Myth Alliances

'I've never seen one that moved before,' Tananda mused, peering at the force field curiously. 'That's really interesting. It dragged over the table but didn't burn anything. These are still intact.' She picked up a pair of gaudy-framed spectacles that lay on the wooden top. 'That's what was in the box the Ten were putting a spell on,' I declared, excitedly. 'It's a clue. We'll take them to Zol. He'll help us figure out what they are.'

'When we get out of here,' Tananda reminded me. 'We can't wait here for them to come back, then ask them pretty please to remove their security spell because we got trapped in it.'

'Then we won't,' I stated, grimly.

'What? What are we supposed to do with a huge cage of burning blue fire?'

'We'll take it with us,' I explained. 'It doesn't hurt inanimate objects. All we have to do is shrink it around us and walk out of here. As soon as they get back and notice it's gone, they'll dispell it and start over. We'll just have to make sure that neither we nor anyone else touches it until then.'

A slow grin curled the side of Tananda's mouth. 'That's so ridiculous it's brilliant,' she nodded. 'I'll help you. We have to hurry.'

I dismissed my invisible pairs of hands inside the room and reconstituted them outside. 'All together now, push!'

The spell became very tall and narrow. I hoped when the top of the now rectangular shape vanished through the ceiling that it wouldn't hit any poor, innocent Wuhs working on an upper floor. Tananda and I held onto one another as we shuffled in the center of the narrow square, walking out through the antechamber, into the hallway, past the defensive spells that Tananda disarmed then rearmed as we passed. To my relief we did not run into any of the Pervect Ten. Before we reached, the main entrance I put the disguise spell back on us, but if any of the Pervects had looked out the window, the tower of magik would attract their attention long before the little figures inside it did. To prevent any Wuhses from approaching us to pass the time of day I created the illusion of a couple of wheelbarrows full of rotting offal.

'That looks so bad I can almost smell it,' Tananda grinned admiringly. 'You really know your illusions, handsome.'

It took us some time to get back to the inn. We stood at the open door, reluctant to go inside lest the spell towering over us kill anyone in the upper storey.

'Zol,' I called, seeing the author sitting at a table chatting quietly to a couple of Wuhses. Bunny peered around the side of the booth and smiled with relief. Gleep, curled on the floor beside them, raised his head from the floor. His eyes widened with joy, and he sprang to his feet.

'Gleep!' he cried, charging over to greet me.

'No, Gleep!' I shouted. 'Stop! Go back! Don't touch the…'

There was a blinding flash of light as he galloped through the spell's boundary. When my sight returned I dropped to my knees beside my poor, fallen pet. I cradled his head in my lap. He had probably been charred to death by the incineration spell. He… he was still green. The mustache under his long nose was still white. And his eyes…

'Gleep!' he exclaimed. His eyes flew open. He tilted his head back so he could lick my face with his long, forked tongue.

His eyes were still blue. He was all right! I hugged him, and he slurped my face again. I gagged. His breath was as stinky as Pervish cooking.

Zol and Bunny hurried over to us with Wensley scurrying nervously behind.

'What has happened?' the author asked.

'Don't come any closer!' I yelled.

'Yes,' Zol pondered, throwing out an arm to prevent Wensley from stepping right into the edge of the spell. 'I see it now. My goodness, where did you find that?'

Now that we were safely around the corner of the inn facing away from the castle, I plunged the bulk of the spell down into the earth. Tananda and I sat down, and I told the others what we had seen. 'And once they let go of the power all of these active spells began working again, including this one. Now we can't get out until the Ten turn it off and take it home.'

'Yes, you can,' Zol agreed, peering at it closely. 'Mistress Tananda was right about the way the spell is constructed. It is a case of polarity. You were inside when it resumed operating, and the Pervect Ten left the room. If you had gone with them, you wouldn't have felt a thing. If you examine the individual tongues of flame that make up the walls, you would see that they have a blunt end and a pointed end. The pointed end is the dangerous one. When you arrived back just now, they were pointing in. This kind of spell works like a door on a two-way hinge. First it swings out, then it swings in.'

'Oh!' I exclaimed, as enlightenment dawned. 'And Gleep swung it in. So the points are facing away from us?'

'That's right! So now all of you can come out.'

Very nervously, Tananda and I rose to our feet. I bent down and looked Gleep in the eye.

'You jump out at the same time we do,' I ordered, sternly.

'Gleep,' he stated blandly, but I noticed his eyebrow ridges rise. He understood me. I wrapped my arm around his neck.

'One, two, THREE!'

We bounded out. Another brilliant flash of light blinded us for a moment. I could feel my hair crackle on my head, but no blaze of fire tried to consume me. When we let go of one another I patted myself down to make sure nothing was burning. Gleep's long neck snaked all around me as he looked to make sure I was all right. Tananda brushed her hair back, and pulled her tunic down so her decolletage returned to its normal buoyancy.

'That's a nasty one,' she remarked. 'I'll have to remember that trick.' We'd barely straightened up when I heard another crackle from behind me. I spun around just in time to see the column of blue light collapse and vanish. The Pervect Ten were calling their safeguard spell home.

'A very sophisticated use of magik,' Zol Icty agreed, leading us back to the table. Montgomery, our host, brought us a tray full of food and beer. I fell on the food as though I'd been starved for weeks. Tananda served herself more daintily, but she filled her plate as high as I did mine. Being terrified and nearly incinerated did help us work up an appetite. 'We are up against very intelligent opponents. You say they had a computer in the room?'

'Yes,' I affirmed, washing down a mouthful of cheese with a swig of beer. 'The little one was reading from an almost infinite scroll. I think it would be the longest scroll in the history of the world, but I couldn't see where it was rolled up.'

'It's in virtual space,' Zol explained, smiling. 'A kind of magik. I could teach you, but that is not the best use of our time now. Can you get me in there?'

We looked at Wensley. He writhed uneasily.

'They're in there all the time except when they eat or sleep or come to supervise us.'

'Tonight is time enough,' Zol assured us. 'I am awake a good deal of the night anyhow.'

'You don't want to go back again?' Wensley squawked, aghast.

'How do you want us to figure out what they're doing?' I demanded. 'Ask them?'

The Wuhs had no answer to that.

Once again we found ourselves sneaking into the great room of the castle. The Wuhses on what anywhere else would have been guard duty carefully looked the other way as we passed, with all the subtlety of a child counting to 100 in a game of Hide and Seek.

Apparently it had not made the Pervect Ten suspicious that their security spell had been stolen that afternoon. The gleaming blue cage was back in place, this time tethered with lines of force to the walls of the castle, preventing it from moving again. That didn't worry me, because now we knew how to pass in and out of it without being killed.

The little flames were pointing inward when we reached the room, a sign that the Ten were not in it. Very carefully I used a tendril of magik to ease open the door wide enough to peer through. As I hoped, the room was dark and silent. I signaled to the others. We tiptoed in.

I had left Gleep at the head of the corridor curled up under a couch set in an alcove. If he saw any Pervects heading towards us he had instructions to cry out. At the sound of 'Gleep!' we were to run into the anteroom and pop back to the inn. He would meet us there as soon as he could get away from them. They'd be unlikely to