Myth-ion Improbable

"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 trea sure 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 trea sure 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, track ing 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, ru

It was a cool, tingly sensation, but strong, almost too strong, and getting stronger and stronger. I quickly opened up, letting the energy cha

"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 dimen sion 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.

Chapter Five

"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 en­ ergy 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 find­ ing 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 got­ ten this far with this map before. It would have never oc­curred to me that the map led to Kowtow."