After another hour I was sure I had the important areas of the map pretty well memorized, including some escape routes from the castle I didn’t think any vampire cow would know about.
I stood and moved over to where Aahz and Tanda were sitting at desks pouring over books. Glenda was still asleep on her couch, the golden rope tied around her.
“Have a good nap?” Aahz asked.
“A productive one,” I said.
He looked at me with his normal puzzled frown and then pointed at the book he had open in front of him.
“Says here that this area around the castle is the magik focal area of the entire dimension. Before Count Bovine took it over, it was a spa area where demons from all the dimensions nearby came to soak up the concentrated magik forces and become rejuvenated.”
“Powerful stuff,” I said.
“More than anything I’ve seen before,” Aahz said.
Tanda pointed at what she had been reading. “This book says that the war between the vampires and the normal folks lasted for over two hundred years and killed almost everything. This was one of the last books put in here before the exodus.”
“Exodus?” I asked.
Aahz nodded. “It seems, from what we can gather, that when the compromise was reached to save both sides, Count Bovine and his people left this area, this castle, putting a shield up around it to keep everyone out of the magik.”
“It seems the count didn’t trust his own people with this kind of power,” Tanda said.
“So what became of this count?” I asked.
Aahz shrugged. “Maybe Harold will tell us in the morning.”