ll of cow food.
     "Okay, Skeeve," Tanda said, "see if you can find that opening."
     I got down on my  stomach and crawled partway under  the  bunk  next to
where Glenda sat. It looked like a stone wall, just like all the rest of the
room. But when I went to  touch the wall, my hand went through as if nothing
was there.
     "A disguised opening," I said.
     I crawled under the bunk and right on  through the  wall, coming out on
the other side. It was pitch black, so I tore a little piece off the  bottom
of my shirt and  used  a magik spell to light it. I was in a tunnel that had
been cut out of stone. It was just tall enough for me to stand, and not much
wider than  my shoulders.  It  clearly hadn't been  used in a  long time, if
ever. There was an  unused torch stuck in a crack in the rocks, so I lit it,
tossing to one side my burning piece of shirt.
     A moment later Aahz  followed, coming through what looked to  be  solid
stone near the floor  of the tunnel.  Then  Glenda,  breathing  hard, pulled
herself into the tunnel and sat with her back against the sidewall, followed
almost instantly by Tanda.
     "This  tunnel is shielded as well,"  Tanda said, looking around as  she
stood. "A shield so old, it might have been here before the castle."
     "I'm impressed," Glenda said,  still  sitting on the  floor. "How'd you
know this was here?"
     I pulled  the  map  out  of  my pouch  and  held  it  up  in  the faint
torchlight. She saw it and nodded. "Of course."
     I opened  the map and Aahz, Tanda, and I stood under the torch studying
it.
     It now showed the tunnel we were in as center, and the location of  the
golden cow  had changed. Now it was in a dining room ten floors  above us. I
didn't believe it for a moment.
     The map showed that we had to follow the tunnel for as far as we could,
then climb up a ladder and through the floor of what was called a morgue.
     "Seems we  don't have much choice," Aahz  said, staring at  the map. He
pointed to the fact that the map didn't show a way back into the room we had
just left.
     I moved over  and touched the  wall we had just crawled through. It was
solid rock. Weird.
     I moved back over to where they were standing under the light.
     "We're going to be chasing the cow until we find an exit," Aahz said.
     "We could always kill the magik in the map one more time," I said.
     "No," Tanda said. "We may end up in a room that we need the map to help
us get out of."
     "She's right," Glenda said. "For all  we know, the map may be the magik
source that created this tunnel. From the looks of how that wall turned back
to stone, it just might be."
     I stared at the paper in my hand, then at  Glenda sitting on the floor.
If she was right, and I had killed the magik in the map again, we might have
ended up trapped in stone. I didn't want to think about that at all.
     "So we follow the magik," Aahz said.
     I folded the map  and put it away in my pouch, then  took the torch out
of  the crack and held  it in front of  me  so that I  could see where I was
going. Then,  doing my brave routine, I started off down a tunnel so old, or
so magical, that it didn't look as if anyone had ever been in here.
     The tunnel sloped upward like a  fairly steep ramp. I moved at a steady
pace, making sure that each step was on solid ground. I didn't trust my eyes
at this point, after crawling through solid rock.
     After about  a hundred paces  I looked back. Tanda was right behind me,
Aahz behind  her, and Glenda was managing to stay up with us, only because I
was moving so slowly. I didn't feel the slightest bit sorry for her. She had
left me  to die, and gotten  herself into the mess she faced last night. And
without  us,  she wouldn't  have this  chance  to  escape. As far  as I  was
concerned, she would either keep up or go out on her own again.
     I went  back to working my way up  the tunnel, testing each step, until
finally I reached  the  end. A rock ladder had been  carved  into the stone,
leading straight up through a very narrow hole.
     As Aahz stopped beside me I pointed up at the hole.
     "Can you squeeze through there?"
     "Do I have a choice?"
     "I suppose not," I said. I handed him the torch. "Let me get up through
the opening so I  can brace my  back  against  the  wall, then  hand me  the
torch."
     Without waiting for another idea from my mentor, I started up. The hole
in the roof of the tunnel was big  enough that my shoulders touched  on both
sides, but not so small that  I  had to  squeeze. Aahz might be able to make
it, but it was going to take some work.
     Once I got through the hole,  the  space got bigger. I stopped and Aahz
handed me the torch, passing it up past me quickly so I wouldn't get burned.
     Above I could  see the ladder climbing at least twenty or so of my body
lengths before reaching what looked to be a wooden trapdoor in a floor.
     "Send Tanda up second,"  I whispered down to Aahz below me. "We need to
make sure no one is in the room above the trap door up here."
     "Good thinking," Tanda said, climbing up under me as I went higher. She
got  up just  under  me, paused, and  then nodded. "No one  up  there at the
moment."
     "Good," I said.
     "You go next," I heard Aahz say to Glenda down in the tunnel.
     "No," Glenda said, her voice firm. "You get stuck in that opening  it's
going to take both Tanda pulling and me shoving to get you through."
     I couldn't hear  what Aahz  said, but a  moment later  his green-scaled
head came through the hole below Tanda.
     "No, both arms ahead of you," Tanda said.
     Aahz backed down a  step, put both his arms over  his head, and climbed
back  up into the  hole.  From  what I could see, his shoulders  were wedged
pretty good in the rock.
     Tanda  braced herself, grabbed  one of his hands, and then said, "Ready
to push, Glenda?"
     "Ready," Glenda said, her voice muffled as  if  she  were a  long  ways
away.
     "Now,"  Tanda  said,  pulling on Aahz's arm as he  pulled  on the  rock
surface with the other.
     With a rip of his shirt, he came through.
     Tanda let go and moved up under me. Aahz had his  shoulders through the
hole, but he wasn't climbing any higher at the moment.
     "Glenda," he said. "Grab a hold of my leg and I'll pull you up."
     "I think I can make it," she said.
     "Just do it and quit arguing with me," Aahz said.
     I stared down at the top of my mentor's head.  The old green-scaled guy
had a soft spot after  all. Always knew  it was  there,  just hadn't seen it
that often.
     As Aahz helped Glenda up  the stone ladder,  Tanda and I went on up  to
the trap door. Since  Aahz hadn't taught me a spell yet  that could sense if
something was on the  other side of  a wall, or a  floor in this case, I was
leaving that up to Tanda.
     "We still in the clear?" I asked.
     "We are," Tanda said.
     I eased up  to the wooden trapdoor and pushed slowly. The  wood scraped
as  it went  up,  then the  door seemed to catch on something.  It took me a
moment to realize it was a rug. From the looks of it, a very old rug.
     I  pushed even harder,  and the rug lifted  and pulled aside  enough so
that I could get  through. I went halfway up through the trapdoor and stood,
torch in the air, lighting the dark room.
     Tanda had been right. From what I  could see, no one was around. Just a
bunch of tables  and a wooden door leading off to the left. But the minute I
stepped up and stood, I  knew that Tanda  and I had both  been wrong. No one
alive was around.
     But the place was filled with dead people. Tables full of them.


        Chapter Twelve

     "There's gotta be a way out of this dungeon."
     G. GYGAX

     Okay,  this  was  another  first  for  me. I  had never  had the  luck,
opportunity,  or bad timing to be in  a room  full of dead people. And these
weren't just any dead people, but people who had clearly had the life sucked
out  of them  through their necks just the night  before. There had to be at
least fifteen or twenty  bodies, all naked, with ugly  marks on their necks,
and eyes staring at the ceiling.
     I stood,  holding the torch in the air, not really  wanting  to move in
any direction until the others were beside  me. Not that I thought  the dead
could do anything  to me, or that I  was superstitious about dead spirits. I
wasn't,  I was sure.  I just  didn't want to make a wrong move  until  I had
someone beside me, or at least that was what I told myself.
     "Looks like you were lucky to survive last night,"  Aahz said to Glenda
as helped her through the trap door and onto her feet.
     "Does seem that  way,  doesn't  it," she said, leaning against a  table
with a dead guy on it.
     The guy looked a  lot like the guy who ran Audry's.  I was  starting to
think that most of the men on this planet looked like him.
     "So much for thinking they didn't kill their food source," Tanda said.
     "I don't  think  most  do,"  Aahz said. "But  this  is the castle,  the
royalty of the planet. I would imagine in here all rules are off."
     "Wonderful,"  I  said. "Now we have  naked killer  vampire cows, one of
which is rumored to give golden milk."
     "Strange place, isn't it?" Aahz said.
     "You could say that, but you just did."
     "We need  to put  that rug back and close the trap," Tanda said.  "Make
sure we cover our tracks as best we can."
     I handed Tanda  the  torch and Aahz and I sat to work. In a few seconds
the room looked like it had before we came up out of the floor.
     "Now where?" Glenda asked.
     I pulled out the map and opened it, holding it up to the light for Aahz
and Tanda  to  see. The morgue, the room we were in,  was now central on the
map.  The  golden cow had moved to the kitchen. And our path out of here was
through  a panel in the back of  the room, not the door. The map  showed the
panel leading to a secret passageway that led for a long ways up through the
castle.
     "You know," I said, pointing at where  the passageway led, "that we are
getting deeper and deeper into the castle and farther from an escape exit."
     "Looks that way, doesn't it?" Aahz said, staring at the map.
     "That doesn't matter and you know it, Aahz," Glenda said. "At least you
could tell your apprentice the truth."
     We  all  turned and looked at where  she was leaning on  a table with a
naked dead guy right behind her.
     "How's that?" Aahz asked, clearly not happy at Glenda's tone.
     "We can't escape  this place without beating this map," she said.  "And
beating the map means capturing the golden cow, who I assume, is  the leader
of this entire dimension. That golden  cow is the only one who is  going  to
let us go, and you know it."
     At that point I was convinced that all the blood loss had gotten to her
mind. The only thing  I wanted to do was find a  way  out and  run or fly as
fast as we could until we were far enough away that we  could hop dimensions
and get away from this insane place.
     "Come on,"  I said, smiling at her. "That would be crazy.  Going  after
the head of  all  the cow vampires  would be suicide. We'd  end  up like all
these fine food products around us. Glenda, it's clear you need to rest."
     No  one  said  anything.  Glenda  just kept staring at me and slowly  I
realized  that  neither Aahz or Tanda  were telling her how  crazy  she  was
either.
     I turned to my mentor, who had a sheepish look on his face.
     "She's right,"  he said. "We wouldn't stand a chance of getting  out of
here, against the kind of magik we are facing, without the help of the map."
     I looked at Tanda.
     She  smiled  at  me.  "They're  right.  I  can  barely,  with  Glenda's
assistance, keep  us  hidden.  The  magik around  here  is  so  powerful, we
wouldn't stand a chance without help from the top. And the map is leading us
to that help."
     At that moment I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was as  dead
as any of the bodies in the room  with us. I just wasn't smart enough yet to
lie down and stop breathing like they had all done.
     With one  more look at  my mentor, then at Glenda, I shrugged and tried
to put on my best death-mask face.
     "Why not?  Let's get moving  before someone comes in and stops  our fun
treasure hunt before it really gets started."
     With one more look at the map, I folded it and put it back in my pouch.
     Then I headed through the tables of  bodies to the back wall. As I went
I wanted  to talk to the bodies,  tell them I'd be right back, tell  them to
wait, to reserve a table for me. But I kept my morbid thoughts to myself.
     There was a large cabinet of medical supplies filling the back wall and
no hidden panel that I could see. From what the map had shown, the panel was
right behind the cabinet.
     I  took hold of  the  back edge  of  the cabinet and pulled  outward. I
expected  it  to  be too heavy  for  me  to  move, but  it  swung easily and
silently, opening up into a passageway behind the panel.
     I glanced back at Tanda and Aahz and Glenda, who were silently watching
me.
     "Give me the torch and follow  me," I said. "We'll check  the map again
when we get a ways inside. And pull this closed behind you."
     Aahz nodded.
     It felt  good to be leading, even  if I wasn't going  in a  direction I
wanted to  go. At least I'd get to  the wrong  place  first,  and more  than
likely be killed first.
     Tanda handed me the torch and I slipped behind the cabinet.
     The  passageway  was as wide  as a small hallway back  in the Possiltum
palace.  It was mostly made of wood,  with some  stone walls along the  way.
Unlike the passageway cut out of the rock below the morgue, this looked like
it had had regular traffic over the years.
     I stayed in the  faint path  in  the dust and  moved ten steps down the
secret passageway, then stopped. Aahz pulled the cabinet closed and motioned
that he was ready. I wondered if we could go back that way if we had to, but
I didn't want Aahz to check, simply for the fear of finding out we couldn't.
     About a hundred  paces  along the secret  passageway branched into two.
One  went  to the  right and  up slightly, while  the  other  went seemingly
straight as far as the light from our torch would show.
     Tanda  was behind me and  I handed her the light, again pulling out the
map.
     It  had  changed  again, showing  the passageway  we  were in  and  the
intersection. The map now wanted us to go right. And up.
     I remembered being in front of this castle and looking up as it towered
over us. I had never seen anything so big before. Now it seemed that if this
map had its way, which Aahz and  Tanda were determined  to give it, we would
end up at the top.
     Maybe up there I'd have a good view when all the life was sucked out of
me.
     The passageway sloped upwards, sometimes stairs, sometimes just a ramp.
It bent to  the right, then in twenty paces to the right again, as  if going
around  a  room. From that point on it just  kept turning  and  twisting and
climbing. After twenty  minutes I was  so turned around and lost, I couldn't
even begin  to tell you what  part of the castle we were in. All  I knew was
that we had gone up a great deal. Finally the corridor ended at the top of a
short flight of stairs.
     I stopped and waited as Tanda caught  up.  Then, ten steps behind  her,
came Aahz helping Glenda.  He sure was being  nice,  for some  reason,  to a
woman who had betrayed  him. That wasn't like Aahz at all. Clearly he needed
her for something, and  I was  never far enough away from Glenda to ask what
it was.
     When they caught up,  Glenda slumped to the  ground and closed her eyes
and I pulled out the map and looked at where it was taking us. It showed the
end of the secret passageway where we  were standing, and a secret door into
a giant ballroom was right in front of me. I glanced at the wall. I couldn't
see where it was, but I assumed that when I needed it, it would be there.
     I went back to  studying the map again. We  had to go into the ballroom
and to the far wall where  there was  another panel into another passageway.
The golden cow treasure  was now marked as being in the throne room a number
of floors above us.
     "Looks like we  get to  go out  in the open for  the first time,"  Aahz
said, studying the map.
     "There's no one out there at the moment," Tanda said.
     "So we need to do it and quickly," I said, folding up the map.
     "Keep  the map handy," Aahz said. "When we get into the  ballroom,  you
need to check it again."
     "Of course,"  I said, nodding  and acting as  if I had known that, even
though I hadn't yet thought of it.
     "Can you make it a little farther, Glenda?" Aahz asked.
     Glenda jerked and pushed herself to her feet, leaning against the wall.
     "I can make it as far as I need to make it."
     Aahz just nodded. "Then let's go."
     Tanda had the torch, so I went to the wall and pushed where  the secret
panel was  supposed to be and surprise,  surprise, the  wall opened. I  slid
through. At  first  I thought there  was  nothing on  the other side of  the
panel, that the map had lied to us. Then I realized that the secret door was
pushing out a massive drape or tapestry of some type.
     I ducked to the right under the cloth and out into the open, with Tanda
and the torch right behind me.
     At  the moment  we  didn't  need  the  light.  The  room  had  massive,
two-story-high windows along one side that let in the natural sunlight.  The
hills in the distance were like old  friends calling to me. I so much wanted
to be  out there  instead of in here. The  sun, from what I could tell,  was
within an hour of setting on the other side of the castle. We needed to pick
up speed if we were going to find the golden cow before it became the golden
vampire.
     "Wow," Tanda said, looking around at the  gold-inlaid panels and golden
ceilings of the massive ballroom.
     The  floor  was  a  highly polished white  stone  with streaks  of gold
running through it. In my wildest imaginings I could have never come up with
a ballroom as fancy or beautiful as this one.
     Aahz and Glenda stopped beside us in the huge room. I bet at least five
hundred people could've danced  in this  room without even bumping into  one
another.
     "I remember being in this room last night," Glenda said softly.
     The thought of her being here with a bunch of naked vampires chewing on
her neck made me shudder.
     "Then let's not wait for the music to start," I said.
     I opened up the map and  looked at it. Again,  just  coming through the
secret door  had caused the map  to  change. Now the way out  of here wasn't
across the room, but  up  on  what looked like a stage near  the back of the
room, directly across from the windows.
     "This way," I said, leading  the  way up a  short staircase and  onto a
massive wooden stage.
     On  the  back  wall was  nothing  but  wood slats.  I  glanced  at  the
still-open map in  my hand,  then moved to what looked to be about the right
area, putting the map back into my pouch as
     I  went. After just a few seconds  of trying, I found the loose boards,
pulled them aside, and we were back out of the light and into what I thought
was another dark passageway.
     Tanda came in behind me, holding the torch up so that we could both see
what was ahead.
     I froze like a statue at what I saw.
     "Well I'll be a grave-digger's monkey," Tanda said.
     Ahead  of us  wasn't another passageway,  but  a massive, low-ceilinged
room. Rows and rows and rows of shelves lined the walls, and down the middle
of the room, side-by-side, packed close  on every inch  of every shelf, were
skulls.
     Cow skulls.
     Thousands and thousands and thousands of white, empty-eyed cow skulls.
     Aahz finished making sure the slats  were back in place behind us, then
turned  and  stopped cold beside  me. I  was glad  to  see  he had the  same
reaction I did. It was always good to know my mentor could be shocked.
     "Someone want to explain  this to me?" Glenda asked, her voice  echoing
through the remains of an entire herd.
     "Maybe it's  a thousand years of former royal family?" Aahz said. "Look
at that one."
     He pointed at one skull hung on the wall, ornately decorated with gems.
     I knew that wasn't exactly right. I could feel it in the energy in this
place. After a moment I turned to Tanda.
     "Can you feel anything odd in here?"
     "Power," she said.
     "An energy focus?" Aahz asked.
     "Sure seems that way," Tanda said. "Or maybe there's something  special
about  these skulls, something in  them that magnifies the magikal  power of
this area and turns it into something different."
     I found myself, to my own amazement, moving forward  toward the closest
shelf of skulls. I reached out and  lightly touched the smooth, cool surface
of one. It did have energy, but not energy like I had been taught by Aahz to
use. There was different energy in  it,  used for  something more  than just
magik.
     "Vampire energy," I said.
     Tanda and  Glenda  came up beside me, each  carefully reaching  out and
touching a skull.
     "He's right," Tanda said. "These skulls seem to take magical energy and
change it, radiating the new energy needed to turn cows into vampires."
     "Are you kidding me?" Aahz asked, standing off to one side.
     "No,  she's not," Glenda said. She waved  her hand at the thousands and
thousands of skulls. "Welcome to the energy source of the vampire rulers  of
this world."
     "And the energy is starting  to get stronger," Tanda said.  "I can feel
it."
     "The sun is going down," I said. "We need to get out of here."
     I opened up the map and looked at it. Through the room, against the far
wall, was the  door we needed to go through. And on  the other  side of that
door was something I hadn't expected us to get so close to this fast.
     The golden cow.
     The  treasure we had come so far to find.  It was one secret door away,
in a room called the Meadow.
     "Take a look at this," I said, spreading the map  out  for  everyone to
see.
     "Now what do we do?"
     Aahz looked at the map and smiled.
     "We go capture  us a  leader  as a hostage and make  sure  we  get  our
freedom."
     "Sounds good to me," Tanda said.
     "Why don't I think it's going to be that easy?" I said.
     "Because it never is." Glenda said.
     Around me  the empty-eyed cow skulls started to hum faintly and vibrate
a little, filling the room with a noise that ate at my very soul.
     "Whatever  we're going  to  do," Tanda said, her  hands  over her ears,
"let's do it fast."
     Again I stuffed the map in my pouch and, with my hands over my ears  as
well, I headed  through the middle of thousands of humming skulls toward the
secret panel in the far wall.
     By the  time  I got there  the sound from the skulls in my  head was so
painful  I didn't  even stop. I just went right on  through  and  out onto a
thick carpet of beautiful grass.
     Aahz,  Tanda, and  Glenda followed  me, with Aahz shutting  the  secret
panel behind us, instantly stopping the painful energy pounding at my  head.
I would have been relieved if I hadn't been so stunned at what faced me.
     There was a guy, sitting in  a lounge chair  on the  other  side of the
field of grass, reading a  newspaper.  If  he had had on a  white apron,  he
would  have looked  almost  exactly like the  guy  who had waited on  us  in
Audry's.
     The setting sun was pouring through one of the room's giant windows and
turning the nearby hills to a wonderful shade of gold and pink and red.
     I  glanced around. Except for the  patch of grass we were standing  on,
the  room looked like a large suite, with  a big  bed, a kitchen against one
wall, and a private bathroom area off to one side.
     The guy was sitting  in what looked like a livingroom area, except that
there was only one chair. He  looked over at us, then shook his  head as  if
not believing what he  was seeing. Then  he looked at us again and jumped to
his feet, an expression of sheer joy and happiness on his face.
     "My wonderful heavens!" he shouted. "You've finally come!"
     "I think he's happy to see us," Tanda whispered.
     The guy came toward us, his face almost breaking from the smile filling
it.
     "Really happy," I whispered back.
     "My friends, my friends, come in," he said, motioning us to come toward
his living area. "Don't be afraid. I'm just so happy you have arrived."
     "You are?" Aahz asked.
     The guy laughed.
     "I  am. I honestly am. I  can't believe after all this time the map has
finally brought someone to rescue me!"


        Chapter Thirteen

     "You can't always get what you want."
     M. JAGGER

     The guy led us off the grass and into what was clearly his home.
     "Sorry for the mess," he said, scampering about picking up a book here,
a notebook there, some dishes which he quickly put in  the sink. We all just
sort of stood in a group watching him. "My name is Harold. I'm sorry I don't
have enough chairs for you all." "
     He looked like a  Harold. The name fit him, and all the other  guys who
looked  a lot like him in all the Audry's-like places we had been in. Harold
pulled  his one kitchen chair away from the small table and set it out, then
indicated  that  one of  us  should take it  and  another  should  take  his
recliner. It was beyond clear that he never got  guests of any kind-at least
the type of guests he wanted to sit down with. I think at that point we were
all so stunned by what he had said, we really weren't reacting well. I  know
I wasn't. I have no real idea what I thought I was going to find when we got
to the "treasure," but a guy waiting to be rescued sure wasn't it. And a guy
who had used the map to bring his rescuers would  have never occurred to me.
Only Glenda took his offer of the recliner and settled into it  with  a deep
sigh. The guy looked at her, worried.
     "You were captured and taken last night, were you not?"
     "I was," she said.
     Harold  looked sincerely  upset.  "I'm  so  sorry. You're so lucky  you
survived it."
     "We saw a room full of people who didn't," Aahz said.
     The  poor guy looked  like he might just faint away right there. He was
wringing his hands, shaking his head, and pacing.
     "It's all my fault, you know. All my fault."
     "Okay,"  Aahz  said,  trying  to calm the guy a little.  "You  want  to
explain to us what's going on?"
     "Actually  start  from  the beginning,"  I  said,  leaning  against the
kitchen counter.
     From where I stood I  could  see  out the  two-story-tall  windows that
flanked one side  of the big room. The valley below  was in complete shadow,
but  the sun still covered the mountains and  streamed in through the window
onto the grass. If this was a prison, it was the nicest jail cell I had seen
in a long time.
     Harold nodded. "I'm sorry, I  am just so shocked you are here, that the
map worked."
     "The beginning," Aahz reminded him.
     "Please?" Tanda  said. "Right now you are looking  at four of the  most
confused people you have ever seen."
     "Okay," Harold said,  his  head  nodding  like  it was on  a spring. He
glanced  at  the window and then  took  a  deep  breath. "I've  only  got  a
half-hour until sunset and this is a long story. I might have to continue it
in the morning."
     "No  problem," Aahz said, clearly doing his green-scaled best  to  calm
the guy. "Just start and we'll go from there."
     Again  Harold did the nodding routine, his  head going up  and down  so
hard I was  sure  he  was going  to  have a neck  ache.  "First off,  you're
standing in what centuries ago used to be called Count Bovine's Castle."
     Okay, I have  to say  that I wasn't the one who started the snickering.
Tanda was, with her  snort.  Then Aahz  started  shaking  his  head, clearly
trying  to contain  himself,  and I just  couldn't  keep  the  laugh  inside
anymore. Thank heavens the guy was so lost in trying to tell us the story he
didn't notice.
     "For as long as  history recorded," Harold said, gathering speed on his
tale, "Bovine's type and our people lived in an uneasy balance. They fed off
of  us; we killed them  when we discovered  them. Everything was in balance.
The legends go that Count Bovine, a very long-lived and smart vampire, found
this area and took it over. He enslaved the people of Donner and built  this
castle."
     Harold waved his arms in both directions to make sure, I guess, that we
knew he meant the castle we were sitting in.
     "Then Count Bovine led his people in a revolt against my people,  using
the power that  came from this  castle. Over a period of  a hundred years he
swept  out over everything and was on  the verge of wiping my  kind from the
face of this planet."
     The  guy  glanced  at  the  window.  The  sun was  on  the tops  of the
mountains. Sunset was close.
     Harold went on. "Of course, during that time Bovine's people also wiped
out almost all other living creatures here as well with their  blood thirsty
ways.  Day in and day  out, they just couldn't  get enough blood to  satisfy
themselves."
     It suddenly dawned on me, that except  for  horses,  we hadn't seen any
other creatures since  we had gotten here. No  dogs or wild animals. Nothing
but cows, horses, and people.
     "Okay,  a quick question," I said.  Harold nodded with  a glance at the
window. "You're saying that Bovine's people were not cows at that point, but
were people like you, just vampires?"
     "Yes,"  Harold said. "In fact,  it is rumored that  vampires originally
came from our species, but that fact is lost in time, if true."
     "It's  that way on  other  dimensions," Aahz said, "so it  is more than
likely it was that way here as well."
     Harold nodded. "I had heard that as well."
     "So what happened?" I asked.
     "Count  Bovine,  who  was not  a  stupid  individual,  understood  that
something had to be changed or his people would wipe out my people, who were
his people's only remaining food source."
     "Makes sense," Tanda said. "You lose your food, you die as well."
     "Exactly," Harold said. "So he struck a deal  with the few remaining of
my people to  take his people away for all but the nights of  the full moon,
if my people would serve his kind during that time as food."
     "And your people agreed?"  Glenda  asked, sounding as stunned  as I was
feeling.
     "I don't think  my  ancestors  had  a choice," Harold said. "Using  the
magik of this area, Count Bovine put a spell on the rest of my people. Then,
using an even more powerful magik spell, he changed his people to cows."
     "So while they  were cows,"  Aahz asked,  "why didn't your people  just
kill them all? Seems like it would have been easy."
     "It would have been," Harold said, "if not  for the magik that keeps us
from doing just that, and keeps us from advancing. The magik allows us to do
nothing  but prepare for the round-up. Month in and month out, for centuries
now,  we  have  done nothing else." Harold just shook his head and  went on.
"Bovine's  people became contented cows, careful  how they treated us during
the full-moon nights  when they regained their  normal form and had parties.
We  became the feed animals, content to do nothing but prepare constantly to
serve our cow masters. It was survival for us, but not much of one."
     Harold glanced once more out the window. The sun was just a minute from
leaving the top of the distant mountaintop. "Quickly,  follow  me," he said,
moving toward the bathroom area of his living quarters.
     "What happens now?" Tanda asked.
     "I become a cow for the night, the vampires roam the castle feeding and
killing like the history says happened, and if you don't hide in a magically
protected area, they will find you."
     I  was right behind him when Harold led us  into his bathroom, opened a
cabinet on the wall, touched a place inside the cabinet, and stepped back as
a wall behind a toilet started moving inwards.
     "This is the most  magically  protected room in all the castle," Harold
said. "Stay in there until I open the door. Under no circumstances come out.
Understand?"
     "We understand," Aahz said.
     I was  the first  one through  the door,  with  Tanda and  Glenda right
behind me. Aahz took a moment longer, talking  about something  with  Harold
for a moment, then he joined us.
     Behind the wall the space  had  been carved out of solid stone that was
streaked in gold. It was  warm  and lit by  the golden glow of the gold from
the  walls.  The  entire  room  was  filled  with old books, scrolls, desks,
chairs,  and more antiques than  I had ever  seen in one place.  We were all
inside when the  guy slid the  wall panel  closed behind us without  another
word.
     "Not even a wave goodnight," Tanda said.
     Glenda moved inside and right to an antique couch against one wall.
     "If  you  don't mind,"  she said, lying down and closing  her eyes.  "I
think I need a nap."
     "Good  idea,"  Aahz  said.   Then  he  looked  at  me  and  held  up  a
gold-threaded  rope that he had  gotten somewhere. He put his  finger to his
mouth to indicate that we should all be  quiet. Then he  moved over and took
an old blanket from another antique.
     "I got a blanket  here to cover  you," Aahz said  to  Glenda. "Keep you
warm for the night."
     "Thanks," Glenda murmured, clearly almost asleep.
     Aahz moved over  to her, motioning for Tanda and me to follow silently.
I  had no idea what  he  wanted  me to do. Aahz  put  the  blanket over her,
wrapping the rope over her as well. Smooth move. She would never know it was
there.
     He pointed that I should pull the end of the rope that had dropped down
against the wall under the couch.
     I got on  my knees and  did just that, then gave the end to him as Aahz
pretended to tuck the blanket around her. With a quick knot he tied the rope
and stepped back.
     Tanda  and I  both stepped  back with him. I  didn't know how  one loop
would hold  someone like Glenda,  or  why she  even  needed  to be held. But
clearly Aahz had known something I hadn't, which was normal.
     Glenda  started  thrashing,  back  and  forth, back  and forth, clearly
trying to get out of the bind, yet the golden  rope never seemed to  tighten
or strain in holding her. Then  her eyes opened as if seeing a terror I sure
didn't want to see.
     "What's happening?" I whispered.
     Aahz motioned  for me  to be  silent  as Glenda's  mouth opened  into a
scream  that never really  came. Her back arched her up  against the blanket
and rope, and she held that pose for a good thirty seconds.
     It was the longest thirty seconds I had experienced. I couldn't take my
eyes off of her and the look of pure terror  on her face.  Then whatever she
was going through  was over. She slumped back, closed her eyes, and began to
snore.
     Aahz motioned that we should move away through the books and old papers
and scrolls.
     "Okay, what just  happened  there?" Tanda asked a half-second  before I
asked the same question.
     "Harold  gave  me the rope to save her  from becoming  a vampire," Aahz
said. "It seems that those left alive last night were the ones they liked."
     "So that was why Glenda's body wasn't in that morgue with  the others,"
I said.
     "Exactly," Aahz said. "They  were trying  to turn  her,  have her  join
them."
     I glanced back at where Glenda was snoring. "So she's not going to be a
vampire now?"
     Aahz shrugged. "We'll keep  the rope on  her until morning just to make
sure."
     "How about for two days?" Tananda asked.
     Aahz laughed and said, "Maybe."
     As  far as I was concerned, we could keep the rope on her for the  next
month. When it came to Glenda, my motto was better safe than sorry.
     Spending the night trapped in the middle of a culture's entire history,
afraid that at any moment I might get taken and  have my blood sucked, is an
experience I would not wish on my worst  enemy. The room we were  trapped in
was huge, with  a high, domed ceiling  and row after row of shelves  full of
old  books  alternating with piles of ancient  furniture.  Unlike  Aahz  and
Tanda,  I was not the scrounge-through-old-things kind of person. Old  stuff
was dusty and usually boring, as far as I was concerned. I thumbed through a
few books and blew the dust off some old scrolls that looked like cookbooks.
I decided I  didn't want to know what they were trying  to tell me about how
to cook, so I wandered over to another aisle, found an antique couch  tucked
off to one side of a pile of furniture, managed to get most of the dust  off
of it, and lay down.
     Tanda and  Aahz  were reading,  whispering to  each  other about  their
finds, clearly excited about  what  they  were  seeing. I  was beyond  being
excited about anything at this point. I was just tired. Yet for some strange
reason (namely vampire cows and fear of getting my blood drained  and ending
up naked on a metal table in a morgue), I  couldn't get  to sleep. Instead I
lay there, finally turning onto my back and staring at the high ceiling.
     Maybe an hour into the attempt at sleep, it finally dawned on me what I
was looking at every  time I opened  my eyes.  On the  smooth, stone ceiling
surface  someone  had  painted something a long, long time ago. Now,  in the
weird light from the glowing walls, and  all  the  dust of the years, it was
faded and almost invisible. But it was still there.
     And  the more I  lay on my back staring at it, the more I realized that
what I was seeing was the most important thing in the room as far as we were
concerned.  It  was a map of the entire castle, only it  wasn't a map of the
current castle, but the layout of Count Bovine's castle.
     The more  I studied  the drawing, the  more I could see  in  the  faint
outlines.  I found  Harold's living area,  which at one point must have been
Bovine's royal suite.
     The room we were now in was shown  as a private library. And  the skull
room  was  there as well, labeled as "royal storage."  But  what was  really
interesting was  the  passageway  that led  from  this  room  down  into the
mountain, away from the Royal Suite, down to  a point that seemed to show an
energy focal point of some sort in a large room. The  energy point was drawn
on the very center of the dome, which I also found interesting.
     After  another hour I  was sure I  had the  important  areas of the map
pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn't
think any vampire cow would know about.
     I stood and  moved over to where Aahz and  Tanda were sitting  at desks
pouring over books. Glenda was  still asleep on her  couch,  the golden rope
tied around her.
     "Have a good nap?" Aahz asked.
     "A productive one," I said.
     He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and  then pointed  at the
book he had open in front of him.
     "Says  here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of
the entire dimension. Before  Count Bovine took it over,  it was a spa  area
where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated
magik forces and become rejuvenated."
     "Powerful stuff," I said.
     "More than anything I've seen before," Aahz said.
     Tanda pointed at what  she had  been reading. "This book says that  the
war between  the vampires and  the  normal folks lasted for over two hundred
years and killed almost  everything.  This  was one of the last books put in
here before the exodus."
     "Exodus?" I asked.
     Aahz  nodded.  "It  seems,  from  what  we can  gather,  that when  the
compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people  left
this area, this castle, putting  a shield up around it to keep everyone  out
of the magik."
     "It  seems  the count  didn't trust his  own people  with this  kind of
power," Tanda said.
     "So what became of this count?" I asked.
     Aahz shrugged. "Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning."
     "Well, before that I've got something to show you."
     I had them follow me back to my couch.
     "I really don't feel like a nap," Aahz said.
     "Just  trust me,"  I said, pointing to  a  pile of furniture ten  paces
away. "Pull that other couch over here."
     He shook his head, but did as I suggested.
     "Now both  of you lie on that couch," I said,  dropping onto  the one I
had been on for hours earlier. "And lie on your backs."
     Neither of them moved, and both looked annoyed. "What, can't  trust  me
for five seconds?" I asked, smiling up at them.
     Aahz  snorted and then lay down, scooting  over enough to give  Tanda a
l