Myth-Taken Identity

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 djeanns three sizes too small for her. "Your pardon, sir," he offered to a multi-legged Scarab wriggling into a lapis-lazuli-colored pullover tunic.

"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 announced.

"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 skinny claw. Immediately, it was filled with crackling energy like a ball of lightning. "I have your friend."

"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 running. Rattila leaped off the Troll's belly and dashed away, shrieking, into the malodorous hideaway. The rest of the mall-rats scattered in all directions, most of them heading for the exit.

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

"We will!" Eskina shouted, running into the gloom after the giant rat.

Par, Cire, and the guards started chasing mall-rats all over the place. Massha sailed over to cut Chumley loose. I lost sight of them.

"He must not escape," Eskina panted.

The dark figure ahead of us dodged around piles of stolen goods. Lightning balls and tongues of flame crackled toward us. We threw ourselves into heaps of moldering clothes and stinking upholstery to avoid them. Smoke began to fill the low chamber as Rattila's missiles set more and more swag on fire.

"He won't," I coughed.

The truth was, I didn't have a plan. I had hoped that superior numbers would overcome Rattila and his followers. I was surprised but relieved that there were so few of them. Par should have no trouble rounding them up.

The footing was unsteady. Bedsheets, T-shirts, tunics, socks and stockings, hats and underwear had been tried on and strewn all over them place in ammonia-scented heaps. I tripped on a knot of scarves. A bolt of green power sizzled over my head, incinerating a grandfather clock.

"He is doubling back," Eskina stated.

I took a moment to judge my bearings and realized she was right. The sound of a free-for-all was ahead of us once again. I heard Parvattani bark out orders.

"He's heading your way!" I bellowed.

I hoped Cire and Massha could cut him off, but with all the power he had at his disposal, he probably outgunned them. I wondered how we were going to deal with him if we caught up.

"Halt in the name of the law!" I heard Parvattani shout. Another blaze of crackling power came in response. We saw the backwash of actinic white light and heard a yell of pain.

"We must get the device away from him," Eskina insisted.

"We will," I insisted grimly. "Split up. We'll flank him."

Eskina nodded sharply and ducked away to the left, between a pair of full-length mirrors.

Emerging into the area we had been in before, I spotted Rattila alone. He was clambering up the highest heap of junk, heading for a metal seat that looked like a science-fair project at a school for young torturers. I made straight for him. He spotted me about the same time I spotted Eskina coming up behind him.

"C'mon, ugly," I taunted him, walking toward him nice and slowly. "Give up. You don't know how much power we can raise against you."

"I know all about you, Aahz," Rattila snarled, scrabbling frantically at the debris with both paws. "Magikless freak! Big talk, but nothing to back it up. Your Skeeve had more talent than you will ever have!"

"True," I acknowledged, evenly. "The kid's full of promise. But so what?"

I was livid that he had been picking my ex-partner's memories like daisies. When I got my hands on him I'd tear him a new orifice, but Eskina was within a pace of making the collar. I couldn't blow it for her.

"No matter how good someone is, there'll always be a better one coming along in a moment. He's the real thing. You're just a pathetic wanna-be."

"I am the epitome," Rattila hissed. "I hold all—"

Eskina pounced. Her teeth snapped shut on the nape of his neck. In spite of the near parity of their sizes, she managed to lift him off the ground and shake him.

In a flash, he became a huge red Dragonet. Eskina lost her grip and tumbled down the mound. Rattila galloped toward the exit. I ran to catch Eskina. "You all right?" I asked, setting her upright. She pushed away impatiently. "Yes! Hurry! He is getting away."

We dashed out into the shop, but we couldn't spot Rattila right away. Chaos reigned in The Volcano. Though I had told Rimbaldi to shut the place down, dozens of his relatives and other shopkeepers had descended. I guessed that word had gotten out that we had uncovered the lair of the gang that had been ripping them off for years, and they all wanted a piece of the action.

Rattila's henchcreatures—henchrats, now that it looked like all of his associates were rats like him—weren't stupid. I watched an Imp, pursued by Marco Djinnelli, disappear into a standing rack of clothes and emerge on the other side as a Shutterbug, full of injured dignity.

"Get your hands off me!" it squeaked, as the Djinn teleported to the far side and nabbed him.

"So sorry," Marco apologized, letting him go immediately. "Did you see an Imp-—"

"That's him, Marco!" I called, as Eskina and I dashed toward them. "Shapechanger!"

The Shutterbug didn't wait around for light to dawn on Marco. He fled into the melee. Marco gathered his wits and teleported after him. The mall-rat turned into a Djinn, too, and started bamfing around, trying to find a way out of the store. Luckily The Mall's security system prevented him from being able to hop farther than the door, where Cire was waiting for him with his back to the carved doors, which had been bolted and chained shut. The Djinn-thief popped out again, just a moment before Marco and two of his cousins converged on the same spot.

All around us Parvattani's officers chased the thieves, who morphed into various shapes in hopes of escaping notice. I thought I spotted Rattila's red-scaled form near the big three-way mirror halfway to the front. I pushed my way toward him.

"Leave me alone!" a plump Deveel matron shrieked, holding her purse to her. "I am not a mall-rat! I am a longtime customer!" Bisimo, Parvattani's lieutenant, tugged at the purse. "Oh, you brute!" The handbag flipped open, sending cosmetic cases, address book, black leather wallet and a pair of sequined thong underwear flying. No credit cards.

Bisimo's cheeks turned sapphire. "I am so sorry, madama!" he stammered, helping her to pick up her belongings. She belted him over the head with the empty bag.

Chumley had made the first real capture. He held a mall-rat up by the scruff while he snapped its collection of identity cards one at a time in his teeth. Massha hovered over a gondola of clothes that writhed and gyrated. Every time a limb stuck itself out of the hangers, she zapped it with a little gadget that looked like a miniature lightning bolt.

Rattila was getting closer to the entrance. Guards saw him coming and threw themselves on him or tried to stun him with the pikes Massha had issued to them a few days before. Scales crackling with power, he threw off attacks and attackers with ease.

"Cire!" I bellowed. "Stop him!"

The Walroid saw him coming and braced himself. His huge flipperlike hands whipped out, producing a cone of cold white light. Rattila-the-Dragonet emitted a jet of fire sixteen feet long. I couldn't blame Cire. He dove to one side.

Eskina, baying shrilly, bounded up, trying once again to bring Rattila down. He swatted her away into three oncoming Djinnelli cousins. Before anyone else could get close to him, Rattila threw an enormous blast of magik at the doors. They splintered and burned. Rattila dove through the hole. I headed after him.

"Cire, Eskina! Come with me!" I shouted. I backed up, preparing my dive carefully. I hate fire. We Pervects are very vulnerable to it. I threw up my arms to protect my face.

"Aahz!" Massha called, just before I jumped. She hovered in the air, brandishing a kicking brown creature by the ear. She shook it at me. The creature struggled and whined. "What about these mall-rats?"

"Handle it!" I bellowed. "You can do it just fine!"

I leaped.