"Almost certain." Tanda laughed.
"You're kidding?" I asked. "You really think there is a golden cow out there?"
"I didn't say that," Aahz said. "I just said the map was likely to be real."
I frowned and Tanda laughed.
"Mini is populated by Minikins, who have this awful power of never telling a lie about anything. They do not do well at the Bazaar at Deva, for obvious reasons."
"But what happens if the guy who sold it to me wasn't a Minikin?"
"If he had been there for more than a day, he had to tell the truth about the map as well. That's why we got out of there so fast. Truth is not a good influence when you are shopping."
At that I had no firsthand knowledge, but I figured Tanda was the expert.
"Come on," she said to Aahz. "Dig out the map. We're wasting time. Let's do this."
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Aahz asked as he pulled out the parchment, unfolded it, and put it on the bed so all three of us could look at it.
I had no idea what I was looking at, but Tanda seemed to. She pointed at the upper left corner.
"That's Minikins' Dimension."
Even I knew that, since it was labeled Mini.
"So we start there?"
Aahz nodded. So did Tanda, for which I was grateful. If they both agreed, at least we had something solid.
Tanda ran her finger along the only line leading from Minikin. It ended at a dot that was labeled Vortex #1. She studied that for a moment, then glanced at Aahz.
"You have any idea what that means? Or where it's at?"
"Not a clue," he said.
Now I was stunned. It wasn't often that my mentor admitted he didn't know something. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time that it had happened, if ever. I wanted to point that out to him, but this just didn't seem to be the right time, so I went back to studying the map.