Myth Alliances

ONE

I stared at the candle in the brass holder in the middle of the cluttered table. Light the candle, I thought, concentrating hard. Light it!

Anyone who might have looked in the window would have seen a young, blond man from Klah, if they knew Klah, gazing hard at an unlit candle. Anyone from a few dozen dimensions might have identified that young man as The Great Skeeve, Magician to Kings and King of Magicians. None of them would have guessed that in spite of my reputation, which was that of a wonderworker, diplomat and organizer, as far as magik went, I was still a pretty rank… apprentice.

Apprentice. I sat upright on my bench to rub my back, and gazed at nothing in particular. The term caused all kinds of emotions to well up in me and distract me from my self-assigned task. The first: regret. I just walked away from my entire life to date: money, a position as Court Magician I could have held on to infinitely just on my reputation, a business that was thriving even beyond my ability to cover all the opportunities that came my way. But the thing I most regretted leaving was friends. The best and most important friend I had left behind was the chief reason I had gone. Aahz, denizen of the dimension Perv, had been my mentor, guide, partner, teacher and, yes, friend, since the untimely death of my master, the magician Garkin, who'd just finished this very lesson when he'd been killed by an assassin.

The second was fear. I hadn't mastered the candle trick then, and though I could do it now with ease I hadn't progressed much farther than that in my studies. I'd come back to Klahd to start over again with the basics and work my way up. How long would it take? I had no idea. What if, after all this time, I turned out to have no real magik talent? How would I deal with that? What if I couldn't learn to be the wizard everyone but my partners thought I was?

The third was loneliness, but I suppose that was good, in a way. I left behind friends who'd been my support through thick and thin, who'd given me the confidence to take over situations that I, as an apprentice magician (and would-be thief) never dreamed I'd be controlling, let alone involved in. It was time to strip away that protection and find out who I was. I also needed the solitude to study magik. I couldn't do it in front of a crowd. I needed to be able to fail, and learn from those mistakes without anyone correcting them for me. I needed to know my limitations, hard as that was. I also needed to learn how to deserve the friends I had. There had been times I could look back on now with the shame they deserved when I had been an unimaginable jerk to the people nearest and dearest to me. Being on my own for a while would be good for me.

I wasn't entirely alone in my self-imposed exile. Here, in the inn that we had sort of inherited from a madman named Isstvan and which I now more or less owned, lived myself and three friends. Gleep was my young green dragon. Buttercup, a war unicorn I'd acquired from a retired soldier named Quigley, was Gleep's best friend. Bunny, a drop-dead gorgeous woman, was the niece of my former sort-of-employer (there are a lot of sort-ofs in my life), Don Bruce, Fairy Godfather of the Mob. Bunny, for all her baby-doll looks, had a great brain. She'd been M.Y.T.H. Inc.'s bookkeeper and accountant, and had come with me to be my assistant and connection with the rest of the dimensions.

I turned my attention back to the candle. The spell had become too easy for me. I'd stopped feeling the connection between will and power, the connection I'd fought to attain to master the energies that abounded in earth and sky.

The bell rang. I heard light footsteps on the stone floor, a pause, then more footsteps coming towards me.

"Can you handle this, Skeeve?" Bunny said, poking her head into my room. "It's much more up your alley than mine."

I rose from the table and the unlit candle, and hurried toward the door. A glance through the peephole revealed a couple of eager-faced Klahds with luggage. The inn had been abandoned for years, but I'd cleaned it up enough to make it habitable. Unfortunately, a rumor had gotten around that the hostelry was operating again, not what I had in mind. Normally Bunny would politely send them on their way, but I understood why she wanted me to do it. The eager-faced couple on the doorstep were the kind of tourists who didn't take a subtle hint.

The one magikal talent I had mastered without a doubt was illusion. Immediately I filled the hall with illusory spider webs and broken beams hanging crookedly over the gallery. I cast a disguise spell over myself to make me into an aged hunchback with matted hair crawling with vermin. I blotted Bunny out completely behind the image of a sarcophagus with skeletal hands crossed on the chest under a skull-like face. Then I opened the door.

"Ye-ees?" I croaked.

"Hello!" the man beamed. "Do you have a room for the night?" As he glanced over my humped shoulder at the ruin of the room his face changed. "I mean… er… do you know of a nearby hotel where we could spend the night?"

"Come in, come in," I urged them, beckoning with a gnarled hand. The man backed away. Gleep chose that moment to stick his head around the door. I changed his scaled visage from dragon to large and mangy dog. There was no need to alter his breath, which was bad enough to send maggots packing. The man and woman stepped back another pace.

"We'll just be going," the woman said weakly. The two of them, apologizing hastily, sprang back onto their cart. The man whipped up their horse, who lurched into a trot. I waited until they were out of sight, and had a good laugh.

"Thanks, Gleep," I praised my dragon, patting him on the head. His tongue lolled. I let the disguise drop, restoring his large, round eyes to their normal baby blue. The tongue snapped up and slimed me across the face. I gagged. He romped away a few paces, then thundered back to me, making the floor wobble under his weight. He looked hopeful.

"Skeeve… play?"

"Not now. I'll play with you later," I promised. "I've got to keep working. Why don't you find Buttercup?"

"Gleep!" He thundered off, his passage shaking dust down from the rafters.

I turned away from the door. Bunny emerged from the shadows. The beautiful woman with luxurious red hair had a figure that made it hard for men to remember to look up at her face… which, by the way, was well worth the effort. She resembled a wood nymph appearing suddenly from a copse of trees. I let the illusion fade away, to be replaced by the ordinary walls and furniture.

"Thanks," she sighed. "I just knew when I saw those tourists pulling up they weren't going to take no for an answer from me."

"No problem," I assured her. If we'd been back in the Bazaar at Deva there was not a soul who'd give trouble to the niece of Don Bruce, the Fairy Godfather, or to a member of M.Y.T.H. Inc, for that matter, but Klahds, denizens of my own dimension, were notoriously unable to appreciate subtleties. It took a good scare to send them off.

I was a Klahd, too, but I knew I'd changed in the years I'd associated with my friends, especially Aahz. Looking back, I finally understood what the Pervect meant when he said, "You can't go home again." In the past I'd been puzzled by that, since all I had to do to go home was unlock the door of the tent in the Bazaar, and there I was. This was the home I couldn't come back to. I knew I didn't belong here any longer, but this was the appropriate place to do what I'd come here to do.

"Lunch in ten minutes," Bunny said, heading back toward the kitchen. I snapped back to reality long enough to lift my head and sniff the air. Bunny's cooking was much better than mine. It was an unexpected bonus when I'd asked her to come back to Klah to be my secretary. I had had visions of endless meals of squirrel-rat stew, something I could prepare with my limited culinary skills. Now I still hunted for most of our meat and cut herbs from the wild tangle of weeds that surrounded the inn, but she prepared those simple ingredients with a gourmet's hand. She had numerous unheralded talents, and was always surprising me with the things she knew or was studying. I had a sneaking feeling that she'd be a much better magician than I, though she seemed to have as little interest in the Arts Magikal as she did in going into her own Family's business.

I sighed, glancing back into my study. The candle still sat on the table unlit. Drawing the lines of force that ran through the earth deep under the inn into my body, I formed a hot spark in my mind and sent it to the wick. The candle blazed brightly into life. Too easy, I thought sadly, as I turned toward the kitchen. The lesson no longer taught me anything. I'd have to look elsewhere for inspiration.

"Massha sent a new collar for Gleep," Bunny bubbled, as she dipped a ladle into the simmering pot of soup. "It was a present from her friend, Princess Gloriannamarjolie. It's there on the table." She pointed with the non-dripping side of the spoon. I unwrapped the package. The collar, made of a thick hide I hoped was fireproof, had been dyed a soft baby blue that would match Gleep's eyes. It was studded with cabochon jewels, also light blue, each bigger than the last joint of my thumb. Automatically a part of my brain calculated the value of the gems. If fortune did not go my way, each of them could feed us all for a year. Disgusted at myself, I shook my head, to chase away the thought. I had plenty of money, countless times more than I deserved for the work for which I'd earned it.

Bunny must have noticed that I was in a dark mood. Never a prattler under other circumstances, she began to talk cheerfully about other subjects at random.

"My uncle has a new tailor who's trying to sell him a whole wardrobe. You've never seen so much purple fabric anywhere. I don't think ruffles are him, if you know what I mean…"

The bell rang softly. I rose to my feet. Bunny looked dubious. "You don't suppose they've come back, do you?"

"I hope not," I agreed. I wasn't in the mood for any more interruptions.

Before I reached the hall, the bell had sounded again twice more, but with only a mild jangle, as if the person had pulled the string gingerly. It had to be those tourists again, I thought, my ire rising. I didn't even bother to put on a disguise as I flung wide the door. "We're not open!" I shouted. The man on the doorstep jumped back, flinging his hands up to protect his face. "Go away!"

He gawked at me, then vanished. I blinked. I hadn't used any magik to dispel him. I thought. Puzzled, I closed the door and turned around.

He was standing there looking at me. "Please," he begged. "I need to speak to you."

"No, you don't," I stated. "The inn is closed."

I noted that he had hazel eyes with horizontal slitted pupils, giving him the look of a herd sheep. He tilted his round head, which was topped by a mass of pale curls, adding to the ovine semblance. "But you are Skeeve the Magnificent, aren't you?"

"Yes! I mean, no!" The surprise of being recognized momentarily unsettled me. "I'm not magnificent. I mean, I'm on sabbatical."

"But, we need your help."

"Not mine," I contradicted, firmly, walking toward him. He cowered until he was standing in a corner with me looming over him. "Go away. Scram."

The sheep-man reached into his tunic. I readied a defensive spell, but I didn't need it. He disappeared. Relieved, I started toward my study.

He appeared in front of me again, hands out, beseeching. "Please, Master Skeeve, you must listen to me…"

My hands went up automatically, spreading out a web of protection. The sheep-man rose in mid-air, his body twisting as the strands of power surrounded him. It was a spell Aahz had taught me to tangle up intruders. He looked so miserable and helpless I felt terrible for tying him up in it. I hurried to undo the enchantment, all the while listening to him babble.

"… They'd kill me if they knew I was here, but we can't take it much longer… I heard you were the only one who could, well, convince them that what they're doing is a bad idea… I mean, I think it's a bad idea, but other people might think I'm wrong… I mean, I'm willing to concede that I may be wrong…"

By the time his feet touched the ground I was interested in spite of myself. "Who would kill you?" I asked, curiously.

The sheep-man sputtered, as if embarrassed by his own choice of words. "Did I say that? Well, I mean they'd be unhappy with me. Really unhappy with me. Not that it would be unjustified, my questioning their judgment like this, but…"

Bunny swept in and took the man by the arm. "Why don't you just come and sit down and tell us all about it. Maybe Skeeve can recommend someone to help you with your problem if you talk it out with us. How do you like that idea?"

The sheep-man was almost bleatingly grateful. He turned his large eyes toward her. "Oh, I'd love to! But only if it's all right with you. I mean, I am so sorry to intrude on your privacy. I'd never dream of it normally…"

Once Bunny had settled him in the inglenook with a hot cup of tea, our visitor was somewhat more composed. I sat in the big armchair between him and Bunny in case he seemed inclined to become hysterical again. He remained calm, if a little incoherent, as he outlined his mission.

"My name is Wensley. I represent the government of Pareley in the dimension of Wuh," he began. "Well, it was the government before… but I'm getting ahead of myself. My people have never been very worldly. It's terrible to have to admit it, and I don't want to speak ill of others, but I think, well, I think I think that it comes from our never having needed anything much from outsiders before. Our land is fertile, our animals and crops plentiful, our climate more than clement." "It sounds like a paradise," Bunny put in.

Wensley laughed bitterly. "And well you might put it that way, dear lady. It was a pair of dice and a few other devices of the Deveels that landed us in the situation that led to our present plight—but I'm being far too direct." He looked abashed.

"Not at all," I assured him. "Lots of beings have lost money to the Deveels. Does your problem have something to do with gambling?"

"Not exactly," our visitor waffled, with an uncomfortable wriggle. "If our leaders had in truth been gambling, but I think that perhaps in retrospect the games might have been a tiny bit tilted away from strictly fair?"

"If they were Deveel-run, there's no way they would have been fair at all," Bunny stated firmly. "At least, not to anyone from outside their own dimension. Deveels are in business strictly to earn money—all of it, if they can."

"Well," Wensley hesitated, relieved that someone else had put it more strongly than he seemed inclined to, "it might have been a little like that. Our representatives were persuaded to put our treasury surplus into a game of chance or two. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a can't-miss proposition. If we made a large wager, the returns were to be astronomical. They put the idea up as a referendum to the population…"

"Pareley isn't a kingdom?" I asked.

"Why, no," Wensley replied, surprised. "Well, it was. That didn't seem at all fair as a system of government. When the old king abdicated, his son announced that he didn't feel wise enough to tell his people what to do, so he wanted everyone to have a voice in deciding how to run the country. That way none of the wisest ideas would be lost, you see."

"And no one would have to take the blame for bad decisions?" Bunny concluded wryly.

"I suppose so," Wensley conceded. "Everyone seemed quite happy about it at first. Then it became rather cumber- some, collecting everyone's opinions on every single matter of state. It was only logical that those of us in a large geographical district should pool our opinions and have them presented by one person, although for anyone living close to the border between two zones it was difficult to decide which group one ought to give one's opinions to, and some ended up putting in their suggestions twice…"

"Why did they send you?" I interrupted. Even a small sample of this brand of logic was enough to cross my eyes.

Wensley looked modest. "You see, I'm considered—by some—to be more decisive than most. But I don't know if that's true. It might be. I don't really know."

"Go on," I prodded him.

"Er, yes. Well. Naturally, in retrospect it would have been worthwhile to have checked whether the odds were quite so good as we had thought in the beginning, but no one felt it was right to question the motives of our visitors. They seemed so willing to help us increase our treasury!"

"I bet they did," I smirked. "Did they take all your money?"

"Not all of it," Wensley hastened to assure us. "Well, most. We could still scrape by. I think they felt sorry for us. So they sold us this." From inside his tunic he brought out a D-hopper. It looked functional but in poor condition. "A marvelous device," he said enthusiastically. "Everyone wanted to have a chance to try traveling to other dimensions—imagine, before the Deveels came we never knew there were other dimensions! I think perhaps we would have been better off never knowing, because, well, travel can be so expensive, you know…"

I nodded.

"Your people saw all kinds of new things and went on a buying spree. It happens."

I knew, because when I first went into the Bazaar at Deva I wanted to buy everything I saw, too. It was lucky for me that I didn't have any money to spend. I still ended up with a baby dragon. "That's right," Wensley confirmed. "And the payments we owed for our purchases and the D-hopper turned out to be more than we could handle. To be honest, Wuhses have never been very good at negotiation. Among ourselves we agree all the time."

"So you're on the run from bill collectors?" I asked.

"No, no! We always pay our debts. That wouldn't be fair, to cheat someone out of their hard-earned wages… well…" Wensley paused. "… out of what we owed them. It's not their fault we weren't experienced enough to handle such…"

"Cheats?" Bunny suggested.

Wensley blushed to the roots of his pale hair. "Oh, let's not call them that. But we ran out of money. Almost completely. We needed help."

"I'm not a financial advisor," I stated.

"We don't need a financial advisor," Wensley pleaded, his eyes huge with woe. "We found financial advisors. Now we need help getting rid of them."

Bunny and I looked at one another, then back to our guest. "Why don't you just ask them to leave?"

"We… can't," Wensley quavered, dropping his gaze to the ground. "You just don't tell the Pervect Ten to leave."

I raised my eyebrows. This was starting to sound interesting. "Perfect Ten? They're beautiful women?" I started to picture myself the heroic intercessor between the Wuhses and their lovely foes. They'd be so grateful that I stepped in to clear up a misunderstanding. I didn't need to study all the time, did I?

Wensley made a face. "I suppose they are beautiful… though I have to admit that I might be prejudiced against green scales and yellow eyes, and then there are the big teeth… really off-putting, but I might not understand the aesthetics of…"

My ears pricked up. "Wait a minute—not perfect, Per-vect? You went to Pervects for investment advice?"

"Really, it started out as a consulting contract," Wensley said desperately. "They came highly recommended. Ten of them came in and within no time ripped out the entire organization we had in place. They assessed our debt structure and our earning potential, and steered us onto a new course. Under their guidance we started small businesses, and they sold the goods to other dimensions. Pretty soon they made us open factories and controlled our expenditures. Within a couple of years we were out of debt again. But now they're pretty much in charge of everything. We can't get them to go away."

"Ten… Pervects?" I uttered, faintly. "Ten… Pervect… women?"

"Yes, well. I… then, one of the Wuhses who had braved the wilds of Jahk came back with stories about you and how you bested the Jahks and won their Trophy. We were so impressed! Here was the very person or persons who would free us from the yoke of oppression… well," he stopped, and gulped, "from a relationship that has accomplished rather more than we assumed it would."

"You do need help," I began. "But I'm not the one to do it."

"But, Master Skeeve!" Wensley wailed.

I stood up decisively, and the Wuhs jumped to his feet in reaction.

"Let me take you to a friend of mine. He's an expert on Pervects. I'll explain everything. You won't have to say a thing."

"To Aahz?" Bunny asked, linking her arm with mine.

"ToAahz."