Myth-Gotten Gains

"Shut up!" I boomed. "I'm trying to think!"

"But the Margrave will kill us when he discovers your subterfuge! The fate of the family of Calypso is doom! Why are you not frightened?" She kicked away more insects.

"We've been in tighter situations," I said, trying to get back to the fly in the ointment. I mused aloud. "That should have worked. It shouldn't have mattered what I drank from that cup. I felt the power. My powers should have been restored instantly. Why weren't they? What in the nine Netherhells is wrong with that cockamamie cup?"

"Well, perhaps if you had told me what you needed me to cure. I could have told you that it wouldn't work," the Cup said suddenly, in perfect Walt. "Silly Pervert."

"Pervect," I corrected automatically, then did a double-take.

"My apologies. All the people from your dimension I have known were such lowlifes that "Pervert" comes automatically to my lips."

We all gazed at the golden goblet.

"It talks!" Calypsa said, starting forward. The chains jerked her back.

"All of the Golden Hoard can talk," Tananda said. "You know that."

"But it did not say anything before!" Calypsa said.

"I didn't have to defend myself until that Pervert maligned my talents," the Cup said in a ringing contralto female voice. The two rubies facing us were sharp with reproof.

"That's Pervect! I may have swallowed your potion, but I don't have to swallow insults. What if I stomp you into a solid gold floor tile?"

"Nonsense," she said. The engraving around the bottom of the bowl curved upward into a grin. "You can't reach me from there, and we both know it."

"Besides, it was Kelsa who said you would be able to restore his powers," Calypsa said.

"Did she?" the Cup asked. "She sees accurately, but I wouldn't give you dregs for any of her interpretations."

"Fair cup, then what is it that Aahz felt when he drank from you?"

"My name is Asti, you polite child," the Cup said. "I have a lot of talents. I can cure poison. I heal. I nourish—and by the way, I can tell from here you're not getting enough vitamin C. You'll get rickets in those long legs of yours. I create harmony between parties, weddings and peace treaties a specialty. And I brew some dandy hooch. Catch me in a good mood some evening when the moon is shining over my bowl. How'd you lose your powers, Pervect?"

"Joke powder."

"From the Bazaar at Deva?"

"Yeah." I had no wish to go further into my misadventures.

"Ah," Asti said, knowingly. I could imagine her nodding her head, if she had one. "Sorry. Not in my playbook. Ask the Book or the Ring. That's more up their street."

"What DID you do to me? I thought I felt my powers return!"

"Oh, that's just general purpose healing," Asti said. "You have fifty-five bones that have been broken at least once each over the course of your life, including all of your fingers and toes. You had Scarolzzi fever, can't say when, messed up part of your circulatory system. You're lucky it's not contagious any longer. You had lost about 30% of your hearing, normal wear and tear for someone your age. Your liver has been run

over by some pretty bad booze, lots of it. There were a dozen or more other minor conditions I won't bother to name. All that's gone. You've got a clean slate, but I suppose you'll just go back to your bad habits again. I can only cure. I can't make you stay healed."

"I like my bad habits," I said, sulkily.

I glanced sideways at Tanda, who was gri

"Everyone does," Asti said, with a sigh. "I never deny healing to anyone who needs it, but I often regret that my talents are wasted on some people."

"So," I summed up, "I'm perfectly healthy, but I still have no magik."

"That's my diagnosis. You can thank me at your leisure." Asti's mouth settled back into a line of tarnished engraving. I snorted and began to pick at the locks with a talon.

"Then, we are trapped here," Calypsa wailed. "Trapped here until that horrible man chooses to come back and torture us! To death! No food, no water, no comfort! And all this vermin!" She began to drum her toes on the insects milling around us, only scoring on two or three out of every hundred.

"C'mon, cupcake," I chided her. "That's no way to stamp out roaches. You need to do it like this." I brought the flat of my foot down on the nearest cluster of wildlife, smashing it flat. "Put some body English into it." I kicked away a few more rats. One of them took a nip out of my left foot, and I launched the critter into the water barrel. It surfaced, gasping, and slunk over the side toward the hole in the base of the wall.

"But we are prisoners! Prisoners!" Calypsa exclaimed.

"Maybe...not...for long," Tananda panted. I glanced her way, and my jaw dropped. You think you know someone, then,

even after more than a hundred years they can surprise you. She had bent one of her legs up behind her, and was pulling her pointed toe upward toward between her shoulder blades, a feat of elasticity that I didn't think even a Trollop was capable of. With both thumbs she peeled back the tip of her boot. Holding the foot steady with one hand, she pulled a long, ski

"I can't get it out by reaching forward," she explained. "That's how it goes undetected if I'm ever searched."

"Tanda," I said, gri

"That's why they pay me the gold pieces," she said. "Give me a moment. These old locks are stiff."

Tanda bent her head over the chain on her left wrist. I heard rather than saw the noise of the pick scratching away at years of rust and who knew what else caking up the mechanism of the fist-sized locks. I kept my eye on the door. Groans, shrieks and wails for mercy the guards would ignore. The sounds of an attempted escape were more likely to attract their attention. My keen ears, made more keen than I could recall in a lot of years by Asti's charm, were open to the noise of returning footsteps.

While Calypsa and I watched in fascination, Tananda popped the hasp of the first lock. The thick wristlet sagged open with the creaking sigh of a disappointed torturer. She let the chain down very gently so it did no more than jingle against her skirt hem as she started in on the other chain. The tip of her tongue stuck out between her teeth as she probed around in the keyhole. The pick scratched less certainly here. Tananda's forehead creased.

"Would an anti-rust cantrip help?" I asked. It's impossible not to kibbitz when you're watching an expert at work.

She shook her head. "The lock's bespelled," she said. "I'd have to drop the disguise spell to absorb enough power from the force lines."

I glanced at the door. "Do it," I advised. "I don't want Highboy coming back and deciding he wants to get a head start on his torture program."

The fetching form of a female Klahd vanished, and the familiar shape of Tananda in her working clothes emerged.

"Ahhh!" Tananda shook out her hand and held it over the recalcitrant lock. It started quivering, not an uncommon reaction when Tanda gets close.

"What's the problem?"

"This is an old spell," she said. "They don't get wizards around here much, but this one—whew! He knew his torture devices."

"I bet he was fun at parties," I said, keeping my ear open for any interest by the guards. My keen Pervish hearing picked up conversation beyond the door about the latest serving wench and who was likely to get between her plackets first.