Myth-Gotten Gains

Chapter 6

THE HUGE IRON door slammed shut behind him. The noise echoed in the stone room, battering at my ears. I hung from my manacles, too brought down even to stand up under my own power.

"Slick," Tananda said.

"Shut up," I growled, not bothering to look up. "That should have worked."

"Diplomacy's not an exact art." Tananda was being nice to me. I couldn't stand it. "What's he going to do when he finds out there's no Lord Fistula?"

"There is one," I said, swaying mournfully from my chains. The cockroaches and rats swarmed out of the walls and began to circle our feet. "The trouble we're going to have is when he finds out that the real one is still at court, or was, last time I heard."

"What's the penalty for impersonating a favorite of the local duke?"

"Same as always, death." I stood up and tried the chains again to see if I could dislodge them from the wall. No, the staple had to have been driven in at least a foot. The force required was beyond even that of a Pervect in good shape. I doubted anything short of a Troll could have yanked them free.

"Are you sure?" Tanda gulped.

"Klahds just aren't that imaginative, Tananda," I said. "They like torture and killing. Most of their hobbies revolve around one or the other. Hunting. Cockfighting. Football. Skeeve's a peace freak compared with his fellow demons."

Calypsa looked even more taken aback. "This is my fault. I apologize. If I had not thought out loud, we would not be in this sorry predicament."

"I wouldn't have called it thinking, girly," I said, grumpily. "I don't know how you lived to the age you are without having someone strangle you for blurting out whatever comes into your head. Look at what they did to my clothes. This jacket came from Bond of Savylle. I haven't had shoulders fit this well in thirty years."

"Woe is me," Calypsa said, enlarging upon her theme of self pity. She clasped her hands together and jangled her manacles as she beseeched the sky. "Now I and my champions are locked up in a foul dungeon, and my poor grandfather languishes without a hope of rescue." A bug touched her foot and she recoiled on tiptoe. "Eek!"

"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 grinning at the long list of ailments as Asti reeled them off. I didn't like the cup mentioning the Scarolzzi fever. It was a little condition I'd picked up on Zimwod from a female there who'd been very friendly, and not at all forthcoming about her past…but I digress.

"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, skinny pick out from between the upper and shin of her boot. Triumphantly, she let her leg drop and brandished the shaft of metal at me.

"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, grinning, "you're the best."

"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.

"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, skinny body undulated back and forth, setting a fascinating tempo. Her arms lifted and began to weave backwards and forwards. I found myself taking a 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."