“Yeah, they bolt their doors and shutter every window, every night,” I said. “I couldn’t think of a way to ask them what they were afraid of without tipping my hand that I was a demon. And at that point I had other problems to figure out, like what to do next if you two didn’t come back.”
Aahz nodded. “So we need to be careful at night.”
“The bartender guy said the round-up was still a few days off, since it wasn’t the full moon yet.”
“I wonder what they’re rounding up?” Tanda asked.
“Or who’s doing the rounding?” Aahz added. “There’s a lot to Kowtow we don’t know. You have the map?”
“I sure do,” I said, taking it out of my pocket and handing it to him.
As I did I had another realization. The map was magik. It hadn’t shown us the right path to Kowtow until I took the magik out of it, but back on Kowtow the magik had returned to the map.
“Aahz,” I said, smiling at my mentor, “you know, don’t you, that the magik returned to the map when we reached Kowtow?”
“Yeah,” he said, almost sneering at me. “So? Glenda saw it as well.”
“Exactly,” I said, smiling at my green mentor, “Glenda looked at the map while we were in Evade. Right?”
Suddenly Tanda burst out laughing, long and hard and so loud I thought she might hurt herself.
I smiled at the puzzled expression on my mentor’s face. Considering how stupid I had been lately, getting back on top and giving him some good news felt good.
“The map is a puzzle,” I said. “That basic nature of the map won’t change just because we reached Kowtow.”
Suddenly the light in Aahz’s eyes brightened and slowly a smile crept over his green-scaled face.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186