I felt around on the floor beside me, but I couldn't find a torch. There wasn't one near me. I'm not sure why I expected there to be on the floor, but still I couldn't find it. The floor I was on was cold, like stone, and hard as a rock.
"Skeeve, some light."
Aahz was starting to get on my nerves. It was dark out. Why couldn't he just let me sleep? I reached down and ripped off a little piece of my shirt. I seemed to remember that some time in the past I had done that same thing. But the memory was foggy.
Holding the piece of cloth up in front of me, I focused my mind, trying to find some energy to take and light the cloth. It was hard, but I finally found enough to catch the cloth and start a small flame.
The room around me flickered into being. Aahz was sit ting against a stone wall with Tanda's head on his lap about ten paces from me. There was nothing else in the room except a big hunk of thin, gray metal covering the center of the room.
"I was worried about you, apprentice," Aahz said. "Glad to see you alive."
"I was worried about me as well," I said.
Slowly I was remembering. We were here to cut the en ergy from a big spell done a long time ago by a Count Bovine, and the big pancake-like gray thing in the middle of the floor was my shovel, or what was left of it.
Tanda moaned on Aahz's lap and tried to sit up.
"Take it easy," Aahz said. "You got a nasty bump on the head."
"I can feel that," Tanda said. Then she looked around and smiled at me. "Good to see you made it as well."
"I'll tell you in the morning if I made it," I said as more memories flooded back in.
She laughed and then clutched her head from the pain.
"I told you to go slow," Aahz said.
"Well," Tanda said after a moment. "Did we succeed?"
"I don't know," Aahz said. "Skeeve, did we succeed?"
It took me a moment of sitting there with my back against the wall and the cloth burning in my hand to understand what he wanted me to do. Then it dawned on me. Look to see if the energy flow to the Bovine spell had stopped.
I could do that. Or at least I thought I could do that. I opened up my mind, searching for the blue energy stream that had filled this room just a short time ago. Nothing. The side stream and the main stream were now gone completely. The room was as empty energy-wise as it was furniture-wise.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "We succeeded. Maybe a little too well."
"All gone?" Tanda asked, not moving her head.
"All gone, main stream and all."
"Well, that's going to be interesting," Aahz said.
The cloth was starting to get close to burning my fingers, so I scooted slowly over on the floor to where the torch lay and lit it. Then I held it up and looked around. On the other side of the room, where I was fairly sure there hadn't been a door before, was now an open archway. A breeze blew in from the archway, through the room, and into the tunnel we had come out of.
"I think we'd better go see what we've done," Aahz said. "Can you both walk?"
I tested my legs as Tanda tested hers. It seemed that, besides a lot of bumps and bruises, we had all come out of everything pretty well. It was going to be interesting to see how the rest of the inhabitants of this castle fared.
"Do we have to go back up the tunnel?" I asked, trying to imagine making that climb in the condition I was in.
Aahz shook his head. "If this didn't work to stop Bovine's spell, nothing is going to, and that means we're never getting out of here, so why bother continuing to hide?"
"I thought I had the positive attitude," I said.
"I can learn from an apprentice," Aahz said.
We limped our way toward the door with the wonderful fresh breeze blowing in. It led us into a corridor that turned after about fifty paces. After the turn there was a flight of stairs. Painful stairs, but at least stairs that had fresh air blowing down them.
At the top, the corridor turned again and went out an arch way covered in a mass of flowering plants. Aahz pushed through the plants and I helped Tanda follow.
We stepped out into the beautiful sunshine of a wonderful afternoon. After being under tons of rock, getting knocked out by an energy explosion, and waking up in pitch darkness, the sunshine was beyond words.
There was a shovel lying on the lawn in front of us. It was the same shape as the golden-plated shovel we had used, only there was no gold left on it.
"Would you look at that," Aahz said.
On the corner of the lawn was a smoking pile of what looked like a cow.
"Looks like we broke Bovine's spell," I said.
"Sure does," Tanda said, pointing to the shovel. "On both sides of it. Whoever had that shovel has left. And the front gates of the castle are standing wide open."
She was right, but what I also noticed was that the gold trim that had decorated the gate was gone, and the gold along the top of the walls was gone. I looked slowly around. There wasn't a speck of gold in sight. Tanda's spell must have used it all around this area.
We walked across the soft grass toward the burning pile until the smell stopped us twenty feet away. It had been a vampire cow all right, but now its legs were sticking straight up in the air and its skin was burnt to a crisp. It looked as if had burst into flames and died almost instantly, before even turning completely back into its vampire form.
"What a waste," Aahz said, staring at the burning creature.
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "That was a blood sucking vampire."
"No," Aahz said, shaking head. "I mean what a waste of good meat. No one eats their steak well-done these days."
He turned and smiled at me. "What was the chef thinking?"
"That it will be years before I eat another steak," I said.
Chapter Eighteen
"So where's the profit?"
TERECTUS
Victorious or not, we were still pretty tired by the time we made our way back to where we had left Harold and Glenda. Something I've noticed in the past about playing with chan neling energies: when it's over, what you feel is drained.
The first thing that was noticeable was that apparently Harold had untied Glenda, as she was conscious and perched in a chair across the table from him. The second was that Harold himself seemed far more composed as he rose to greet us.
"Ah, my friends! It seems that congratulations are in or der," he said, smiling broadly. "All indications are that you were successful in your efforts to shut down the spells."
"That's not all that's in order," Aahz said darkly, folding his arms across his chest. "I think, at this point, we're due a few explanations. Beyond the tale you told us originally, that is."
"But of course," Harold said, gesturing for us to pull up chairs. "I take it that you have already determined that my story was not quite complete."
"Let's just say that the facts as they were presented to us don't quite add up," Tananda said through tight lips.
Harold nodded. "It is true that there were a few minor points that I omitted or altered slightly when I explained the situation you."
"Why don't you just fill us I on those points now," Aahz said, "and let us decide for ourselves how minor they are."
"Very well. First, perhaps things will be clearer if I admit that my name is not Harold. In truth, I am Count Bovine himself."