So here you have it. A collaboration that once more brings you the adventures of Skeeve the Magnificent and his companions. This time they are taking on one of the most frightening forces that can be found in all of the Dimensions in a book that will be both comfortably familiar and a little something new as well.
Enjoy.
—The Editor
ONE
"Not much of an inn, if you ask me."
—H. JOHNSON
I stared at the candle in the brass holder in the middle of the cluttered table. Light the candle, I thought, concentrating hard. Light it!
Anyone who might have looked in the window would have seen a young, blond man from Klah, if they knew Klah, gazing hard at an unlit candle. Anyone from a few dozen dimensions might have identified that young man as The Great Skeeve, Magician to Kings and King of Magicians. None of them would have guessed that in spite of my reputation, which was that of a wonderworker, diplomat and organizer, as far as magik went, I was still a pretty rank... apprentice.
Apprentice. I sat upright on my bench to rub my back, and gazed at nothing in particular. The term caused all kinds of emotions to well up in me and distract me from my self-assigned task. The first: regret. I just walked away from my entire life to date: money, a position as Court Magician I could have held on to infinitely just on my reputation, a business that was thriving even beyond my ability to cover all the opportunities that came my way. But the thing I most regretted leaving was friends. The best and most important friend I had left behind was the chief reason I had gone. Aahz, denizen of the dimension Perv, had been my mentor, guide, partner, teacher and, yes, friend, since the untimely death of my master, the magician Garkin, who'd just finished this very lesson when he'd been killed by an assassin.