Myth Alliances

"It contains a portion of the enchantment that created the anti-magik field inside the jail on Scamaroni," I explained.

"But what's the use in that?"

"What's the biggest advantage the Pervect Ten have over us?" I asked her.

"That they can mop up the floor with us?"

"That's only if they can reach us," I pointed out.

"But so can any Pervect," Bu

"No," I corrected her, "what makes the Ten unbeatable is their ability to combine their magikal talent into ten times ten, to command forces that make my talent look like a drop of water in an ocean. If I can figure out how to duplicate this spell, we can knock out their power."

"Which still leaves them able to mop up the floor with us," Tananda pointed out. "They don't need their magik to tear us to pieces."

"Not if they can't reach us," I replied. "You see, if they can't use their talent, they can't dimension hop."

"Out of what?"

"Remember their fire protection spell? The one we took for a walk the first day we came to Wuh?"

Tananda made a noise. "Will I ever forget it? I like being around hot stuff, but that goes outside the definition."

"That's the one. We get them inside it, but we turn it inside out so they're trapped. If they can't use magik, they're not going anywhere. Then we have negotiating power."

"And how are we going to get them to wait politely in their chamber while we steal their powers and lock them inside their own security spell?"

I agreed with them. "For that, we're going to rely upon Wuhs power." Since the Wuhses were still under house arrest during all nonbusiness hours the only time they were able to attend a secret meeting was just after dawn and before they had to report for work in their shops and factories. Thirty or forty Wuhses crowded nervously into Montgomery's main room.

"We do not wish to be late, Master Skeeve," Gubbeen reminded me, watching through the window as the sun climbed with distressing rapidity up the eastern edge of the sky.

"Then I won't waste your time," I said. "I'm ready to fulfill the deal we made, but to succeed I am going to need your help."

"Us! W… w… well, you're the one Wensley hired," Ardrahan protested.

I raised an eyebrow. "How badly do you want these Pervects out of here?"

"Er," Gubbeen thought about the question for a moment, "a lot?" The others nodded their heads vigorously. That seemed to be the general consensus. They were willing to agree upon that concept.

"Enough to risk your life?" I inquired, pushing a little harder.

"Uh," Cashel gulped, "well, now that you mention it, not really. It hasn't been so bad with them here now, you know… new things to do, new industry getting started…"

I interrupted him. "Do you want to end up in a bottle like Wensley?"

"No!" the Wuhs protested. He began to back out, but there wasn't room in the crowded i

"Well, here's the good news," I told them. "I need your help, and it won't be fatal or painful at all. How about that?" The Wuhses looked surprised. I had begun with the worst possible scenario, and dropped the level of threat un- til it was under their threshold of panic. I did my best to keep from smiling as they discussed the matter between themselves, but I wasn't going to wait long for their answer. "Well?"

"I believe," Gubbeen began, "that the risk assessment is favorable to our continued comfort. All in favor of assisting Master Skeeve…?"

"Yah. Ya-a-aaah. Yaaaah," the others bleated in agreement.

"Opposed."

They all looked at one another. That was the biggest reason I had not approached each Wuhs privately. In public, they had to hang together, or face peer pressure to accede. I was right.

"Sheep," Tananda muttered.

I rubbed my hands together. "Good. Now, here's what I want you to do. One week from today…"

I now had to undertake the most intense course of study in my life, more difficult even than when I was trying to learn Dragon Poker in a week. Montgomery lent me a small, unused root cellar as my study, since we didn't want an inkling of what I was doing to circulate. The Wuhses were terrified of the Pervects, but they loved to talk among themselves. A secret which they crossed their hearts and hoped to die before telling was open knowledge before the next round of drinks was on the table. I watched it happen over and over again. Therefore, Gubbeen and the others were on a need-to-know basis only, as far as the specific details of our upcoming attack were concerned.

It was easy for me to say I could break down the components of die anti-magik spell and figure out how it worked, but since it did dampen any magikal probe that I threw at it, it made it harder to figure out what made it tick. Zol offered me his assistance. "We can employ statistical analysis and field emissions to discover what sets it off," the Kobold stated, setting up his computer at the far end of the table. We discovered that inside a certain range the stone prevented either his notebook or Bytina from operating in this dimension. Bu

"What puzzles me is what our source told Tananda," Zol reminded me. " 'It makes more of itself.' What can that mean?"

"I don't know." I peered at the rock more closely. I had had plenty of time to study the walls during my incarceration, but I had not seen the bricks reproducing. "Maybe we have to give it something to reproduce with."

We tried soaking the stone in water, wine, oil, and several less savory fluids. We fed it sugar, plant food, even people food, but it continued to sit there. I went back to Klah for the grimoires Garkin had left me. Everything in his books was oriented toward cha

"Maybe it's like yeast," I suggested. We broke it up into little pieces. We mixed it with dirt, then gravel, then chunks of rock. We heated it in fire, cooled it in ice, added practically every ingredient I could think of. I surrounded it in a field of magikal energy, then let it dissipate. Nothing happened until we mixed the wall parts with sand. The chunks of rock started making a hissing noise. A lather began to gather on top. I reached out a finger to touch it, but Zol yanked my hand back.

"Don't touch it!" he cautioned me. The sizzling noise got louder. "I believe it's working!"

"But why sand?" I asked, watching as the foam covered the mass and enveloped it in a seething, heaving, glowing lump. Heat blasted outward from it, singeing our eyebrows. We retreated to the far end of the cellar. "Why would that work when rock like the original piece wouldn't?"

"Because of its relative translucency," Zol explained. "I believe that what you have just witnessed is a textbook example of near-clear fizzin'."

I was too fascinated by the process to ask for a clarification. It was working.

It took a few days to produce a couple of buckets full of the anti-magik material. Tananda provided security on the cellar, making sure that no one came down to see what we were doing, although my yell of "Yee-hah!" probably raised a few eyebrows. I emerged from our laboratory, frizzled hair and all.

"Are we ready?" Bu

"We are," I a