Chapter Fifteen

"Go with the flow."

M. TWAIN

Sometimes in grand adventures, there are times when just noth ing happens. The rest of the third day of the full-moon cycle was one of those times.

Aahz, Tanda, Harold, and Glenda spent the entire day por ing over books and old scrolls, trying to find answers on how to get out. I mostly sat and listened, falling asleep every few minutes until my head bobbed enough to wake me up enough to listen until I fell asleep again.

And over and over that pattern went. My neck was sore by the time the day was over.

About thirty minutes before the sun set Aahz had Glenda lie down on a couch, and then he tied the gold-laced magikal rope around her. She fell asleep instantly. That rope was the best sleep aid I had ever seen. Aahz should take it back with us to Possiltum to make money. On bad nights, I bet the king would pay a ransom for it.

If it had been up to me, I'd have sent Glenda out into the hallway to be a cow, eating grass and being followed around by a guy in a white hat with a shovel. But it wasn't up to me, so Aahz put her to sleep.

About twenty minutes before the sun set Harold shut us into the library again and went to his grass to become a cow for the night.

I slept off and on all night. Aahz and Tanda did as well, reading while they were awake. By morning, when Harold opened the door and let in a few wonderful rays of sunlight from the living area, I was well-rested and bored to tears.

Aahz untied Glenda to wake her up, pouched the rope, and we all went out into the kitchen area to have Harold cook us horse steaks covered in tomatoes. He called it his celebration breakfast. He said he had it every month after the last full moon night.

I had to admit, it was surprisingly good. After breakfast the talk turned to escape, which, after the boring day and the fear of cow vampires all night, was the most interesting topic I could imagine.

Aahz took charge of the discussion and ticked off our options. "First chance we have is to lower the dimension-hopping screen. If we could do that for even an instant, we'd be out of here."

"I've never run into a screen like it," Tanda said, "even in all my years of being an assassin. It's more solid than a rock."

"More than likely coming from the energy in the moun tain," Aahz said.

I thought about the map on the ceiling, and how Aahz hadn't mentioned it to either Harold or Glenda. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I sure didn't want to mess up what he was doing by blurting something out. I'd done enough of that in the past.

"Our second option is to just find a way out of the castle."

"Right," I said, "and sneak all the way through Donner and past the posse."

"Posse?" Harold asked.

"Mounted riders who knew we were coming far outside of town."

"They picked me up as well," Glenda said.

"So they have some magik that tells them enemies are com ing," Aahz said. "We could be screened against that."

"If we knew what kind of magik it was," Tanda said.

"I'm stuck here anyway," Harold said. He pointed to what I had assumed was the front door to the suite. "It's like walking into a wall trying to go through there."

"And the same for how we came in?" Tanda asked.

"Oh, I can go all the way to the entrance into the ballroom through the skull room," Harold said. "Then I hit the screen."

"How about through the floor, or the window?" I asked.

"Haven't tried either," he said.

"I doubt it would work," Aahz said.

"Yeah," Tanda said, "captive spells, which I think this sounds like, are all-around prisons. It's like being in an invisible, unbreakable bubble."

"So to get Harold out with us," I said, "we have to break that spell as well."

"You're coming with us?" Glenda asked.

"I'm going to try," Harold said. He didn't add that there was gold for getting him out, and none of the rest of us filled her in either.

"So, old mentor," I said to Aahz, "how do we go about breaking the spells, since it seems to me that both our main ways of escape are blocked by them?"

He looked at me with a harsh look, then answered my question. "A couple of ways to break a spell. Either put a counter-spell on it, or cut off the source of power to the spell."

"Since this place is flowing with energy, the second doesn't sound likely. How does a counter-spell work?"

"I've tried every one I know," Harold said.

I glanced at Aahz. "My mentor hasn't even taught me any yet."

"When you gain enough self-control to use them," Aahz said, "I might think about it."

"I tried a number of them the first day I was here," Glenda said. "Didn't even dent the dimension-hopping shield."

"I tried all the ones I knew as well," Tanda said, frowning. Since we were all still here, I assumed she had had the same result as Glenda.

"And I saw nothing in any of the books back there to give us any help either," Aahz said. "In fact, I think it's worse than we are assuming. I think the spell that keeps all the vampires as cows, and your people under their spell and not killing the cows every month, is tied up with the very spells we are trying to break."

"If that's the case," Harold said, sounding defeated, "to free me, I must release all my people from the spell that has held them for centuries, and free all the vampires to kill them at the same time. I can't do that."

"Actually," Aahz said, smiling, "there might be a way that it would work, if we could shut everything down at once and at an exact time."

"How?" Harold asked.

"I wouldn't mind knowing the same thing," I said.

Tanda laughed with Aahz. "Do it during the middle of the day."

I frowned and looked at Aahz, who was nodding and laugh ing at me. Harold was frowning as well.

Glenda was laughing, but not very much.

"All the cows are out in pastures," Aahz said, his voice taking on the tone he got when I was being so stupid he couldn't believe I could be that stupid.

"Daylight," Tanda said. "Vampires?"

"Oh," Harold said. "Of course. Sunlight kills vampires."

"Of course," I said out loud, pretending I had just forgot ten, even though I had never known that fact about vampires. Why would I have? Until I came to this stupid dimension, I had never seen or even heard of a vampire. I just figured they had something to do with full moons.

"So if we shut off the power to the big spell somehow," Harold said, "all the vampires on one half of the planet would die."

"Exactly," Aahz said, "And the ones on the night side would have to find shelter by sunrise, giving your people time to kill many of them."

"Aahz, I just have one question."

He looked at me and said nothing.

"How do you propose to shut off the energy flowing in this area?"

Aahz smiled. "That's our problem, isn't it?"

"Why do I think I'm not going to like what you're thinking at this moment?"

"Oh, maybe because I'm thinking that's where you're going to come in."

Tanda laughed.

"It's not funny," I said.

"Sure it is," Tanda said.

I just stared at Aahz. Someday I'd love to figure out a way to get him his powers back so I wasn't the one doing the dirty work all the time. I had a hunch, from the look on his face, that this was going to get really dirty for me. Center-of-the-mountain-kill-the-energy-at-its-source dirty.

"Before we can figure out how to block the energy for the spells," Aahz said, "we have to know how it flows through the castle."

He said that and I just shuddered.