Clothing shops and scarf vendors weren't the only sellers there. Far from it. Jewelry booths tempted the eye with a rainbow of sparkling color. From this distance I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't, but the effect was impressive. Sword shops, with a sweaty smith bending steel over the breath of a chained dragon, caught light with a different kind of gleam. A host of Vikings stood around the smith, trying out axe blades on the balls of their thumbs and nodding with approval. Beside the smithy were a couple of bookstores offering tomes wrapped in exotic leathers with gem-studded bindings. A few booths with their doorways draped with gauze had all the earmarks of magik shops. This Mall was a high-end operation, just as Massha had said.

"We came in Doorway D," Massha announced, coming over to us with a thick scroll in her hands. "You can tell by the relief of the dragon over the entrance." She pointed back toward the doors we had just come through.

"There's a map?" I asked, reaching for it.

"It's an encyclopedia," Massha countered, thrusting it at me. I peered down at the illumination. A glowing blue disk indicated you are here. I kept unrolling it until I was wrapped in a coil of papyrus. I was impressed. The corridor off Doorway D was one of a dozen entrances. The shopping space contained within these walls was vast, with several floors in each wing. You had to squint at the flowery writing to read the names of the stores, but it wouldn't help to memorize them, since unlike an ordinary chart, this one was constantly updated by magik. The green square on Gallery Two that was the Bilko Shop vanished and repainted itself in a bigger location just up the hall from where we were standing. I glanced up in time to see the store appear in a fusillade of fluttering banners, parting the crowds of shoppers, who went on browsing and buying without missing a single pace.