"Tananda!" I shouted, stepping toward the beautiful crea ture with the long green hair and a body that, with a deep breath, could stop a parade.
"Skeeve!" she shouted back, laughing.
Then she pulled me into a hug that I hoped would never, ever stop. Now, granted, it had only been a month since I had last seen her, drunk as a skunk at Aahz's birthday party. But every time I saw her I figured it was a great excuse for a very long hug. And she sure didn't seem to mind, either.
Tanda was a former assassin and member of the guild. I wasn't sure what she did now besides shop and go on adven tures. What's more, I didn't really want to know. We were friends, and that was enough for me.
Aahz cleared his throat after far too short a time in her wonderful hug. He did seem to mind that she didn't mind. Oh, well. I still believed she liked me better than him, and that was all that mattered.
She pushed me back and looked at me sternly, her won derful eyes glaring at me with mock anger.
"Why didn't you tell me you had bought a treasure map?"
"Actually, I was going to when we stopped for the night," I said with a shrug, "but then the game and you getting captured and everything sort of pushed the map out of my mind."
"So do you remember how many dimensions before Jahk you bought it?" she asked.
I knew exactly how many, since I had done the disguises in every dimension on the trip. "Three," I said.
"You're absolutely sure?" Aahz asked, his golden eyes star ing at me like they were about to shoot daggers.
I held up my hand.
"Jahk, the dimension with the Big Game."
I pointed at my thumb.
Tanda nodded and Aahz just glared, his expression of annoyance making me take my time.
"Counting backwards," I said, pointing at my index finger, "the dimension before that was where we had to look like a form of a three-nosed pig."
I wiggled my index finger at both of them. Tanda nodded. "Yeah, fun place."
"Not really," I said. Aahz's glare got deeper, so I went on. "Before that was the dimension where we had to be eight feet tall and have three legs." I pointed at my middle finger. Tanda laughed. "That was a fun dimension, too. Wasn't it?" It hadn't been, since walking on three legs is something that is a factor harder than trying to fly by flapping your arms and jumping off a cliff. But I ignored her this time and went on.
I pointed to my next finger.
"Dimension where we had to be four feet tall and where I bought the map." I held up the three fingers. 'That many in front of the game dimension."
I wanted to add that I could go over them again if Aahz wanted, but he was clearly not happy with me, so I didn't offer.
Tanda smiled. "I thought so. Mini."
"So what's so special about that dimension?" I asked. It hadn't seemed like much to me, although Tanda had not wanted to stay there long on our shopping trip.
"Actually," Aahz said, "it makes this map more likely to be real."
"Almost certain." Tanda laughed.
"You're kidding?" I asked. "You really think there is a golden cow out there?"
"I didn't say that," Aahz said. "I just said the map was likely to be real."
I frowned and Tanda laughed.
"Mini is populated by Minikins, who have this awful power of never telling a lie about anything. They do not do well at the Bazaar at Deva, for obvious reasons."
"But what happens if the guy who sold it to me wasn't a Minikin?"
"If he had been there for more than a day, he had to tell the truth about the map as well. That's why we got out of there so fast. Truth is not a good influence when you are shopping."
At that I had no firsthand knowledge, but I figured Tanda was the expert.
"Come on," she said to Aahz. "Dig out the map. We're wasting time. Let's do this."
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Aahz asked as he pulled out the parchment, unfolded it, and put it on the bed so all three of us could look at it.
I had no idea what I was looking at, but Tanda seemed to. She pointed at the upper left corner.
"That's Minikins' Dimension."
Even I knew that, since it was labeled Mini.
"So we start there?"
Aahz nodded. So did Tanda, for which I was grateful. If they both agreed, at least we had something solid.
Tanda ran her finger along the only line leading from Minikin. It ended at a dot that was labeled Vortex #1. She studied that for a moment, then glanced at Aahz.
"You have any idea what that means? Or where it's at?"
"Not a clue," he said.
Now I was stunned. It wasn't often that my mentor admitted he didn't know something. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time that it had happened, if ever. I wanted to point that out to him, but this just didn't seem to be the right time, so I went back to studying the map.
I could see that on the map Vortex #1 had six lines leading off to six unlabeled points on the paper. And lines led off of each of those points to other vortex dots. There were seven more vortexes listed, and a big "X" marking the cow in the lower right corner of the map. Only one line led from Vortex #8 to the cow.
It was clear that there was no straight line from Mini to the cow. And no right path. From the looks of it, we could go any of a dozen different ways, through different points labeled vortexes, taking different lines. If nothing else, this was going to be an interesting puzzle.
Aahz had told me that dimension-hopping was dangerous because a person could hop to an unknown dimension and never get back. I wondered now how safe it was going to be following a map through some of these dimensions, especially when even the map was confusing.
"Well," Tanda said, turning to Aahz. "It looks like we're going to need some more help if we're going to find this golden beast."
Aahz looked at her and then slowly shook his head. "You can't be thinking what I think you're thinking."
"I'm thinking it," she said.
"No!" Aahz said, his voice firm. I knew for a fact that when he said no like that there was no changing his mind.
"Yes," Tanda said, smiling at him with a smile that could melt a belt-buckle right off a guy's pants. She reached up and touched one of the green scales on his cheek.
"No," Aahz said, but this time it wasn't as firm. Not even a Pervect could stand up against Tanda's charms.
"Yes," she said, turning the smile up one more notch and stroking Aahz's green neck just below his ear.
I was glad she wasn't doing that to me. As it was, just watching I was almost a puddle on the floor. And I didn't even know what they were arguing about.
Aahz wasn't faring much better. He shook his head, then said, "It's a mistake."
"How else are we going to find what dimension to jump to from Minikin?"
She stroked his cheek and then moved right up against him.
No sentient male being could have withstood that attack. Aahz didn't.
I was sweating hard just watching. Much more and I would need to change into one of my clean shirts.
"All right," he said, his voice so soft I could almost not hear it. "But trust me, this is a mistake."
"Oh, we're not showing anyone the map," Tanda said, mov ing away from Aahz and turning down her convincing body language and smile to a normal level.
Both Aahz and I took a deep breath.
"Then why?" Aahz asked.
"We're just going to find out what, or where a vortex is," Tanda said.
I couldn't stand it any longer.