MA11-12 Myth-ion Improbable Something Myth-Inc by Robert Asprin Read Free Book Online

percent,” I said.
    Then it dawned on me that she knew about the treasure as well.
    And that we had been negotiating with the Shifters. How much did she know, and how did she know it?
    Aahz gave me a stern look and I shrugged. He always thought I talked too much, and clearly this was one of those times he just might be right.
    “Wow, you must be a great negotiator,” she said, smiling at me.
    “Not hardly,” Tananda said, moving over and sitting down at the table.
    Aahz and I did the same.
    “So you know our friend Skeeve here,” Tananda said. “Could you please tell us what your name is, and how you know him?”
    The girl smiled at me, holding my gaze in her beautiful brown eyes.
    “My name is Glenda. My father sold Skeeve the map you are using to search for the golden cow.”
    Glenda turned back to the counter and opened a cabinet that contained what looked to be a freshly baked loaf of bread.
    Tananda glared at me and I just shrugged. I had told her and Aahz everything that had happened when I bought the map. This young lady had been nowhere around. That much I was sure of. I would have remembered seeing her.
    Now I was even more confused. Why had the guy who sold me the map sent his daughter here to meet us? For what reason?
    “So the map was a scam after all,” Aahz said, scowling at her, “and you’ve been waiting here to collect something from us. Is that it?”
    Glenda laughed and smiled at Aahz. “The cynic of the group, I see.”
    Then she smiled at me again.
    I smiled right back at her.
    “He does tend to look at what could go wrong a lot.”
    “He would make a great lawyer,” she said.
    I wanted to ask what a lawyer was, but just nodded instead.
    She turned to look directly at Aahz.
    “No, I assure you that, as far as I know, or anyone knows, the map is real.”
    “So what are you doing here, then?” Tananda asked.
    Glenda shrugged. “My father thought you might need some help about now. And when my father told me about Skeeve after he bought the map, I thought he might be cute. I was right.”
    I think I blushed from the ends of my toes to the top of my head. Luckily the only thing visible to her was my face.
    Aahz snorted even louder, an ugly sound that seemed to just hang in the warm cabin like a bad smell.
    “Why would your father think we need help?” Tananda asked.
    Glenda went back to cutting the fresh bread as she answered. “Because no one has ever made it past this point before, and returned alive.”
    “Ohhhh,” Aahz said, “ now I understand. Your father keeps selling the map over and over and your job is to get it back.”
    “Actually, he’s tired of selling it,” Glenda said. “And getting it back has never been a problem. He usually just pops in here every spring and takes it off the bodies.”
    The faint crackling of the fire and the wind against the eaves of the cabin were the only noises. I didn’t want to think about the fact that a map I had carried around for a week had been on dead bodies.
    “Why does that happen?” Tananda asked, but I noticed that she wasn’t really putting as much anger into her voice as before.
    Glenda smiled at her. “You’re the one with the ability to dimension-hop. You tell me.”
    Tananda’s eyes seemed to fade out for a moment, then she looked up at Glenda and said softly, “We’re too far away from any place I know, including the last place we jumped to.”
    “Exactly,” Glenda said, putting the cut bread on the table in front of us. “The Shifters have done that to six groups of treasure-seekers that my father sold the map to. Vortex #6, this place, is just too far from any known dimension, and any other dimension on the map, for almost anyone but the most traveled dimension-hopper. And until I fixed this cabin up a few weeks ago, there was nothing here but a shell of old logs.”
    “We would have starved to death,” I said.
    “Given time, you would have starved, or jumped to some other dimension and gotten lost,”