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 direc tion 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, some times 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 pan els 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 vam pires 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.