myth-taken identity

I eyed him as something nibbled at the back of my memory. "What kind of spells?" I demanded.

"Oh, you know," Skocklin mused, "climate control and all. We're sittin' on top of a volcano, after all."

"The Volcano!" I roared.

"Why, dagnabbit, why is the scaly boy gettin' all riled up?" Skocklin's voice faded behind me, as I shot down the hall.

"What's the hurry, honey?" Massha asked. Her levitation belt let her overtake me with ease.

"You were pretty out of it the last time we were in The Volcano," I explained, pumping my elbows to get the highest turn of speed. "Jack Frost was there, arguing with one of the Dji

Massha's eyes went wide. "So you think the way down is somewhere in there?"

"It has to be," I asserted. "Where would be a better interface for thieves? Rattila's people wear dozens of different faces. The Volcano's the busiest store in The Mall. People are always coming and going, and they have about ten thousand dressing rooms. Who would notice if somebody went into one and never came out?"

"Pretty convenient, living right underneath your place of business, huh?" Cire wisecracked, huffing along behind us.

"Idiot," Eskina snorted, ru

TWENTY-FIVE

Rimbaldi greeted us with outstretched arms. "What news, Aahz?" he boomed.

"You're harboring fugitives," I rapped out, marching past him.

"What? What does he say?" He reached for Massha's arm. "Dearest madama, what does he mean?"

"You might be closer to your shoplifters than you think, honey," Massha explained. "Can we look around?"

"Of course! My shop is at your service."

"Spread out," I ordered the group. Parvattani was on the horn in seconds. Guards, both uniformed and undercover, started rilling the gigantic store. "And be ready! They've been a step ahead of us all the way. They've got to know we're coming. Seal the doors."

The shoppers present, began to protest. Rimbaldi and his clerks hastened to assure them that nothing was wrong.

Eskina, more nimble than I, ducked past me and started sniffing the ground for familiar scents. Cire peered behind mirrors and displays. With Parvattani at my heels, I started flinging open dressing-room curtains.

"Sorry, madam-a," he apologized to an Imp woman we caught trying to wriggle into a pair of djea

"Quit apologizing to them," I snarled. "This is important."

"How far back should we go?" Massha asked. "This place is practically infinite!"

I started sniffing sulfur and brimstone. I knew we couldn't be far off.

"It's got to be in the Flibber half," I insisted. "The extradimensional section wouldn't have access to the cellars here."

"Good thinking," Eskina exclaimed. "But how far back is that?"

"Up there," Rimbaldi indicated, pointing ahead. "Just in front of where that werewolf is coming out."

"Good," I stated. "Let's cut to the chase."

I figured if I were Rattila, I would conceal the entrance to my lair where it wouldn't be easily uncovered, say in the midst of a thousand doors just like it. I wouldn't use the farthest door, because of the tendency people have, either in dressing rooms or lavatories, to use either the very first booth or the very last. Rattila had proved he was a pretty good psychologist, or he had learned a lot from the identities he had ripped off over the years. Well, today was the last day he was going to have the benefit of those identities.

I flung open the second-to-last dressing room. Instead of the usual cramped stall with two hooks, a mirror, and a wooden bench, it contained a long, black, downward-sloping corridor. Waves of sulfur-scented hot air rolled out, making us gag.

"Sacred lamps!" Rimbaldi exclaimed, bobbing up to the ceiling. "I never notice that before!" "This is it!" Cire exclaimed, his crystal ball glowing brightly.

"I smell him!" Eskina yowled. She shot forward, baying loudly. "Rattila!"

We plunged forward into darkness.

"Welcome, Aahz," a chilling voice echoed all around us.

Pale phosphorescence picked out looming shadows in the inky surroundings.

"Hell with it," I snapped. "Massha, light us up."

"Gotcha, honey," she replied.

A rosy orange glow issued forth from a charm in the palm of her hand and spread out as far as the eye could see, hundreds of yards! Thousands! The farther it went, the more astonished I was. And the room was far from empty.

"There must be a million gold pieces' worth of merchandise in here," Massha breathed, looking around at the heaps and piles everywhere that reached up to the low ceiling.

"The stolen goods!" Parvattani a

"That's not all," I reminded them. "We're not alone."

Around us, dozens of pairs of beady little eyes reflected the light back to us. And two unusual pairs side by side: one odd-sized and moon-shaped, and the other slanted and glowing red.

"Greetings, Aahz," hissed the voice we had heard before. The pair of red eyes bobbed slightly. "Welcome to my Rat Hole. I am Rattila."

"Yeah, I guessed," I replied, sounding as bored as I could.

Massha increased her light spell, and I finally got a good look at the creep who had caused all my current problems.

Rattila lounged at his ease on Chumley's chest. The Troll appeared to have been tied up with duct tape, a sub- stance that, though it had its own magikal properties, should never have been strong enough to hold him. Rattila was a ratlike creature, similar to the host of mall-rats crouching around us in the Rat Hole, but much, much bigger. If he had been standing next to me, he might have come up to my collarbone. His yellow teeth and red eyes provided the only relief from a personal color scheme that was unrelieved black: fur, nose, tail, and claws.

"He has grown huge!" Eskina squeaked, taken aback for the first time since I had known her. "He should be half that size!"

"Yes, my fellow Ratislavan," Rattila gurgled. "I have finally attained stature befitting my status."

"Hah!" Eskina scoffed. She put her hands on her furry hips. "You are a night janitor. Now, you will give me back the device, and we will return to Ratislava, where you will face justice."

"You are all forgetting something," Rattila reminded us, holding up one ski

"You okay, Chumley?" I called.

"Fine," he grunted.

"Good. All right, Rattila, what do you want?"

"Now you are making sense," Rattila crooned, with all the confidence in the world. Casually, he tossed the ball of lightning a few times, then shoved it in the Troll's face. Chumley recoiled, and we all smelled the odor of singeing fur. "I want all of you to leave here. Forget about me. Go away and let me complete my business. If you don't leave at once, then your friend dies. That's what I want. Do you understand?"

"Uh-huh," I nodded. "Oh, well... sorry, Chumleyr

With that, I leaped at them.

Rattila gawked at me for one second, then threw the lightning ball at us. I rolled to one side, ignoring blows from the pile of socks the lightning hit, and came up ru

"Get them!" I bellowed, as Parvattani and his people stood frozen. "I'll get Rattila."

"We will!" Eskina shouted, ru