"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 some thing 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 mo ment the secondary flow was sideways to the main one, it van ished 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.