Myth-Gotten Gains

"Darn!" Tananda whispered.

The pick jumped out of her fingers. She made a swipe for it, but the point bounced off her fingertips. It tinkled on the floor and rolled, sounding louder than an electric guitar in the silence of the dungeon. On the other side of the door, footsteps hustled in our direction. The door sprang open.

"Hey, fellahs, we were just gettin' lonely," I said. They gasped. Our disguise-free state evidently turned them off.

"Monsters!" one of the guards exclaimed.

"Kill them!" the captain of the guard bellowed.

"Now, come on, fellows," I said, spreading out my hands with a friendly grin on my face. The guards blanched. They leveled their crossbows at us and prepared to fire.

"La di dah! La di dee! La de da daddle daddle dah!" a soft voice began to croon by my right ear. I turned to gawk. How could Calypsa think about singing at a moment like this?

She wasn't just singing. I don't know how she was doing what she was doing, but her long, ski

helpless step in her direction. Her long neck curved bewitch-ingly from side to side. I felt transfixed but divinely happy, like a fly caught in a jar of grape jelly. How come I hadn't noticed before how large and lustrous her eyes were? The fans of thick, black-and-white fluffy plumes spread between her arms and the sides of her body concealed and revealed, leaving me gasping for another glimpse of her half-smile. The guards were similarly agog. Their crossbows drooped toward the ground like.. .crossbows drooping. In no time at all they had forgotten that we were demons, dangerous prisoners of their employer. All they could see was Calypsa.

She lifted her chin and nodded in the direction of the fallen lock pick. I snapped out of the half-trance, but not as fast as Tananda, who flicked a finger at the length of steel. It leaped up into her hand, summoned by a burst of 'come-hither' magik. I forced my eyes toward her. The guards never turned to look. Tanda scraped at the wards of her lock. With a screech, it popped open. She dumped it on the floor. She bent and unfastened the chains around her feet, then sprang over to free me. The guards weren't about to interrupt her. They couldn't take their eyes off Calypsa. I had to work hard to avoid falling into the spell again.

Tananda undulated toward the Walt, steering the pick through the air with a tickle of magik. It nosed into the keyholes of the locks on Calypsa's wrists and ankles, until the chains fell to the floor with a THUNK! The slender girl whirled in place, her hands flashing. Tananda and I hurried to stuff our possessions back into our pockets and other hiding places, and to gather up the Cup and the wrapped crystal ball.

"Talented girl," Asti stated, one of her jeweled eyes watching her critically over my shoulder.

"Shut up," I growled, shoving my purse back into my pocket. Good thing I never carried a credit card. In an effort to stave off fraud, the modern ones issued by the Gnomes of Zoorik bore the owner's picture. If Highboy'd had any brains,

he would have realized the coins were just as much a giveaway that neither I nor my companions were from around there.

"How are you going to extract her from here? If she stops dancing, they'll snap out of it."

"No problem," I said. I edged around behind the fascinated chief guard and lifted the heavy ring of keys out of his belt. He never budged. "Hey, doll," I called to Calypsa. "Let's play peek-a-boo with your new admirers."

She looked a question at me, so I jerked my head toward the heavy dungeon door. She nodded, and worked the gesture into a sexy spin. The girl was brighter than I had given her credit for. Tananda might be right about the promise she showed. Too bad about her impulse control problems, but most of that would probably work out over time. If we all lived that long.

Tananda had already caught on to my idea. With the lightness of someone who was accustomed to moving in and out of a location undetected, she had edged past the guards and backed up the stairs. In one hand she had a dagger by the point; in the other she cradled the muffled form of Kelsa. I didn't need any other armament than I had been furnished by nature, but I was hampered with Asti, who, being made of solid gold, was a heck of a lot heavier she looked, and squealed whenever she was tipped sideways. How no one in that pathetic little town had failed to cotton on to the metal, let alone the quality of her workmanship, made me despair of Klahds ever entering seriously into the realm of advanced commerce. I stuffed her into one of our carry sacks and ignored her complaints. Too bad we didn't have a second silence scarf like the one around Kelsa.

As Calypsa undulated around her admirers, I edged out of the dungeon. Except for Tananda, I couldn't hear anyone else breathing within about twenty yards. I recalled that the door through which we had been hauled wasn't far from the dungeon—all the easier to make deliveries. I could smell fresh air, or what passed for it around here, redolent of cow manure and kitchen garbage.

The Walt wriggled her way up each of the stone stairs. The guards followed her, tongues hanging out. She stopped to pirouette on the top step, with a cute little boom-sha movement that would have been worth its weight in gold pieces at any of the quality strip clubs on Perv, like Gawker's or Irv's Red Hotsies, and gave them a little toss of her head as if to say "here's one for the boys in the back row." When she got in range, I snaked my arm in, yanked her out, and slammed the door.

It took a moment for the spell to break. By the time the guards realized they'd been tricked, I'd locked the big door on them. Tananda beckoned over her shoulder and fled into the dark hallway. I hauled Calypsa along behind me.

"But I was not finished!" she protested. The guards started pounding on the door and yelling, from frustration or anger, I couldn't tell.

"We don't hang around for curtain calls," I snarled, hustling her toward the disappearing green figure of the Trollop. "What was that?"

"The Dance of Fascination," Calypsa said, tossing her head proudly. "My great-great aunt, the dancer Rumba, was the first to perform it."

Chapter 7

I WISHED WE could have used the D-hopper and bamfed out without all the fancy footwork, but we still had to retrieve Ersatz. I was regretting leaving him behind in the woods, but it was better to have to backtrack and get him than to have to search the castle for whatever armory in which Highboy would have stashed an obviously valuable sword after he confiscated it from us. I didn't know whether Calypsa's hips would have held out for that long.

We paused at the door while Tananda whipped us up a new disguise spell, then plunged out of the castle, disguised as Highboy and two generic soldiers. The guards on duty outside threw me a grand salute, which I returned, looking harried. Not a bad imitation, if I do say so myself.

Ersatz spotted us long before we could see him. He was hidden at just above eye level in a hollow branch of a big tree overhanging the forest path.

"Well, friend?" the sardonic voice asked. "Is all well? Are your powers restored to you?"

"Don't ask," I grunted, as I yanked him out of his post.

"Have you the old beaker with you? She has not yet poisoned you, at any rate."

"I would know that rusty garden gate of a voice across the universe," Asti shrilled. "Let me out of this rag bag at once!"

I looked around to make sure no one was coming, then I brought Asti out of my rucksack. The jeweled eyes and the reflected ones regarded each other with expressions of mutual dislike.