Myth Alliances

"How can I find this prophet?" she purred, fluttering her green eyelids at him.

Two uniformed guards arrived in my cell with swords drawn. I sprang up in alarm. Very solemnly, they marched me into a corner and stood facing me. I peered up at their solemn faces.

"Are we going into court now?" I asked hopefully. "I'd like to get this all cleared up so I can go home."

But they didn't say a word. Their reticence made me nervous. In my experience, no news was not necessarily good news. I heard footsteps in the hallway, accompanied by the sound of metal clanging and creaking sounds. I frowned. Was this my release? Or more trouble? Did they torture their prisoners?

To my wondering eyes, the newcomer was an elderly female Scammie, dressed in drab brown and gray. Her hair was gathered up underneath a triangular scarf of the same gray fabric. A big clip held her single nostril closed. Not looking up at me, she pushed a bucket on wheels into the room. My shoulders sagged. A cleaner!

While the guards held the terrifying wizard (me) at bay in the comer, the cleaning woman swabbed the floor with a big mop. They moved me around the room from time to time so she could get into every corner without having to walk past the big dangerous criminal (me). I wondered about the chances of overpowering one or both of my captors, then fighting my way out of the jail using the cleaner as a living shield. I calculated my own body mass, even adding in a factor of 150 percent for all the dirty infighting tricks that Aahz had taught me over the years, and came up at least 400 percent short.

"Nice day," I observed, instead. The Scammie guards didn't reply. They both looked as though they would have liked to be wearing clips on their noses like the old woman.

The cleaning lady continued to potter around. She removed my chamber pot and replaced it with a new one, emptied, rinsed out and refilled my washing pitcher, picked up the used dinner trays and laid a wrapped candy on my stone bunk. The guards waited until she had clanged and squeaked her way but again, then withdrew, bolting the door.

Depressed, I stumped back to my bed and sat down heavily upon it. I picked up the candy, unwrapped it, and immediately spat it out again. Licorice. No news was indeed no good news.

FIFTEEN

"Darling, your slip is showing."

-G. ROSE LEE

"This has to be your fault," Oshleen accused, striding alongside Paldine up the main street of Volute. "How could you blow something as perfect as the deal we had on those glasses?" Vergetta trotted to keep up behind her two young associates. Five of the others trotted in their wake.

Caitlin had refused to come.

"Straightening out other people's messes is not my bag," she had snorted, and gone back to working on her program to translate the specs of every Wuhs they knew into computer game characters for a game she called "Pretend Pushovers".

Niki, who distrusted anything in which Monishone and/or high sorcery was involved, offered to stay behind and keep an eye on the Wuhses. Vergetta had to agree. They started doing things when the Ten were not in residence. And she had begun hearing rumors of unrest.

That was all right; eight of them was more than enough to straighten out a misunderstanding. One should have been. She didn't know what had gotten into Paldine, carrying on like that. Brainwashing, indeed! They were businesswomen, not voodoo economists.

"I didn't do it, I tell you," Paldine protested. "Everything, everything I did was according to our plan. We ought to have been raking in the gold pieces by now. This item ought to have netted us ten thousand this week alone."

"Well, that's five percent of what we need," Oshleen snorted.

"You think I don't know that? Bofus, that imbecile, claimed a group of strangers bounced in here, and started talking nonsense about how we were planning to rule the world, starting with everyone who bought our toy. Non-Scammies. Everyone believed it. They are so gullible."

"It's those Wuhses!" Loorna growled. "I told you we have to find that D-hopper and confiscate it. Then I'm going to tear all of them limb from limb. When I think of all the hard work we've put in trying to pull their fat out of the fire, I could just scream!"

"It can't be the Wuhses," Nedira stated, flatly. "To stand up in front of a crowd of strangers and make a speech like that? It's just not in their nature, dears. Wuhses couldn't do it."

"Who else?" Loorna demanded. "Who else knew we were selling merchandise to the Scammies?"

"I still want an explanation for why the fire barricade went for a walk the other day," Tenobia added. "Monishone saying that it ought to have been tethered down all along still doesn't ring true."

"The Wuhses can do some magik," Monishone suggested. "Perhaps we have overlooked a real magician among them."

"I still tell you they couldn't be responsible for this," Nedira protested, trotting ahead to catch up with Paldine. The marketing specialist opened her stride.