All three of us moved over to her. As we did her eyes fluttered open and she saw Aahz, then Tanda and me.

"Found the treasure, I see," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Then she was back asleep, her breathing heavy, and her mouth hanging open. The red marks on her neck pulsed with the beat of her heart.

"I don't like the looks of this," I said.

"Any chance we can get out of here?" Aahz asked, glanc ing around the room.

I did the same. None of the other prisoners in the place looked to be in any better shape than Glenda. And all of them had the red marks on their necks and were sleeping heavily, almost dead.

Tanda shook her head.

"Not a chance at all. The energy is back flowing to us, but the dimension hopping is still blocked completely. I've been trying to D-hop ever since we were captured."

"Well," Aahz said, "we're just going to have to find an other way out, and grab a little gold along the way."

"How about the D-Hopper?" I asked. "They didn't search us. Maybe it would work."

Aahz pulled the D-Hopper out, made sure the setting was right, then triggered it.

We stayed right where we were.

"Worth a try," I said as he put it back in his shirt.

"I think we need some answers," Aahz said.

He sat down on the edge of Glenda's bunk and then not so gently shook her awake.

"No! No!" she said as she woke.

Her hands went to her neck and then flinched away. Again it took a moment for her to recognize us. She blinked, then said, "Go away," and closed her eyes again.

"We need some answers," Aahz said.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, twisted her around, and sat her upright on the bed, her back against the wall.

"Easy there, big fella," Glenda said, her voice hoarse. "We're all in this together."

"I'm not in anything with you," Aahz said.

Looking at the wreck she had become, it was hard for me to even remember why I had been interested in her in the first place. Could I be that superficial that she had to remain beau tiful for me to care? Or did I no longer find her attractive or have any interest in her because she had betrayed us? It was an interesting question I'd have to talk to Aahz about once we were safely back home.

"Oh," Glenda said, "trust me. If you're here, in this cell, then we're all in this together."

"How'd you end up here?" Aahz asked. "How'd you find the place without the map?"

She laughed. "I went to Dodge City, didn't find anything, so I asked this guy running a bar where the golden cow was, and he told me here."

I shook my head. How simple that would have been. Why hadn't we thought of it?

"Then what happened?" Tanda asked.

"Didn't even make it into town," she said. "Got picked up by a bunch of guys on horses yesterday and tossed in here. Then last night I got hauled out to be a snack at the big party upstairs."

Her hand again went to her neck and she flinched. The red marks there didn't look like they were healing very well. And I didn't much like the sound of being a snack like those people lined up on the road had been.

"It was like a bad dream," Glenda said, her eyes distant. "They kept forcing glass after glass of carrot juice down me while taking turns sucking oh my neck. By morning I couldn't even walk. I don't remember how I got back down here."

The thought of carrot juice ripped my stomach into a knot.

"Who were they?" Tanda asked.

Glenda shrugged. "Hundreds of beautiful naked people in this gold-covered ballroom way up in the castle somewhere."

Aahz nodded. "Vampire cows."

"What?" Glenda asked.

"We saw a field of cows change into beautiful naked people last night," I said, "and snack on the townspeople who were waiting to be used."

She looked at me, then at Aahz. "The kid's not kidding, is he?"

Aahz shook his head.

Glenda shook her head and then closed her eyes.

"Drunk dry by bovine vampires. How ironic."

She didn't say anything else, and Aahz didn't push her. She looked as if she had lost twenty pounds in one night. She had managed to outsmart us, find her way to the castle, and still get captured. If she couldn't get away, how were we going to do it before we became a full-moon snack?

"We've got to get out of here before the sun goes down," Aahz said, standing and moving to the door.

He gave it a couple hard hits, but it didn't move, and no one came because of the noise. Clearly none of the golden- shoveled guards were worried about a prisoner escape.

"Even if we did get out," Tanda said, "it would take a map to find our way back through the castle."

"Map," I said. "That's the key."

Aahz turned and looked at me, giving me one of those I- don't-understand-how-you-can-be-so-stupid looks.

I moved over to him and stuck out my hand.

"Can I have the map, please?"

"Why would you want it?" Aahz asked.

I didn't want to tell him my idea without first seeing if I was right.

"Just give it to him," Tanda said.

Aahz shrugged and took out the map, handing it to me still folded.

I opened it up, laying it flat on the nearest empty bunk so that we could all look at it. The map looked as I had expected. It had gained its magik back once we got inside the castle. It showed where we were, fifteen levels down and under a lot of rock and gold. It also showed the room where the golden cow was, far above us.

And better yet, it showed us a path from where we were being held to what the map called a large ballroom. Clearly the map's designers had planned on continuing the game right to the very last room. It sort of made sense. Dimension to dimension until we found the right one, then town to town until we found the right one, now room to room until we found the right one. I didn't much like the game, but I understood the thinking.

"Well, would you look at that?" Aahz said, stunned.

Tanda studied the map, then looked at the wall near Glenda's bunk, then studied the map again.

It didn't take me long to see what she was doing. The map showed a way out of this room that wasn't the main door. Maybe, just maybe, we had a chance. If we could escape the cell, then avoid hundreds of men with white robes and golden shovels, and then outrun the posse on horseback, we might be able to get far enough away from the castle to dimension-hop back to Vortex #6.

It sounded impossible, but it was more than we'd had a moment ago.

I folded up the map and put it in my pouch, then headed for the wall where Glenda was still sitting on a bunk. Her eyes were closed, and if her chest hadn't been moving I would have thought she was dead.

"Wait," Tanda said as I started to get down on my knees to look for an opening in the wall under the bunk beside Glenda's, where the map indicated it would be. "We need to protect ourselves, not let anyone know what we're doing."

"And how do you suggest we do that?" I asked.

Aahz glanced around at the bunks and the blankets on them.

"Skeeve, when Tanda gives the word, I want you to make the blankets on those three bunks look like the three of us."

"Four of us," Glenda said, opening her eyes and looking clearly at Aahz. "If you've found a way to leave, I'm leaving with you."

"Yeah," Aahz said, laughing, "like you took us with you on Vortex #6? I don't think so."

"I don't go, I alert the guards," she said, staring at him. "And I've got enough power left to easily break an apprentice's disguise spell."

For a moment I thought Aahz was going to strangle her, and I wanted to help. Then Tanda stepped between them, facing Aahz.