Myth-Told Tales Read online

  —Robert Lynn Asprin

  MYTH CONGENIALITY

  By Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye

  I answered the door of the inn in my most repulsive disguise.

  “Yeah?” I asked the two small children who looked up at the one-eyed, white-haired rogue with five teeth, tangled hair, bizarrely twisted features, and visible insects crawling in and out of his clothes. They didn’t retreat a pace.

  “Is the haunted house open?” the older one asked.

  “Yeah!” the little one said, staring at me with open curiosity. “We wanna see all the monsters!”

  “Monsters?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Yeah! Draggins and wivverns and yuni-corns and creaky floors and stuff! We heard about it in town.”

  “No,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my pet dragon Gleep charging for the door. He loved to answer the door. I put a foot into his chest to keep him from sticking his nose around the edge. “No monsters here.” Now Buttercup wanted to know what was going on, and you can’t deter a war unicorn as easily as you can a baby dragon who’d impressed upon you. “Nope. Just a law-abiding, boring old guy living quietly by himself.” I could see them starting to become afraid now. I smiled wistfully. They started to back away nervously. “Just a lonely old man who’d love to have company to while away the hours. Sorry.” I slammed the door shut on them just before Buttercup put his muzzle under my arm.

  “Stop it, you guys,” I protested, being nuzzled by a dragon on one side and snuffled by a unicorn on the other. Gleep and Buttercup looked hurt. “I keep telling you to stay out of sight. Now the townspeople have seen you. Can you believe it? A haunted house! And they want to come in. I wish Bunny was here.”

  Bunny, my former accountant, was staying here at the old inn with me, running interference and pretty much keeping house so that I could get on with my magikal studies. She’d gone off on vacation a few days before. I hadn’t realized until she had been gone how lonely it was in the sprawling building by myself. Alone, as I said, except for two exuberant pets.

  I let the disguise spell drop. I always had to use one when I opened the door. Nobody in Klahd would be impressed or frightened by my normal appearance. I was young, for one thing, tall but thin, with a thatch of blond hair, and I’d been told that my blue eyes reminded them of Gleep’s. When I looked in a mirror I couldn’t see the same innocent wide expression, but I’d been assured by Aahz that it was there.

  “Come on, you guys. Let’s have lunch.”

  I wasn’t much of a cook, being used to leaning out the door of our tent at the Bazaar on Deva and being in reach of every kind of cuisine from every dimension, some delicious and toothsome, some more frightening to smell or look at than any disguise I’d ever put on. My cooking was somewhere in between, but Gleep ate everything, and Buttercup was always content with his fodder.

  The kitchen, as befit one in a building constructed to serve a houseful of guests, was enormous. I kept a small fire going in one of the baking ovens instead of the huge ingle that comprised a whole wall shared with the rest of the inn. We usually ate at a small table tucked in the alcove beside it, cosy and warm. Formality was pointless, since we never had guests, and I could keep my back to the wall.

  I dished up stew that had been bubbling away in a closed pot among the embers of the fire. One generous portion for me, five for Gleep. (He also caught his own meals from among the rodents in the barn, but I didn’t want to know about that.) It hadn’t burned, for which I was grateful, since we were short on supplies. Going into town to shop always elicited curiosity from the merchants and townsfolk as to who I was, where I came from, and what was going on in the old inn. I used to think they were just friendly, but experience made me question everybody’s motives. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I turned all the queries back on those who were asking, inquiring how they were, whether the prize cow had had her calf yet, and so on. I was thought of as a friendly guy, probably the servant of the old man at the inn, yet no one knew much about me. I was content with that, since I wasn’t ready to answer those questions myself.

  “Not bad,” I said, tasting the squirrel-rat stew. I trapped animals for meat in the woods outside, and grew a few vegetables, skills learned long ago from my farmer father. My mother had taught me basic cooking, but I’d picked up a few hints over the years. Gleep stuffed his face into the washing bowl that served as his food dish when he ate inside. A happy “gleep” echoed out of the earthenware. I looked around for the wineskin. Still more than half full, I was pleased to note, as I poured myself a glass. So I hadn’t unconsciously drunk more than I should have. My habits were getting better. I wished Aahz was there to see.

  A loud POP! sounded in the center of the room. I jumped to my feet and drew my belt knife. Travel between dimensions was accomplished using incantations, spells or D-hoppers, magikal devices one dialed to reach the right destination. I had enemies as well as friends.

  To my relief, it was only Bunny. I relaxed for a split second, then, at the sight of the expression on her face, scooted out around the table to meet her. Her normally immaculate clothes were disheveled, and she looked as though she’d been crying.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  I helped her to sit down and poured her a glass of wine. She downed the glass in one gulp, something I’ve never seen the ladylike Bunny do.

  She looked at me, her large blue eyes rimmed with red. I noticed that her lids were crusted with a noxious-looking green paste, and her eyelashes had been dipped in black tar, making them stick out in spiky clusters.

  “Oh, Skeeve, I need your help!”

  “For what?” I frowned. “Did something happen on your vacation?”

  Bunny looked abashed. “I wasn’t on vacation. I asked for a few days off so I could see my uncle. Don Bruce asked me to do him a favor. He said I was the only one he could trust to do it.”

  Her uncle, Don Bruce, the Fairy Godfather of the Mob, had for years employed M.Y.T.H. Inc. to look after its business interests in the Bazaar at Deva. He’d sent Bunny to me in hopes that I’d marry her, to make ties between his operation and mine closer. I prefer to choose my own girlfriends, and I admit I had sold Bunny short when I first met her. Since then I’d come to appreciate her intelligence. She was our accountant and book-keeper. If Don Bruce had sent her on an errand, it was probably a tough one.

  “He sent me to get a device called a Bub Tube for him from a dimension called Trofi,” she continued. “I tried, Skeeve, but I just can’t get it. It’s too much for me.” Her face contorted, and she burst into tears. “I really can’t do this.”

  I hunted up a clean handkerchief and pushed it into her hands. “I can’t believe Don Bruce would send you into a really dangerous situation without backup.”

  “Oh, Skeeve, I wish it was dangerous!”

  “What?” I asked. “Why? What do you have to do?”

  She lifted her face, now smudged with black and green. “Primp, parade, put on enough makeup to cover a dragon, sing, dance, wear a swimsuit in front of a panel of ogling judges, and, throughout the whole thing—smile!”

  “That’s demeaning,” I said, shuddering. In her place I would rather have faced an active volcano.

  “That’s what I mean,” Bunny wailed, wringing the handkerchief between her hands. She was normally so composed. I was worried. “I hate it.”

  “Couldn’t I just go in, as a businessman, and meet with the owners of the Bub Tube face-to-face? I could probably negotiate for it. After working with Aahz for so many years I’ve gotten pretty good at it. If Don Bruce is involved, money should be no object . . .” She shook her head. I frowned. “I could steal it. My skills are pretty rusty after all this time, but now that I’ve been practicing magik . . .”

  “It’s been tried, Skeeve. Everything has been tried. There’s no other way to obtain it. In this dimension there are no business meetings. Only contests. I have to win this beauty contest to get the Bub Tube. It’s humiliating.” />
  I sat back. “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”

  “That’s not enough. Every other contestant is cheating broadside, you should excuse the expression, and I can’t win. My uncle is counting on me. Will you help me? I could ask Tanda or Massha, but I’m ashamed to tell another woman what I’m going through. I’d rather trust you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But if I can’t help negotiate, the only thing I can offer is moral support, and a little magik.”

  Bunny looked resigned. “That may be the only thing that will help me win.”

  I put together a kit of magikal items that I thought would be of some use. I put food out for Gleep and Buttercup. Bunny assured me that I could come and go between Trofi and Klahd without a problem, so I didn’t have to call on any friends to look after them. I would have brought them along, but they’d have added too much to the chaos.

  And chaos it was. The D-hopper delivered us into the middle of a shrieking crowd. I jumped, thinking that the shrill voices were raised because of a threat, but it turned out to be the normal voices of several hundred females, all of them with anywhere from one to a dozen attendants primping and coiffing them.

  I looked around at the set faces of the contestants. There were several horned and red-skinned Deveel females clad in black and red to accent their complexions. They shot sultry glances at anyone who met their eyes. Pinky-red Imp women, stubbier and less sleek, dressed in dated fashions and too much makeup, sashayed around. A blue-skinned girl I recognized as a Gnome was holding still for four beauticians, each dabbing a different shade of makeup onto her face. She seemed fuzzy, as if she was going in and out of focus as I watched. I noticed a few Klahds, including one man dressed up, not very effectively, as a woman. Plenty of other dimensions were represented. All of the entrants looked determined and a little desperate.

  “This must be one powerful magik item,” I commented.

  “It is,” Bunny said. “It’s up there.” She pointed to a dais at one end of the vast chamber. High above it on a golden platform was a bulging, rectangular piece of glass with a magickal image flickering behind it. I peered at it, and found my gaze caught. Even at that distance I had to make a conscious effort to drag my eyes away from it.

  “It causes people to stare helplessly at it for hours,” Bunny said. “My uncle doesn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Whose?” I inquired.

  “Well . . . anyone’s but his.” But the way she hesitated made me think that there was someone specific he wanted to keep it away from. Bunny, if she knew, wasn’t going to tell me.

  I studied my surroundings. The room, a high-ceilinged chamber lined with mirrored doors on three sides, was a staging area. The center of the fourth wall featured a huge staircase flanked by thick black-velvet curtains leading up into a darkened area. Dozens of makeup tables were laid out in the center of the room. Each was occupied by a beautiful woman, or one of many beings who were undoubtedly considered beautiful in their own dimensions, but to my eye could scare the pith out of a reed. Not far from me sat a huge female Pervect, like Pookie, but nearly a foot taller and half as wide. Considering that Pookie was slender, this one looked unnaturally thin. When you added in the mouthful of four-inch fangs, she looked like a smiling dragon. Wearing lipstick. I gulped.

  “How can I help?” I asked.

  “You’ve probably noticed how much magik is flying around here, Skeeve. I need you to keep me from dropping too far behind in the contest.”

  I felt around for lines of force. Bunny was right: a hugely powerful force line ran directly underneath the building, leading toward the staircase. I wondered if the place had been constructed with it in mind. I was able to tap in without difficulty, and discovered that many fellow magicians were doing the same.

  “But you know I haven’t made too much progress in my lessons yet,” I said. Bunny was the only one of the staff of M.Y.T.H. Inc. that I had brought with me to the isolated inn where I meant to buckle down and study. “The only thing I’m really proficient in is illusion, plus a few very minor tricks.”

  “That may be all I need,” Bunny said. “I need to stand out in this crowd, and that won’t be easy.”

  “But you’re . . .” There was no point in denying the truth. I swallowed and plunged onward. “You’re the most beautiful woman in this room. If it’s really a beauty contest, you’ll win it hands down.”

  “If it was that simple,” Bunny said, “I would never have brought you into this. I would have done it for my uncle, and no one would ever know. But I admit I’m out of my depth.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best,” I said. “Where do we begin?”

  “First is the beauty parade,” Bunny said. “It begins in an hour. I’ll need you to cover my back.”

  Her back wasn’t covered, nor was most of her body, during the beauty parade. She wore a brief, bright red bathing suit whose color pretty much matched my face. I was far more embarrassed than she was. Bunny disappeared into a changing room and emerged in a robe. When she shed it I thought steam would come shooting out of my ears. Her outfit started inward from her shoulders and downward from her collarbone and upward and downward from her navel, and left no inch of her spectacularly long, slim legs to the imagination. My hands itched to encircle her waist, which looked small enough that my fingers could meet around it. Above and below, her feminine attributes were . . . undeniable, yet very much in proportion. On her feet she wore shoes with such high, narrow heels that they made her taller than me.

  Bunny’s suit, if you could call three wisps and a few strings a suit, was modest compared with many of her fellow contestants assembled backstage. An Impish woman with a figure I’d once heard Aahz describe as zaftig had on three narrow strips of dark green cloth and an expression that if I gave in to the impulse to put my hands around her waist I’d shortly have no hands at all. It was no trouble at all to restrain myself. A bevy of red Deveel women glittered in silver, black, gold, and copper suits. The Pervect wore a suggestion of golden yellow to match her eyes. A sharklike female, clad in one strip of cloth far down by her tail, swam by in the air. Magik, I remembered with difficulty. That was why Bunny had called me in.

  Once she’d donned her . . . er . . . suit, she had to put on cosmetics, lots of them. The green stuff she larded around her eyes, she assured me, was harmless, as was the black stuff. The pale cream paint she rubbed onto her cheeks and forehead, I thought, must be a protective layer for the women’s faces, because some of the contestants were layering it on so heavily that there was no chance of a hint of sun contacting skin. A huge, insectoid woman wearing a yellow polka-dotted garment had matching goo of bright yellow for her mandibles, with lines of black to accent her multiple eyes. Behind her stretched a queue that had to be hundreds long.

  “There’s only one prize?” I asked.

  “Just one,” Bunny assured me, stroking tar onto her eyelashes and making them stick out like combs. She put the applicator away and looked at me. Strangely enough, under the bright lights all the cosmetics did make her seem very attractive—at a distance. If you got close up, you could see where all the various colors intersected, like a mosaic.

  “What happens to all the others?”

  She glanced around disapprovingly, then leaned in to whisper. “A lot of them stay around and marry. Trofi has no business interests but contests, but they do a great deal of matchmaking. Males from hundreds of dimensions prize Trofi wives above all others. Sensible men don’t bother to come here. It’s not worth it. Trofi wives are all what you might call ‘high-maintenance.’ ”

  Well, I wouldn’t, because I didn’t know what the expression meant, and there was no time to ask for an explanation. Perhaps it had something to do with the costumes and cosmetics, both of which had to be adjusted and added to on the way to the flight of steps.

  Up above, it was dark. I was aware of thousands of pairs or sets of eyes glittering in the reflected glow of spotlights swi
nging above the stage. There was a orchestra fanfare, then all the lights dropped but one. I peered over the edge. A lanky male Deveel, deveelishly handsome in a long-coated black suit and shiny shoes, held a short baton close to his face. He sang into the bulbous top end, and his voice was projected magickally all over the vast arena.

  “There she is! / How beautiful! / Your queen of love! / How magikal! / How beautiful and magikal! / Your queen of love she is.”

  I found myself humming along. It was catchy. There was a hint of enchantment in the tune, causing me to crane my head to see as the Deveel stretched out his hand toward the steps. The first contestant, a serpentine woman with blue skin, ascended.

  The crowd breathed an admiring sigh as the woman slithered gracefully around the stage on the arm of the Deveel host. So far, so good, I thought. The Pervect female ahead of Bunny hissed, showing her long teeth, then flicked her wrist in a meaningful gesture. She was casting a spell!

  On the stage, the sighs turned to titters. I glimpsed the smooth head of the snake woman as it dipped low, far lower than I suspect she intended, then vanished entirely. The audience broke out into a laugh.

  “She tripped!” Bunny whispered to me.

  “Did she fall or was she pushed?” I whispered back, indicating our neighbor by a tilt of my head. Bunny’s eyes widened, but she hid the expression quickly as the yellow gaze slid toward us.

  The snake woman’s cheeks were glowing royal blue by the time she got back to the steps. She shinnied down the railing, cursing under her breath, and was met by a wriggling mass of supporters, all exclaiming how unfortunate it was she’d suffered such an accident. The Pervect smiled smugly, a terrifying sight.

  A Deveel woman glided out next. Around her head flitted tiny winged salamanders in rainbow colors, shedding gleaming lights on her face.