moved, too. The harsh gaze softened.
'Child, your story touches me. I must continue to warn you that what you seek to do will rock the very foundations of the universe!'
'Please, sir, I love my grandfather,' Calypsa begged. 'He is a proud man. I know that this time he went too far and got himself into danger. You cannot say no. You just can't!'
Ersatz sighed. 'You are courting disaster,' he said, then raised the sharp eyebrows to forestall another outburst. 'BUT I will aid you. My steel is at your service.'
'Oh, thank you!' Calypsa said, joining her palms together in a gesture of thanks. 'You will never know what this means to me!'
'Alas, child, you may find out, to your cost.'
'Good,' I said, slapping my hands together and rubbing them. I could almost feel the lines of force tingling through my hands again. 'We're all on board. Where do we start?'
'THEY ARE ALL looking at us,' Calypsa said nervously. 'They are so strange looking!'
I grumbled under my breath. 'This would all have been a lot easier if you had let me and Tananda go in alone.'
'Nothing doing,' the girl said, holding the bundle containing Kelsa protectively to her narrow chest. 'I go where you go. I do not want you to slip away inconveniently. My grandfather's life is in danger.'
'Then, shut up,' I said, with a glare I hoped would seal her lips for the time being. 'You don't speak the local lingo, and I don't want anyone to misconstrue what they think you said.' I grinned affably at a man who was watching us talk. 'Nice spring day, isn't it, friend!'
The people of Mernge watched us out of the corners of their eyes as we went down the street. The trouble with Klahds is their dimension is almost bereft of magik, and equally devoid of technology. As a result, very few of them are familiar with either, so the appearance of anything strange is met with the utmost suspicion. Without the aid of complex mechanical or magikal means of assistance, Klahds have to rely on animal power, either their own or another animal's, to get around. Hence, they don't travel much, so visitors are more rare than in other dimensions. When roused, Klahds tend to break out in deadly and punitive force. Sophistication and smooth talking are no match for a rope, an ax or a torch.I've been on the business end of all three of those unfriendly greetings more times on Klah than I feel comfortable thinking about. How they would have reacted to a Pervect, a Trollop and a storklike Walt I could just imagine, and it wouldn't be pretty.
So you're asking yourself, why weren't they reacting to the sight of a Pervect, a Trollop and a Walt? In the interests of self-preservation, I had Tananda put a disguise spell
on the three of us. If I had had my powers, I could have done it in a wink, no problem, but I had to admit Tananda had done a pretty good job. I was used to delegating jobs like that now, not a bad skill to have learned, though I wasn't crazy about the condition that had forced me to learn it. Still, we were attracting attention anyhow, because we were clearly not locals.
I always said that the best way to go into any situation was as if you belonged there. In the guise of a wealthy merchant, I swaggered down the street, accompanied by my two female associates. Tananda, in her dress and kirtle, undulated, but she'd exude sex appeal if she was disguised as a raccoon in bloomers. Klahdish males gawked after her, some with open mouths.
After a few false starts we'd disguised Calypsa as a school-marm. With her posture it was either that or a sergeant-major, and I didn't want people to think that the military was invading their little hamlet. No, I had come up with a stratagem to separate an eight-year-old boy from his sports trophy. Not that I had any qualms about getting it away from him; the trick was to do it so we could remove it and ourselves from the arena without causing the town elders to examine our credentials too closely. I could
At any rate, we couldn't help but have to march through town like a trio of traveling players. Kelsa had been pretty obtuse about finding the boy, but she let us know by telling us 'hot' or 'cold' whether we were walking in the correct direction or no. Unfortunately, she didn't know the meaning of the
word 'undertone.' Every pronouncement was made at the top of her ringing voice. Since we couldn't muffle her and still figure out where we were going, Tanda had to cover every outburst with meaningless chatter.
'Left here!' Kelsa announced.
'My goodness,' Tananda exclaimed loudly, for the benefit of the crowd following us. She veered in that direction, talking loudly over the crystal ball's continuing babble, something about the cobblestones being the bumps in the gods' thought process. 'What a fine butcher shop window! Isn't that the best display of cow hooves you have ever seen?'
I stumped along behind her and took a brief gander at the meat display. The Klahd behind the counter glared at the trio of strangers. He had the same poleaxed expression as the carcass hanging on the hook behind him. He brought his cleaver down with a thunk! Bone chips flew in every direction. Tananda gave him a winning smile, and sauntered, seemingly at random, down the little lane beside the shop. We had left Ersatz out of town, concealed in the trunk of a hollow tree. He had had second thoughts about the hunt, in spite of all Calypsa's heart-wrenching pleas, and had spent plenty of time trying to talk us out of it. We just couldn't afford to have two disembodied voices drawing the crowd's attention.
'So, watcha doing in Mernge?' a boy asked, running alongside me. He had red hair, freckles and eyes the same color as pond silt.
'Minding my own business,' I snapped.
'That sounds boring!'
'Aahz!' Tananda said, pointedly. She dropped an arm around the brat's shoulders. 'We're scribes from the Margrave's castle. We're here to get an important story about a boy who took part in a race.'
'I ran a race,' the boy said, eagerly. 'I won the race in front of our whole school!'
'Not you,' Tananda said. 'It's another boy who ran that we're interested in.'
'But I won!'
'That's not as interesting to the Margrave as the boy who tried hard, but didn't succeed,' Tananda said. It sounded lame even to me.
I took charge of the conversation. 'Bug off, kid. You don't want to get involved in Margrave's business, do you?'
The kid's face screwed up, making him uglier than ever. He kicked my shin. 'I'll tell my dad on you! He's the mayor! He'll make you interview me!' I made to grab him, but he ran away. I added him to the list of people I was going to 'chat with' when I got my powers back. He needed to learn some manners, one way or another.
'Are you sure this is the best way?' Calypsa asked, with dismay. 'The open approach, in the middle of the day? Why could we not make a secret visit, perhaps in the night?'
'Right turn, no, left. Left!' Kelsa's voice echoed in the narrow alley. Tananda gave an apologetic smile to the crowd following us.
'It wouldn't be secret with our own personal foghorn letting off like that,' I said. If the crowd was growing suspicious of the disembodied voice, the swiftly spreading rumor of the Margrave's involvement kept them from getting too curious about our strange behavior. I began to get nervous about the formidability of the local laird, and wished we'd done a little more investigation before we marched into town. Too late, I thought, squaring my shoulders. Just keep going.
'That's it!' Kelsa screeched happily as we arrived in front of a house. The garden gate was painted white, and young shoots of climbing flowers were just twining their way up the arch. The house beyond was pretty good sized. We were dealing with a merchant or better. I sized up the amount of gold I still had in my pocket, and
