Myth-Fortunes

Chapter 12

But when our waiting Camel brought us back to Phase One, instead of looking up, we found that things had actually gone down.

We pushed through a frantic crowd of workers clustered around the northeast corner of the pyramid. Everyone was shouting. I looked where they were pointing.

To my horror, the house-sized corner stone had tilted downward. Part of its outer corner was buried in the sand and sinking fast. The whole structure looked threatened. The slabs above the tilted one were at risk of slipping or cracking. Ghord workers in loincloths had thrown themselves against the massive block. Others had dashed to their shrines to invoke the assistance of their ancestors.

Countless Scarabs dug away at the foundation to get at the lower edge. A rooster-tail of sand flew under their feet. As soon as it was visible, they swarmed under it, dragging ropes and harnesses.

"Heave!" the beetles shrilled in their tiny voices. "Heave!"

The block stopped tipping. I held my breath as the mass of workers surged together, pushing with all their strength.

More Scarabs swelled the ranks, but they couldn't bring it back to level.

"No!" Beltasar shrilled, audible over all the others. She hovered in mid-air, pointing her tiny hands to direct her workforce. "Reinforce the corner! Division One, down to the superstructure! Division Two, scaffolding!"

"Hup one! Hup two!" The beetles formed themselves into wedges, driving the stone upward, a fingernail's breadth at a time.

"Pray harder!" shouted the Ghords. "The Ancients will raise the stone!"

We found Samwise in the middle of a gaggle of supervisors. The Imp spread out a rolled papyrus. All the section bosses argued with one another over who or what was to blame.

"What can we do to help?" Aahz asked.

"Nothing, my friends, nothing," Samwise said, waving us away. "We have this under control."

"Doesn't look like it to me," Aahz commented.

"I know it doesn't look like it," Samwise said, "but we are handling the situation correctly. First we confer. Then we act. Now, will you kindly leave us alone? This delay is putting us hours behind!"

Fortunately, the Scarabs weren't paying attention to the Ghords, Imps, and other two-legged beings. They had enlisted other help. A flying wedge of beetles carried harnesses out to the sands where Camels waited. They threw collars around the Sheep of the Desert and fastened them.

"All hands on deck," Beltasar shrilled. "Division Three, we need to get elevators underneath it at once, before it all tumbles down on us! Ready? Heave!"

The Camels swam away from the pyramid, pulling as hard as they could. Slowly, the stone began to lift. Several Scarabs, standing on their front feet, rolled six-pointed metal spikes toward the opening gap with their hind legs. Just as they were about to insert them between the tilted stone and the foundation the big stone dropped. The building jacks went flying.

I heard a loud twang. The Camels were yanked bodily right out of the quicksands by the weight of the building and dragged along the pier. They came to a halt, lying on their sides, looking dazed. Shaking themselves, they rose on four paddle-like feet.

"Camels got legs," Aahz said, enlightened.

A couple of them heard him and exchanged shocked expressions.

"Now we'll have to kill him," the first Camel said. "Not now," the second one whispered. "Everyone is watching."

"No, no, no!" Beltasar screeched, zipping around in frustration. "Try again! Everyone back into position."

The Ghords, Scarabs, and Camels all made their way back to their starting points. The beetles dug down

Aahz and I hurried over to the hovering supervisor.

"You're the only one doing anything practical," Aahz said. "What can we do to help?"

"Nothing!" Beltasar shrilled at once. "Perverts are in the way. We can handle it! Is everyone ready?"

Aahz's protest of "It's Per-vect!" was drowned out by the voices of thousands of Scarabs. "Ready!"

The Camels waded back into the sand, and their mysterious legs disappeared beneath the surface. They braced the harnesses on their chests and looked back over their shoulders for the word. The Scarabs rolled the jacks back into place. More beetles forced their way under the now perilously leaning slab

"Oh, for Phoenix's sake," Aahz said, angrily. "A blind bat could tell they're making it worse!"

"What should they be doing?" I asked.

"Bracing the foundation," Aahz said. "They have the right idea, but they're doing it wrong."

Aahz's assessment was all too accurate, as the heavy stone creaked against its restraints and continued to slip.

"Pray harder!" the Ghord supervisor shouted at his staff.

"Are you idiots just going to stand there and let the whole thing come down?" Aahz bellowed at Samwise. "You'll be paying me to consult on nothing if you don't shore up the underpinnings before you relay the slabs."

"I say we consult on whether the corner slab should be replaced entirely," the chief Ghord scribe said, frowning and stroking his chin. "Clearly it doesn't wish to be there."

"But that is where the customer paid for it to be," Samwise moaned. "Why does everything have to happen to me? What do you think we should do, Aahz?"

A loud creak made everyone look up.

"It's going to go," I said. I ran to Beltasar. "I'll do anything to help," I offered. "I'm a competent magician. I have plenty of experience. I'll follow your instructions to the letter,"

The huge slabs groaned. I was afraid they would crack at any moment. I could tell that the Scarab was vacillating between breaking the rules and letting the project in which they took so much pride be damaged.

"Let me help!" I said.

"Klahds are more useless than Perverts! You will only get in the way."

Ghord workers wailed as the corner slab above the tilting stone started making grinding noises. I offered desperately, "I'll sign a waiver. You can blame it all on me. You can even fine me if you want for interfering."

That got her attention. She slewed her big turquoise eyes toward me.

"All right! Can you lift the edge of the stone up so we can get a jack underneath? "I'll do my best," I said.

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I pictured the thin yellow line of magik twisting underneath our feet

and let the force line flow into me until my hands were almost stinging with the power. I pictured my hand under the edge of the stone, lifting it gently.

It wouldn't move. I opened my eyes. The slab was just where it was. The Ghords who had expected their burden to be lifted off their shoulders looked disappointed. Beltasar was furious. She butted me in the chest.

"Ow!" I protested.

"Useless! I told you Klahds are useless!"

"Give him a chance," Aahz roared. "C'mon, kid, pick it up!"

I absorbed some more power from the yellow line. I was used to using magik to raise myself and possibly a friend or two, but this stone weighed more alone than the whole staff of M.Y.T.H., Inc., put together and then some. I felt myself sweating. Stone grated on stone. The noise set my teeth on edge.

"Go away, go away, Klahd!" Beltasar screeched. "You are not helping!"

I opened my eyes. Aahz was at my shoulder, along with the entire management staff. They were wringing their hands. "What'll I do, Aahz? I can't lift the stone."

"Don't pull," Aahz advised, calmly. "Push. Picture yourself pushing up from the bedrock under the stone. I'll let you know when you get it level. C'mon, kid. You can do it."

The yellow force line wasn't strong enough. The next nearest line was the surging black line. I felt nervous about dipping into it. Compared with the thinner ones nearby, it was a raging bull instead of a friendly dog. But I didn't have a choice. I needed power, a lot of power. I reached out to it.

Wham!

I often wondered what it felt like to be struck by lightning. Some races reveled in it, like my buddy Gus the Gargoyle, who would linger outside during the most terrifying thunderstorms hoping to be electrified by those blinding strikes of power that would fry a Klahd to a cinder. That's what I imagined as the force from the black line surged in through my fingertips and burned its way along my body. I tried turning off the flow, but it was stronger than I was.

Power roared into me, overspilling my batteries and filling every inch of my body. I felt as if I had drawn in the entire force line and become part of it. I had never used a more powerful source in all my experience. That explained why even the humblest Ghord used magik readily. It was more plentiful than food or water in this dimension. I hoped that I'd worked with enough force lines in my time to handle it. I directed the flow downward, letting it carry my consciousness with it.

My senses felt for the bedrock. It wasn't where I expected it, directly underneath the foot of the pyramid. Instead, the gigantic structure stood on a kind of aggregate, like compacted sand, over twenty feet thick. This pad of sand had broken off at the edge, crumbling more every time the stones above it shifted. I had to reach down farther than I dreamed until my mental hand touched something truly solid. The magik told me this was indeed the bedrock. Upon it I built a pillar of magik. I filled it in with more and more power from the force line, as though it was the upward surge of a fountain. It reached the bottom of the tipping stone and pressed against it. I felt it move. Yes! I heard voices around me exclaiming. And cheering. And gasping.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Uh, kid, that's too much."

I opened my eyes and looked at the pyramid. Or, rather, where the pyramid had lain. There was nothing ahead of me except... a big square shadow.

I raised my eyes. I gawked.

The whole pyramid hung about thirty feet in the air.

"Wha-?" I choked out. "Uh, how . . . ?"

"Perhaps," Beltasar said, a lot more respectfully than she had sounded before, "you can hold it there for just a little bit."

"Careful!" Samwise shouted. He ran to my side. "Oh, careful, Skeeve the Magnificent. I had no idea that you lived up to all that hype going around the Bazaar. I thought you were merely paying for the publicity. No one ever told me! You are so much more than I expected, even more than Aahz's reputation. Be careful! Don't let the carvings get scratched!"

"Don't pester the kid when he's working," Aahz said, dragging him back. He looked disgusted.

My eyes refused to believe what I had actually accomplished, but there it was. I had to grin. All those years of straining to pick up tiny objects, all the times that I had nearly dropped people for lack of confidence, and I was juggling a whole building—well, the first three tiers of one.

At my thought, the stones started to wiggle. Beltasar's people let out a shrill wail of concern. Samwise wrung his hands.

No, don't juggle! I told my subconscious, hastily thinking of stillness and calm. That was better. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. A crowd began to gather around me, staring up at the pyramid in the sky.

"Do you think we should leave it there?" asked one of the Ghord supervisors, a male with the head of a snake. "It's very impressive."

"The underside would need more decoration," said the chief scribe, a woman like a quail with three feathers growing out of the top of her head. "We would have to get instructions from the property owners on what to put on the bottom."

"That will change the terms of their contracts," Samwise said. He plucked the Pyxie from his pocket and whispered instructions to it. The Pyxie dove back in. I heard faint rustling sounds.

It wasn't easy, holding the pyramid aloft. No one seemed in a hurry to get anything done. Consultation went on endlessly, delaying Beltasar and her workers from the repairs. Aahz kept telling them what would go wrong whatever choices they made. My shoulders started to shake. No matter how much power was available, it was still going through one mortal Klahd magician—me.

"Look, guys," I began.

"Hold it, kid," Aahz said, raising a hand. "Samwise, you gotta mix in some larger grains into the mix. The little stuff's just eroding. It'll blow away during the next sandstorm."

"Our climate spells prevent sandstorms in this locale," a female Ghord magician informed him with some asperity. "Perhaps it has been too long since you studied advanced weather magik?"

"Listen, sister," Aahz said, dangerously, "I've supervised bigger projects than this, in dimensions where

the primary currency wasn't scorpion tails and beer. You need physical matter to supplement the magik. Any idiot who lives in a structure more complicated than a blanket flung over a stick could figure that out."

"That is enough," the chief scribe said. "My people will not work with this savage. He does not appreciate our culture."

"Of wasting time?" Aahz asked. "Pal, every office in every dimension has the same culture as yours. The heat death of the universe is gonna be due to meetings, not inertia."

Now my arms were starting to shake, too.

"Aahz!" I yelled.

Aahz snapped out of lecture mode. "That's just what I mean," he said. "You get a top-flight magician volunteering his services, and you waste his time! That's going on our billable hours, Samwise."

"No, no, that's not in our agreement!"

"Show me where Skeeve signed off on it," Aahz countered.

"Fools!" Beltasar screeched, breaking off from the group. "Division One, prepare to reinforce foundation, now! Division Two, ready to relay sealant layer! Division Three, containment spell!"

"Ready!" they shrilled. Go!

Millions of Scarabs rose into the air and spread out across the huge empty square. They dropped armfuls of what looked like glowing dust. Where it touched, the ground lit up. I saw that not only had the corner nearest me collapsed under the weight of the building, but the foundation was covered with little cracks that gleamed like hot gold wire. The cracks melded and sealed up by themselves. The next swarm of Scarabs dropped black dust. That covered the glow in a layer of darkness. The third group filled the entire gap between the bottom of the pyramid and the ground with a network of tiny fibers like spiderwebs of magik. I felt the bond form. In fact, my fingers felt as if they were sticking together like glue. I had to force my eyelids open again when I blinked.

"Well done! It will never shift now, not if the whole dimension goes away." Beltasar let out one more shriek. "Division Four!"

No one responded.

"Division Four! You, Klahd! That's you!" "Me?" I turned a blank face to her.

Beltasar pointed a tiny fist at me. "Yes, you, Skeeve the Magnificent, lower the pyramid, please. Gently. Gently!"

I lowered my trembling arms very, very slowly. The enormous square base sank with them until it was about my eye level. I caught a glimpse of Samwise's anxious face. He made me nervous. I was afraid I would drop it, ruining the work of hundreds of beings. I closed my eyes and concentrated, putting him out of my mind. If I could raise the pyramid, I could put it down safely.

My hands shook like leaves. I heard a nerve-wracking rumble and everyone moaned. I forced my wrists to go rigid. In my mind's eye, I saw the tiers of stone settle onto the enormous square of sand. I had to open my eyes to make sure. I had landed it without even a thump.

"Way to go, kid!" Aahz shouted.

I grinned.

Beltasar hurtled into my shoulder, the Scarab equivalent of Aahz chucking me with his fist.

"Well done, well done!" she trilled. "We shall vote on making you an honorary Scarab! And," she added generously, "there will be no fine against an unlicensed builder on site! However," she turned to Samwise, "I call for fines for running an unsafe construction zone."

"How about that?" I asked Aahz. I was still marveling at having moved a whole building by myself.

Aahz gave me a wry half-grin. "Remind me to call you if I ever need to change a tire."

"Into what?" I asked. I was proud not to have to ask what a tire was; I had visited Perv and seen the vehicles they drove. But Aahz still looked exasperated.

"Thank you, thank you," Samwise exclaimed, rushing up to pump my hand. I nodded. I had never felt so exhausted in my life. "No wonder they call you Skeeve the Magnificent! I had no idea!"

I felt proud. Me, the same apprentice who had been unable to light a candle for Garkin, or make a feather fly without drenching myself in sweat! I had lifted an entire building and not cracked a single brick. The Scarabs and Ghords kept glancing back at me. Glyphs flew back and forth around the site, and everyone who received one looked at me, too. I rubbed the back of my neck with both hands. Now that the power had abated, I was no longer buzzing. I felt numb.

"Sorry for not seeing what kind of fix you were in at first, kid," Aahz said, giving me a companionable slap on the back. "I don't get into good arguments like that much anymore. I love playing Deveel's advocate against office politics."

I didn't mind Aahz having fun. I hadn't dropped the ball, er, pyramid anyhow.

"What caused the break?"

"I don't know. That shouldn't have happened," Aahz scratched his head thoughtfully. "The local magik looks pretty strong. Lots of force lines. Shouldn't be this full of problems. That foundation ought to have held a dozen buildings this size until the second day of forever. I wonder if Diksen had the same trouble. Do you know if he did?" he asked Samwise.

The Imp turned from his admiring regard of me, to my relief.

"Of course not, Aahz! As far as I know he has had no troubles like mine at all."

Aahz was unimpressed. "You're not a magician. How would you know? He might have had to counterspell someone's interference, or counteract a curse."

Samwise was indignant. "I just know! He would have said something. . . . Well, mumbled something. Diksen doesn't like to talk a lot. . . . Well, not to me."

"I can't see why not," Aahz said dryly. "All right, Skeeve, what do you say? Shall we drop in on the neighbor and get a heads up?"

"Sure," I said. "I want to get a look inside that ball of water."

"Let's go catch a Camel." Aahz headed toward the walkway that led to the pier.

"No!" Samwise sputtered, jumping in front of us. "You don't want to do that. He hates to be bothered!"

"It's no bother," Aahz said, handing him aside firmly. "It's a courtesy call, two master magicians, new in town, stopping in to pay respects to the local head honcho. He's probably wondering why we haven't come around before this. We ought to pick up a box of oranges or a bottle of booze as a gift."

"But why?" Samwise wailed, wringing his hands as he strode to keep up with us. "Why bother Diksen?"

"It's not a bother," Aahz explained, starting to lose his patience. "It's the neighborly thing to do, since we're going to be working around here for a while. I'd like to ask him what his take is on the accidents, see if he's been having trouble he can't explain."

"Oh, no," Samwise exclaimed. "You don't want to do that!"

Aahz studied him. "The more you tell me not to visit Diksen, the more I want to do it. You're starting to make me think you never worked for him at all."

Samwise raised his hands in protest. "Yes, I did! Really, I did. He's a good guy, honest, Aahz. He just hates, I mean, hates interruptions. We parted on good terms. It's just that's one of the reasons I left. His studies were more important than good employee relations." He rubbed his backside, and I guessed a little of how the magician had expressed his displeasure at being bothered in the middle of his studies. That made up our minds to try and talk to him as soon as possible. "I just want to prevent you from making the same mistakes I did."

"You've warned us," Aahz said curtly. "Is there security around the pavilion? Are we going to have to fight our way through cold-seeking lasers or anti-personnel cantrips?"

"Nothing. I once suggested an array of stasis bombs, because he has some really valuable artifacts in that office suite, but he didn't want to bother. There isn't really a need for special security measures around Diksen."

"Why not?" I asked.

"He's a very powerful magician," Samwise said, as if that ought to have been obvious to me. The hero worship of a few moments ago was already relegated to the past. "He can do things to people who piss him off. Personally."

"Urn, what kind of things?" I asked, glancing at Aahz. We were better off being prepared.

"Oh, you know, the usual kinds of catastrophic magik: transformations, banishments . . . death. You know." The Imp squirmed a little.

Aahz and I exchanged a look. I wondered if Samwise had ever really witnessed any of that revenge. Sometimes having the reputation for being the biggest, baddest, toughest, meanest magik-slinger in town was a whole lot better than ever having to prove it.

We left Samwise protesting and called a Camel.