Robert Asprin, Jody Lynn Nye

Myth Alliances

INTRODUCTION

You have in your hand something both familiar and also new. In a way this is a bit frightening. The best selling Myth Adventures series has had a unique place in SF literature. And a surprising number of the readers of this series are amazingly knowledgeable about every detail and nuance. This is a new novel in the Myth Adventures series. That is the familiar. What is new is the second name on the cover. This book is a collaboration between Robert Lynn Asprin, who created the series and wrote the earlier novels, and Jody Lynn Nye, the author of over two dozen other books. It is a further adventure, or series of calamities, featuring Skeeve and many of the same characters you have enjoyed in the first dozen books. This adventure takes place just after the end of volume 12, Something Myth Inc. A few years ago Jody and Bob created another novel set in contemporary New Orleans, License Invoked. They have also done several short stories, which have been collected in the Myth-Told Tales (a Meisha Merlin book). Incidentally those stories actually set the scene for this book, though aren't needed to read it. So why Jody Lynn Nye? Simply put, Jody had already demonstrated the ability to fit comfortably in other author's worlds with other collaborations, most notably four novels written with Anne McCaffrey. She has herself written several humorous novels. It didn't hurt that Jody and Bob have known each other for almost two decades as well. So when the decision was made to add collaborations to the series, Jody Lynn Nye was first choice.

Note I said "add collaborations." This is not to say there won't be more solo novels from Robert Lynn Asprin as well. There will be.

So what is happening beyond this new Myth Adventure that has both writers so busy, especially Robert Asprin? Both contributors are also working on other books. Robert Asprin has already delivered to Penguin Putnam the first of two really action-filled fantasy novels in a series titled Wartorn and as of writing this is getting close to the deadline for the second adventure. He is also in the process of expanding a second mystery novel in a series not yet placed. Jody has herself just completed a new novel in her Taylor's Ark SF medical series, titled The Lady and the Tiger. From that list of projects you might be beginning to get the idea on why a collaboration became a good idea. It's called deadlines… and finding the time to do it all. Both the readers and the publishers were asking for another novel. You see above how busy Bob is, and it is also hard, often slow work to write humor, and the gentle situational humor in the Myth Adventures series is one of the most difficult. This is not to mention the effort it takes to keep things fresh after having already written a dozen books in this series over what is now just short of twenty years. The second writer adds a new perspective, a fresh look, shared laughter… and a second pair of hands typing away when time is limited and we cruel publishers demand at least one new Myth Adventures book a year.

You will find many of Bob's trademark writing styles in Myth Alliance such as the quotes starting the chapters and Bob's penchant for rarely using the word "said" (Had you noticed?). Since this is a collaboration you may find some differences in the way the familiar characters and dialogue are presented. That is inevitable in any collaboration, if subtle. When you speak with either of Bob or Jody about this book, the parts you really like should be assumed to have been written by whichever author you are talking to. Those you don't like most obviously should be assumed to have been written by the absent one. (Hmm, now that is a real advantage to collaborating.) Though most likely each will credit the other with the good ideas.

So here you have it. A collaboration that once more brings you the adventures of Skeeve the Magnificent and his companions. This time they are taking on one of the most frightening forces that can be found in all of the Dimensions in a book that will be both comfortably familiar and a little something new as well.

Enjoy.

— The Editor

ONE

I stared at the candle in the brass holder in the middle of the cluttered table. Light the candle, I thought, concentrating hard. Light it!

Anyone who might have looked in the window would have seen a young, blond man from Klah, if they knew Klah, gazing hard at an unlit candle. Anyone from a few dozen dimensions might have identified that young man as The Great Skeeve, Magician to Kings and King of Magicians. None of them would have guessed that in spite of my reputation, which was that of a wonderworker, diplomat and organizer, as far as magik went, I was still a pretty rank… apprentice.

Apprentice. I sat upright on my bench to rub my back, and gazed at nothing in particular. The term caused all kinds of emotions to well up in me and distract me from my self-assigned task. The first: regret. I just walked away from my entire life to date: money, a position as Court Magician I could have held on to infinitely just on my reputation, a business that was thriving even beyond my ability to cover all the opportunities that came my way. But the thing I most regretted leaving was friends. The best and most important friend I had left behind was the chief reason I had gone. Aahz, denizen of the dimension Perv, had been my mentor, guide, partner, teacher and, yes, friend, since the untimely death of my master, the magician Garkin, who'd just finished this very lesson when he'd been killed by an assassin.

The second was fear. I hadn't mastered the candle trick then, and though I could do it now with ease I hadn't progressed much farther than that in my studies. I'd come back to Klahd to start over again with the basics and work my way up. How long would it take? I had no idea. What if, after all this time, I turned out to have no real magik talent? How would I deal with that? What if I couldn't learn to be the wizard everyone but my partners thought I was?

The third was loneliness, but I suppose that was good, in a way. I left behind friends who'd been my support through thick and thin, who'd given me the confidence to take over situations that I, as an apprentice magician (and would-be thief) never dreamed I'd be controlling, let alone involved in. It was time to strip away that protection and find out who I was. I also needed the solitude to study magik. I couldn't do it in front of a crowd. I needed to be able to fail, and learn from those mistakes without anyone correcting them for me. I needed to know my limitations, hard as that was. I also needed to learn how to deserve the friends I had. There had been times I could look back on now with the shame they deserved when I had been an unimaginable jerk to the people nearest and dearest to me. Being on my own for a while would be good for me.

I wasn't entirely alone in my self-imposed exile. Here, in the inn that we had sort of inherited from a madman named Isstvan and which I now more or less owned, lived myself and three friends. Gleep was my young green dragon. Buttercup, a war unicorn I'd acquired from a retired soldier named Quigley, was Gleep's best friend. Bunny, a drop-dead gorgeous woman, was the niece of my former sort-of-employer (there are a lot of sort-ofs in my life), Don Bruce, Fairy Godfather of the Mob. Bunny, for all her baby-doll looks, had a great brain. She'd been M.Y.T.H. Inc.'s bookkeeper and accountant, and had come with me to be my assistant and connection with the rest of the dimensions.