"Okay, what just happened there?" Tanda asked a half-second before I asked the same question.
"Harold gave me the rope to save her from becoming a vampire," Aahz said. "It seems that those left alive last night were the ones they liked."
"So that was why Glenda's body wasn't in that morgue with the others," I said.
"Exactly," Aahz said. "They were trying to turn her, have her join them."
I glanced back at where Glenda was snoring. "So she's not going to be a vampire now?"
Aahz shrugged. "We'll keep the rope on her until morning just to make sure."
"How about for two days?" Tananda asked.
Aahz laughed and said, "Maybe."
As far as I was concerned, we could keep the rope on her for the next month. When it came to Glenda, my motto was better safe than sorry.
Spending the night trapped in the middle of a culture's entire history, afraid that at any moment I might get taken and have my blood sucked, is an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy. The room we were trapped in was huge, with a high, domed ceiling and row after row of shelves full of old books alternating with piles of ancient furniture. Unlike Aahz and Tanda, I was not the scrounge-through-old-things kind of person. Old stuff was dusty and usually boring, as far as I was concerned. I thumbed through a few books and blew the dust off some old scrolls that looked like cookbooks. I decided I didn't want to know what they were trying to tell me about how to cook, so I wandered over to another aisle, found an antique couch tucked off to one side of a pile of furniture, managed to get most of the dust off of it, and lay down.
Tanda and Aahz were reading, whispering to each other about their finds, clearly excited about what they were see ing. I was beyond being excited about anything at this point. I was just tired. Yet for some strange reason (namely vam pire cows and fear of getting my blood drained and ending up naked on a metal table in a morgue), I couldn't get to sleep. Instead I lay there, finally turning onto my back and staring at the high ceiling.
Maybe an hour into the attempt at sleep, it finally dawned on me what I was looking at every time I opened my eyes. On the smooth, stone ceiling surface someone had painted some thing a long, long time ago. Now, in the weird light from the glowing walls, and all the dust of the years, it was faded and almost invisible. But it was still there.
And the more I lay on my back staring at it, the more I realized that what I was seeing was the most important thing in the room as far as we were concerned. It was a map of the entire castle, only it wasn't a map of the current castle, but the layout of Count Bovine's castle.
The more I studied the drawing, the more I could see in the faint outlines. I found Harold's living area, which at one point must have been Bovine's royal suite.
The room we were now in was shown as a private library. And the skull room was there as well, labeled as "royal stor age." But what was really interesting was the passageway that led from this room down into the mountain, away from the Royal Suite, down to a point that seemed to show an energy focal point of some sort in a large room. The energy point was drawn on the very center of the dome, which I also found interesting.
After another hour I was sure I had the important areas of the map pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn't think any vampire cow would know about.
I stood and moved over to where Aahz and Tanda were sitting at desks pouring over books. Glenda was still asleep on her couch, the golden rope tied around her.
"Have a good nap?" Aahz asked.
"A productive one," I said.
He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and then pointed at the book he had open in front of him.
"Says here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of the entire dimension. Before Count Bovine took it over, it was a spa area where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated magik forces and become rejuvenated."
"Powerful stuff," I said.
"More than anything I've seen before," Aahz said.
Tanda pointed at what she had been reading. "This book says that the war between the vampires and the normal folks lasted for over two hundred years and killed almost everything. This was one of the last books put in here before the exodus."
"Exodus?" I asked.
Aahz nodded. "It seems, from what we can gather, that when the compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people left this area, this castle, putting a shield up around it to keep everyone out of the magik."
"It seems the count didn't trust his own people with this kind of power," Tanda said.
"So what became of this count?" I asked.
Aahz shrugged. "Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning."
"Well, before that I've got something to show you."
I had them follow me back to my couch.
"I really don't feel like a nap," Aahz said.
"Just trust me," I said, pointing to a pile of furniture ten paces away. "Pull that other couch over here."
He shook his head, but did as I suggested.
"Now both of you lie on that couch," I said, dropping onto the one I had been on for hours earlier. "And lie on your backs."
Neither of them moved, and both looked annoyed. "What, can't trust me for five seconds?" I asked, smiling up at them.
Aahz snorted and then lay down, scooting over enough to give Tanda a little room as well.
I pointed upward. "What do you see?"
"A dark ceiling and a lot of dust," Tanda said.
"I see myself wasting my time," Aahz said. "There's a lot of information here that we need to-"
Silence filled the old library. After a few long seconds I said, "Interesting, isn't it?"
"What?" Tanda demanded. "Would you stop playing games and just tell me what is going on?"
To me the map was now as clear as if it were printed on a white piece of parchment. "It's a drawing," I said, pointing to the clearest lines to Tanda's right.
"It's a map," Aahz said.
"Exactly," I said. "And if you study it long enough, you can see where we are."
"Oh, my heavens," Tanda said to herself, now clearly see ing the drawing of the castle.
"After a few minutes of looking at it, the lines become clearer," I said. "Take a look to the right of the room we're in."
I didn't say anything else, giving them both time to study what I had been looking at for hours. Then finally Aahz said, "It looks like there's a corridor there."
"Where?" Tanda demanded.
"Off the room shown as a private library," I said. "On the opposite side from the royal suite."
"And it leads downward," Aahz said.
"To this area's power," I said. "Do you have any idea what standing in the middle of that kind of energy focal point would feel like?"
Both Tanda and Aahz looked at me.
"Like nothing you could ever imagine, apprentice," Aahz said.
"True," Tanda said, going back to staring at the drawings on the ceiling, "but Skeeve might be the only one who can go down there."
"I know," Aahz said, also going back to studying the roof over his head.
"Exactly what do you mean by that?" I asked, not liking the idea that I might have to take that old corridor alone into the middle of the mountain.
Aahz sighed. "I've lost my powers; Tanda is an assassin, not a magician, and we can't trust Glenda. You're it, apprentice. If one of us has to go down there, it has to be you."