "Can't be helped. I suggest we head for the center
one."
"Etc it is, then," I said.
All Aahz did was growl deep inside his throat as he stood and put the
map away.
"I hope this means we're going back to Vortex #1 again." I said. "Tell
me we're not visiting the snakes again."
"It would be safer if we hit Bumppp again," she said. "No point in
taking the chance."
"You can't be serious," I said. Just at the mention of those snakes my
stomach clamped up into a knot.
She laughed. "Don't worry. From here I can hit Vortex #1. No snakes
needed."
She made sure Aahz was ready, then we hopped.
The dust pounded at me for all of five seconds while Tanda made sure we
were there and all right, then she hopped us again right back into the tent
of the Shifter.
He was now shaped like a sofa with eyes on the arms and pillows where
the ears would be. A massive, orange tongue hung out of the face, forming
the seating area. From that moment onward, sitting on a sofa was going to
take on a whole new meaning for me.
"We need the Etc dimension," Tanda said.
"Your total is now twenty percent," the creature said, its massive
tongue moving as if someone was fluffing the pillows.
"We are aware of that," Tanda said.
The next moment we found ourselves standing on a wide and, mercifully,
empty street. Plain-looking wooden buildings framed both sides of the
street.
The sky overhead was cloudy and gray, the air was cold and crisp, but
at least it wasn't blowing. I was glad I still had our heavy coats and hats
on as disguises.
I turned slowly around. There was no doubt there were some strange
dimensions in this universe. The road seemed to go off into the distance in
both directions from where we were standing, framed by exactly the same
types of buildings on both sides, all the same height. Each building had a
strange shape to it as well, with two doors, and matching windows. There was
no way to tell what was on the other side of the buildings, since it was
like we were standing in a canyon.
I had no idea how anyone living in this place found his or her way
home. Every building was exactly like the one it butted against, with no
numbers or colors or any kind of distinguishing marks.
"Wonder where the people are?" I asked.
"Let's check the map and not wait to find out the answer to that," Aahz
said as he headed for the side of the street.
"Yeah," Tanda said as she looked around, dearly on guard. "I don't like
the looks of this."
Aahz pulled the map out as he got near the edge of the road and opened
it. On the map the dimension we were in was now marked clearly, with only
one path leading away from it. Vortex #6 was our next stop. At least we had
jumped over Vortex #5 just like we had over #2 and #3.
Tanda glanced at the map and shook her head.
For a moment I thought Aahz was going to wad the thing up and toss it
away, but then he folded it and put it back in his jacket.
Suddenly, in the window of the building closest to us, a creature
appeared.
"We have company," I said softly.
Tanda and Aahz both looked up as another creature appeared in the
window beside the first one.
I glanced around. Every window of every building now had someone
standing in it. And every one of them looked exactly alike. Gray suit, gray
hair, gray face, two arms. They were all the same shape and same height.
And when one of them moved, every other creature I could see moved the
same way.
"This is creeping me out," Tanda said.
The next instant the dust smashed into my face.
"Warning next time," Aahz said.
"This is Vortex #4," she shouted over the wind. "We're hopping again
before the bunnies find us."
For an instant there was no dust, then it hit again.
I knew this had to be Vortex #1. I mean, with the dust and all, what
else could it be?
Then we were back in the tent with the Shifter. And right at that
moment what I really wanted to do more than anything else was just walk out
of the tent and forget this entire thing.
"Vortex #6 please," Tanda said to the Shifter, who had lost his couch
shape and now looked more like a cross between a cat and a table.
"Twenty-five percent."
Aahz ground his teeth, the sound filling the tent.
"You're making my friend angry by repeating that," I said.
Then I realized I had spoken my mind. Tanda hadn't sealed my lips for
this visit. Aahz glared at me and I shrugged.
"It is a bargain at twice the price," the Shifter said.
I was about to tell him that dealing with a Deveel was a bargain as
well, but Tananda put her hand over my mouth and spoke to the Shifter.
"Vortex #6 please. We have agreed to twenty-five percent total to this
point."
The Shifter nodded, which looked a lot like a table lifting its leg,
then we were back in the dust storm.
It seemed like the same dust, and was as hard to walk in as the last
two Vortex dimensions. But as we got near the old cabin, I noticed a very
large and very important difference.
This time there was a light in the window.
Someone was home.
"Don't pick up hitchhikers!"
D. ADAMS
The yellow light coming from the cabin window was like a warning sign.
We all stopped about twenty paces short of the door and stared through the
blowing dust at the light. I know I was annoyed. After using the cabin in
two other dimensions, I was starting to feel like it was an extension of
home. How dare anyone actually live in it? "Now what do we do?" I shouted to
Aahz over the sound of the storm whipping around us.
"Anything else close by?" Aahz asked Tanda. His green scales on his
face were plastered in dust. I knew for a fact he hated being dirty, and
after giving away so much of an as-yet-unfound fortune to a travel guide, or
agent, or whatever he had called the Shifter, the dust and wind couldn't be
helping his mood any. Tanda shook her head.
"No dust bunnies and nothing else I know of. The Shifter only put
directions to this place in my mind on the first hop."
"So we knock," I said over the wind. Tanda and Aahz seemed to have no
other idea, so I slogged through the deep dust to the door and rapped on it.
Tanda moved over to my left and Aahz stayed five steps away in the
background, his face covered. If I had to, I would disguise him quickly. His
green scales and looks tended to frighten a lot of people.
The door opened suddenly and I found myself facing a girl. She was
wearing a long-sleeved shirt, dark pants, and had her hair pulled back off
her face. She had a smile that lit up her deep brown eyes and warmed every
nerve in my body. I figured her to be about my age. Her face brightened when
she saw me.
"You must be Skeeve," she said. "Come on in. My dad said you'd be along
eventually."
I stood in the dust, staring at her. In all my life I had never been so
surprised at anything anyone said.
She knew my name.
She had been expecting me.
God knew how many dimensions from home and in the middle of a raging
dust storm, she had been expecting me!
My first thought was to back slowly away before turning and running
into the storm. But my legs remained frozen in place, my mind too stunned to
even try to reason out anything.
"Come on," the girl said. "It's windy out there!"
Nothing on me was moving.
Tanda finally pushed me forward and the girl stepped back, holding the
door for all of us to go inside.
If I hadn't known this was the same cabin as we had seen in the other
dimensions, I would have never have recognized it. Now it had a wooden
floor, the cracks in the walls were all filled, and it was warm and
comfortable.
There was a table with a bowl of fruit on it, four chairs, and kitchen
counter with cabinets on one side of the room. A fire was burning in a
baking stove, keeping the cabin comfortable. A bed was against the far wall,
with a beautiful blue and gold quilt neatly covering it and a pillow.
The young lady didn't seem to be at all surprised to see Aahz, which
worried me even more. Pervects tended to scare people, either by their looks
or their reputations.
I finally managed to find the words I needed to ask.
"How do you know me?"
"She knows you?" Aahz asked.
Clearly he had been too far out in the dust storm to hear her over the
blowing wind.
The girl laughed and I got even more afraid of her. The laugh was
perfect, sort of gentle, yet free and high, like a soft breeze on a summer's
afternoon. The exact laugh I would expect from a young lady as beautiful as
she was, yet never got, at least from the few I had met.
"I doesn't really know him," she said, again laughing. "At least not in
the traditional sense, or any other sense for that matter. Although I must
say, I wouldn't mind, if you know what I mean."
I had no idea what she meant. I wanted to ask just how many senses of
'know' there were, but figured I'd wait to do that later.
Aahz snorted and Tanda laughed.
She went on. "My father said I should expect a young, good-looking man
named Skeeve to come here. I just assumed you were Skeeve, since you are the
first person to visit this place in the two weeks I've been here."
I think I was staring at her, stunned. At least that was how it felt. I
didn't know her and I had no idea who her father might be.
She smiled at me and then turned to Tananda.
"You must be the one Skeeve was traveling with before," she said.
"Don't worry. I've taken care of the dust bunnies. You know, don't you, that
they're completely invisible to guys."
Then she glanced at Aahz and frowned slightly.
"But I don't know you and your connection to this, big guy"
I was so shocked, I couldn't say anything. She had called Aahz 'big
guy,' and knew I had traveled with Tanda.
No one said anything.
Clearly Tanda and Aahz were shocked as well. From what Tanda had said,
we were a lot of dimensions away from our homes. Yet in the middle of a dust
storm, in a strange dimension, we had found someone waiting for us. Someone
who knew my name.
"Cat's got your tongues, I see," she said, laughing. She turned around
and motioned that we should sit down at the table. "I bet you're getting
hungry by now, after all the dimension-hopping you've been doing."
I wanted to ask why she thought a cat had my tongue, and how she knew
what we had been doing, then decided against asking that, in exchange for
what I thought was a better question.
"Are you a Shifter?"
Again she laughed, the wonderful sound filling the cabin and blending
in with the faint crackling of the fire in the oven.
"Not hardly. But my father said you might be getting a little tired of
their costs by now. How much of the treasure have you given away so far?
Thirty-five percent? Forty percent?"
"Only twenty-five percent," I said.
Then it dawned on me that she knew about the treasure as well. And that
we had been negotiating with the Shifters. How much did she know, and how
did she know it?
Aahz gave me a stern look and I shrugged. He always thought I talked
too much, and clearly this was one of those times he just might be right.
"Wow, you must be a great negotiator," she said, smiling at me.
"Not hardly," Tanda said, moving over and sitting down at the table.
Aahz and I did the same.
"So you know our friend Skeeve here," Tanda said. "Could you please
tell us what your name is, and how you know him?"
The girl smiled at me, holding my gaze in her beautiful brown eyes.
"My name is Glenda. My father sold Skeeve the map you are using to
search for the golden cow."
Glenda turned back to the counter and opened a cabinet that contained
what looked to be a freshly baked loaf of bread.
Tanda glared and me and I just shrugged. I had told her and Aahz
everything that had happened when I bought the map. This young lady had been
nowhere around That much I was sure of. I would have remembered seeing her.
Now I was even more confused. Why had the guy who sold me the map sent
his daughter here to meet us? For what reason?
"So the map was a scam after all," Aahz said, scowling at her, "and
you've been waiting here to collect something from us. Is that it?"
Glenda laughed and smiled at Aahz. "The cynic of the group, I see."
Then she smiled at me again.
I smiled right back at her.
"He does tend to look at what could go wrong a lot."
"He would make a great lawyer," she said.
I wanted to ask what a lawyer was, but just nodded instead.
She turned to look directly at Aahz.
"No, I assure you that, as far as I know, or anyone knows, the map is
real."
"So what are you doing here, then?" Tanda asked.
Glenda shrugged. "My father thought you might need some help about now.
And when my father told me about Skeeve after he bought the map, I thought
he might be cute. I was right."
I think I blushed from the ends of my toes to the top of my head.
Luckily the only thing visible to her was my face.
Aahz snorted even louder, an ugly sound that seemed to just hang in the
warm cabin like a bad smell.
"Why would your father think we need help?" Tanda asked.
Glenda went back to cutting the fresh bread as she answered. "Because
no one has ever made it past this point before, and returned alive."
"Ohhhhh," Aahz said, "now I understand. Your father keeps selling the
map over and over and your job is to get it back."
"Actually, he's tired of selling it," Glenda said. "And getting it back
has never been a problem. He usually just pops in here every spring and
takes it off the bodies."
The faint crackling of the fire and the wind against the eaves of the
cabin were the only noises. I didn't want to think about the fact that a map
I had carried around for a week had been on dead bodies.
"Why does that happen?" Tanda asked, but I noticed that she wasn't
really putting as much anger into her voice as before.
Glenda smiled at her. "You're the one with the ability to
dimension-hop. You tell me."
Tanda's eyes seemed to fade out for a moment, then she looked up at
Glenda and said softly, "We're too far away from any place I know, including
the last place we jumped to."
"Exactly," Glenda said, putting the cut bread on the table in front of
us. "The Shifters have done that to six groups of treasure-seekers that my
father sold the map to. Vortex #6, this place, is just too far from any
known dimension, and any other dimension on the map, for almost anyone but
the most traveled dimension-hopper. And until I fixed this cabin up a few
weeks ago, there was nothing here but a shell of old logs."
"We would have starved to death," I said.
"Given time, you would have starved, or jumped to some other dimension
and gotten lost," Glenda said, pulling out the chair and sitting down beside
me. "My father tracked two groups with the map who did that. Both met very
ugly ends at the hands of creatures they never should have faced."
My memory of the snakes was clear enough to understand exactly what she
was saying.
She took a piece of the wonderful-smelling fresh bread and bit into it,
never taking her gaze from mine.
"And your price to rescue us is...?" Aahz asked.
I glanced at him. Typical Aahz, always leading with the pocketbook
first.
Glenda smiled at my green-scaled mentor.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Aahz," he said. "And you haven't answered my question yet."
"I want to go with you," she said. "And for helping you find the golden
cow and getting us all back to a dimension near the Bazaar at Deva, I want
the same share as each of you are getting, after paying off the Shifter."
It still wasn't making sense.
"So why haven't you just gone after the cow on your own, before now?"
"Honestly," she said, looking directly into my eyes while answering,
"my father thought you, Skeeve, were the first one he had ever sold the map
to that had a chance of actually getting to the cow."
"You didn't answer his question either," Aahz said. "And why should we
give you such a large share of the treasure?"
She laughed. "Besides getting you out of this place? This is only one
of the problems you face. My father tried a number of times to go the
distance before he sold the map the first time, but he always had to turn
back. There are many problems ahead. I know what they are. You need me."
"And your father thinks Skeeve can make it?" Tanda asked. I would have
been unhappy with the sound of disbelief in Tanda's voice if I didn't feel
exactly the same way.
Glenda reached over and touched my hand on the table. Electric shocks
went up my arm and I am sure my face again turned a bright shade of red. I
couldn't even begin to think about moving my hand away from hers. And I
didn't want to. She was doing things to me I had only dreamed about, all
with a single touch of her hand.
"My father has the ability to see the true nature of people," Glenda
said, "and their true strengths."
She rubbed the top of my hand and it was everything I could do to not
let out a long, loud sigh.
"If he thinks Skeeve can get to the golden cow and win over the
problems that lie ahead, then I believe in Skeeve as well."
I just smiled at Aahz, giving him my widest grin. In all our time
together, I had never seen him look so disgusted.
It felt wonderful.
And so did Glenda's hand on mine.
Okay, so there was tension in the small cabin. Lots of it, of all
kinds. I have to admit that having a girl my age along on this crazy quest
sounded just fine by me. Especially one that thought I was special without
really knowing me, and could make my entire body tingle at the touch of a
hand. I liked the advantage of that. With her, I didn't have any past
mistakes to climb over or make up for.
Aahz and Tanda, on the other hand, weren't so certain about taking
Glenda along and cutting her in on the possible prize. And that wasn't good
tension at all. And since none of us knew her, there was that tension as
well.
But the way I figured it, there really wasn't much choice. Tanda
couldn't hop us back to any dimension she knew of. It was just too far, and
we didn't dare just risk hopping dimensions trying to get close enough. We
would end up lost, or more likely dead from something like those snakes or
creepy identical-people on that street.
We needed Glenda. And besides, I wanted her along. It would be fun
getting to know her.
"So now there's four of us," I said, smiling across the table at Glenda
and ignoring the scowls coming from my mentor.
"Great," Glenda said. "You won't regret it."
I doubted I would either.
"We split the treasure four ways," Aahz said, making the deal clear.
"After the Shifter's part is taken out," I reminded him.
"Yeah, after the Shifter's twenty-five percent."
He almost spat the last few words of the sentence as he glared at
Tanda.
"There'll still be more than enough for everyone," Glenda said as she
offered everyone some fresh bread. "If we can get to the golden cow and make
it ours."
I took a large piece and them some of the wonderful apple jelly she had
on the table. After one bite I knew that fresh bread and jelly was the
best-tasting thing I remembered having in a long, long time. It more than
melted in my mouth as it turned my taste-buds into a wonderful world of
flavors. Man, if Glenda could make all the food she cooked do that, I was
never leaving her side.
After we were all eating-and I noticed that even Tanda and Aahz enjoyed
the bread-Glenda looked at me. "Dig out the map and let's figure out where
we're headed next."
I pointed to Aahz. "I'm letting the big guy carry it."
I thought Aahz would choke on the bread.
Tanda laughed, and the tension in the room eased a little.
Aahz took out the map and unfolded it on the table.
Glenda moved around so that she stood beside Tanda. I scooted over to
get a better look as well.
Again the map had changed.
No surprise there. We were on Vortex #6, which was now clearly
highlighted on the map. There were four lines from our dimension headed to
four different places. I didn't like the sounds of the four dimensions at
all.
Febrile was the one on the right, Hostile the next one, Durst the next,
and Molder the farthest left.
Tanda shook her head. "I don't know any of them."
"Neither do I," Aahz said.
"No way that you could," Glenda said. "They are even farther removed
from Deva than this place."
She glanced at me to make sure I was listening, then pointed to
Febrile.
"That place's coolest temperature is over one hundred and twenty. We
wouldn't last five minutes there."
"Nice that the map designer put it on the map," I said.
"Traps," she said. "The Cartograms loved to make these sorts of
things."
"Cartograms?" I asked.
She gave me another of her wonderful smiles.
"They are an entire race who explore and map dimensions, and any time
they find a treasure, they do one of these treasure maps to the location of
the treasure, and then sell the map."
"I'd heard about them," Tanda said. "Never bothered to buy a map from
one of them, though."
"They have booths in the Bazaar at Deva," Aahz said. "Never had the
need to use their services."
"Did they do the map on the wall in the Shifter's tent?" I asked.
Glenda nodded. "I'd bet that any kind of map that shows different
dimensions was done by a Cartogram. Every treasure map they do is magik and
often contain puzzles and traps just like this one."
"Good to know," I said, glancing at Aahz. It was clear he hadn't known
about the traps when we started out after this golden cow.
My mentor just frowned at me.
Glenda went on. She pointed at the dimension with the name Hostile.
"We don't even want to think about going there. Makes Febrile look
cool."
Aahz nodded.
Glenda pointed to the next one. "Durst no longer exists. Something
destroyed the entire dimension thousands of years ago."
"That leaves Molder," I said. "What's it like?"
"Only been there for a few moments with my father, tracking what
happened to this map three buyers ago," Glenda said, shaking her head. "It's
a dark, damp place where everything always seems to be changing. Even the
ground seems to grow and move under your feet."
"So tell me," Tanda said to Glenda. "You've gone after this treasure
with your father, and seen others do it. You must know the path at least a
few steps ahead. Why can't we just jump over this step. Don't you know where
the map will lead us?"
I had to admit that Tanda had a good point there. It would sure be a
lot easier.
Glenda sighed, and even the sigh was a wonderful sound to my ears. She
could sigh at me all she wanted.
"I wish I could," Glenda said.
"The map is magik," Aahz said. "It's never the same. Right?"
"Exactly," Glenda said. "Except for going through these Vortex
locations at one point or another, the map changes the correct path with
every user, and every attempt."
"Hmmm." Aahz said, staring at the piece of parchment. "Too bad we can't
just take the magik out of the map and have it tell us the only true path to
the dimension with the golden cow."
That gave me an idea. It was so simple it was probably stupid, so I
didn't say anything aloud. Still, the thought kept rattling around in my
head as the others continued their conversation.
What if I tapped into the magikal energy of the map, just like I did
with the energy lines when I was casting a spell? Wouldn't that draw off the
magik?
I made myself relax, then reached out with my mind and touched the map
Aahz was holding, working at absorbing energy as I did.
At first nothing happened. Then the parchment began to tremble and an
energy line sprang into being, running from the map to me.
It was a cool, tingly sensation, but strong, almost too strong, and
getting stronger and stronger. I quickly opened up, letting the energy
channel through me and into the ground, just as Aahz had taught me in some
of our earliest lessons.
"What the..." Aahz exclaimed, letting go of the map.
Instead of falling, it hovered in midair.
"Skeeve!" Tanda shouted, but I ignored her, keeping my attention on
what I wanted to happen.
Finally the energy flow slowed and ebbed until it was merely a trickle.
I released my mental contact, and the parchment fluttered to the floor.
"Try looking at it now," I said.
All three of them were looking at me as if I had suddenly grown another
head.
"Someone want to explain to me what just happened?" Glenda said, taking
her gaze away from me to look back at the map.
Aahz frowned as he did the same.
Tanda laughed. "Master Magician Skeeve here just solved a whole bunch
of our problems."
I stared at the map, not believing what I was seeing.
Now there was only one line from Vortex #6 to Molder, then a line from
Molder to Vortex #5, then a line to a dimension called Baasss, then a line
back to here, Vortex #6, then one final line to our cow dimension.
And the cow dimension now had a name.
Kowtow.
We could jump directly from here to Kowtow.
Glenda laughed and gave me the best hug I could ever remember. Her
entire body pressed into mine, and I tingled in more places than I ever
wanted to admit.
"My father was right," she said as she squeezed me even harder. "You
really are special."
The sound of Aahz snorting didn't take away one bit of my enjoyment of
the moment.
"That's wild!"
J. WEST
"What kind of name is Kowtow?" I asked, pointing at our destination on
the map after Glenda released me from the hug of the century.
No one answered me.
"How did you do that?" Glenda asked, staring at me. "I've never heard
of anyone taking the magik out of a treasure map before."
Her beautiful brown eyes were huge and there was a look of what I took
to be slight worry. Then I realized that what I was seeing wasn't worry. She
was in awe of me. And having someone in awe of me was not a circumstance
that often happened.
"Honestly," I said to her, "I'm not sure."
"Why is that no surprise?" Aahz said, his eyes rolling in disgust.
"Aahz said something about taking the magik out of the map," I said,
going on, explaining to her what had happened while ignoring Aahz, "So I
gave it a try. I tapped into its energy like I would a force line and just
let it flow through me and into the ground. That's all I did. Honest."
Tanda looked as if she understood, but was saying nothing.
"The vortex dimensions are known to be powerful places for magik,"
Glenda said. "That's why no one lives here very long."
"So while we're here," Aahz said, glaring at me, "be careful!"
I pointed at the map. "What? Didn't I help?"
"I think you did," Tanda said. "Glenda, do you know this Kowtow
dimension? Or do we have to go back to the Shifter to get there?"
Aahz moaned at the mention of the Shifter.
"I've been there a number of times," Glenda said. "Never thought of it
as a place with a great treasure, though."
"Are there cattle there?" Aahz asked.
"More than you could ever imagine," Glenda said.
"So our next adventure," I said, smiling at Glenda, "is finding a
single cow in a proverbial haystack of cows."
A puzzled frown came over her face, telling me clearly she had no idea
what I had just said, and since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I
didn't want to try to explain a haystack of them to her.
"What our young friend there was trying to say," Tanda added, "is that
if there are a lot of cows, how are we going to find the one that gives
golden milk?"
Glenda shrugged. "I have no idea. No one has ever gotten this far with
this map before. It would have never occurred to me that the map led to
Kowtow."
Aahz wasn't adding anything, so I figured it was safe to say what I was
thinking.
"Wouldn't a cow that gave golden milk live in a golden palace?"
Again they just all three stared at me.
"More than likely," Tanda said, nodding slowly.
Silence again filled the small cabin. At that point I figured it was
better to just eat more bread and leave the thinking up to them.
After an hour of planning and talking, at Aahz's suggestion, Glenda
dimension-hopped us to Kowtow, to a location isolated enough that we
wouldn't be seen by anyone. He figured that way we would have time for me to
get us in disguises so that we looked like the local residents.
Before we hopped, Aahz made real sure that either Glenda or Tanda could
hop back to this cabin. And he had Glenda help him set his D-Hopper so he
could as well. It seemed I was the only one who didn't have an emergency
getaway. I planned on making sure I was always close to one of them.
Preferably Glenda.
After the hop, we ended up standing near a large rock cliff face. The
air was warm and dry, and the sun was high overhead at the moment.
The area around us looked like desert, but the ground sloped away from
us down to a lush, green valley. A road came over the hill beside the cliff,
wound past where we were, and down the hill to what looked to be a small
town built out of wood. From what I could tell there was no building over
two stories tall. The buildings seemed to be centered around the main
street.
"That town is called Evade," Glenda said. "Mostly cowboys and bars."
"Cowboys?" I asked. Since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I
couldn't imagine what a boy cow would be, or why they would build a town.
"Cowboys are men who take care of the cows," Glenda said. "For some
reason they're called that in just about every dimension there are cows or
cattle."
I wanted to ask her what a woman who took care of cows was called.
"In this dimension," Glenda said, "the cowboys are a strange bunch, let
me tell you."
Aahz stood, staring at the town in the valley below them.
"In what way?"
Glenda shrugged. "They seem to treat the cattle almost like they were
sacred. They never hurt a cow, they never push a cow too hard, and they
always talk nice to the cattle. And they protect them against anything."
"Now that is weird," Tanda said.
"Why?" I asked.
Aahz looked at me with one of his looks that said I was asking too many
questions. I knew that look well, since I saw it two or three times a day.
"Because, in most dimensions, cows are nothing but food. Here, killing
a cow is a hanging offense."
"So what do these cowboys look like?" I asked. For once, courtesy of my
earlier adventures, I knew what a hanging offense was. In fact, I knew about
it intimately enough to not want to dwell on the memory.
"Actually, in this dimension, they look a lot like the three of us."
Glenda laughed. She glanced at Aahz. "We're going to have to do something
about you, though, big boy. They don't know about demons here, let alone
Pervects."
Aahz said nothing. I think he was just glad she didn't call him a
Pervert, as so many did.
Suddenly, over the hill behind us, along the road, there was the sound
of something coming. Glenda had us move back behind some rocks at the base
of the cliff and watch. I made sure I had a pretty good view of the road so
that I could disguise us all in the right clothes.
A minute later, two men appeared at the top of the rise. They were on
horses and were headed slowly down the hill toward the town below. They both
were dressed pretty much the same. They had on plaid shirts, jeans-like
pants, high boots, and wide belts. Their skin was tan from a long time in
the sun, and they wore wide-brimmed brown hats on their heads. One was a
little older than the other and both had short hair and mustaches. They rode
side-by-side in silence. After they got a distance down the hill, Tanda
turned to me. "Get what they look like?"
"Easy," I said.
Pulling in the energy I needed, I changed all of us into our local
disguises. I gave us all black hats, and basically similar plaid shirts.
Since I couldn't see beyond the clothes what my magik did when I disguised
someone, I glanced at Glenda. "How do we look?"
"Perfect," she said. "Even Aahz's tan is red instead of green."
"Are we going to need horses?" I asked. "I can't do them."
"We might," Glenda said, looking frustrated. "Especially if the golden
cow isn't close by. We might have to do some traveling, and, from what I
remember, horses are the only means of travel here."
"Money?" Aahz asked. "We're going to need money as well."
"I don't think so," Glenda said. "This place doesn't use money."
I thought Aahz was going to have a heart attack. It was like telling
him the sun would never come up again.
"So what do they use to trade and buy things with?" Tanda asked, also
shocked at the very idea.
"Work," Glenda said. "Work is their capital."
Now I was just as lost as Aahz and Tanda looked.
Glenda went on. "You work for someone when you want something from
them. They keep everything on IOU's. So if you want a drink or some food,
you sign an IOU and then later you have to work off the debt."
"This is a strange place."
Glenda agreed and we started off down the hill, four strangers walking
into a town full of cowboys. I just hope my disguises worked. Just in case,
I stayed real close to Glenda. Not that that was a hardship or anything.
The town of Evade was active and primitive. The only street was
appropriately enough called Main Street. It was dirt and hardened mud and
very rough. It split two rows of wooden buildings with covered wooden
sidewalks in front of them. Outside the main street were houses scattered
through the farmlands, tucked into groves of strange-looking trees.
Music and laughter were coming from a number of the doors along Main
Street. Bright-colored signs were over some of the doors, with names like
Battlefield, Wild Horse, and Audry's. I had no idea what any of those names
meant.
Horse-drawn wagons and single horses were tied up on rails along the
wooden sidewalks, and the entire town smelled like horse droppings, of which
there were some pretty good-sized piles spaced along the road.
A man with a white hat and a big shovel was slowly picking up fresh
horse leavings and tossing them onto the piles. I wanted to ask him what
debt he was trying to pay off, or what he was trying to buy, because
whatever it was, the price was too high.
When we reached the main area of town we stepped up on the sidewalk on
the left side and into the shade. Suddenly I realized just how hot our walk
from the cliff had been, and how lucky it was these people wore hats. The
sun hadn't seemed that hot at first, after coming from Vortex #6, but now
that we were in the shade, I realized how bad it was.
We strolled along the wooden sidewalk, trying to look as if we
belonged. Of course, in a town that couldn't have more than a few hundred
full-time residents, four newcomers stood out like a bad blister in new
shoes.
"Howdy," the first man we passed said to us. He tipped his hat and just
kept right on moving.
By the time I tipped my hat back, he was past us.
A woman in long skirts and a flower-patterned blouse walked past us a
few moments later.
"Howdy," she said.
I tipped my hat, as did Aahz.
She smiled at us, showing some pretty strange-looking teeth.
After she was past us I glanced down at my neck to make sure the
Translator Pendant that Tanda had given me was still there. It was, but it
couldn't be working, because I had no idea what "howdy" meant.
I glanced at Tanda who just shrugged.
About a quarter of the way up the street into the town we stopped and
leaned against a wooden wall and tried to look as if we were relaxed. No one
was bothering us, or even paying us much attention. Across the street,
something. Aahz and money were not easily parted, and if we did find this
golden cow, there was no doubt in my mind that Aahz would not want to part
with much of the golden milk. But now he would have no choice, for at least
ten percent of the find.
And I had no doubt we were going to be back here a number more times
before this little venture was over.
"What is your destination now?" it asked.
"Bumppp," Tanda said.
For a moment the creature hesitated, and I thought I saw the morphing
hesitate as well. Then it said, almost sadly, "Very well."
A moment later we ended up in the middle of a wide meadow filled with
thick plants and orange flowers. The sky overhead was a faint blue and pink.
Dark-green trees surrounded the meadow, and in the distance there were pink
mountains. I had been ready to use my disguise spell on us to protect us
from any storm, but the air was warm and humid, just the way I liked it.
Actually, all in all, this was one of the most beautiful dimensions I
had visited. I wondered what kind of lucky people lived here.
Tanda turned a full circle, her sharp eyes taking in things I knew I
didn't see.
"Ten percent?" Aahz said, his teeth still grinding.
Tanda put her finger to her mouth for Aahz to be silent. I instantly
started searching the tree-line for any sign of danger. There was nothing
that I could see. No natives with weapons, no crouching tigers, no charging
bears.
Nothing.
But clearly from Tanda's actions and the attitude and hesitation of the
Shifter, this wasn't a friendly place. Beautiful, but not friendly.
"The map," she whispered to Aahz. "Quickly."
Then she motioned that we should all crouch down.
The weeds and flowers covering the meadow were no more than knee-high
and would give us no cover at all. They smelled like my dragon when he got
wet.
I figured we should move to the edge of the trees. At least there we
might have a fighting chance if something came at us. But Tanda was the
ex-assassin among us. She knew what she was doing. Or at least I hoped she
did.
Aahz opened the map and laid it out carefully on top of the weeds. It
was clear instantly that the map had again changed. Bumppp, the dimension we
were in, showed clearly, with only one path leading from this world toward
the dream of our very own golden cow. And that path led to Vortex #4.
Not #2, as I would have expected, or even #3, but #4.
Tanda nodded and motioned for Aahz to quickly fold up the parchment and
put it away. Then she stood.
I stood right with her, and the moment I did I saw movement. Not just
some movement, but all around the edges of the meadow the weeds and flowers
were jerking and swaying as if something was running under them at us.
Then a head poked up about a hundred paces from us. A massive snake
head that was larger than my head, with yellow, swirling slits for eyes and
huge fangs. There was no telling how long the snake's body was, and I really
didn't want to wait around and find out.
And then another stuck its head up to the right of the first one. And
another and another.
I spun like a dancer. We were surrounded by giant snakes with very
nasty-looking fangs. If we didn't do something quickly we were going to end
up the main course for lunch.
"Nice place," Aahz said as the moving grass got closer and closer
around us.
"Any time now," I tried to suggest, but the only thing that came out of
my still sealed mouth was "Aggghhh tgggghhhh."
.
What's the matter?" Tanda asked, smiling at me. "Afraid Of a little
snake?"
I nodded vigorously as another monster snake head popped up not more
than fifty paces from us. It looked not only hungry, but angry.
"Yeah," she said, "me, too."
With that we were back in the dust storm on Vortex #1.
"Skeeve!" Aahz yelled as the dust pounded into us.
Before I could even act, Tanda said, "Don't bother."
Then we were back in the Shifter's tent, staring at the creature who
now looked just a little too much like the snakes we had just left.
"I am glad for my percentage to see that you have returned," it said.
"I'll bet," Aahz said.
"Vortex #4 please," Tanda said, getting right to business.
"The total is now fifteen percent."
"I understand our agreement," Tanda said before Aahz could say a word.
"Vortex #4 please."
The snakelike-shaped Shifter nodded, and again we were whisked through
to another dimension.
And right back into the same stupid dust storm.
Okay, I have to admit that when we dimension-hopped back into the dust
storm, I was shocked.
Tanda motioned that we should follow her. It took me almost all the way
to our destination before I realized where we were. Now granted, I had the
excuse that it was blowing heavily. And to me, one dust storm looks just
like another. But it wasn't until the old log cabin loomed up out of the
dust like a ship in the fog that it dawned on me that we were back in the
same place.
Only it wasn't the same place. This was supposed to be Vortex #4, not
Vortex #1.
Inside the old building it became clear that we were in a slightly
different place. This time, instead of being bare, the inside of the log
cabin was filled with branches and some old furniture, and there was no sign
of the fire I had built.
"Did you see them this time?" Tanda demanded.
"See what?" Aahz frowned.
"Out there in the storm." she said. "This time I got a good look at
them."
"What was it?"
"Dust bunnies. A whole pack of them." She wrapped her arms tightly
around herself and shuddered.
Aahz and I looked at each other and shrugged. Again we seemed to be
oblivious to whatever it was that was setting Tanda on edge.
By the time I got a new fire going and Tanda had put a containment
protection around the cabin to keep the wind out, my lips had unsealed. They
were chapped and sore, but at least they were loose.
"So Vortex #4 is a lot like Vortex #1," I said.
"Makes sense," Tanda said. "Otherwise, why give them the same names
with only different numbers?"
"Any other dimensions so similar that they could be numbered like
this?"
"More than likely," Tanda said, "but I've never seen or heard about
any."
"So we paid another five percent to that thief for this?" Aahz said,
dearly disgusted. "We could have found this on our own."
I had no idea how he thought we could have done that, but since I
didn't know much about dimension-hopping, I said nothing.
"Not likely," Tanda said. "We are a long, long way from Vortex #1.
We're farther away in number of dimensions from the Bazaar at Deva than I
have ever been before."
"Oh," Aahz said.
"And you know that how?" I asked. "Is there some sort of mileage marker
I keep missing in the blink of eye it takes to hop to a new dimension?"
Tanda laughed. "Don't we wish."
"When a person is dimension-hopping," Aahz said, "and they have powers
to do it, like Tanda does, you get a sense of how many dimensions away you
have jumped. Not precise, but just a sense of distance."
Tanda nodded. "And the farther away in number of dimensions, the harder
the jump. And the greater the chance of missing the target and getting
lost."
"So that's why you took us back through Vortex #1 from Bumppp?"
"Safer that way," she said.
"And each of our jumps following this map is getting us farther and
farther away from home?" I didn't much like the idea of that happening. My
job as the Royal Court Magician wasn't much, but at the moment it was better
than this place.
"So far," Tanda said. "But this is a treasure map we're following. It
isn't supposed to be so easy that just anyone could do it."
I didn't like the sound of that, either.
Aahz pulled off his gloves and took out the map, spreading it on the
floor so we could all see it by the light of the fire. As expected, the map
had changed again. There were now six lines leading from Vortex #4, all to
points that now had names. All six lines headed in the general direction of
the point marked as the treasure, but none directly. This map wasn't making
anything easy, that was for sure.
The names on each dimension this time were stranger than normal. All
were combinations of the same five letters. Starting from the left, the
names were Et, Cet, Era, Etc, Etc, and Ra.
"You know any of those dimensions?" Aahz asked.
"No," Tanda said. "You?"
"No," Aahz said. "There goes another five percent."
Tanda shrugged. "Can't be helped. I suggest we head for the center
one."
"Etc it is, then," I said.
All Aahz did was growl deep inside his throat as he stood and put the
map away.
"I hope this means we're going back to Vortex #1 again." I said. "Tell
me we're not visiting the snakes again."
"It would be safer if we hit Bumppp again," she said. "No point in
taking the chance."
"You can't be serious," I said. Just at the mention of those snakes my
stomach clamped up into a knot.
She laughed. "Don't worry. From here I can hit Vortex #1. No snakes
needed."
She made sure Aahz was ready, then we hopped.
The dust pounded at me for all of five seconds while Tanda made sure we
were there and all right, then she hopped us again right back into the tent
of the Shifter.
He was now shaped like a sofa with eyes on the arms and pillows where
the ears would be. A massive, orange tongue hung out of the face, forming
the seating area. From that moment onward, sitting on a sofa was going to
take on a whole new meaning for me.
"We need the Etc dimension," Tanda said.
"Your total is now twenty percent," the creature said, its massive
tongue moving as if someone was fluffing the pillows.
"We are aware of that," Tanda said.
The next moment we found ourselves standing on a wide and, mercifully,
empty street. Plain-looking wooden buildings framed both sides of the
street.
The sky overhead was cloudy and gray, the air was cold and crisp, but
at least it wasn't blowing. I was glad I still had our heavy coats and hats
on as disguises.
I turned slowly around. There was no doubt there were some strange
dimensions in this universe. The road seemed to go off into the distance in
both directions from where we were standing, framed by exactly the same
types of buildings on both sides, all the same height. Each building had a
strange shape to it as well, with two doors, and matching windows. There was
no way to tell what was on the other side of the buildings, since it was
like we were standing in a canyon.
I had no idea how anyone living in this place found his or her way
home. Every building was exactly like the one it butted against, with no
numbers or colors or any kind of distinguishing marks.
"Wonder where the people are?" I asked.
"Let's check the map and not wait to find out the answer to that," Aahz
said as he headed for the side of the street.
"Yeah," Tanda said as she looked around, dearly on guard. "I don't like
the looks of this."
Aahz pulled the map out as he got near the edge of the road and opened
it. On the map the dimension we were in was now marked clearly, with only
one path leading away from it. Vortex #6 was our next stop. At least we had
jumped over Vortex #5 just like we had over #2 and #3.
Tanda glanced at the map and shook her head.
For a moment I thought Aahz was going to wad the thing up and toss it
away, but then he folded it and put it back in his jacket.
Suddenly, in the window of the building closest to us, a creature
appeared.
"We have company," I said softly.
Tanda and Aahz both looked up as another creature appeared in the
window beside the first one.
I glanced around. Every window of every building now had someone
standing in it. And every one of them looked exactly alike. Gray suit, gray
hair, gray face, two arms. They were all the same shape and same height.
And when one of them moved, every other creature I could see moved the
same way.
"This is creeping me out," Tanda said.
The next instant the dust smashed into my face.
"Warning next time," Aahz said.
"This is Vortex #4," she shouted over the wind. "We're hopping again
before the bunnies find us."
For an instant there was no dust, then it hit again.
I knew this had to be Vortex #1. I mean, with the dust and all, what
else could it be?
Then we were back in the tent with the Shifter. And right at that
moment what I really wanted to do more than anything else was just walk out
of the tent and forget this entire thing.
"Vortex #6 please," Tanda said to the Shifter, who had lost his couch
shape and now looked more like a cross between a cat and a table.
"Twenty-five percent."
Aahz ground his teeth, the sound filling the tent.
"You're making my friend angry by repeating that," I said.
Then I realized I had spoken my mind. Tanda hadn't sealed my lips for
this visit. Aahz glared at me and I shrugged.
"It is a bargain at twice the price," the Shifter said.
I was about to tell him that dealing with a Deveel was a bargain as
well, but Tananda put her hand over my mouth and spoke to the Shifter.
"Vortex #6 please. We have agreed to twenty-five percent total to this
point."
The Shifter nodded, which looked a lot like a table lifting its leg,
then we were back in the dust storm.
It seemed like the same dust, and was as hard to walk in as the last
two Vortex dimensions. But as we got near the old cabin, I noticed a very
large and very important difference.
This time there was a light in the window.
Someone was home.
"Don't pick up hitchhikers!"
D. ADAMS
The yellow light coming from the cabin window was like a warning sign.
We all stopped about twenty paces short of the door and stared through the
blowing dust at the light. I know I was annoyed. After using the cabin in
two other dimensions, I was starting to feel like it was an extension of
home. How dare anyone actually live in it? "Now what do we do?" I shouted to
Aahz over the sound of the storm whipping around us.
"Anything else close by?" Aahz asked Tanda. His green scales on his
face were plastered in dust. I knew for a fact he hated being dirty, and
after giving away so much of an as-yet-unfound fortune to a travel guide, or
agent, or whatever he had called the Shifter, the dust and wind couldn't be
helping his mood any. Tanda shook her head.
"No dust bunnies and nothing else I know of. The Shifter only put
directions to this place in my mind on the first hop."
"So we knock," I said over the wind. Tanda and Aahz seemed to have no
other idea, so I slogged through the deep dust to the door and rapped on it.
Tanda moved over to my left and Aahz stayed five steps away in the
background, his face covered. If I had to, I would disguise him quickly. His
green scales and looks tended to frighten a lot of people.
The door opened suddenly and I found myself facing a girl. She was
wearing a long-sleeved shirt, dark pants, and had her hair pulled back off
her face. She had a smile that lit up her deep brown eyes and warmed every
nerve in my body. I figured her to be about my age. Her face brightened when
she saw me.
"You must be Skeeve," she said. "Come on in. My dad said you'd be along
eventually."
I stood in the dust, staring at her. In all my life I had never been so
surprised at anything anyone said.
She knew my name.
She had been expecting me.
God knew how many dimensions from home and in the middle of a raging
dust storm, she had been expecting me!
My first thought was to back slowly away before turning and running
into the storm. But my legs remained frozen in place, my mind too stunned to
even try to reason out anything.
"Come on," the girl said. "It's windy out there!"
Nothing on me was moving.
Tanda finally pushed me forward and the girl stepped back, holding the
door for all of us to go inside.
If I hadn't known this was the same cabin as we had seen in the other
dimensions, I would have never have recognized it. Now it had a wooden
floor, the cracks in the walls were all filled, and it was warm and
comfortable.
There was a table with a bowl of fruit on it, four chairs, and kitchen
counter with cabinets on one side of the room. A fire was burning in a
baking stove, keeping the cabin comfortable. A bed was against the far wall,
with a beautiful blue and gold quilt neatly covering it and a pillow.
The young lady didn't seem to be at all surprised to see Aahz, which
worried me even more. Pervects tended to scare people, either by their looks
or their reputations.
I finally managed to find the words I needed to ask.
"How do you know me?"
"She knows you?" Aahz asked.
Clearly he had been too far out in the dust storm to hear her over the
blowing wind.
The girl laughed and I got even more afraid of her. The laugh was
perfect, sort of gentle, yet free and high, like a soft breeze on a summer's
afternoon. The exact laugh I would expect from a young lady as beautiful as
she was, yet never got, at least from the few I had met.
"I doesn't really know him," she said, again laughing. "At least not in
the traditional sense, or any other sense for that matter. Although I must
say, I wouldn't mind, if you know what I mean."
I had no idea what she meant. I wanted to ask just how many senses of
'know' there were, but figured I'd wait to do that later.
Aahz snorted and Tanda laughed.
She went on. "My father said I should expect a young, good-looking man
named Skeeve to come here. I just assumed you were Skeeve, since you are the
first person to visit this place in the two weeks I've been here."
I think I was staring at her, stunned. At least that was how it felt. I
didn't know her and I had no idea who her father might be.
She smiled at me and then turned to Tananda.
"You must be the one Skeeve was traveling with before," she said.
"Don't worry. I've taken care of the dust bunnies. You know, don't you, that
they're completely invisible to guys."
Then she glanced at Aahz and frowned slightly.
"But I don't know you and your connection to this, big guy"
I was so shocked, I couldn't say anything. She had called Aahz 'big
guy,' and knew I had traveled with Tanda.
No one said anything.
Clearly Tanda and Aahz were shocked as well. From what Tanda had said,
we were a lot of dimensions away from our homes. Yet in the middle of a dust
storm, in a strange dimension, we had found someone waiting for us. Someone
who knew my name.
"Cat's got your tongues, I see," she said, laughing. She turned around
and motioned that we should sit down at the table. "I bet you're getting
hungry by now, after all the dimension-hopping you've been doing."
I wanted to ask why she thought a cat had my tongue, and how she knew
what we had been doing, then decided against asking that, in exchange for
what I thought was a better question.
"Are you a Shifter?"
Again she laughed, the wonderful sound filling the cabin and blending
in with the faint crackling of the fire in the oven.
"Not hardly. But my father said you might be getting a little tired of
their costs by now. How much of the treasure have you given away so far?
Thirty-five percent? Forty percent?"
"Only twenty-five percent," I said.
Then it dawned on me that she knew about the treasure as well. And that
we had been negotiating with the Shifters. How much did she know, and how
did she know it?
Aahz gave me a stern look and I shrugged. He always thought I talked
too much, and clearly this was one of those times he just might be right.
"Wow, you must be a great negotiator," she said, smiling at me.
"Not hardly," Tanda said, moving over and sitting down at the table.
Aahz and I did the same.
"So you know our friend Skeeve here," Tanda said. "Could you please
tell us what your name is, and how you know him?"
The girl smiled at me, holding my gaze in her beautiful brown eyes.
"My name is Glenda. My father sold Skeeve the map you are using to
search for the golden cow."
Glenda turned back to the counter and opened a cabinet that contained
what looked to be a freshly baked loaf of bread.
Tanda glared and me and I just shrugged. I had told her and Aahz
everything that had happened when I bought the map. This young lady had been
nowhere around That much I was sure of. I would have remembered seeing her.
Now I was even more confused. Why had the guy who sold me the map sent
his daughter here to meet us? For what reason?
"So the map was a scam after all," Aahz said, scowling at her, "and
you've been waiting here to collect something from us. Is that it?"
Glenda laughed and smiled at Aahz. "The cynic of the group, I see."
Then she smiled at me again.
I smiled right back at her.
"He does tend to look at what could go wrong a lot."
"He would make a great lawyer," she said.
I wanted to ask what a lawyer was, but just nodded instead.
She turned to look directly at Aahz.
"No, I assure you that, as far as I know, or anyone knows, the map is
real."
"So what are you doing here, then?" Tanda asked.
Glenda shrugged. "My father thought you might need some help about now.
And when my father told me about Skeeve after he bought the map, I thought
he might be cute. I was right."
I think I blushed from the ends of my toes to the top of my head.
Luckily the only thing visible to her was my face.
Aahz snorted even louder, an ugly sound that seemed to just hang in the
warm cabin like a bad smell.
"Why would your father think we need help?" Tanda asked.
Glenda went back to cutting the fresh bread as she answered. "Because
no one has ever made it past this point before, and returned alive."
"Ohhhhh," Aahz said, "now I understand. Your father keeps selling the
map over and over and your job is to get it back."
"Actually, he's tired of selling it," Glenda said. "And getting it back
has never been a problem. He usually just pops in here every spring and
takes it off the bodies."
The faint crackling of the fire and the wind against the eaves of the
cabin were the only noises. I didn't want to think about the fact that a map
I had carried around for a week had been on dead bodies.
"Why does that happen?" Tanda asked, but I noticed that she wasn't
really putting as much anger into her voice as before.
Glenda smiled at her. "You're the one with the ability to
dimension-hop. You tell me."
Tanda's eyes seemed to fade out for a moment, then she looked up at
Glenda and said softly, "We're too far away from any place I know, including
the last place we jumped to."
"Exactly," Glenda said, putting the cut bread on the table in front of
us. "The Shifters have done that to six groups of treasure-seekers that my
father sold the map to. Vortex #6, this place, is just too far from any
known dimension, and any other dimension on the map, for almost anyone but
the most traveled dimension-hopper. And until I fixed this cabin up a few
weeks ago, there was nothing here but a shell of old logs."
"We would have starved to death," I said.
"Given time, you would have starved, or jumped to some other dimension
and gotten lost," Glenda said, pulling out the chair and sitting down beside
me. "My father tracked two groups with the map who did that. Both met very
ugly ends at the hands of creatures they never should have faced."
My memory of the snakes was clear enough to understand exactly what she
was saying.
She took a piece of the wonderful-smelling fresh bread and bit into it,
never taking her gaze from mine.
"And your price to rescue us is...?" Aahz asked.
I glanced at him. Typical Aahz, always leading with the pocketbook
first.
Glenda smiled at my green-scaled mentor.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Aahz," he said. "And you haven't answered my question yet."
"I want to go with you," she said. "And for helping you find the golden
cow and getting us all back to a dimension near the Bazaar at Deva, I want
the same share as each of you are getting, after paying off the Shifter."
It still wasn't making sense.
"So why haven't you just gone after the cow on your own, before now?"
"Honestly," she said, looking directly into my eyes while answering,
"my father thought you, Skeeve, were the first one he had ever sold the map
to that had a chance of actually getting to the cow."
"You didn't answer his question either," Aahz said. "And why should we
give you such a large share of the treasure?"
She laughed. "Besides getting you out of this place? This is only one
of the problems you face. My father tried a number of times to go the
distance before he sold the map the first time, but he always had to turn
back. There are many problems ahead. I know what they are. You need me."
"And your father thinks Skeeve can make it?" Tanda asked. I would have
been unhappy with the sound of disbelief in Tanda's voice if I didn't feel
exactly the same way.
Glenda reached over and touched my hand on the table. Electric shocks
went up my arm and I am sure my face again turned a bright shade of red. I
couldn't even begin to think about moving my hand away from hers. And I
didn't want to. She was doing things to me I had only dreamed about, all
with a single touch of her hand.
"My father has the ability to see the true nature of people," Glenda
said, "and their true strengths."
She rubbed the top of my hand and it was everything I could do to not
let out a long, loud sigh.
"If he thinks Skeeve can get to the golden cow and win over the
problems that lie ahead, then I believe in Skeeve as well."
I just smiled at Aahz, giving him my widest grin. In all our time
together, I had never seen him look so disgusted.
It felt wonderful.
And so did Glenda's hand on mine.
Okay, so there was tension in the small cabin. Lots of it, of all
kinds. I have to admit that having a girl my age along on this crazy quest
sounded just fine by me. Especially one that thought I was special without
really knowing me, and could make my entire body tingle at the touch of a
hand. I liked the advantage of that. With her, I didn't have any past
mistakes to climb over or make up for.
Aahz and Tanda, on the other hand, weren't so certain about taking
Glenda along and cutting her in on the possible prize. And that wasn't good
tension at all. And since none of us knew her, there was that tension as
well.
But the way I figured it, there really wasn't much choice. Tanda
couldn't hop us back to any dimension she knew of. It was just too far, and
we didn't dare just risk hopping dimensions trying to get close enough. We
would end up lost, or more likely dead from something like those snakes or
creepy identical-people on that street.
We needed Glenda. And besides, I wanted her along. It would be fun
getting to know her.
"So now there's four of us," I said, smiling across the table at Glenda
and ignoring the scowls coming from my mentor.
"Great," Glenda said. "You won't regret it."
I doubted I would either.
"We split the treasure four ways," Aahz said, making the deal clear.
"After the Shifter's part is taken out," I reminded him.
"Yeah, after the Shifter's twenty-five percent."
He almost spat the last few words of the sentence as he glared at
Tanda.
"There'll still be more than enough for everyone," Glenda said as she
offered everyone some fresh bread. "If we can get to the golden cow and make
it ours."
I took a large piece and them some of the wonderful apple jelly she had
on the table. After one bite I knew that fresh bread and jelly was the
best-tasting thing I remembered having in a long, long time. It more than
melted in my mouth as it turned my taste-buds into a wonderful world of
flavors. Man, if Glenda could make all the food she cooked do that, I was
never leaving her side.
After we were all eating-and I noticed that even Tanda and Aahz enjoyed
the bread-Glenda looked at me. "Dig out the map and let's figure out where
we're headed next."
I pointed to Aahz. "I'm letting the big guy carry it."
I thought Aahz would choke on the bread.
Tanda laughed, and the tension in the room eased a little.
Aahz took out the map and unfolded it on the table.
Glenda moved around so that she stood beside Tanda. I scooted over to
get a better look as well.
Again the map had changed.
No surprise there. We were on Vortex #6, which was now clearly
highlighted on the map. There were four lines from our dimension headed to
four different places. I didn't like the sounds of the four dimensions at
all.
Febrile was the one on the right, Hostile the next one, Durst the next,
and Molder the farthest left.
Tanda shook her head. "I don't know any of them."
"Neither do I," Aahz said.
"No way that you could," Glenda said. "They are even farther removed
from Deva than this place."
She glanced at me to make sure I was listening, then pointed to
Febrile.
"That place's coolest temperature is over one hundred and twenty. We
wouldn't last five minutes there."
"Nice that the map designer put it on the map," I said.
"Traps," she said. "The Cartograms loved to make these sorts of
things."
"Cartograms?" I asked.
She gave me another of her wonderful smiles.
"They are an entire race who explore and map dimensions, and any time
they find a treasure, they do one of these treasure maps to the location of
the treasure, and then sell the map."
"I'd heard about them," Tanda said. "Never bothered to buy a map from
one of them, though."
"They have booths in the Bazaar at Deva," Aahz said. "Never had the
need to use their services."
"Did they do the map on the wall in the Shifter's tent?" I asked.
Glenda nodded. "I'd bet that any kind of map that shows different
dimensions was done by a Cartogram. Every treasure map they do is magik and
often contain puzzles and traps just like this one."
"Good to know," I said, glancing at Aahz. It was clear he hadn't known
about the traps when we started out after this golden cow.
My mentor just frowned at me.
Glenda went on. She pointed at the dimension with the name Hostile.
"We don't even want to think about going there. Makes Febrile look
cool."
Aahz nodded.
Glenda pointed to the next one. "Durst no longer exists. Something
destroyed the entire dimension thousands of years ago."
"That leaves Molder," I said. "What's it like?"
"Only been there for a few moments with my father, tracking what
happened to this map three buyers ago," Glenda said, shaking her head. "It's
a dark, damp place where everything always seems to be changing. Even the
ground seems to grow and move under your feet."
"So tell me," Tanda said to Glenda. "You've gone after this treasure
with your father, and seen others do it. You must know the path at least a
few steps ahead. Why can't we just jump over this step. Don't you know where
the map will lead us?"
I had to admit that Tanda had a good point there. It would sure be a
lot easier.
Glenda sighed, and even the sigh was a wonderful sound to my ears. She
could sigh at me all she wanted.
"I wish I could," Glenda said.
"The map is magik," Aahz said. "It's never the same. Right?"
"Exactly," Glenda said. "Except for going through these Vortex
locations at one point or another, the map changes the correct path with
every user, and every attempt."
"Hmmm." Aahz said, staring at the piece of parchment. "Too bad we can't
just take the magik out of the map and have it tell us the only true path to
the dimension with the golden cow."
That gave me an idea. It was so simple it was probably stupid, so I
didn't say anything aloud. Still, the thought kept rattling around in my
head as the others continued their conversation.
What if I tapped into the magikal energy of the map, just like I did
with the energy lines when I was casting a spell? Wouldn't that draw off the
magik?
I made myself relax, then reached out with my mind and touched the map
Aahz was holding, working at absorbing energy as I did.
At first nothing happened. Then the parchment began to tremble and an
energy line sprang into being, running from the map to me.
It was a cool, tingly sensation, but strong, almost too strong, and
getting stronger and stronger. I quickly opened up, letting the energy
channel through me and into the ground, just as Aahz had taught me in some
of our earliest lessons.
"What the..." Aahz exclaimed, letting go of the map.
Instead of falling, it hovered in midair.
"Skeeve!" Tanda shouted, but I ignored her, keeping my attention on
what I wanted to happen.
Finally the energy flow slowed and ebbed until it was merely a trickle.
I released my mental contact, and the parchment fluttered to the floor.
"Try looking at it now," I said.
All three of them were looking at me as if I had suddenly grown another
head.
"Someone want to explain to me what just happened?" Glenda said, taking
her gaze away from me to look back at the map.
Aahz frowned as he did the same.
Tanda laughed. "Master Magician Skeeve here just solved a whole bunch
of our problems."
I stared at the map, not believing what I was seeing.
Now there was only one line from Vortex #6 to Molder, then a line from
Molder to Vortex #5, then a line to a dimension called Baasss, then a line
back to here, Vortex #6, then one final line to our cow dimension.
And the cow dimension now had a name.
Kowtow.
We could jump directly from here to Kowtow.
Glenda laughed and gave me the best hug I could ever remember. Her
entire body pressed into mine, and I tingled in more places than I ever
wanted to admit.
"My father was right," she said as she squeezed me even harder. "You
really are special."
The sound of Aahz snorting didn't take away one bit of my enjoyment of
the moment.
"That's wild!"
J. WEST
"What kind of name is Kowtow?" I asked, pointing at our destination on
the map after Glenda released me from the hug of the century.
No one answered me.
"How did you do that?" Glenda asked, staring at me. "I've never heard
of anyone taking the magik out of a treasure map before."
Her beautiful brown eyes were huge and there was a look of what I took
to be slight worry. Then I realized that what I was seeing wasn't worry. She
was in awe of me. And having someone in awe of me was not a circumstance
that often happened.
"Honestly," I said to her, "I'm not sure."
"Why is that no surprise?" Aahz said, his eyes rolling in disgust.
"Aahz said something about taking the magik out of the map," I said,
going on, explaining to her what had happened while ignoring Aahz, "So I
gave it a try. I tapped into its energy like I would a force line and just
let it flow through me and into the ground. That's all I did. Honest."
Tanda looked as if she understood, but was saying nothing.
"The vortex dimensions are known to be powerful places for magik,"
Glenda said. "That's why no one lives here very long."
"So while we're here," Aahz said, glaring at me, "be careful!"
I pointed at the map. "What? Didn't I help?"
"I think you did," Tanda said. "Glenda, do you know this Kowtow
dimension? Or do we have to go back to the Shifter to get there?"
Aahz moaned at the mention of the Shifter.
"I've been there a number of times," Glenda said. "Never thought of it
as a place with a great treasure, though."
"Are there cattle there?" Aahz asked.
"More than you could ever imagine," Glenda said.
"So our next adventure," I said, smiling at Glenda, "is finding a
single cow in a proverbial haystack of cows."
A puzzled frown came over her face, telling me clearly she had no idea
what I had just said, and since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I
didn't want to try to explain a haystack of them to her.
"What our young friend there was trying to say," Tanda added, "is that
if there are a lot of cows, how are we going to find the one that gives
golden milk?"
Glenda shrugged. "I have no idea. No one has ever gotten this far with
this map before. It would have never occurred to me that the map led to
Kowtow."
Aahz wasn't adding anything, so I figured it was safe to say what I was
thinking.
"Wouldn't a cow that gave golden milk live in a golden palace?"
Again they just all three stared at me.
"More than likely," Tanda said, nodding slowly.
Silence again filled the small cabin. At that point I figured it was
better to just eat more bread and leave the thinking up to them.
After an hour of planning and talking, at Aahz's suggestion, Glenda
dimension-hopped us to Kowtow, to a location isolated enough that we
wouldn't be seen by anyone. He figured that way we would have time for me to
get us in disguises so that we looked like the local residents.
Before we hopped, Aahz made real sure that either Glenda or Tanda could
hop back to this cabin. And he had Glenda help him set his D-Hopper so he
could as well. It seemed I was the only one who didn't have an emergency
getaway. I planned on making sure I was always close to one of them.
Preferably Glenda.
After the hop, we ended up standing near a large rock cliff face. The
air was warm and dry, and the sun was high overhead at the moment.
The area around us looked like desert, but the ground sloped away from
us down to a lush, green valley. A road came over the hill beside the cliff,
wound past where we were, and down the hill to what looked to be a small
town built out of wood. From what I could tell there was no building over
two stories tall. The buildings seemed to be centered around the main
street.
"That town is called Evade," Glenda said. "Mostly cowboys and bars."
"Cowboys?" I asked. Since I had no idea what a cow looked like, I
couldn't imagine what a boy cow would be, or why they would build a town.
"Cowboys are men who take care of the cows," Glenda said. "For some
reason they're called that in just about every dimension there are cows or
cattle."
I wanted to ask her what a woman who took care of cows was called.
"In this dimension," Glenda said, "the cowboys are a strange bunch, let
me tell you."
Aahz stood, staring at the town in the valley below them.
"In what way?"
Glenda shrugged. "They seem to treat the cattle almost like they were
sacred. They never hurt a cow, they never push a cow too hard, and they
always talk nice to the cattle. And they protect them against anything."
"Now that is weird," Tanda said.
"Why?" I asked.
Aahz looked at me with one of his looks that said I was asking too many
questions. I knew that look well, since I saw it two or three times a day.
"Because, in most dimensions, cows are nothing but food. Here, killing
a cow is a hanging offense."
"So what do these cowboys look like?" I asked. For once, courtesy of my
earlier adventures, I knew what a hanging offense was. In fact, I knew about
it intimately enough to not want to dwell on the memory.
"Actually, in this dimension, they look a lot like the three of us."
Glenda laughed. She glanced at Aahz. "We're going to have to do something
about you, though, big boy. They don't know about demons here, let alone
Pervects."
Aahz said nothing. I think he was just glad she didn't call him a
Pervert, as so many did.
Suddenly, over the hill behind us, along the road, there was the sound
of something coming. Glenda had us move back behind some rocks at the base
of the cliff and watch. I made sure I had a pretty good view of the road so
that I could disguise us all in the right clothes.
A minute later, two men appeared at the top of the rise. They were on
horses and were headed slowly down the hill toward the town below. They both
were dressed pretty much the same. They had on plaid shirts, jeans-like
pants, high boots, and wide belts. Their skin was tan from a long time in
the sun, and they wore wide-brimmed brown hats on their heads. One was a
little older than the other and both had short hair and mustaches. They rode
side-by-side in silence. After they got a distance down the hill, Tanda
turned to me. "Get what they look like?"
"Easy," I said.
Pulling in the energy I needed, I changed all of us into our local
disguises. I gave us all black hats, and basically similar plaid shirts.
Since I couldn't see beyond the clothes what my magik did when I disguised
someone, I glanced at Glenda. "How do we look?"
"Perfect," she said. "Even Aahz's tan is red instead of green."
"Are we going to need horses?" I asked. "I can't do them."
"We might," Glenda said, looking frustrated. "Especially if the golden
cow isn't close by. We might have to do some traveling, and, from what I
remember, horses are the only means of travel here."
"Money?" Aahz asked. "We're going to need money as well."
"I don't think so," Glenda said. "This place doesn't use money."
I thought Aahz was going to have a heart attack. It was like telling
him the sun would never come up again.
"So what do they use to trade and buy things with?" Tanda asked, also
shocked at the very idea.
"Work," Glenda said. "Work is their capital."
Now I was just as lost as Aahz and Tanda looked.
Glenda went on. "You work for someone when you want something from
them. They keep everything on IOU's. So if you want a drink or some food,
you sign an IOU and then later you have to work off the debt."
"This is a strange place."
Glenda agreed and we started off down the hill, four strangers walking
into a town full of cowboys. I just hope my disguises worked. Just in case,
I stayed real close to Glenda. Not that that was a hardship or anything.
The town of Evade was active and primitive. The only street was
appropriately enough called Main Street. It was dirt and hardened mud and
very rough. It split two rows of wooden buildings with covered wooden
sidewalks in front of them. Outside the main street were houses scattered
through the farmlands, tucked into groves of strange-looking trees.
Music and laughter were coming from a number of the doors along Main
Street. Bright-colored signs were over some of the doors, with names like
Battlefield, Wild Horse, and Audry's. I had no idea what any of those names
meant.
Horse-drawn wagons and single horses were tied up on rails along the
wooden sidewalks, and the entire town smelled like horse droppings, of which
there were some pretty good-sized piles spaced along the road.
A man with a white hat and a big shovel was slowly picking up fresh
horse leavings and tossing them onto the piles. I wanted to ask him what
debt he was trying to pay off, or what he was trying to buy, because
whatever it was, the price was too high.
When we reached the main area of town we stepped up on the sidewalk on
the left side and into the shade. Suddenly I realized just how hot our walk
from the cliff had been, and how lucky it was these people wore hats. The
sun hadn't seemed that hot at first, after coming from Vortex #6, but now
that we were in the shade, I realized how bad it was.
We strolled along the wooden sidewalk, trying to look as if we
belonged. Of course, in a town that couldn't have more than a few hundred
full-time residents, four newcomers stood out like a bad blister in new
shoes.
"Howdy," the first man we passed said to us. He tipped his hat and just
kept right on moving.
By the time I tipped my hat back, he was past us.
A woman in long skirts and a flower-patterned blouse walked past us a
few moments later.
"Howdy," she said.
I tipped my hat, as did Aahz.
She smiled at us, showing some pretty strange-looking teeth.
After she was past us I glanced down at my neck to make sure the
Translator Pendant that Tanda had given me was still there. It was, but it
couldn't be working, because I had no idea what "howdy" meant.
I glanced at Tanda who just shrugged.
About a quarter of the way up the street into the town we stopped and
leaned against a wooden wall and tried to look as if we were relaxed. No one
was bothering us, or even paying us much attention. Across the street,