the brace of heavily armed trolls that flanked it on either side.
On a back bench, a quietly triumphant Quoll sat flanked by a silent Ruut and Ratha. Oskar growled in their direction, only to have their gleeful foe respond with a taunting, infuriating smile.
The nearest guard cuffed Oskar smartly upside the head and grunted. 'No snarling in the courtroom. Show some respect.'
Shortly thereafter, a door opened behind a toadstool of truly prodigious dimensions, and a figure appeared within. As it tottered up to the oversize fungi, a sprite clad in flowing frillwork appeared from nowhere to tootle on a small, cochlear horn.
'Hear ye, hear ye! The City Court of the Kingdom of Purple is now in session. His honorable and mystic magisterial elf self Judge Cooble Pilk presiding.' A second, slightly less elaborate tootle from the tinny trumpet, and the sprite vanished.
Ascending all of two feet to the high chair located behind the commanding toadstool, the judge had extraordinarily large, pointed ears, a shiny forehead from which a few determined, scraggly hairs emerged, narrow, intense dark eyes, and the long, supple fingers of a courtesan. The lavender-whitish wig he wore spilled in carefully powdered curls down his back, onto the floor, and beyond, stretching several feet in two directions. No book lay open before him, nor was a gavel of any kind close at hand. Pushing out his hairy lower lip and glaring importunately at the unhappy prisoners, he folded his hands and leaned forward, his elbows resting on the curved, slightly flexible surface of the toadstool.
'Well? Do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence?' From the back of the room, one of the bats snickered loudly.
'Now wait a minute!' Mamakitty would have sprung forward had not she been yanked back onto the bench by the ogre that stood behind her. She struggled to remain calm. 'What kind of a trial is this? You haven't even heard any evidence yet!'
'Don't need to,' the Honorable Cooble Pilk snorted. 'Waste of time, evidence. You lot were caught trying to steal an exhibit from the museum of the kingdom.' With a hirsute hand he indicated the silently pulsating globe of white light posted in the nearby evidence box. 'That exhibit. Terrible business, terrible. Why, if everyone started helping themselves to exhibits, pretty soon all the kingdom would have left is an empty, unhappy building. Have you ever seen a building cry? Especially one the size of the Grand Glorious Multitudinous … uh, the Gigantic Inconceivable Miraculous … clerk?' he snapped irritably.
'The Celebrated Grand Mystic Museum of the Exalted Kingdom of Purple, your honored necromancy, sir.' The multiarmed court reporter goggled its eyes a little more than usual.
Wagging his tail anxiously, Oskar slipped off the bench to which the defendants were confined. The guard behind him tensed, but let him stand on all fours. 'Aren't you even curious to know why we tried to take the globe of white light?'
Hacking up something decidedly unenchanted, the judge spat into an unseen but resonant spittoon. 'Not particularly. But I have this sinking feeling that you're going to tell me anyway.'
Aided in emphasis and detail by Mamakitty, Oskar proceeded to relate the history of their travels, beginning with the assault on the Gowdlands by the Totumakk Horde, the curse that had subsequently been laid by the horrific Khaxan Mundurucu, and their own efforts, following their transformation by a posthumous spell of the wizard Susnam Evyndd, to find and acquire some light containing all colors to bring back home.
The Honorable Cooble Pilk listened tolerantly to every word. When Oskar finally concluded with a deferential, 'That's all, Your Honor,' and sat back on his woolly haunches, the magistrate appeared to have fallen into deep contemplation.
Appearances can be deceiving, however.
'If you've finished, we can get on with this. I have a game at three. I'm playing with two nymphs and a senior gremlin. Nymphs don't like to be kept waiting.' He smiled tersely. 'I don't like to keep nymphs waiting.'
This time, Mamakitty slid slowly off the bench, mindful of the massive ogre standing behind her. When she tried to approach the judicial toadstool, however, it reached out to grip her upcurving tail in massive fingers, holding her back.
'Your Honor,' she pleaded, 'everything we've done has been on behalf of others. I know we were wrong to try and take the white light, but we weren't doing it for ourselves. It was only for all those whose lives have been made unbearable by the Mundurucu!'
'Not all lives have been made miserable!' a gleeful Quoll called out from the back of the chamber.
Mildly annoyed, the presiding elf focused his gaze in the direction of the outburst. 'Silence in the court! I'll tolerate no unsolicited comments from spectators.' Returning his attention to the attentive prisoners, his thick eyebrows lowered until they cast perceptible shade across his prominent nose.
'Theft is theft and the law is the law. Why, without the law we'd be no better than mortals, subject to the whims of ordinary existence. Benign motive is no excuse.' Bringing both hands together sharply, he demonstrated why the presence of a gavel was unnecessary in the courtroom. A petite sonic boom rattled the chamber, ruffling the cats' fur, lifting Taj's feathers, and even knocking the hulking ogre and troll guards back a step or two.
'The sentence is death, to be carried out at a place of execution three days hence.' Rising, his curly wig of office swirling about him like a pair of penned serpents, he turned to exit the courtroom. The trial was at an end.
From the back of the chamber rose a vile, cackling whoop of quollish satisfaction. Leaning toward her mate, Ratha whispered delightedly, 'The Khaxan Mundurucu will be pleased.' Mamakitty, Cocoa, Taj, and Samm were too stunned to speak.
Not Oskar. Advancing on the toadstool, he dodged the grasping hand of the troll stationed on his left. 'Sir, Your Honor! You can't—I mean, this isn't about us! It's about our purpose, our mission to save others! No matter what you think of us and our actions, surely you can't just dismiss the misery of thousands of other suffering beings with a wave of your hand?'
The Honorable Cooble Pilk paused and looked back. 'I didn't wave. I distinctly remember not waving. There being no one to speak on your behalf save yourselves, who are already condemned by your actions, I see no reason to reconsider my decision.'
'But there are others!' a voice cried.
Everyone in the chamber turned toward the entrance; prisoners, guards, and momentarily victorious allies of the Mundurucu alike. Striding boldly through the diaphanous doorway was an agitated cat wearing a mouse on its head. They were accompanied by a troika of exceedingly well-turned-out gnomes.
Mamakitty's whiskers curved so far upward they almost pointed at the ceiling. Nearby, Oskar had begun to bark uncontrollably. Cocoa's eyes shone with a new inner light, Taj was bouncing excitedly up and down on the perch within his cage, and Samm's flicking, sensitive, unsplinted tongue caught the scent of something welcome and familiar in the air of the courtroom. Leaning to her left, Mamakitty whispered softly to Oskar, her quivering whiskers almost touching his muzzle.
'I
Oskar looked down over his nose at her. 'You knew? Hey, what's that in your eye?'
'Nothing, dog-breath. Mind your own business.' She turned back to the front of the courtroom. 'Anyway, don't you know cats can't cry?'
Each gnome carried beneath his left arm a small briefcase, sewn from tanned snowflake. There was nothing in them, but in the kingdom of enchantment, appearances are important. Approaching the bench, the middle gnome spoke for his colleagues as well as for himself.
'Horglum, Grugle, and Migwig, Your Honor. Counselors for the defense.'
Folding his enormous ears forward so that they momentarily covered his face, the judge let out a high- pitched gargle of resignation. By the time these impressive organs of hearing had relaxed back into their normal positions, he had reluctantly resumed his seat behind the imposing toadstool. 'What is this?' Whiskers quivering violently, a furious Quoll rose on hind legs at the back of the chamber. 'You've already pronounced sentence! The trial is over!'
'No trial is over until I say it's over!' Leaping to the top of the toadstool rostrum, the Honorable Cooble Pilk clapped his hands in Quoll's direction. The resultant sonic boom blew quoll and bats up against the back wall, where they remained flattened and motionless, as if glued in place. 'You'll stay like that until this is over with. By Titania's
