Myth Alliances

TWENTY-SEVEN

Niki shouldered into her coverall and gulped down the rest of her coffee.

"Almost whistle time," she told the others, who were in various stages of trying to wake up.

Oshleen peered up from her ledger full of red ink with gold lines showing in the yellows of her eyes. Vergetta threw aside her copy of the Perv News, their sole link with civilization in the dreary Wuhs backwater.

"The new line is running like a top. No trouble from the Wuhses. They went right from Pervomatics to personal reminder pixies. The hypno chamber is really good. Even I almost forget what we're doing when I leave there."

"Should patent it," Caitlin stated, tapping away at her keyboard. "Look at the potential applications for secret installations. There might be government contracts in a device like that."

"Oh, great, that's all we'd need," Charilor groaned. "The government already forgets half the stuff it's doing. Do you really want to add deliberate black holes to that?"

"I guess not," the little Pervect shrugged, not looking up from her screen. "Should patent it anyhow. Won't keep the Deveels from copying it, but at least we'll have a legal reason for ripping their lungs out if we catch them."

"I can't believe that there's been no heroic attempt to rescue you, little guy," Vergetta told the paperweight in the middle of the table. "Nobody throwing themselves on the ramparts, no one scaling the walls, nobody battering down the door. Looks like all your friends are a bunch of Wuhses, eh?" She laughed heartily at her own joke. The Wuhs didn't join in.

"There was a retraction in the Ronko Gazette from the Great Skeeve," Paldine announced. "I saw it when I went to pick up our stock. What I can't figure out is why."

Vergetta looked dubious. "Why which one? Why he got in our way, or why he apologized?"

"The apology is the weird part."

"Looks to me like he backed out of his contract with Shorty over there," Tenobia declared, aiming a manicured thumb at the Wuhs on the table. "Nothing's happened for a week. He probably went back to his batcave with a big fat zero. Probably just figured out he's as likely to get paid as we are."

The can hanging from the wall jangled. Niki frowned at it, then went over to pick it up. She listened, the scowl growing deeper.

"Something's wrong at Factory #9," she told the others as she let the cylinder drop. "The Wuhses are refusing to sign in." The can clattered again. She snatched it up and shouted into it. "I'm coming! What?" She threw it down. "Factory #2. They're protesting for better parking spaces."

"I'll go," Tenobia volunteered. "I'll give them parking spaces!"

"Don't all of them walk to work?" Nedira inquired. "It's probably a notion one of them picked up on another dimension," Tenobia snarled. "Ironic, isn't it? They found something for free that's still a pain in the rump!" She vanished.

The can jangled again. And again. The Pervects grabbed for it, another rushing off to handle each fresh situation.

"Hold on!" Vergetta shouted, as Charilor was about to blip out to handle a riot at Factory #3 about microwave popcorn privileges. "This is too fishy. Someone's trying to get us all going in a dozen directions at once."

"Skeeve," Oshleen sniffed. "He's back! But where?"

A shout from Caitlin made the remaining four turn around.

"We got him," the smallest Pervect announced smugly. "He's trying to read our computer again!"

Her hands danced over the keyboard. Vergetta smiled her admiration as a ball of blue lightning built up in the air around Caitlin's head. As the little Pervect hit ENTER, the surge dove back into the computer and down the line. She crossed her arms. "That'll fix him."

I jumped to catch Zol as a jagged ball of power leaped out of his notebook, knocking him flat. We were in a room of the castle on the same floor as the Pervects' headquarters waiting until the room was empty. Gleep sat in a corner happily crunching up more Kobold treats than I had ever let him have before.

"What happened?" I demanded.

Bunny lifted the little gray man's head. His eyes fluttered open.

"Coley," he gasped. "Where's Coley?"

I lifted the notebook and handed it to him. The screen had been blown outward, and all the lights were dark.

"No!" he cried. "Oh, Coley!" He cradled the little computer, patting its case and rocking it. Tears ran down his face. The computer was ruined. Zol muttered nonsense to himself.

I was shocked. It was the most emotion I had ever seen from the impassionate little Kobold.

"They're joined for life," Bunny reminded me.

"Zol, we've got to move soon," I whispered. "How many are left?"

The Kobold whimpered at me, his big dark eyes open and anguished.

"He's in no shape to help us," Tananda whispered back. "A Kobold and his computer are one of the great love stories in all the dimensions."

I made a quick decision. I pulled the D-hopper out of my boot and handed it to Bunny.

"Take him back to Kobol. See if they can do anything for Coley. We can handle the first part, at least."

Bunny nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can." She kissed me. My heart sang. "Good luck!"

I grinned. "No warrior ever got a better sendoff to battle."

She blushed prettily and pushed the button.

"That leaves three of us," Tananda reminded me.

After their cowardly attack on Zol I was more determined than ever to drive the Pervects out. "That will be plenty."

We hefted our weaponry and sneaked into the anteroom. Gleep's stomach rumbled audibly behind me.

"Shh!" I hissed.

Gleep looked at me apologetically. "Gleep sorry."

The Pervects weren't listening for small noises. They were shouting at one another. A clanging noise added to the clamor. I crawled close enough to the door to listen.

"More riots!" the eldest one yelled. "What is it, every single Wuhs in Pareley decides this is the day to protest our rules? They're insane."

The jangling came again. "Hello! Factory #8. Fix it yourselves, you miserable sheep! One of you go. Hurry."

I heard a bamf of displaced air as a Pervect vanished.

Mentally I complimented Kassery and Bunny. They had been riding herd on the designated protest teams all week long. Bunny in particular had been incredibly good about getting them to promise to cooperate at the designated moment. With her background in handling Mob men, the Wuhses didn't have a chance to waffle or back out. It looked like all her convincing had paid off.

"Let them riot!" shouted the elegant one in the jumpsuit. "Who cares if the Wuhses riot? There's a magician gunning for us. Concentrate on him! Find him!"

'That power surge ought to have knocked him out," the little one at the computer snapped. "He's flat on his back. He ought to be easy to find. Follow the power line. Take a tracer from my CPU."

If they had a means of locating computers by magik I was glad Bunny and Zol were no longer in the dimension. I peered through the crack in the door. Four left. Weren't they ever going to leave?

"Gleep?" my pet asked quietly. He wore a collar filled with anti-magik dust. I hoped that would protect him from the fire spell. If he felt any heat at all he had orders to back off and lure the Pervects to him. It would have the same effect of clearing the room that I had in mind.

I glanced in through the doorway. The old one, the very young one, the elegant one and the tough one in the miniskirt were still in there. Time was running away! How could I get in and lay my anti-magik floor if they didn't leave? Time to take action!

I gestured over my head. Gleep gave me a happy grin, nudged open the door with his nose, and trotted playfully into the middle of the Pervects' chamber.

"Well, look at that, a little pet dragon," the elder Pervect said, bending over to beckon Gleep to her. "Come here, little dragon-cutie-pie. What are you doing here?" "Dragons aren't native to this dimension," the little one warned her. "It's some kind of trick…!" But it was too late.

POOT!

"Aaaaugggh!"

The inevitable happened. The effects of processed carbohydrates hitting dragon digestive juices manifested itself strongly in the enclosed room. The air didn't actually turn green, but it smelled as though it should have. Gleep stood in the middle of the stone floor, looking very pleased with himself. Then he stuck out his long, forked tongue and blew a raspberry at the four Pervects. Flicking his tail playfully, he galloped out of the room. The Pervects let out a cry of fury, and went running out after him, past us and into the hallway. I checked the status of the spell to make sure the little flames were pointing inward now, hoisted my buckets and charged in.

"Hurry," Tananda urged me. "Phew!"

The gaggingly awful smell Gleep had left behind drove me to my knees, but I used a form of the "pushing" spell I knew to clear out the air.

"Look!" I cried joyfully, pointing to a clear glass globe on the table. "There he is!" A small figure was jumping up and down inside it. Wensley.

There was no time to free him now. I stuffed the sphere into my pouch. Tananda and I emptied our buckets into the center of the room and used brooms to push it over the surface of the floor in a big square.

"Do we have to get it everywhere?" she asked.

"Keep it more than an arm's length from the wall. I don't want it to take out the fire spell. I need that. Look! It's soaking right in." The disenchanting sand seemed to dissolve right into the substance of the floor.

"If it replicates itself," Tananda pointed out, "then eventually it will work its way outward and put out the fire."

"I hope we can get this done before that happens," I replied. But I was worried about that, too. Screaming and the sounds of breaking crockery allowed us to monitor Gleep's progress around the castle. I had instructed him to cause the maximum possible disruption, and it sounded as though he was taking my orders to heart. I hoped that the other Pervects would come running to help. When I was only half-finished covering the floor the sound seemed to grow nearer.

"Not yet, Gleep," I muttered desperately. We couldn't even become invisible. All magik within arm's length of the bespelled floor had been dampened. "We're not ready!"

It must have been a lucky gust of wind or a shift in the old building's foundation, but the door into the hallway swung shut just before Gleep thundered past it with the Pervects in hot pursuit. It was about time something went our way on this assignment.

I surveyed our handiwork. The anti-magik dust had soaked into the floor, leaving only a slight sheen to show where it lay. I tried throwing a fireball into the room, but my spell fizzled almost as soon as it left my hand. I grinned.

"Now, to get them all back in here," I declared.

"First thing we have to do," Tananda insisted, dropping her broom and shouldering a bag full of her own special equipment, "is to get their attention."

Loud clattering in the direction of the kitchen told us where Gleep had led them. I levitated the two of us past all the traps and spells that were supposed to prevent intruders and were now impeding the Pervects from intercepting the dragon who had made their room temporarily uninhabitable. Cursing, they had to dispell their own magikal obstacle course as they ran. Gleep let half the attacks roll off his tough hide, and blew out the other half of the defenses with blasts of flame.

He spotted me as we ducked into the long hallway that led to the butler's pantry, the laundry room and several other side passages. Wheeling almost on his tail, he bowled over his pursuers, and came charging towards us. I readied an illusion spell for the moment he crossed the threshold, transforming him into a mouse. The Pervects hammered past the doorway of the pantry, backpedaled and glanced in.

"Gleep?" squeaked the mouse.

"He must have gone down one of the other passages!" the elegant one shouted.

"We'll split up," the miniskirted one ordered.

"Call for reinforcements," the little one panted.

"I'll get the others back here," the elder one insisted. "You keep looking. I'll bet this Skeeve is here somewhere."

I grinned. They were absolutely right.

They all took off in different directions, but within minutes reassembled in the hall heading for the main stairs. Tananda vanished, heading to a point over the stairway where she had some little surprises ready. I could almost count backwards in my head, men…

"Eeeeeee!!!"

A plague of wood spiders came plummeting out of the air onto the heads of the Pervects. These weren't real arachnids, but an animate growth like an active moss Tanda had discovered while "camping out" in another dimension (well, that's what she had called it). The longlegged plants enveloped the Pervects with fibrous threads, wrapping them up like mummies. The females' feet got tangled up, just in time to slip on the spongy marbles scattered on the floor from another package in the Trollop's bag of tricks. Yelling, the four clutched at one another, dancing madly to stay upright. They cannoned into one another, and rolled head over heels down the stairs. Being Pervects I knew the fall wouldn't hurt them, but it would make them mad.

I had been counting on Bunny to set off the next wave, which let a gaggle of herdbeasts loose from the reception chamber where they'd been penned up since before dawn. I reached out with my mind, lifted the latch, and flung open the door. Baaing in panic, the herd thundered out, heading for the main door and freedom. Before the Pervects could tear all the wood webbing off, they were in the middle of a mini-stampede.

Into the midst of this mess, another Pervect appeared, the efficient one in the coveralls.

"Vergetta, what's going oooo-nnn-nnn-nnn!"

The marbles claimed another victim. She catapulted down the stairs and landed on her fellows, who were just picking themselves up off the floor. They all fell down again. Another, the plump motherly one, blipped into the middle of the disarray.

"What is going on here?" she cried. "Who-oo-oooa!" And down.

Six. It was time to let myself be seen. Wearing the disguise that Aahz and I had worked up for my "audition" as court magician of Possiltum, I stalked out onto the landing and raised my arms. The main door slammed shut behind the last of the herdbeasts. The open windows banged closed, and the torches on the walls dimmed and flickered.

"There!" the elegant one shouted. "There he is!"

Bolts of fire and lightning flew at me, from not one, but two directions. I spun on my heel. The slim female in the long robe had reappeared on the landing. I glanced up. Tananda was gone. I threw up my hands, spreading out a ward. Her lightning bolt bounced off, and I "disappeared" in a cloud of smoke, courtesy of a bag of flash powder. The Pervect magician doubled over coughing. Before it cleared I was flying through the hall overhead, aiming toward my next vantage point. The object was to lure the Pervects, all ten of them, back into their chamber all at the same time. I had seven.

Gleep wasn't idle. I bounded up toward the ceiling in time to avoid being run over by my pet, who was being chased by two Pervects dressed in exactly opposite styles. One had on the most conservative two-piece suit I had ever seen, and the other was in a spiked leather bustier and stockings. It takes all kinds, I mused. Nine.

All we were missing was the grouchy one. I had presumed I was going to catch a few fish upstairs in the main headquarters as they popped back from the Wuhs riots, then found they couldn't pop out again. I hoped fervently that she was there. It was time to lure the rest of them back into the trap we had set.

Sailing towards the second floor anteroom I lit off a series of rainbow blasts of light designed to bring the Pervects running my way. Without Bunny I was going to have trouble with the next part of my illusion, but I was willing to improvise. I alit on the mantel of the fireplace, where I'd gotten stuck the first day. Now it was a perch to keep me from being trampled by the Pervects.

"Sst! Skeeve!"

I glanced down and saw the gleam of a familiar head of red hair. Bunny! A thin gray hand waved.

"Ready, Master Skeeve!" Zol whispered.

I beamed. My force was back up to full strength. It was showtime.

From two different directions the Pervects converged upon the hallway, one group pursuing Gleep, one following my beacons. At my signal, Bunny turned Bytina toward me.

I spread out my arms and in my most impressive voice I boomed out, "Greetings!"

My magician image, vastly expanded, appeared on the wall of the headquarters. Yes, there was the tenth Pervect waving her arms, evidently trying to figure out why her transportation spell wasn't working.

"He's in our workroom!" the eldest shrieked furiously. Together, the remaining nine of the Pervect Ten went charging into the chamber with Gleep right alongside them. I saw him take a deep breath.

I crossed my fingers. The timing was very tricky. The second the last Pervect crossed the threshold, Gleep breathed out a long tongue of flame. It struck the big tub of flash powder Tanda and I had left on the Pervects' table. A vast cloud of smoke filled the room, accompanied by coughing and hacking. Gleep came lolloping out of the midst of it as if he hadn't a care in the world. He was largely immune to anything having to do with smoke and fire. I watched carefully as he exited. The little flames marked his passage, and turned their points inward. The Pervect Ten were trapped.

When the smoke cleared, I was sitting crosslegged on the air facing the door, my disguise dispelled.

"Greetings," I announced. "I am the Great Skeeve."