at a time. I put him in a judo hold and tripped him over on his back. As soon as I grabbed him, Eskina fell down, gasping for breath. Chumley joined us, holding on to the figure's kicking feet.
"Some world-ruler you are," I scoffed in Rattila's face. "You lose focus too easily. I bet all your spells fall apart like that." I reached for the gold card.
Roaring out his rhyme, Rattila squirmed out of my grasp in the shape of a gigantic serpent. Chumley reached around with both arms and locked my arms in the corners of the serpent's jaw so he couldn't sink his fangs into anyone. I spotted the Master Card on a tiny chain around the snake's neck, and started to shinny up the writhing, muscular length toward it.
"Mmmph mmmph mmm mmm mmm mmmph, mmmmph mmm mmm mmm mmph," Rattila-the-snake muttered around my arms.
In the next second I was grasping a bright yellow, six-foot fish covered with five-inch-long spines.
"Yeowch!" I yelled. It was an effort, but I held on.
"I'll take care of it, honey," Massha called. I don't know how she did it, but the spines became rubbery and soft. We wrestled Rattila to the ground by his fins and dragged him by inches down the slope toward Eskina and the handcuffs. His flukes flopped furiously, trying to make me let go.
"No way, vermin," I snarled. Eskina jumped on top of him and fastened the cuffs around one fin. The open mouth goggled a few times. We collapsed on top of a nest of thin tentacles like pink spaghetti. They whipped around us with astonishing strength and dragged us up toward a maw filled with incurving teeth.
"You don't know the power of the Master Card," Rattila slavered.
I braced myself off a bundle of the writhing tentacles and came around with both hands joined in a double fist. I smashed it into the grinning face. The tentacles contorted painfully as the face collapsed in pain.
"I don't believe in credit cards," I informed him, giving
him a solid kick, and followed it up with an uppercut.
Eskina sank her teeth into the tentacle holding her. Chumley, uncommonly furious for a being of his temperament, knotted the writhing legs together in a gigantic macrame plant holder.
"Gives other people too much power over you."
Rattila wailed in pain. I recognized the chant again.
"I no longer need to control you," he yelled, changing into a Troll the exact likeness of Chumley. "I've got power over all your friends!" He lifted each of us in one hand and threw us down the mound. "Where are my mall-rats?" he roared, stomping toward the showroom.
Massha staggered to her feet. "They're not coming," she announced, dusting herself off. "They got a better offer."
The Troll spun on his heel, gawking in astonishment.
I wanted an explanation from Massha, too, but it would have to wait.
Chumley was there and ready for him.
"You do not deserve to wear my face," he informed Rattila, wrapping one meaty arm around the other's head.
If you've never seen two Trolls fight, let me tell you it is not a lot different than watching two avalanches rolling toward one another. The collateral damage to the location, furnishings, and anyone unlucky enough to be within range of a limb or thrown object is usually considerable. Most insurance policies written in dimensions where there is a lot of D-hopping specifically exclude damage sustained involving a Troll, a lot like the dragon-fire exclusion. I had always found it amusing that insurance never covered anything that was likely to cost the most to repair.
Massha, Eskina, and I followed the battle as it progressed around the overstuffed Rat Hole and up the ramp out into The Volcano. Roars, howls, and thuds warned the curious listeners in the store overhead to get the hell out of the way and retreat to a safe distance by the time Chumley and his impostor rolled through the curtained doorway.
"Should we not help Chumley?" Eskina inquired.
"We're far more likely to get in the way," I informed
her. "If Chumley needs our help, he'll ask."
One Troll was clearly flagging. He heaved up a low platform, brought it down on his opponent's head, and stopped to pant. The other staggered backward, then came running at the first one with his head down. The first went flying back into a rack of clothes.
I figured Chumley had gotten enough of his own back by now. Moa and The Mall guards watched, wide-eyed, with the shopkeepers and Jack Frost, who must have been called in about the heat leak again. As soon as my way was clear, I beckoned to the Djinnellis.
"Give us a hand!" I shouted, miming pulling two objects apart.
The Djinnellis understood and held up their folded arms.
Suddenly, the two Trolls were plastered on the air like huge, shaggy paper dolls. I realized then that the exhausted one was Chumley. The other, a glint of gold showing through the fur near his neck, seemed fresh as a daisy.
To the amazement and consternation of the Djinns, Rattila shook off the suspension spell. He seemed to grow larger as he marched toward me.
"That was refreshing!" he boomed. "I am nearly at full power! And I am going to use your friend's identity to do it!"
The Troll vanished. In his place was a tall, skinny, pale-haired, pale-eyed Klahd with a goofy grin and a kind, open expression. Skeeve.
"Hey, Aahz, don't you like the idea of me being the most powerful magician in the world? I'm going to make it possible for Rattila to achieve his dream. Isn't that great?"
My hands twitched. At the sight of my ex-partner's face I admit a lot of emotions went though me, but on top was outrage, followed by fury.
"You dare," I began in a low voice that made everyone else in the store back away slowly, "to sully the good name of my friend?"
"More than that!" the Skeeve-face gloated. "At the same
time he gives up the rest of the energy I need to become a full magician, I take full possession of him, too. He will cease to have any separate existence from my Master Card."
"Well, then, we need to cancel your account," I informed him smoothly.
I darted toward the pouch on his belt. A hand like a steel trap caught mine. He bent my wrist backward until the bones ground together.
He grinned in my face. "Want to hear me sing?"
"Not a chance!" I snarled.
I swept my feet underneath his and sent him sprawling. He had Skeeve's quick reflexes at his command, so he was up in no time. I knocked him down again with a backhanded swipe. He flicked a hand, and I floated up toward the ceiling. I windmilled, trying to get back toward the ground.
"Flying's great, Aahz! Don't you wish you could do it on your own? Oh, but I forgot," the face pouted. "You lost your magik." The pad of air under my body vanished, and I hit the floor. "You kept up a facade like you were still important. You tried to show me how wise you are, but it's all a sham. Everyone pretends they like you, that they feel sorry for you, but inside they're laughing. In this world nothing else matters but power!"
He reached out and pinched his thumb and forefinger together. Suddenly, my ears were filled with a deafening blare of music, voices, and noise. I knew what he had done: he'd destroyed Massha's cone of silence. Without its protection my sensitive ears were going to be overwhelmed by the sounds of The Mall—he hoped.
"You are so wrong, long-nose," I gritted out. "And this is going to end now!"
The ground dropped away from me again, but I had a hand on a display rack. I used my weightlessness to swing my legs around in a circle. I cringed a little at attacking one of my closest friends, but I reminded myself that this was not my friend but someone who wanted to drain the life out
of him. At the last moment I tensed so my whole weight hit him in the head. Rattila staggered back a couple of paces, then came roaring in at me. As I swung around I smacked him in the face. He stopped, goggling. I came around the pole again and slapped him so hard he staggered and fell.
My feet settled toward earth.
"Go get him, tiger!" Massha shouted, waving a charm shaped like a scale at me.
I leaped onto th
e impostor. The Djinnellis and other onlookers crowded in.
"Back off!" I roared. 'This one's mine!"
I hauled Rattila up by the scruff. His mouth and hands twitched. I felt something hot and gluey pour over my head, covering my eyes, nostrils and mouth. I sucked in a deep breath. The stuff solidified, but I didn't let go. I shoved Rattila into the wall and head-butted him. The shell over my face cracked away. I lifted a fist. The blue eyes opened wide.
"Aahz, don't hit me," Skeeve's voice begged me. It caught me off guard. "I didn't mean those things I said. I respect you. Really."
I cocked my head. "Sorry, partner," I replied.
It was a wish for the absent Skeeve, not for this loser. With all the strength in my body, I connected my fist with his jaw. I threw another punch. The head snapped back against the wall, and the long body collapsed in a heap on the floor. I could have stopped then, but I had a lot of resentment to get out of my system, too. I kept pounding on Rattila until the Skeeve-form disappeared, and he became a rat again.
I straightened up and kicked at him. "And your rhyme stinks, too!"
Eskina raced in and bound up the limp rodent's limbs with her cuffs. "Magnificent, Aahz!" she congratulated me. My friends and new acquaintances crowded in to shake my hand and pound me on the back. "Now, where is the device?"
I searched through the greasy black fur until I came up with the gleaming gold card.
"Here it is."
"Excellent! Give it to me! I must take it back!"
"No way," I retorted. "This thing is too dangerous to exist. Besides, it's got an imprint in it of everyone that Rattila ever ripped off."
"In spite of my firewall I can still feel a pull from its spell," Massha added.
"I, too," Chumley agreed.
"Unless you can empty it of its charge, you're not getting it back," I concluded.
"But I must bring it back with me!" Eskina shrieked. "Five years I have sought it. The scientists are waiting!"
"And what happens the next time an alchemy lab janitor can't resist the temptation?" I asked.
Eskina looked crestfallen.
"You are right," she acknowledged.
"You have the villain," Parvattani reminded her, coming up to put a consoling arm around her.
She looked up at him gratefully. "That is true," she smiled.
"You two make a good team," I told them. "Think about it."
They both looked shy.
"What about the card, Hot Stuff?" Massha asked.
"History," I snapped out.
I bent the device between my fingers. Unlike the slave cards it could make, the Master Card wouldn't break, no matter how much I twisted it.
"Let me try," Chumley offered.
But he couldn't make a dent in it either. Nor could the magik of any of the Djinnellis, Cire, Sibone, or Chloridia, nor Woofle, who had finally come out from wherever he had been hiding.
"I'm stumped," I admitted.
"Perhaps you had better let me take it back," Eskina offered, sympathetically. "It was made to withstand elemental forces."
"Elemental!" I snapped my fingers. "Jack, are you here?"
The climate-control engineer squeezed through the crowd. "What can I do for you, Aahz?"
I tapped a foot on the glowing red floor. "What'll it take to get through this to the lava underneath?"
"A snap," Jack grinned at me. "A cold snap." He pointed a finger at the floor. A white cone formed over the spot.
When he finished there was a round white patch on the floor. I brought a heel down on it. It shattered. Lava splashed up through the broken shards of flooring. I tossed the gold card into the liquid burning stone until the letters on it ran. A chorus of howling voices rose from it as it melted away. The remains flowed off under the floor. Jack spread his hands, and the hole sealed up as if it had never been there. I dusted my hands together.
"It's a time-honored tradition, after all," I remarked, "throwing all-powerful magik items into volcanos to get rid of them."
"I feel so much better!" Massha announced.
"So do I," Chumley agreed.
"Me, too," added Marco.
"And I," a female Deveel put in.
The chorus of voices went on and on, until everyone was looking at one another.
"And the moral of that story is," I concluded, "always look out for those hidden charges."
On the floor at my feet, Rattila groaned.
TWENTY-EIGHT
"You must take this, too, darling madama," Rimbaldi insisted, draping another pair of djeanns on Massha's outstretched arms, this one in acid green. "And accessories! Belts, bracelets, scarves, anything you like! We must make up for the things that villain took from you. My cousin Paolo does his best to repair your lovely belt and bracelets. You shall have more, more, more!"
"I'm overwhelmed, you beautiful man," Massha batted her eyes at him. "That's plenty, honest! Stop!"
All morning the denizens of The Mall had been showing their gratitude for our capture of Rattila and his mob. Massha admired herself in the big three-way mirror, attended by a troop of willing Djinnies and a couple of Rattila's ex-henchrats.
"By the way," I asked, sitting in the midst of a mountain of boxes with my name on them, "what was the deal you made with those creatures?" I gestured toward a rat who went out in search of an orange belt in Massha's size to go with the green pants.
"Well, you know, the mall-rats were scared to death!"
Massha declared, holding a scarf up to her ample chin and adding it to her heap of swag. "They're really harmless lit-' tie creatures, if you overlook their penchant for picking up anything that isn't nailed down. What with all those Djinns pouring into the store, and the guards chasing them everywhere, they thought they were about to die. Once we got them all surrounded I realized they were Rattila's pawns. With Chumley's help I kept the storekeepers from killing them while I negotiated a settlement. Negotiation," she repeated with a wink at me, "is something I learned from both my teachers."
"Save the flattery," I growled. "Let's hear the rest."
Massha winked at me. "Well, I got the Djinnellis to agree that if the mall-rats surrendered their cards, they would hire them to help shore up security all over The Mall. As lifelong shoplifters, they know where all the holes are, so to speak, and they exploit them. Now they can point them out to the owners. Their leader, the one they call Strewth, persuaded the other mall-rats to agree, as long as they didn't have to be official, er, rats. They had a reputation to protect."
"Parvattani agreed," Chumley put in. "He told them they can work undercover. He even offered them their special undercover uniforms."
I laughed, remembering the gaudy getups we had turned down. "Inspired!"
"Indeed!" Chumley cheered. "I was very proud of Massha. I wish you could have seen how well she handled it all."
"It was nothing," Massha bridled, shoving Chumley backward into his collection of goodies.
The Troll, too, was surrounded by boxes of books, candy, grooming products, and anything in which he had ever expressed even the most passing interest. The patch of acid-singed fur on his chest had been expertly barbered and doctored by the local alchemist, all free of charge.
All the frozen clerks and guards in the loading dock had been restored to life once Rattila's power was broken. The
shopkeepers of The Mall were overwhelmed with gratitude, now that the ring of thieves had been broken and Rattila hauled away by a triumphant Eskina.
The little investigator had left early that morning for Ratislava. She had persuaded Parvattani to go with her, not that he needed a lot of persuading. He was in love.
"For a tour of the most beautiful dimension of them all," she had told me, giving me a kiss good-bye. "I have succeeded in my mission, thanks to you. I shall most likely get a promotion. And possibly, a lifelong friend." She was in love, too. It was kinda sweet.
"Aahz, there you are!"
Chloridia swept into The Volcano wit
h a hand through Cire's elbow. She stretched out two free arms to embrace me.
"I wanted to say farewell. I need to get back to Kallia. I have a documentary lined up to warn people about the trauma I have just gone through! The dangers of unbridled shopping!"
"I'm going with her," Cire added, blowing out his mustache. "Now that The Mall has cleaned up my credit, I've got some free time, and the publicity wouldn't hurt. Thanks for everything, Aahz. Friends?"
"Of course we're still friends," I tossed off, casually, shaking his outstretched flipper. "You're not half so bad as you used to be. You did good."
Chloridia gave her tinkling laugh. "You should come, too. You are the great hero of the day! Let me interview you on the network. It'd be a tremendous boost for you."
"No, thanks, sweetheart," I demurred. "All I want to do is go back to the thinking I was doing when all this started." A commotion near the front of the shop attracted my attention. "And there's the chair I'm going to do it in."
Delivery Flibberites in pale brown uniforms guided a floating platform containing a huge form under a tarpaulin through the crowds of shoppers and lowered it at my feet.
"Your new chair, sir," the lead deliveryman announced.
I threw off the covering and circled it, cackling with delight. "Look at that! Mahogany wood, dark red leather
upholstery, drink-holders, magikal entertainment system, full horizontal recline—every bell and whistle!" I threw myself into it. The cushions conformed to my body as if they had been made for it, which they had. "Aaaaah."
"Stylish," Chumley commented.
"Beautiful," Massha agreed.
"Very lovely," Chloridia acknowledged, leaning over to kiss me. "Ta-ta, darling."
"Later, Aahz," Cire added. He waved a hand, and the two of them vanished.
"Mr. Aahz!" Woofle bustled over to me, a receipt in his hand. "You can't expect me to pay this amount! It's outrageous!"
Moa sauntered in after his fellow administrator. "Pay it, Woofle." It sounded like that wasn't the first time he had said it.
"But, Moa!" Woofle looked like he was about to explode in outrage.
"Pay it. He earned it. Even more than that."
I tilted my head to look up at him. "You're not going to bring up that crap about a reward again," I moaned.
MYTH-Taken Identity Page 25
