f the
library in there."
     "No,  it's  not," Harold  said, shaking his head. "This is a picture of
the castle during Count Bovine's first days."
     "Go  look for yourself,"  Tanda said. "It took me a while  to see it as
well. Skeeve spotted it first."
     Harold stared at us as if we  had all gone nuts. I didn't blame him. If
I had been living in a place for as many years as he had been  trapped here,
and a stranger had pointed something this  important out, I wouldn't believe
him either.
     He huffed and stormed off toward the library.
     "Okay," I  said, "we  know where  Count Bovine  tapped into the  energy
stream. How do we untap it?"
     "We have to get down there," Aahz said. "Then we have to divert  it for
just an instant to break the link. That's all it will take."
     I looked at the massive flow of energy  rushing up out of the ground. I
could tap into small energy streams, but I had no idea how a person would go
about blocking something this large. And I wasn't sure I wanted to ask.
     Harold came back in, looking stunned and embarrassed.
     "If  we  manage  to block  this," Tanda said, "what do  you think  will
happen?"
     Aahz  looked at  the  map. "Probably every spell  ever put up by any of
Count Bovine's people will be broken."
     "My people will have their minds and free will back," Harold said.
     "Yeah," I said, "and every vampire will suddenly be around every day of
every month."
     "Half of the  population of vampires will  be dead moments  after  they
turn from  cows," Aahz said. "And all  the others will be without resources,
clothes, shelter, and food, with the sun coming quickly."
     "Do you think my people will remember all the years of having to submit
to the round-up?" Harold asked.
     "I have  no doubt," Aahz said. "You still remember  it before  you were
rescued from here, don't you?"
     Harold nodded. "My people will hunt down and kill most of the remaining
vampires."
     "And you'll be free to leave," I said.
     "If we can break the vampire hold on my  world, I won't want to leave,"
Harold said. "I'll stay here and help my people rebuild."
     I shook my head. It was all fine and good to  plan what people would do
if we succeeded, but I sure didn't see that happening any time soon.
     "So no one has answered the question yet of how we stop that flow."
     I didn't even want to try to bring up the point of getting down to that
spot in the castle.  We were way up at the  top, and that breach in the main
flow was way  down  in a sub-basement,  where I doubted anyone  had been  in
centuries.
     "Gold,"  Glenda  said,  her voice sounding tired and  worn. "Gold would
stop the flow, if you could focus enough of it."
     Aahz  seemed to be off somewhere  inside  his head, thinking. Tanda was
doing the same thing.
     Harold  and I  looked at  each other. Clearly, as apprentice magicians,
neither of us even had a clue what the other three were considering.
     "I think it might be  done," Aahz said, nodding. He  looked  at Glenda.
"Good idea."
     She  said nothing in return. It seemed that as  the closer we got  to a
possible answer, the  more  sullen and reserved  she became.  I was still so
angry at her  for what she did to me that I didn't  care enough to  even ask
what was happening.
     "Okay, to  the next  problem," I said. "How  do we get down  there with
enough gold to stop the energy stream?"
     "We  won't  need  much  gold,"  Tanda said. "Just enough,  with  a good
connection  spell,  to  hook  other nearby  gold  into  the  blockage. Maybe
something gold-plated and flat."
     "A golden shovel?" I asked.
     Tanda nodded. "That would do it, I'm sure."
     Harold moved over toward the front door  of  the suite,  near where the
grass was planted. He tapped a spot on the wall and a closet door opened. He
reached inside and pulled out a golden shovel, just like the ones the palace
guys had. It seemed that, in the palace, no cow droppings could be picked up
with anything but a golden shovel.
     "Okay, we're set for  the  gold  part," Aahz  said. "Tanda,  when we're
ready to try this, can you do  the connection spell to hook enough gold into
the shovel?"
     She nodded. "I've done a number of them over the years to build shields
and walls."
     "So  back to my problem,"  I said.  "How do  we get down there  without
being run over by the mounted posse?"
     Aahz pointed to a spot on the map. At first I couldn't  see what he was
pointing at,  then I saw  it.  The very same tunnel I had been  afraid I was
going to end up down in.
     "Follow where it  leads," Aahz said. "Starting  with the secret opening
back in the library."
     I  did as  he suggested, focusing on the map as it changed, showing  me
the  different  levels of the secret passageway  as it  dropped  through the
mountain  behind the  castle,  curved under everything, and came out in  the
very room where the big energy flow had been taken off for the spell.
     "Looks like there  was a  reason that  tunnel  was  built,"  Aahz said,
smiling at me.
     "Count  Bovine used it to  get to his main  power  source when he lived
here full-time," Harold said.
     "What do you know?"
     "So we're  going  underground," I  said,  reaching  over and taking the
heavy shovel from Harold. "I just hope I don't have to dig my way out."
     "You and me both," Aahz said, staring at the map.
     My mentor had a way of making everything seem so positive that it was a
wonder I could even move most mornings.
     It  took a  little  longer  than  I  had expected  to  find the  hidden
passageway into  the tunnel in  the  old  library. We had  to move  pile  of
furniture, old books,  and  more rolled-up scrolls than I  could  count. The
scrolls were the hardest, since Harold wouldn't let us just kick them aside.
Finally,  we got to the spot  where the passage should be  and faced a stone
wall.
     "I  didn't  think  there was anything back  here," he said.  "After all
these years, I know this room."
     I didn't want to  mention to him that he really didn't, since he hadn't
even noticed the map painted on the ceiling.
     "Oh, it's here all right," Aahz said.
     All  five of us  were standing there  in the  dusty  place.  I had  the
shovel, Tanda had the map.
     "Glenda?" Aahz said.
     She stepped up to him.
     Quicker  than I had seen my mentor move in  a long, long time, Aahz had
the rope out of his pouch, over her head, and tied.
     She  dropped to the ground, sound asleep, before she  could  even get a
complaint out of her mouth. I was stunned.
     "Harold," Aahz said, "pick up her feet and let's move her to a couch."
     Harold looked as stunned as I felt. Tanda seemed to again  know exactly
what was happening. Aahz moved  Glenda to the couch, made  sure the rope was
tied,  then looked at Harold. "No  matter what you do, what  you think, what
happens around you, do not untie her until we get back. Understand?"
     Harold nodded. "But I don't see why."
     "The map," Aahz said.
     Tanda held it up and pointed to a spot on it.
     "Right here,"  she said. "See this tiny thin line coming up out of  the
basement and into this suite?"
     I looked real close. For a moment I thought she was  making it up, then
I saw the blue line. It went  right to a spot in the suite  where  the chair
was, where Glenda had been sitting when I did the map.
     "Glenda's hooked up somehow,"  Aahz  said. "I didn't  see that until we
had already made our plans."
     "You mean they might know we're coming?"
     "Possible," Aahz said.
     "Oh, that's nice," I said. I wondered how many  of  that  posse I could
hit with the golden shovel before they took it away from me.
     "Are you ready?" Aahz asked.
     "You want me to lead?" I asked, still not seeing where we were going to
go.
     "I've got it for the moment," Aahz said. He  picked up the torch we had
brought with us from the first tunnel, held it out and said to me, "A  light
might help."
     I eased some energy out of the stream, just  enough to  start the torch
on fire. Not long ago I had had trouble with that spell as well. And  a year
ago I might have set the entire library on fire trying to light that torch.
     "Follow me," Aahz said, and stepped at the stone wall.
     And right through it.
     "This place could give a guy  a headache," I said, moving at  the stone
wall behind him. I had the shovel slightly in front of me in  case the stone
decided to be stone for me.
     I went right through, just as Aahz had done.
     Tanda came through behind me.
     The tunnel was narrow and carved out of solid rock. Steps led down into
the bowels of the earth. More  steps than I could see in the torchlight. The
place was cold and very dusty. It  was clear that no one had been in here in
a  very, very long  time,  as our footsteps kicked  up a cloud of dust  that
swirled in the flickering light of the torch.
     "Are we shielded?" Aahz asked Tanda.
     "Same  as in the library," Tanda said. "Count  Bovine didn't want  this
tunnel found, that's for sure."
     "That helps us," I said.
     Aahz nodded, made  sure we were both  ready, then, holding the torch up
so  that we could see the steps as well as  he could in the dust, he started
down.
     And we went down for a very, very long time, kicking up thick clouds of
dust with  every step. I could  not imagine how anyone could have carved the
tunnel. I could barely walk the steps, and we were going down. Climbing this
must be next to impossible for anyone not in top shape.
     Finally, after what seemed like a nightmarish  eternity, we reached  an
area of the tunnel that flattened out.
     "Map," Aahz said.
     Tanda moved up and the two of us crowded with Aahz so that we could see
the map in  the torchlight and  swirling dust. It showed that we had reached
the bottom of the tunnel. I glanced around at the rock walls and ceiling. We
were under  thousands  and  thousands  of body-lengths of rock.  I  couldn't
imagine how much weight was pressing down on the ceiling of the tunnel above
us right at that moment.
     The thought sent a shiver through  me, and  a touch of panic.  "Can  we
keep going?" I asked.
     Tanda took the map  and Aahz  smiled at me, his green scales covered in
dust, his eyes yellow holes in  the dirt.  I must have looked  as  bad as he
did, maybe worse. "A little claustrophobia?" he asked.
     "I don't know  about that," I said, not having a clue what the big word
meant. Sometimes Aahz  just  didn't  remember  what  a backward  part  of  a
backward world I came from.
     "Feeling the pressure of all this weight over us?" Tanda asked.
     "Yeah,"  I said, "more than I want to think  about right now, thank you
very much."
     Aahz laughed. "We don't have that much farther to go."
     "Then  let's go," I said,  fighting  against the  panic  at  the  walls
closing in.
     Aahz gave me a long look, then turned and headed along the flat part of
the  tunnel. I kept the golden  shovel clutched  in front of me. At least if
the tunnel came down, I'd be buried with something worth digging up. After a
hundred paces the tunnel started back  up. Stair after stair after stair. Up
and up and up.
     I forgot to be  afraid of the tunnel coming down on me because I was so
tired from the climbing.
     "Wait,"  Aahz said,  stopping to  pant for a moment. "The air's  bad in
here."
     I realized  when he  said that  that I was also having  trouble getting
enough  air. Now  not only was  the roof  about to fall and  crush me, I was
going to die from lack of air.
     "Almost there," Tanda said from behind me. I could hear the rustling of
the map. Aahz nodded and pushed upward, taking one step at a time.
     I used the shovel as a sort of crutch. Step. Clunk. Step. Clunk.
     The sound echoed down the tunnel behind us. If this plan didn't work, I
couldn't imagine having to go back to the  suite using  this tunnel. I'd try
it if I had to, but I sure didn't want to.
     Step. Clunk. Step. Clunk.
     We kept  climbing.  Forever.  How  could this  be? Had we gotten turned
around and were headed back to the suite?
     My lungs burned  like the time I had stayed underwater too  long in the
pond when I  was  a kid.  My eyes stung with the dust, and  I could feel the
grit in my mouth.
     "We're here," Aahz said, his voice  barely  a whisper. I glanced  back.
Tanda was a few  steps behind me, her face covered in dust, mud caked around
her mouth and nose. She looked as if she was about to pass out.
     Ahead of me Aahz slid back a wooden panel and stepped through.
     Cool, fresh air hit me like  a hammer as I stepped up to follow him. In
all my life I couldn't remember anything feeling that good before.
     We were  in a good-sized  room, at  least fifty paces across, that  was
completely empty of every stick of furniture. It  was  simply four walls  of
stone, a stone floor, and a stone ceiling. From the looks of it, the door we
had come through  was the only door in the place. And there were no windows.
Where the wonderful fresh air was coming from I had no idea.
     "Oh,  my," Tanda  said, coming  up out  of  the tunnel and  taking  big
gulping breaths of air. I gulped right along with her.
     Aahz came  over  and took the map  from Tanda, studying it as we caught
our breath. After a moment he moved around the room, staying to the outside.
     I knew why he stayed to the  outside.  In the center of  the room was a
massive energy flow  coming up through the  floor and going  out through the
ceiling.  It wouldn't hurt  him to  walk through it, but Aahz was taking  no
chances.
     About  halfway around  the room he  stopped, studied the map again, and
then came back toward us a few steps.
     "Right here,"  he  said, pointing  into the empty  air. "Right here  is
where the energy flow is diverted."
     He  pointed  in the direction of  the empty wall beside him, indicating
how the energy flow moved off the main one.
     I took a deep breath and let my mind open slightly to see the flow.
     "Wow!" I said, staggering backwards from the sight.
     Beside me Tanda did the same.
     "It's huge!" she said.
     Not more than a  few paces in front  of  me was a torrent of  pure blue
energy, flowing like a  fast-moving river  up out  of the ground and through
the ceiling. It  was a  good  forty  or more paces across.  I could see Aahz
through  it,  but just barely. About halfway  up, in the  center of the room
about  head high,  the flow seemed  to decrease in size  significantly, from
forty paces across to less than thirty.  I could  see where the other energy
was  going  sideways  and  then  vanishing in  the  direction that Aahz  had
pointed. That energy was powering the spell that held this dimension in  the
strange  state it was  in.  How  Count Bovine had managed to divert  so much
energy  into  one  spell  was  also   beyond   my   apprentice's   level  of
understanding. I glanced down at the little  gold shovel  I held in my hand,
then back at the raging torrent of blue energy in front of me. The silliness
of even thinking of trying to change that torrent with my little shovel made
me laugh.
     Aahz,  staying to  the outside,  came  back  around to  where  we  were
standing.
     "This isn't possible," I said, holding up the shovel.
     "It fills  this  room, Aahz," Tanda said, the awe in  her voice  clear.
"I've never seen an energy stream anything like it."
     "We can  do  it," Aahz  said.  Again I looked at my little gold shovel,
then at  the  torrent  of  blue  energy and just shook my head. Sometimes my
mentor was smart, sometimes angry, but right now he was just plain crazy.


        Chapter Seventeen

     "I've heard of goldbricking, but this is ridiculous"
     MIDAS REX

     "Skeeve," Aahz said,  "can you  see where the flow for  Count  Bovine's
spell leaves the main energy?"
     We had moved around to the side of the  room where Count Bovine's spell
took its energy from the river of flowing energy pouring out of the ground.
     "Yes, right in front of us," I said.
     I pointed out where it left and how high it was to Aahz, who nodded.
     I was using  a part of my mind that allowed me to reach  out for energy
and  do spells myself. That part allowed  me to see the energy,  where Aahz,
who had lost his powers, could not.
     Where the energy for Count Bovine's spell left the main stream was like
a branch on a big tree.  It sort of cut it off of one side of the main flow,
moving up  and sideways. The moment the  secondary flow was sideways  to the
main one, it vanished into the  spell it was being used for. We had  about a
body length, right above where  I stood, to cut that side-flow  off and send
it along in the  main  flow.  At least, that was the  theory on what we were
going to try. Sort of like  trying to dam up the side branch of a  river  in
one  quick  move,  without getting wet. But  even  that  side-branch of this
energy, where  I could see  it, had to  be ten paces across. Far,  far wider
than my  little gold shovel. Yet from what I  understood, Aahz wanted  me to
try to  divert  or even  stop that energy with my shovel. Not  a chance in a
Bovine hell.
     Aahz moved over behind me.  "We're going to have to do  this together,"
he said. "Tanda, when I say 'ready'  you  connect the gold in this shovel to
whatever gold you can sense nearby. Pull in as much as you can."
     "Oh, so you're going to make the shovel  bigger?" I  asked, starting to
understand his plan.
     "Exactly," he said.
     Tanda nodded. "I'm going to  have to make the  gold wide,  at least ten
feet around."
     Tanda could see  the  giant flow of energy as well as I could. She also
knew how insane this attempt was.
     "I know," Aahz said, nodding.
     "Can you hold that much?" I asked. "I sure can't."
     "We're both going to try," Aahz said. "You steer, I'll  lift. I'm going
to get  under the shovel. When Tanda connects  other gold  to  it and starts
expanding it, it's going  to get really,  really heavy very  quickly,  so be
ready the moment I say go. I don't want to drop it."
     I nodded.  This  gold-plated shovel  wasn't that  light as  it  was.  I
couldn't imagine how Aahz and  I could  even try to hold up a gold block ten
feet across, even a thin one.
     "We have to keep it out of the flow until it's big enough," Aahz said.
     "Okay," I said. "Let's do this and get on to the next life."
     Aahz laughed. "That's what I like about you, apprentice.  Always a good
mental attitude."
     "Give me something to be positive about," I said.
     Aahz moved around and got under  me, bracing himself solidly  as I held
the shovel up in position next to the side-flow of energy. When the gold got
big enough for what Tanda was going to do, we  were going to  simply let the
shovel fall to our right and cut off the side-flow to the spell. However, if
we let the shovel fall forward into the main flow, there was no telling what
would happen.
     Aahz said he wasn't even sure what was going to happen when we  cut the
side-flow. He hoped nothing, but he didn't know  for  sure when  I had asked
him.
     "Ready!" Aahz shouted,  even  though the room was empty and  there were
only the three of us in it.
     To an  outsider watching us who couldn't see the energy  flow, we would
have  looked darned silly.  Aahz crouched in front of me, holding  onto  the
shovel  I was  holding in  the air. Tanda  beside us,  her head tilted back,
staring up into nothingness.
     "Ready," she said.
     I knew she was sending her mind out, linking gold, pulling it in to add
to our shield.
     "Now!" Aahz shouted again.
     Instantly the shovel started growing in size  and  in  weight. I braced
myself as Aahz did the same. I was stunned at how heavy it got so quickly.
     The shovel grew and I strained against dropping it, trying to do my job
of just holding it steady.
     "About  half!"  Aahz said,  his  voice  strained from  holding  up  the
ever-heavier shovel. Aahz was one of the strongest demons I knew, and he was
having problems. I did my best to help lift at the same  time as holding the
shovel in position. I doubted I was doing  much  good, but I knew for a fact
the effort was going to cost me later.
     The shovel was getting bigger and bigger, growing quicker and quicker.
     "Almost!" Aahz said, his voice barely a croak under the  weight.  Above
me the shovel looked like a massive gold coin.
     "Now!" Aahz said.
     I pushed  sideways,  letting the  shovel fall toward  the  side-flow of
energy as Tanda kept adding more and more gold to it.
     Like a gold knife, the shovel cut through the blue energy.
     At that moment everything in the room seemed to explode.
     I was smashed back against the stone, banging my head hard.
     Tanda tumbled across  the floor toward the door, coming to rest pressed
against  the wood. Her eyes were closed and I couldn't tell  if she was hurt
or not.
     Aahz was pressed against the stone wall beside me.
     Forces like I had never felt before held me in position as the gold cut
through the flow just as  we had planned. So far it  was working. I couldn't
believe it.
     But  then  the  shovel kept growing and growing as  more and  more gold
poured into it. Something was wrong. Tanda should have  unlinked the gold in
the shield we built from  the other gold around the area when the shield hit
the energy. But there was clearly still more and more gold pouring into that
shield.  It had cut the  side-flow, but now it was falling slowly toward the
main flow, cutting into it as well as it kept growing.
     Then  the  room  seemed to  expand outward and the pressure  of my head
against the stone sent me down into a blackness I didn't much like.
     "Skeeve!"
     "Skeeve! Can you hear me?"
     The  voice  sounded  far off, like it was  coming  from  over a hill. I
didn't care. It was still dark out and I wanted to sleep some more.
     "Skeeve!"
     The voice  was  getting closer, or so it seemed.  I was  in  blackness.
Pitch-black blackness.  I  tried  to  open  my eyes,  but  everything  still
remained black. Every muscle in my body ached, and somehow  I seemed to have
fallen out of bed.
     "Skeeve, if you can hear me, light the torch."
     Now  I understood the blackness, but I still couldn't  remember where I
was. I  could hear something moving around, but  it  was so dark, I couldn't
see a thing.  More than  likely it was Aahz trying to  figure  out  what had
happened to the lights.
     I  felt around on  the floor beside me,  but  I  couldn't find a torch.
There wasn't one near me. I'm  not sure why I  expected there  to be on  the
floor, but still  I  couldn't find  it.  The floor I was  on was cold,  like
stone, and hard as a rock.
     "Skeeve, some light."
     Aahz was starting to get on my nerves. It was dark out. Why couldn't he
just let me sleep? I reached down and ripped off a little piece of my shirt.
I seemed to remember that some time  in the past I had done that same thing.
But the memory was foggy.
     Holding the piece of cloth up in front of me, I focused my mind, trying
to  find some energy to take and light the cloth. It was hard, but I finally
found enough to catch the cloth and start a small flame.
     The room around me  flickered into  being.  Aahz was sitting  against a
stone wall with Tanda's head on his lap about ten paces from  me. There  was
nothing else in the room except a big hunk of thin, gray  metal covering the
center of the room.
     "I  was worried about  you, apprentice,"  Aahz said. "Glad  to  see you
alive."
     "I was worried about me as well," I said.
     Slowly  I was  remembering. We were  here to cut  the energy from a big
spell done a long time ago by a  Count Bovine, and the big pancake-like gray
thing in the middle of the floor was my shovel, or what was left of it.
     Tanda moaned on Aahz's lap and tried to sit up.
     "Take it easy," Aahz said. "You got a nasty bump on the head."
     "I can feel that," Tanda said. Then she looked around and smiled at me.
"Good to see you made it as well."
     "I'll tell you in the morning  if I made it,"  I said  as more memories
flooded back in.
     She laughed and then clutched her head from the pain.
     "I told you to go slow," Aahz said.
     "Well," Tanda said after a moment. "Did we succeed?"
     "I don't know," Aahz said. "Skeeve, did we succeed?"
     It took me a moment of sitting  there with my back against the wall and
the cloth burning in my hand to understand what he  wanted me to do. Then it
dawned on  me. Look to  see if  the energy  flow  to  the  Bovine spell  had
stopped.
     I could do that. Or  at least I thought I could do that. I opened up my
mind, searching for the blue energy stream that  had filled this room just a
short time  ago.  Nothing. The side stream and the main stream were now gone
completely. The room was as empty energy-wise as it was furniture-wise.
     "Oh, yeah," I said. "We succeeded. Maybe a little too well."
     "All gone?" Tanda asked, not moving her head.
     "All gone, main stream and all."
     "Well, that's going to be interesting," Aahz said.
     The cloth was starting to get close to burning my fingers, so I scooted
slowly over on the  floor to where the torch lay and lit it. Then I  held it
up and looked around. On the other side of the room, where I was fairly sure
there hadn't  been a door  before, was now an open archway. A breeze blew in
from the archway, through the room, and into the tunnel we had come out of.
     "I think we'd better go see what  we've done," Aahz said. "Can you both
walk?"
     I tested my legs as Tanda tested hers. It seemed that, besides a lot of
bumps and bruises,  we had all come  out of everything  pretty  well. It was
going  to  be interesting to  see how  the rest  of the inhabitants  of this
castle fared.
     "Do  we have to  go back up  the tunnel?"  I asked, trying  to  imagine
making that climb in the condition I was in.
     Aahz  shook his  head. "If  this didn't  work to stop  Bovine's  spell,
nothing is  going to, and that means we're never getting out of here, so why
bother continuing to hide?"
     "I thought I had the positive attitude," I said.
     "I can learn from an apprentice," Aahz said.
     We  limped  our  way  toward the door with the  wonderful fresh  breeze
blowing  in. It led us into  a corridor that turned after about fifty paces.
After the  turn  there was a flight of stairs. Painful stairs,  but at least
stairs that had fresh air blowing down them.
     At the top, the  corridor turned again and went  out an archway covered
in  a mass of flowering plants. Aahz pushed through the plants  and I helped
Tanda follow.
     We stepped  out into the  beautiful sunshine  of a wonderful afternoon.
After being under tons of rock, getting knocked out by an energy  explosion,
and waking up in pitch darkness, the sunshine was beyond words.
     There was a shovel  lying on the lawn  in front of  us. It was the same
shape  as the golden-plated shovel we had  used, only there was no gold left
on it.
     "Would you look at that," Aahz said.
     On the corner of the lawn was a smoking pile of what looked like a cow.
     "Looks like we broke Bovine's spell," I said.
     "Sure  does," Tanda said, pointing to the shovel. "On both sides of it.
Whoever had that shovel  has left.  And  the front  gates of  the castle are
standing wide open."
     She was right, but what I also noticed was that the gold  trim that had
decorated  the  gate was gone, and the gold  along the top of the walls  was
gone. I looked slowly around. There wasn't a speck of gold in sight. Tanda's
spell must have used it all around this area.
     We walked across the soft grass toward the burning pile until the smell
stopped us  twenty feet away. It had been a  vampire  cow all right, but now
its legs were  sticking straight up  in the air and its  skin was burnt to a
crisp.  It  looked  as if had  burst into flames and died almost  instantly,
before even turning completely back into its vampire form.
     "What a waste," Aahz said, staring at the burning creature.
     "What are  you  talking  about?"  I  asked. "That  was  a  bloodsucking
vampire."
     "No,"  Aahz said,  shaking head. "I mean what a waste  of good meat. No
one eats their steak well-done these days."
     He turned and smiled at me. "What was the chef thinking?"
     "That it will be years before I eat another steak," I said.


        Chapter Eighteen

     "So where's the profit?"
     TERECTUS

     Victorious  or not, we were still  pretty tired by the time we made our
way back to where  we had left  Harold and Glenda. Something I've noticed in
the past about playing with  channeling energies: when it's over,  what  you
feel is drained.
     The first  thing  that  was noticeable was  that  apparently Harold had
untied Glenda, as she was conscious and perched in a chair across  the table
from him. The second was that Harold himself  seemed far more composed as he
rose to greet us.
     "Ah,  my friends! It seems that congratulations are in order," he said,
smiling  broadly. "All  indications are that  you were  successful  in  your
efforts to shut down the spells."
     "That's not all that's  in  order," Aahz  said darkly, folding his arms
across his  chest. "I think,  at  this  point, we're due a few explanations.
Beyond the tale you told us originally, that is."
     "But of course,"  Harold said, gesturing  for us to  pull up chairs. "I
take  it  that  you have  already determined that  my  story  was not  quite
complete."
     "Let's just say that the facts as they were presented to us don't quite
add up," Tananda said through tight lips.
     Harold nodded. "It is  true that  there were a few minor points  that I
omitted or altered slightly when I explained the situation you."
     "Why don't you just fill us I on those points now," Aahz said, "and let
us decide for ourselves how minor they are."
     "Very well. First, perhaps  things will be  clearer if I admit  that my
name is not Harold. In truth, I am Count Bovine himself."




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