Myth-Gotten Gains

"Mount here, good Aahz," Ersatz said. "Kelsa is within."

Ori Ella's tabby housemaid answered the door and left us in the hallway. I had given her my name, but told her I'd state my business to the mistress of the house. She took that without question. I would have bet that over 80% of visitors did the same thing. Either the seer would know all about us without having to be told, or she was a charlatan, and she'd get out of me what she could read from my body language when we met.

Apparently, Kelsa was good at choosing the company she kept. The arched door at the end of the hall burst open, and an Orion with pure white fur came bustling toward me, shimmering blue and green robes fluttering in her wake. She had huge blue-green eyes with vertical pupils that were open into wide ovals.

"Oh, Mr. Aahz, Kelsa has talked of nothing but you for the last two hours! Where is he? Oh, yes, I forgot!" She tittered, and put a coy paw to her breast. "You don't know me, and you don't trust me. I'm Ella. Welcome! Where is Ersatz?"

She was the real thing. I was impressed. In my experience, fortune tellers were either deluded sensitives who thought the voices in their head had some mystical significance, or scam artists who used a combination of psychology, body reading and shrewd guesses to tell the customers what they wanted to hear. I hadn't mentioned the sword's name since we hit the dimension, so she could not have heard it from an agent or a spy-eye. I hiked Ersatz a foot or so out of his scabbard. His eyes gleamed.

"Honored, my lady," the sword said.

"A pleasure," the seer replied, beaming down at him. "Both of you, come right this way! Oh, we have felt for weeks that monumental changes were upon us. I am only glad that you

were able to get here so quickly. I've had a dreadful feeling that something was going to go wrong, but I'd rather be wrong about being wrong. Don't you agree?"

Still babbling, she swept around and led us toward the door from which she had emerged. I followed in her wake, rolling my eyes.

The house might have been a mansion, but the room she led us to could have been any gimcrack psychic's tent anywhere in the cosmos. The room was lit with candles in sconces. The wicks all smoked like sportscasters. The air was thick and tasted of cheap paraffin. All the furniture was covered with loud-colored silk throws, three or four to an item, so that a customer had to plant his feet firmly on the floor to keep from sliding off. There was lots of it. I had to watch my step in the dimness to avoid bumping into little tables filled with useless knickknacks that would have made any Victorian auntie beam with pride of ownership, like a clock shaped like a tarantula that told time with two of the arms, and a bronze ceramic vase so ugly I was surprised it hadn't scared the petals off the flowers in it. Amid the tables were four or five bureaus and a dozen upholstered chairs with stiffly upright backs. The portraits on the walls were of the Angry Ancestors school of art. I got glared at by assorted curmudgeonly Orions of both genders in various weird costumes, informing me that Ella wasn't the first one in her family to lack dress sense. I glared back.

All the kitschy decor faded into a dim setting as my eye was caught by a blaze of pure golden light. In the center of the room, on a little round table with a purple, star-spangled cloth, was a sphere. It was so perfectly shaped it reminded me of a soap bubble. It glowed like a movie sunrise. My feet started moving toward it under their own power. I hauled back, reminding my body to whom it belonged, but I kept my eyes on the gleaming orb.

"Kelsa!" Ersatz said.

"Ersatz!" the globe squealed. As I got closer I could see a face in the sphere, that of a female Orion wearing a turban

adorned with a big gold aigrette and a backward-curving ostrich plume and jeweled spectacles whose corners angled upward. Her whiskers pricked out with delight. "The portents have come to pass. The energies have aligned themselves in the order I foretold as of old. I knew you were coming."

"Indeed she did," Ella said, gliding over and settling down on the ottoman beside the table. She gestured me to a small chair opposite her. "Why we have been talking about it for some time. I am pleased that you are here. Why, your exploits have absolutely thrilled me to the core of my soul!"

I preened. "Thanks, Ella. I don't talk about myself much, but it's nice to be appreciated."

"And, you, too, of course, Mr. Aahz," Ella added, with an apologetic inclination of her head. "Your past has been a most interesting tale. We didn't know until a very short time ago that you were the one who was going to convey the Great Sword Ersatz here to this place!"

I scowled. The face in the globe turned to face me, and became that of a female Pervect.