Myth-Taken Identity

ONE

FizzZAP!!

A lightning bolt snaked through a crack in the door, barely missing my head. Little lower, and I would have been fried. Even the tough, green-scaled hide that every Pervect is born with wasn't enough to make me immune to fire.

This was starting to get serious! I thought they would give up when the two blue plug-uglies realized they couldn't simply break the door of our tent down, but now they were turning to magik. Who would have guessed the scrawny management type with them was a magician!

I smelled smoke and realized the lightning bolt had set fire to my favorite armchair. Trying to control my temper, I reviewed my options. I could wait them out and let them waste their firepower until they got bored, or I could open the door and tear the three of them into little quivering scraps.

At the moment, I was favoring the second choice. I had really liked that armchair.

Bill collectors! I never thought one would come here, to M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s old headquarters in the Bazaar at Deva. Not one of my erstwhile companions was profligate with money; we're all too smart to stiff a creditor and had plenty of cash to pay their bills anyhow. Of all people, the least likely to attract unwanted attention over money was my ex-partner Skeeve. Yet the trio on the other side of the flap insisted he'd run up bills and stiffed the vendors.

"I say, Aahz," a deep voice beside me intoned.

"Chumley!" I said, spinning around. "You scared me out of a century's growth."

"So sorry! Doing a spot of interior decorating?" Chumley asked, nodding toward the burning recliner.

Purple-furred and possessed of a pair of moon-colored eyes of odd sizes, the Troll stood head, shoulders, and half a chest higher than I did.

"That smoke is bad for the paintings on the walls, what?"

"Don't tell me," I growled. "Tell the three bill collectors outside."

"Bill collectors?"

The Troll's shaggy brows drew down slightly. His brutish appearance was at odds with his natural flair for intellectual discourse, a typical misconception about the male denizens of the dimension of Trollia from which he hailed. Trolls deliberately concealed their intelligence, so as not to overwhelm beings in other dimensions who couldn't handle facing both mental and physical superiority at the same time. Chumley did good business as freelance hired muscle under the nom de guerre of Big Crunch.

"An error, surely?"

"Sure must be," I agreed. "They come from a place they call The Mall, on Flibber. They're looking for Skeeve. They say he skipped out on a big fat bill."

"Never!" Chumley said, flatly. "Skeeve's honesty and sense of fair play would never allow him to do such a thing. I've seen them demonstrated in many an instance when he had a choice to make between profit and the right thing, and he has inevitably chosen to do the right thing."

I scowled. Skeeve had let plenty of profit go by the wayside for some pretty outlandish reasons, not all of which I understood, though I had supported him.

"That's what I thought. Ever heard of this Mall?"

"Not I. Shopping is little sister's purview, what?"

The door behind me shook. They weren't going to get through that door with anything less than antiballistic missiles, and I hoped that the Merchants Association that ran the Bazaar would notice before they rolled up a launcher. Chumley threw his not-inconsiderable weight against the flap with mine, and it stopped quivering.

You may ask how a mere tent could withstand magikal attacks. To start with, most of the tents in the Bazaar were built to hold out against a certain amount of magik, but our place was special even here. It might look like a humble and narrow marquee on the outside, but behind the entrance was a spacious luxury villa occupying a large wad of extradimensional space. In other words, as a guy I used to know put it, it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. My unwanted guests couldn't burn the place down or blow it up. For a spell to cross that dimensional barrier would take a lot more firepower than these guys could ever be capable of summoning up, but the interface that allowed us to walk out of the door that bridged the gap had to remain fairly permeable, hence my current problem. Except for back door into the host dimension, Blut, home of vampires and werewolves—a dimension, by the way, that had once tried to have me executed on trumped-up charges—the only way to walk out was obstructed.

"They're looking for 150,000 gold pieces," I said, with some irritation.

"A princely sum! You are certain that Skeeve couldn't have incurred the debt?"

"Pretty positive," I said carefully.

I hadn't been hanging around with him myself for some months. It was a painful subject, but Chumley knew that.

"Tananda's been with him for the last several weeks, on Wuh. She popped out of here a minute ago, headed for Trollia. You just missed her."

"Oh, blast," Chumley said. The door flap responded with an inward thump, and we shoved ourselves against it again. "I came here looking for her, don't you know. Mums sent me here to get her. The redecoration of the home hearth has reached a stage where our dear mater wishes another female's point of view on choices of color and texture. Still, there is a silver lining to the cloud: I shall be glad to miss the resulting arguments."

"Go back when the shooting stops, huh?" I deduced.

"Quite right," the Troll agreed. "By the way, if it began as a mere fact-finding enterprise on the part of our adversaries outside, how did this situation escalate to our present state of hostilities?" He nodded toward the door.

"I have no idea," I said, innocently. "They asked me where Skeeve is, and I flat out refused to tell them. Then they got upset. They threatened to ruin his reputation as a deadbeat, and I offered what I thought were polite and well-thought-out reasons why they shouldn't."

"I see."

Chumley must have run through the scenario in his head. If he imagined a terse argument that got progressively louder and ended up with the two toughs who flanked the shrimp with the clipboard reaching into their bulging tunics in a sort of weapon-drawing way, he would have pretty much captured the sequence of events. We've known each other for a long time, and he was more than familiar with my temper.

"They are mistaken, of course?"

"Positive. Besides, this ain't his style. They read me a list of things Skeeve's supposed to have bought, like Trag-fur coats, a skeet-shooting outfit, a twelve-string guitar that was supposed to have been owned by some famous bard, and just about everything that'd be behind Door #3."

I paused and shook my head.

"It's not what Skeeve would splash out on. A home for destitute cats, yes. Fifty percent of a casino, yes. A bucket of luxury goods adding up to a small kingdom's entire GNP? I don't think so. And besides, Skeeve never spends money he doesn't have. It's not like him. The signature they produced on some bills looks like his, but I am sure it's a fake. For one thing, it said 'Skeeve the Magnificent.' Even when the kid got a big head he usually saved the fancy titles to impress kingdom officials. I mean, he's surprised me a bunch of times in the last few months, but there's too many inconsistencies in this even for a Klahd."

"Then it behooves us, don't you think," Chumley said, "to find out who has run up this bill in his name?"

I glimpsed the D-hopper on the table where I'd set it down. It had been a gift from Skeeve, sent via Tanda, completely unexpected but totally within the character of the kid's sometimes foolishly generous nature.

"You bet it does!" I announced fiercely. "Nobody messes with my pa—ex-partner without having me to answer to. His reputation is worth more than any little bill, or any honking big bill, either. What are you doing this afternoon? I could use some backup."

"Nothing at all," Chumley said, with a grin. "I would be honored to aid in such an enterprise. But how do we leave here? The way is blocked, as you point out, and I have very limited skills in the department of enchantments. Mums sent me here. I expected to have Tanda transfer me back."

"No problem," I said airily, sauntering over and picking up the D-hopper. I smacked it into one scaly palm and brandished it at Chumley. "Poetic justice sent us a way out."

We barred the entrance to the tent with what remained of the living-room furniture, then bamfed out.

We flipped over to Klah first. Cross-spatial hopping is how Chumley and I, who otherwise have little in common as species, are both occasionally called "demons," which is short for "dimensional traveler." Over the centuries the word has become corrupted in a host of dimensions, which meant that referring to ourselves by that handy designation occasionally resulted in us being met by angry mobs with pitchforks and torches. In any case our appearance would speak against us. Nowhere else on Klah, or so I assumed, would one encounter a well-muscled, green-scaled, yellow-eyed, debonair Pervect or a huge, shaggy, purple Troll.

We made sure to materialize nowhere near the remote forest inn where Skeeve had holed up to study magik on an uninterrupted basis (well, that was the theory, anyhow), but in the vicinity of the kingdom of Possiltum, where for a while Skeeve had held a pretty good job as Court Magician, with me as his "assistant" and financial agent. Chumley and I could provide all the muscle and brains we were going to need for any information-seeking mission, but we needed an expert on shopping centers.

"You sure we can't haul Tananda loose to help us out at The Mall?" I asked again, as the turrets of the royal palace hove into view at a distance through a spare haze of trees. "She's the most comprehensive power-shopper I know."

We started down the hill where we'd materialized, following a sheep trail.

"Not a chance," Chumley said with regret, kicking gorse out of his way with his big feet. "The fireballs Mums would throw if both of us turned our back on her project now I would simply not like to consider. What about Bunny? She has considerable skills in the retail-therapy sector."

"It'd be hard to extract her without alerting Skeeve something was up. I don't want to bug Skeeve over a minor misunderstanding."

Bunny was also a Klahd, but a sophisticated, beautiful, and streetwise one, the niece of a Mob boss known as the Fairy Godfather. "Besides, it'd be good to make sure we have someone we can trust looking after him."

I felt in my pocket for a message ball. These handy-dandy little spells, which had been making their manufacturer rich in the Bazaar, could find whomever you addressed them to, even cross dimensions to a limited extent. I scrawled Bunny a quick note on the parchment, tweaked the spell into an outbound globe of golden light, and flung it into the air. It hovered for a moment, then zinged off in the direction of the inn.

"And you don't want to involve Skeeve personally because ..." Chumley began.

I scowled. There were plenty of reasons, but I didn't want to talk about some of them.

"The last person you'd believe protesting his innocence is the guy you accused, right? That's just what you'd would expect him to say. It's like saying you're looking for the real arsonist, when everyone can see the lighter in your pocket. Why, I remember a number of years ago when I was pricing magikal security for a Gnomish funds transfer service, and one of the little guys whose cash register was always short kept going on about how he saw some mystery employee taking crates of gold out of the door just before the supervisor was coming through, and—"

Chumley interrupted me hastily. "So he would be a poor witness to his own defense, eh? That does leave Massha as our best prospect. Her grasp of bazaars and other vending emporia is unparalleled except by the aforementioned others."

Massha had originally signed on with us as Skeeve's apprentice, and had recently taken over his gig as Court Magician. She'd settled in nicely in Possiltum, making friends with Queen Hemlock and marrying the head of the army, General Hugh Badaxe, one hell of a guy, and a man of impressive physique to match Massha's own. The large, round, chiffon-draped figure, definitely female, floated around the small room like a balloon. The Lady Magician of the court of Possiltum had a knack for- dressing that would be gaudy even compared to a Mardi Gras float. Her bright orange hair was drawn up into a knot on top of her head, where it wouldn't war directly with the ruby-colored harem-girl pants and vest that left her wide midriff bare. Silk slippers in a screaming aqua only added a further jarring note. And around her neck, wrists, ankles, fingers, and waist hung dozens of gold or silver chains, bracelets, rings, baubles, bangles, and beads. If I knew our Massha, every single adornment packed some kind of magikal punch.

"So, what's the deal, Hot Shot?" Massha asked, sifting through her chests of impedimenta for the swag that packed the most punch.

Colorful scarves were draped all over the room. Necklaces and rings all sparkling with power even to my disenchanted eyes slithered through her fingers as she sought just the right items.

"You don't drop in very often, and the last thing I ever thought I'd hear fall from your scaly lips is 'do you want to go to The Mall with me?' I mean, I'm happy to help. I owe you for helping me out on Brakespear, and plenty of times before that."

"Never mind that," I said, preoccupied with the present predicament. (I knew I was teed off when I started thinking in alliterations. That poetic bumf was for Chumley or Nunzio. I like to think of myself as a straightforward kind of guy.) "How come you know all about The Mall?"

"I was wondering the same thing," Chumley added. The Troll was perched on the lid of a huge chest of drawers, where he was out of Massha's way as she bustled with intent. "Today's the first time I'd heard about it."

She stopped and gave us the kind of sardonic look you offer to someone who just asked how is it you know, water is wet, then her face softened.

"Any woman could tell that it's been a long time since either of you had a sweetie you wanted to buy something special for." Massha chuckled deeply.

"I've been rather busy," Chumley said uncomfortably. If his thick fur had been skin, it would have been deepening with embarrassment.

"What's your point?" I asked quickly, rather than give her another place to stick a needle. My personal life, or lack of one, was no one's business but mine.

"Well," Massha said, turning toward us with a handsome rosewood coffer, "if you had ever been there, you'd know that it is becoming the place to pick up hot items like these."

She grabbed a handful of swag out of the box and thrust it toward us.

I bent forward for a look. Even my jaded eye instantly detected there was something special about the jewelry. I picked up one piece and took a close look at the stones.

"Unusual cut," I murmured. "Unusual metals, too, if it comes to that."

Cabochon gems with incised slashes across their bases, which made pretty patterns when you looked down on their dome sides, were set in metals that flashed their own rainbow hues. I had never seen anything like them, but Massha was right about my not having any good reason at present to shop for jewelry.

"Hugh bought me these," she said, turning over bracelet after necklace after brooch. Then she brandished a handful of rings. "And I bought these for myself, each from a different magik seller. This one's a heat beam, this one can generate minor illusions ... and this one's plain gorgeous. I had to have it. It'll just knock your eyes out."

We leaned close for a look, then everything went black.

"What the hell just happened?" I demanded.

"Sorry," Massha's voice replied.

In a moment light returned. She looked sheepish.

"I didn't mean to invoke the ring. It really does knock your eyes out, or rather, your vision. It's temporary. This is the kind of good stuff you can find at The Mall. It's vast, but they only seem to attract the high-end merchants. The Bazaar has a little of everything, but you're not going to find whoopee cushions or dragon-whistles in The Mall. What's your interest, since you have never gone shopping there?"

"It's Skeeve," I said, with a grimace.

"Is he in trouble?" Massha asked, cocking her head and pursing her big lips.

"I don't know," I replied.

I explained my visitors and their purported mission.

"My guess is someone is trying to pass himself off as Skeeve. That's smart and dumb, because no one is gonna question a wizard is he who he says he is, with the exception of that wizard's friends. I'm convinced that Skeeve was never on Flibber, or shopped at any Mall. It looks like my confirmation's here." '

As if to echo my statement, a winking light appeared at the window. I opened the casement, and the fist-sized globe dropped into my hand. The glow was purple now instead of gold, indicating a reply was enclosed. As soon as I touched the globe it dissolved into a piece of parchment. The Deveel in the Bazaar who made them was growing rich— this month; next month some other manufacturer would undoubtedly figure out how to make them and undercut the first guy.

To my relief the writing on the paper was Bunny's. In the message she said no, Skeeve hadn't budged from Klah except for his outing to Wuh, he was fine, she would make sure to keep him at the inn for the duration, and where was this Mall? Women. Some things are just universal.

"That's it. Bunny says the kid's never been to Flibber. The debt's not his, and that's all I need to know."

"So you wish to deliver a warning to the counterfeit?" Chumley asked, aiming one moon-shaped eye at me.

To the uninitiated, a huge purple-furred Troll with odd-sized eyes might look amusing and relatively harmless, but no one ever makes one mad twice on purpose.

"I want to do more than that," I said, baring my teeth. "There's the matter of over a hundred thousand gold pieces. Someone incurred those bills, and I want them cleared up with absolutely no doubt who is really responsible for paying, because it ain't Skeeve, and it ain't going to be me or either of you. And someone owes me a new easy chair."

"Agreed," Chumley said. "My goodness, a hundred thousand would put a largish hole in the family exchequer, what?"

"Whew!" Massha agreed. "With that kind of loot I could buy out the Gimmicks 'R' Us store, shelves and all. Just let me leave a note for Hugh."

With two sets of magikal means to transport us, there was an Alphonse-Gaston moment until we decided Massha ought to blink us there. I had a D-hopper now, but no one had the experience with gadgets like Massha. Using the directions we got from an infosearch spell Massha whipped up using an antique locket set with turquoise buttons, we popped in practically on the front doorstep of The Mall.