Myth 13 - Myth Alliances Asprin, Robert (top 100 novels .TXT) 📖

“Not yet, Gleep,” I muttered desperately. We couldn't even become invisible. All magik within arm's length of the bespelled floor had been dampened. “We're not ready!”

It must have been a lucky gust of wind or a shift in the old building's foundation, but the door into the hallway swung shut just before Gleep thundered past it with the Pervects in hot pursuit. It was about time something went our way on this assignment.

I surveyed our handiwork. The anti-​magik dust had soaked into the floor, leaving only a slight sheen to show where it lay. I tried throwing a fireball into the room, but my spell fizzled almost as soon as it left my hand. I grinned.

“Now, to get them all back in here,” I declared.

“First thing we have to do,” Tananda insisted, dropping her broom and shouldering a bag full of her own special equipment, “is to get their attention.”

Loud clattering in the direction of the kitchen told us where Gleep had led them. I levitated the two of us past all the traps and spells that were supposed to prevent intruders and were now impeding the Pervects from intercepting the dragon who had made their room temporarily uninhabit?able. Cursing, they had to dispell their own magikal obsta?cle course as they ran. Gleep let half the attacks roll off his tough hide, and blew out the other half of the defenses with blasts of flame.

He spotted me as we ducked into the long hallway that

led to the butler's pantry, the laundry room and several other side passages. Wheeling almost on his tail, he bowled over his pursuers, and came charging towards us. I readied an illusion spell for the moment he crossed the threshold, transforming him into a mouse. The Pervects hammered past the doorway of the pantry, backpedaled and glanced in.

“Gleep?” squeaked the mouse.

“He must have gone down one of the other passages!” the elegant one shouted.

“We'll split up,” the miniskirted one ordered.

“Call for reinforcements,” the little one panted.

“I'll get the others back here,” the elder one insisted. “You keep looking. I'll bet this Skeeve is here somewhere.”

I grinned. They were absolutely right.

They all took off in different directions, but within min?utes reassembled in the hall heading for the main stairs. Tananda vanished, heading to a point over the stairway where she had some little surprises ready. I could almost count backwards in my head, men ...

“Eeeeeee!!!”

A plague of wood spiders came plummeting out of the air onto the heads of the Pervects. These weren't real arachnids, but an animate growth like an active moss Tanda had discovered while “camping out” in another dimension (well, that's what she had called it). The longlegged plants enveloped the Pervects with fibrous threads, wrapping them up like mummies. The females' feet got tangled up, just in time to slip on the spongy marbles scattered on the floor from another package in the Trollop's bag of tricks. Yelling, the four clutched at one another, dancing madly to stay upright. They cannoned into one another, and rolled head over heels down the stairs. Being Pervects I knew the fall wouldn't hurt them, but it would make them mad.

I had been counting on Bunny to set off the next wave, which let a gaggle of herdbeasts loose from the reception chamber where they'd been penned up since before dawn.

I reached out with my mind, lifted the latch, and flung open the door. Baaing in panic, the herd thundered out, heading for the main door and freedom. Before the Pervects could tear all the wood webbing off, they were in the middle of a mini-​stampede.

Into the midst of this mess, another Pervect appeared, the efficient one in the coveralls.

“Vergetta, what's going oooo-​nnn-​nnn-​nnn!”

The marbles claimed another victim. She catapulted down the stairs and landed on her fellows, who were just picking themselves up off the floor. They all fell down again. Another, the plump motherly one, blipped into the middle of the disarray.

“What is going on here?” she cried. “Who-​oo-​oooa!” And down.

Six. It was time to let myself be seen. Wearing the dis?guise that Aahz and I had worked up for my “audition” as court magician of Possiltum, I stalked out onto the landing and raised my arms. The main door slammed shut behind the last of the herdbeasts. The open windows banged closed, and the torches on the walls dimmed and flickered.

“There!” the elegant one shouted. “There he is!”

Bolts of fire and lightning flew at me, from not one, but two directions. I spun on my heel. The slim female in the long robe had reappeared on the landing. I glanced up. Tananda was gone. I threw up my hands, spreading out a ward. Her lightning bolt bounced off, and I “disappeared” in a cloud of smoke, courtesy of a bag of flash powder. The Pervect magician doubled over coughing. Before it cleared I was flying through the hall overhead, aiming toward my next vantage point. The object was to lure the Pervects, all ten of them, back into their chamber all at the same time. I had seven.

Gleep wasn't idle. I bounded up toward the ceiling in time to avoid being run over by my pet, who was being chased by two Pervects dressed in exactly opposite styles. One had on the most conservative two-​piece suit I had ever

seen, and the other was in a spiked leather bustier and stockings. It takes all kinds, I mused. Nine.

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