The Walroid scrambled up and pointed his hands at her.
A bolt of bright green light hit him between the shoulder blades, knocking him over. I searched for the source of the attack. I turned around, expecting another invasion of the zombie shoppers, but the advancing force was an army of one. Chloridia undulated toward us, her four purple eyes glassy. Cire staggered to his feet. I threw myself at her, trying to distract her aim. She shot another solid bolt at me, and followed it up with another at Cire. The Walroid went backward over a table. I could hear him groaning.
"They got her," I groaned. We needed magikal backup, and quick. "Massha!"
"Help!" her voice came, muffled by the tent.
I looked around. The Pervect had thrown the guards off and disappeared into the screaming crowd. Parvattani nursed an eye rimmed with purple as he helped to pull the table off Moa.
"Consarn it!" shouted Skocklin, Moa's partner, as the guards pulled him free. "I never thought they'd attack like that." "You thought maybe they'd give up like they were playing hide-and-seek?" Moa chided him.
"Someone's going to have to pay for all this damage," Woofle exclaimed, looking pointedly at me.
I turned my back on him and started fighting my way through the fallen tent's folds toward the writhing, kicking mass.
"Massha, Chumley, hold still!" I instructed them. "I'm right here."
"Mmmm!"
With a mighty heave I hauled the scarlet canvas away. A pair of crumpled gossamer wings quivered and lifted, followed by the rest of Massha.
"Whew!" she wheezed. "That's better."
"You okay?" I asked. She nodded, her chest heaving as she gasped for breath. "Good. Can you heat up one of your gizmos and help me lift the rest of this tent? Chumley's still in here somewhere."
"Aahz, he's not," Massha insisted, clutching my arm. "I tried fighting them off, but they cut a hole through the back flap and came in right past the guards. They seemed to know which gadget I would go for next, and had a coun-tergadget ready. They zapped him with some kind of spell and carried him off!"
"Chumley?" I asked, disbelievingly.
"Yes," Massha replied. "I did everything I could to stop them, but I was outnumbered. I'm sorry, Aahz!"
"Who took him?" I demanded.
Massha looked me sadly in the eye.
"Eight Skeeves."
TWENTY-THREE
Not surprisingly, being carried by eight beings of less than average strength was bumpy at best. They dropped him again and again on the hard tile floor. Chumley would have protested if his mouth had been free, but two of the Klahds—he refused to call them Skeeve even in his thoughts—had wound sticky tape around it.
He struggled to get free, to no avail. How was it that eight puny beings were able to sap his superior strength? He suspected that it was not their doing; these were the worker drones—the queen, or, in this case, the king of the hive had cast an enfeebling spell and interfered with Massha's magik.
A ninth figure caught up with the group and hoisted Chumley's left shoulder. Chumley's heart leaped. At first he thought Aahz had discovered the subterfuge and was about to rescue him, but it was a Pervert—er, Pervect of the female persuasion.
"Zis is not fair! Why can I not match ze ozzers?" the Pervect asked, in a peevish tone.
"Because you lost your Skeeve card," one of the bland Klahdish faces responded. "The Big Cheese doesn't remake them, remember?"
The Pervect grumbled. The group trotted on, rounding corners. Chumley tried to keep track of all the turns they made, but he was not accustomed to watching the ceiling.
"Whoops," the lead impostor gulped. "Patrol on the way! Hey, you, disguise us!"
Chumley caught another glimpse of green out the corner of his eye, this one dark and smooth. The newcomer was Aahz's friend Chloridia.
"Mmm!" Chumley exclaimed, trying to get her attention. Her four eyes never focused on him. Her expression was one of dazed obedience. He was shocked. She must have fallen at last under the spell of Rattila's card theft.
"There you are," the impostor lugging Chumley's left foot grunted. "We can't let go of him. Put a disguise on us."
At the impostor's order, Chloridia began to chant in unknown words. In a moment the Klahds bearing him became a host of meaty Djinns in coveralls. Chumley shuddered to think as what they might have disguised him.
"Good," the leader stated. "Now, go buy something. We'll call you if we need you."
"Mmmmh!" Chumley blurted, frantic to get her attention, but she had already turned and undulated away.
The Klahd-Djinns hoisted his limbs once more and continued their journey.
A good deal of the ceiling went by, with several more changes in direction, until the disguised horde finally carried him over a threshold. The scent around him was somewhat familiar, that of brimstone and sulfur, along with a sharper odor reminiscent of ammonia. Through the shoulders of the illusory Djinns around him, he spotted tall shelves supporting myriad pairs of the blue trousers that had so captivated the Klahds. Therefore, he was in The Volcano. Where, then, were they taking him?
Row after row after row of dressing rooms flashed past him in peripheral vision. Chumley tried to keep count of the doorways. He recalled from their early orientation that The Volcano was extradimensional. It could be the reason they had never managed to discover the whereabouts of Rattila was that it lay not in this dimension but in another.
The answer, which surprised him, was not long in coming. A few hundred doorways had gone by when his escort made a sharp left through a gaudily dyed curtain and into dank, hot darkness. As soon as they were within, the disguise spell dropped away.
His eyes, more sensitive than many other species', adjusted very swiftly. Chumley became aware that the party trod a downward slope. Feeble lights issued from the ceiling, lending the Klahds a leprous cast. A howl sounded from far ahead.
"Uh-huh!" one of the impostors announced. "Sounds like the Big Cheese is home."
"Well, well, what have you brought me?" a squeaky voice asked with eager menace.
The Klahds dropped Chumley on the floor. The landing was not painful, as his fall was cushioned by an uneven pad of some kind.
A black-furred face imposed itself between Chumley and the ceiling. Before the Troll's eyes was one of the largest vermin he had ever beheld. Nearly the size of Eskina, this creature had a narrow, tapered head terminating in a quivering black nose with long, wiry whiskers that quivered when it talked.
"Welcome to my Rat Hole," the vermin chittered, showing sharp, yellow, rectangular teeth, a startling contrast to the ebon fur. "You've met all of my associates? I am Rattila, Lord of The Mall, and soon to be of all Ratislava. What do you think of my domain?"
The tape was ripped away from Chumley's mouth, painfully pulling out a good deal of facial fur. With his feet still bound, he attempted to stand up and banged his head on the ceiling. He toppled onto a heap of, clothes and noticed that all of the garments still had the price tags attached. He wrenched himself into a sitting position. As far as Chumley could see, the sprawling chamber was filled with clothing, jewelry, books, musical instruments, large appliances, rolled-up rugs, and furniture, all in their original bags or containers, and all piled haphazardly, as if the getting was more important than the having.
"It's rather a tip, what?" Chumley blurted, then felt abashed. "I do beg your pardon. What bad manners, making personal comments like that. I believe it's the heat."
Rattila's eyes glowed red. "You are just jealous," he hissed. "You envy my collection. Well, you're a part of it now. You belonged to M.Y.T.H., Inc. So that makes you an absolutely priceless asset that my Skeeves here have acquired."
Rattila sprang away from Chumley, revealing a long, snaky, hairless black tail, which he cracked like a whip. The impostors scattered out of his way. Rattila ascended one of the heaps, this specimen greasier and more well worn than the others. At the top, Chumley beheld a seat of some kind. It appeared to be made out of items made of precious metals, such as watches and tableware, tied together at random. It could not have been comfortable to sit upon, but Rattila lounged upon it as if it was a throne.