I pointed to Aahz. “I’m letting the big guy carry it.”
I thought Aahz would choke on the bread.
Tanda laughed, and the tension in the room eased a little.
Aahz took out the map and unfolded it on the table.
Glenda moved around so that she stood beside Tanda. I scooted over to get a better look as well.
Again the map had changed.
No surprise there. We were on Vortex #6, which was now clearly highlighted on the map. There were four lines from our dimension headed to four different places. I didn’t like the sounds of the four dimensions at all.
Febrile was the one on the right, Hostile the next one, Durst the next, and Molder the farthest left.
Tanda shook her head. “I don’t know any of them.”
“Neither do I,” Aahz said.
“No way that you could,” Glenda said. “They are even farther removed from Deva than this place.”
She glanced at me to make sure I was listening, then pointed to Febrile.
“That place’s coolest temperature is over one hundred and twenty. We wouldn’t last five minutes there.”
“Nice that the map designer put it on the map,” I said.
“Traps,” she said. “The Cartograms loved to make these sorts of things.”
“Cartograms?” I asked.
She gave me another of her wonderful smiles.
“They are an entire race who explore and map dimensions, and any time they find a treasure, they do one of these treasure maps to the location of the treasure, and then sell the map.”
“I’d heard about them,” Tanda said. “Never bothered to buy a map from one of them, though.”
“They have booths in the Bazaar at Deva,” Aahz said. “Never had the need to use their services.”