"Bought it from a man on a street corner," I said. "I think it might have been some beggar."
"What dimension?"
"Not a clue." I shrugged. "One of the many Tanda and I visited. You could ask her."
Aahz frowned even more at that.
"What made you buy it?"
Again I shrugged.
"I honestly don't know. I thought you'd have fun with it for your birthday, and the guy said I was the first traveler he'd seen in a long time who might be able to use it and live to tell the tale."
"Could he see through your disguises?" Aahz asked, staring at me.
I tried to remember back to the day. I had used my stan dard disguise spell, and on that dimension, the spell had not been hard. Most of the residents stood four feet tall, and had two feet. Compared to disguising Tanda and me as slugs on one of the previous dimensions, that had been easy. But the beggar had clearly picked me out of a crowd, and he seemed out of place among the short people, being almost five feet tall.
I looked at Aahz and nodded.
"Maybe. But I don't know how he could have."
Aahz waved his hand in disgust.
"Apprentice, there are a thousand ways, especially with someone so unpracticed as you."
I said nothing. No point in even trying to defend my tal ents. Aahz always won those conversations by making me try something I couldn't yet do. And that was just about everything when it came to magik. But making disguises is my best ability.
Aahz spun around and moved back to the window, keep ing the map with him. He stood there, staring out over the courtyard, letting the silence in the room just build and build. And if there was one thing I hated more than anything, it was the sound of someone thinking, without telling me what they were thinking about.