Aftermath

SEEING IS BELIEVING (BUT LOVE IS BLIND) by Lynn Abbey

Illyra awoke to the sound of an infant's crying and a sudden stiffening of the muscles in her neck and shoulders. She stayed that way, tense- almost cringing-until she heard the wet nurse shove her blankets aside, then stumble across the night-dark room. The crying changed to con- tented sucking sounds; Illyra closed her eyes and shrank back into Dubro's arms. He hugged her reflexively but the infant had not inter- rupted his sleep. Why should it? Children were women's work and this child was not even his.

The S'danzo seeress matched her breathing to her husband's and waited for sleep to touch her again. She listened to the wet nurse tuck the infant back into her cradle and return to her own bed where she swiftly resumed her gentle snoring. Dubro's strong arms were no longer com- forting but had become an encircling trap from which she could not free herself-tangible symbols of the weight she had felt since summer when her half-brother, Walegrin, had appeared with the newbom girl-child in his arms.

It had never seemed like a good idea. Three years ago Illyra had borne twins: a boy-child and a girl. Now they were both gone. The boy, Arton, had been taken from the mortal world. Caught up in the influence of the demigod, Gyskouras, he had sailed for the Bandaran Islands this past spring and if he returned at all, it would not be as her son, but as a wargod stranger. Worse, Lillis, her blue-eyed daughter had been hacked into pieces by ravening street gangs during the Plague Riots at about the same time. Illyra had tried to protect her daughter with her own body- with her own life-but fate had denied her sacrifice. There was a purple scar running across her belly but it went not nearly so deep as the scars mourning had left on her heart.

She had nurtured her grief and had wanted nothing to do with living or joy. She had hated that squirming bundle Walegnn had thrust into her arms. Had wanted to dash its head against the doorposts because it lived and Lillis did not. But it had wrapped its fragile fingers around hers and stared into her eyes. And Illyra had Seen that this child would remain at her side.

Strange how the S'danzo Sight worked. It rarely focused on the self, family, or loved ones but brought the abstract, the uncared-for, into clarity. Illyra did not love-would not allow herself to care for-this not- daughter they called Trevya and so the infant flashed constantly in her mind's eye where the Seeing visions grew.

Had not Trevya's legs been crippled in the prolonged birthing that had claimed her blood-mother's life? Had not Illyra Seen, superimposed over every other vision she commanded, a construct of baleen and leather guiding the infant's soft bones into a healthy alignment? Had not Dubro made such a brace, following her precise instructions, and was not that twisted little leg already growing straighter as the Sight had foretold?

Illyra had wrought a miracle for Trevya, who was not her daughter and whom she did not love. She had given Trevya freedom and built an unyielding trap for herself. Hot tears squeezed out from her eyes and puddled in the crook of Dubro's arm. The young woman who had once been a mother prayed that they would not awaken him and waited the long hours until dawn when she would be released.

This not-daughter consumed more of Dubro and Illyra's time and money than their own children had, for they kept Trevya with them in the Bazaar rather than send her behind the fortress walls of the Aphrodi- sia House where working merchants often kept their precious children. So they had had to hire a wet nurse, a woman-scarcely more than a child herself-whose baby had been stillborn and who had come to live with them alongside Dubro's forge. But there wasn't enough room for them, Trevya and the waiflike Suyan, so they'd hired workmen to make their home larger. And, of course, Suyan must have food, and clothes, and medicine when she grew sick.

Fortunately there was plenty of work to be had in Sanctuary these days. The new city walls were being made from cut and dressed stone; there were picks and mauls in need of constant repair and replacement. Dubro had both a journeyman and an apprentice working beside him at the forge these days, and he talked of building a larger furnace beyond the rising walls. Verily, a fortune could be made these days in Sanctuary, but the pump needed priming and it seemed to Illyra that their coin hoard shrank rather than increased.

She was half S'danzo, fully gifted with their preternatural clairvoyance but bereft of their tolerance for haphazard poverty. She was half Rankan, through her father's blood, and craved the material security that was the heritage of that empire's middle class. And, of course, her S'danzo Sight could offer no assurances to her Rankan anxieties. Even without Trevya, Illyra would have lost many a night's sleep this season.

As it was, she balanced on the edge between dreaming and waking, and her thoughts spiraled far beyond her control. Trevya's face drifted toward her, like a leaf on the wind or driftwood with the tide. Illyra called her mind's eye back, but it did not come and the face grew into a full Seeing of a child running through a neat flower garden, arms out- stretched, silently laughing and singing a single word over and over again.

Illyra cried out, breaking the thrall of the Seeing but not disturbing her husband who, in truth, was accustomed to her cries in the night. The seeress, still bound in Dubro's protection, stared into the night deter- mined now to remain fully awake. The vision would not be denied and inserted itself mto her thoughts, demanding interpretation.

That was easy enough. If Trevya ran, then her legs grew straight and strong. If she ran through a garden, then she became a child in a place where beauty was an affordable luxury. If she sang as she ran, then she was happy. If that word was Mother ...

But no, Illyra would not acknowledge that part other Seeing-though it could have told her she would have the material security she craved. She preferred the loneliness other anxiety and clutched its darkness tight around her until slits of dawn light came through the shutters.

Dubro stirred, freeing her as he did. The soul of routine and regularity, the smith rose with the first dawn light year around and had his forge ready when the sun peeked over the horizon. Usually the sight of his broad shoulders as they vanished beneath his worn leather tunic was enough to banish Illyra's night-bom doubts, but not today-nor did she share any aspect of her visions with him. She remained huddled in the bed until Suyan had the baby at her breast and even then Illyra gathered her brightly colored garments as if in a trance.

"Feel you poorly?" Suyan asked with sincere concern.

Illyra shook her head and laced a rose-colored bodice lightly over her own breasts. The girl's voice-her odd, but lilting, syntax-grated with extra harshness this morning, and Illyra was, without forethought, deter- mined to ignore her.

"Herself cried but once in the night, though if that come at a bad time, it's enough to keep you waking until dawn?"

Always a curl to her voice. Everything was a question that needed- no, demanded-an answer. But this time it would not work.

"There's herbs left from Masha zil-Ineel-from Herself's congestion- that could be brewed up?"

"I'm fine, Suyan," Illyra said at last. "I slept fine. The baby didn't bother me. You didn't bother me. And I don't need any herbs- just ..." She inhaled a pause and wondered what she did need. "I'm going uptown today. What I need is a change of scenery."

Suyan nodded. She did not know her mistress well enough to sense how little Illyra needed change of any kind-and would not have done any different if she had.

Shunning her pots of kohl, Illyra brushed her hair into a thick chignon and wrapped a concealing, drab-colored shawl around her shoulders. She would never be mistaken for a woman who followed any of Sanctuary's fast-changing fashions but neither would she be taken for a S'danzo.

"You'll be wanting breakfast?" Suyan asked from the comer, the lilt making her maternal and chastising.

"No, no breakfast," Illyra replied, meeting the other woman's eyes for the first time, and watching them grow fragile with self-doubt. "I've got a craving for the little tarts Haakon sells; I'll get some on my way."

Those huge eyes grew bright and knowledgeable. "Aye, cravings ..."

Illyra found her fist clenching into a warding sign. Suyan had her own need for security, and security for a wet nurse was her mistress's preg- nancy. Not a day went by that somehow, buried in the lilting questions, the subject of Illyra's barrenness was not raised. As Illyra forced herself to relax, the unfaimess of it all swept over her and she knew if she remained one more moment she would dissolve into tears that would only make her world worse.

"I'm going now," she muttered in a voice that sounded almost as bad as she felt.

Dubro was instructing the new apprentice in the finer arts of squeezing the bellows. His voice was deep and even with hard-held patience; there was nothing to be gained by interrupting him so Illyra gripped her shawl against the chill harbor wind and hoped to slip away.

"Madame ... Madame Illyra. Seeress!"

Illyra shrank against the walls, unable to pretend that she had not seen or could not hear the young woman racing through the market-day crowd.

"Oh, wait, Seeress Illyra. Please wait!"

And she did, while the other woman caught her breath and pressed a filthy, battered copper coin into her hand.

"Help me, please. I've got to find him. I've looked everywhere. You're my last hope. You've got to help me."

Numbly Illyra nodded and retreated the few steps to the anteroom where she kept her cards and the other paraphernalia of the S'danzo trade. She could not refuse-though not because of the coin as the suvesh commonly believed. It was not payment that compelled the Sight but, sometimes, the contact of their flesh with her flesh. Already she was growing dizzy with the emergence of another reality. It would be a haz- ard to her if she attempted to deny the vision.

She pushed the deck across the table as she half collapsed onto her stool. "Make three piles of them," she commanded; there was no time to shuffle them.

The visitor's hand shook as she separated the deck- "Find my Jimny before it's too late!"

Illyra swallowed the notion that it was already too late, then surren- dered herself to the emerging images: the Lance of Air, Seven of Ships, Five of Ores, reversed-the Whirlwind, the Warfleet and the Iron Key transformed into a lock. The lock wound through a chain and the chain grew from the belly of a dank, swaying ship-not an anchor chain, but a galley chain from keel to ankle, from ankle to wrist, from wrist to oar. The air reeked of drugged wine and echoed with a whip's crack.

It was too late. Illyra Saw slaves' faces, one clearly, the rest wrapped in fog, and heard-as was the way with her gift-Jimny speak out his own name. She separated herself from the Seeing and sought words to blunt the despair her answer must contain.

"Another card," she heard herself whisper. "Seek beneath the Whirl- wind."

The suvesh, the ordinary non-S'danzo folk of the world, might not know any of the Seeing rituals but they knew the way things were sup- posed to go after they'd put their coin in a seeress's palm-and any deviation was certain to mean bad news. Illyra's visitor was sobbing openly as she reached for the first pile.

Two-not one-cards slipped free: the light-and-dark tunnel of the Three of Flames and the dark-faced portrait of the Lord of the Earth. Illyra absorbed them both and grew no wiser.

"He's been taken onto a boat," she said slowly, gathering the now lifeless chips of vellum into a single stack. "His leaving was not of his choosing," she continued, putting a high gloss over his enslavement be- fore adding, without much conviction, "nor will he choose the time or manner of his return." Illyra could not bring herself to say that the best Jimny would likely get out of his future was a grave under the soil rather than the waves.

"Is there no hope? There must be something I can do. Something, anything. Which temple should I go to? Which gods should I pray to?"

Illyra shook her head, then spoke as a woman rather than a seeress. "There is always hope-but hope doesn't come from a handful of S'danzo cards."

Her visitor shuffled awkwardly to her feet. Illyra confirmed her suspi- cion that she was a few months shy of giving birth and poorer than Suyan had been when they'd found her.

"Take back your coin."

"Will it change things?"

"No, but it will buy you today's food and tomorrow's, too."

"I won't need food tomorrow," the girl shouted through her sobs as she ran from the room.

But she will, Illyra thought, weighed down by the Sight of a pale woman and a scrawny child. There's no death for her. And no life either.

The clanging of three hammers brought her out of her visions. Dubro was tapping the cadence and the other two were beating the red-hot iron. One of them had it right-tap, bang; tap, bang-but the other, probably the apprentice, was off the mark and stuttered against the metal. The forge reverberated with an unnatural rhythm that penetrated deep behind Illyra's weary eyes.

"Can't you get it right!" Illyra snarled, thrusting head and shoulders through the anteroom drapes.

The percussive chorus came to an immediate halt with an aghast look on the faces of the younger men and a knowing, concerned one on Dubro's.

"Learning's not easy," her husband said cautiously, his blue eyes nar- rowed to unreadable slits.

"What, then, is he learning? How to give me a headache?"

Dubro nodded twice, once to his men who laid down their hammers and the second time to his wife as he approached her. He wrapped his arm gently around her and brought her into the anteroom beside him. Just as the forge was his true home-a place built to his scale and com- fort-so the scrying chamber was Illyra's true home and it made him seem an unwelcome giant scraping his head on the rafters, yet unable to sit, as the visitor's chair would not take his weight.

" 'Lyra, I'll send them home, if you want, but I think it's not the hammering that's wrong. What ails you, 'Lyra?"

Illyra on her scrying stool had taken command of the room. She would have had to arch her neck to see Dubro's face, but she had no intention of meeting her husband's eyes. She spoke to the table instead, in a soft voice that emphasized the smith's awkwardness. Yet she was no more comfort- able than Dubro; her hands sought the scrying deck and her fingers rimed through the cards.

"Everything and nothing, husband. I do not know what ails me-and I'm almost past caring." The cards broke free of her nervous fingers to scatter across the green cloth.

Heaving a sigh as he moved, Dubro dropped to one knee; he could look into Illyra's eyes and force her to look into his. "Read the cards for me, then. Ask them what I must do to make you happy."

Illyra avoided him, watching the cards as she gathered them into a rough-sided stack. "You know I cannot. I love you. I cannot See what I love."

She raised her eyes, thinking to shame him but was herself shamed by what she read, without Sight, in his face. He doubted her love and, now that the notion flowed within her thoughts, he had a right to, because she doubted it as well. The worst pain Illyra had ever known shuddered along her spine. The cards spilled onto the table when she hid her face behind her hands. She never imagined Dubro would study and remember each image in the moment before he reached across the table to massage her neck and shoulders.

"Had we rich relations or a hidden villa surrounded by lakes and trees, I'd send you away. It's Sanctuary herself who's hurt you," Dubro said with an eloquence few others knew he possessed.

Illyra imagined the villa and recognized it from her predawn vision of Trevya. Fresh sobs came loose within her as she shook herself free of the villa and her husband.

"What, then?" Dubro asked, a trifle less understanding.

"I don't know. I don't know ..." but then, though she still could not discern the nature of, much less the solution to, her problems, Illyra stumbled across something that could, under different circumstances, have accounted for her despair. At least to Dubro.

"I woke this morning with a foreboding around me," she admitted, not yet lying but working herself up to the sort of half-truths she routinely fed her visitors. "I thought to escape, but that woman came and the foreboding became a Seeing. She wanted to know where her lover had gone and I found him-in chains in the belly of a ship somewhere. And though I only Saw his face clearly, I saw as well that he was not alone and that many men had been pressed into slavery."

Dubro grew thoughtful, as she had known he would. Chains were made from iron, and Dubro knew every man in Sanctuary who knew that metal-in any of its forms-against his flesh. The blue eyes grew un- focused as he, like any other ungifted suvesh, ordered and made sense of his thoughts.

Ulyra watched his pupils move as each mote of knowledge fell into place. Her sense of guilt lessened; she had tricked him into thinking about something else-but a good issue might yet come of it. She gath- ered her cards and wrapped them in a square of silk, never noting which ones had lain exposed.

"This is something for your brother, Walegrin," Dubro decided with a firm nod of his head.

"You tell him then. I'm going for a walk, maybe I'll find a garden somewhere. I don't want to go to the barracks."

Dubro grunted and Illyra suppressed a sigh. A year ago, less even, and her husband would have gone into a rage at the mention of Walegrin's name. He had blamed all their misfortunes on her straw-haired brother. Now, since Walegrin had deposited Trevya in her arms, the commander was welcome in their house and the two men often spent the evening in a tavern. Dubro had even gone so far as to share the cost of posting the child to citizenship in the increasingly meaningless Rankan Empire.

Illyra couldn't imagine conversation, let alone friendship, between the two taciturn men, had never really tried, then realized they talked about her. She had pushed them together with the wall she had built around herself. But the understanding brought no desire for reform.

"Talk to him then. Maybe eat with him as well. I don't think I'll be back until after sundown."

She straightened her shawl and eased past him to the door, never touching him, even with her skirts. The journeyman and the apprentice were gone. Trevya was squalling despite Suyan's best efforts to sing her quiet. None of it caught Illyra's heart. She was into the market-day crowd without a backward glance.

There were perhaps two dozen S'danzo in Sanctuary, counting the female children. The men and the children moved unnoticed through the city-especially now that it had become the workplace of the empire with strangers still arriving each day. But the women, the seeresses true and false, put down their roots in the Bazaar and rarely left its confines. Illyra recognized many of the faces she passed, but none recognized hers. As free as she felt, she was also very much alone and shrinking with each step farther from the Bazaar and the forge.

She was all but invisible when she reached the main gate of the palace. She was known here, and recognized, from the many visits she had made to her son when he lived in the royal nursery with the god-child, Gys- kouras. She was not greeted, as she passed into the interior corridors, for much the same reason.

There were others here who knew her, who mumbled a greeting with their eyes averted from hers as they picked up their pace to be gone from her shadow as quickly as possible. It was, perhaps, a great honor to be the mother of a godling. Certainly the slave-dancer who'd been the mother of the other child did well by her servants, suite, and jewels, but such motherhood did not inspire mortal friendship. In truth, though, Seylalha, with her lithe beauty, would have found her nest of luxury without Gyskouras's help and Illyra, confidante to half of Sanctuary, had never had any friends.

Aside from Dubro and Walegrin, whose relationship to her was defined in ways other than friendship, there was only one to whom Illyra could bare her soul: Molin Torchholder. And it was a sorry state when a god- less S'danzo claimed counsel with a Rankan priest.

At that moment, however, Illyra wore her isolation like armor and strode by the stairway that would have taken her to Molin's cluttered suite. She had her destination clearly in mind; a sheltered cloister that caught the sun without the chill wind. A place certain to have flowers even this late in the year.

The little courtyard was empty-deserted for considerable time and given over to weeds. Two hardy roses held onto brown-edged blooms, their scent all the stronger for the frost that had doomed them. The rest was yellow-top, white lace, and, in the most sheltered comer, a patch of fiery demons-eyes. Illyra was grateful she had no allergies as she gathered an armful of the blooms and settled onto a sunlit stone bench to weave them into a garland. She'd learned the flower braiding in a vision once. Her mother had certainly never taught her, nor Dubro, nor Moonflower, who'd told her what she'd needed to know about womanhood and her gift. She'd learned other things as well: bits of song and poetry, snippets of lovemaking, tricks for killing with a knife or sword. She knew too much to be just one person-and she'd loved Lillis because she yearned to share herself with someone, anyone, who would understand.

Trevya could never understand.

The sun warmed her shoulders, finally loosening the knots that had been there since that late winter day when she'd last held a living daugh- ter of her own blood in her arms. Illyra turned her face upward, eyes closed, imagining an ageless Lillis: child, woman, and friend. She took that predawn vision and changed it until it was her own daughter and she could hear the laughter and the single word: mother, mother, mother ...

But the laughter, Illyra realized after a blissful moment, was real- echoing within the cloister-not in her imagination. She opened her eyes and gazed upon the passel of children who had invaded her retreat with their games. There were none that she recognized from her visits to the nursery-save that two were clearly Beysib. Both were girls and, by their apparent ages, immigrants like their parents.

"It's your turn now!"

"And no peeking!"

The designated child, the younger of the Beysib pair, separated reluc- tantly from the group. Her arms and legs, which extended well beyond her fine but dirty and shapeless tunic, were still pudgy with baby fat; her gait was still flat-footed, after the manner of toddlers, rather than rolling. Her face pulled back into a near-bawling grimace as the distance between herself and the others increased but none of the children had as yet noticed Illyra sitting still and quiet on her bench.

The little girl squared her shoulders and put her hands over her eyes.

"Out loud. Count out loud, Cha-bos!" the other Beysib girl com- manded.

"One ... two ... th'th-three ..."

By the count of four the other children had vanished, squealing and shouting and quickly dispersing through the tangle of rooms and hall- ways of their home. The little girl, Cha-bos, heard the silence and low- ered her hands from her tear-streaked face. She noticed Illyra for the first time.

The nictating membrane that distinguished the exile community from the continental norm flicked over the child's amber eyes and she stared. Illyra, despite her best efforts, started backward just as reflexively. But Cha-bos was apparently immune to that gesture-or at least already able to conceal her own reactions.

"I can't count to one hundred," Cha-bos declared, confident that she had explained everything, and Illyra learned that Beysibs could cry while they were staring.

"Neither can I," Illyra admitted-not that she had ever had need to count so many things.

Cha-bos wilted. What use was an adult who knew no more than she did? "It doesn't matter," she told herself and Illyra. "They don't want me to play anyway."

Caught up in those huge, fixed eyes, Illyra Saw that Cha-bos was right. The older children had not continued with the simple game but were, even now, regrouping for a greater adventure.

"I'm sorry. You'll grow up soon enough."

"They won't ever grow down."

Illyra felt herself squirming to get free of the child's endless eyes. She realized why the other gifted S'danzo women stayed so close to their families-where familiarity, if not love, inhibited the curse of Sight and the scrying table turned vision into a cold business. She especially did not want to know that Cha-bos was no ordinary child-even for a Beysib- but the daughter of the Beysa Shupansea, and already her blood was laced with potent poison.

"You can't have any friends, can you?" she blurted.

Cha-bos went solemn and shook her head in a slow arc, but the mem- brane flicked back and she blinked. "Vanda. She takes care of me."

Vanda was a name Illyra recognized from before. An Ilsigi girl who had somehow gotten herself made nursemaid to the polyglot menagerie of the palace nursery. Illyra had not seen her since Arton had been sent away and had, for no good reason, assumed the young woman had been swallowed back into the city.

"Is Vanda still here?"

"Course she's here. I need her."

Cha-bos's faith in Vanda was as strong as her gut-level certainty that the world-in the proper order of things-revolved around her personal needs. She was willing to lead Illyra through the palatial maze to an interior chamber which by its chaotic condition and the size of its beds had to be the current location of the the nursery.

Vanda sat with her needle and thread amid heaps of children's ravaged clothing. Her face glowed with genuine welcome when Cha-bos an- nounced herself but cooled and became mature when she saw Illyra.

"It's been a long time," she explained, shaking the mending from her lap and bowing slightly-as was proper in the presence of one who was the mother of a potential god. "Fare you well?"

Illyra nodded and was at a loss for words, wondering what she had hoped to accomplish by visiting. "Well enough," she stammered politely.

Living with children had preserved some of Vanda's audacity and forth rightness. "What brings you here?" she asked, taking up the mend- ing again.

Illyra felt her mind carom wildly from one mote of knowledge to the next. Vanda was the daughter of Gilla and Lalo the Limner. Gilla had watched as her children embarked on the journey of adulthood, and had buried one who had not at the same time Illyra's Lillis had been laid in her grave. Gilla had also nursed Illyra through the bleak weeks of their mutual mourning. Vanda would know what her mother knew, and Vanda knew children ...

"I have a child," Illyra began from somewhere deep in her heart.

Surprise and suspicion flickered across Vanda's face. "Oh," she sighed as a calm mask formed over her features. "How fortunate for you." It was a voice to quiet the insane.

The S'danzo couldn't help but feel the emotional distance Vanda hur- riedly created between them. But her despair was a throbbing, emotional aneurysm and, having finally found its voice, it would not be stilled. She described how Trevya had been literally dumped in her arms and how the child gave her no peace. She spoke of Trevya's twisted leg and the psychic intrusions that had led to the construction of the baleen splint which, though it was straightening her bones, chafed her skin and made her cry for hours at a time.

Then Illyra told herself and Vanda about the changes that had come over Dubro since Trevya's arrival. Come over him and between them as if children were interchangeable and a woman's love flowed to any infant that squirmed in her arms. Not, of course, that it was just one child; there was also Suyan who was little more than a child herself. And the new apprentice who, though he still lived with his family in the town, ex- pected that she would care for him ... about him.

And through it all Vanda sat attentive and blank, polite, and growing more reserved with each syllable the S'danzo uttered. Until Cha-bos, who had gotten infinitely bored very early in Illyra's oration, inserted herself into their attention.

The child had unearthed one other ti-cosa, the miniature version of the Beysib court costume, padded and embroidered so it bulked as much as Cha-bos herself.

"Fix it!" she demanded as she began a run across the room.

Ribbons trailed from the robe's seams and edges, imitating the poison- ous Beynit vipers that dwelt with the older female members of the Beysa's intimate family-

"Cha-to-s-tu!" Vanda shouted the child's full name as the impending catastrophe came closer.

Emerald and ruby silk serpentined around the child's legs. Cha-bos lurched forward, unaware at first that she was no longer in control other unbalanced burden. She shrieked as she tumbled forward, becoming a confused mass of cloth and child. The nursery was frozen and quiet when her motion ceased. For a moment Illyra and Vanda believed no harm had been done, then a wail of heartrending terror erupted from the tangled embroidery.

Vanda reached her first, fairly shouting her reassurances as she sepa- rated Cha-bos from the cosa. A splinter as long as the child's finger protruded from her forearm. (The floors, this high up in the palace, were constructed of wooden planking that had seen better days.) Chabostu, second daughter of Shupansea and witness to all that had driven her mother into exile in Sanctuary, was transfixed by the sight of her own blood. Her whole body stared in the rigid Beysib way; her only move- ment came during her spasmodic gasps between screams.

Vanda could not relax the child's arm and when she yanked the splin- ter free the blood followed in bright red spurts.

"Dear Shipri preserve me," the nursemaid intoned as Cha-bos's wide- open eyes went completely white. "Hold her!"

The child was thrust into Illyra's unwilling arms as Vanda shouted for the palace guards and crawled toward the unmended clothing to tear a compress. Illyra rocked back on her heels and went almost as rigid as Cha-bos herself as the warm blood trickled along her fingers.

This was no ordinary child-no ordinary blood. That was foul and potent venom gathering in the crevice between her thumb and forefinger. Illyra gulped, shuddered, and nearly fainted as the fluid streamed over her wrist and out of sight beneath her cuff. There was nothing she wanted to do more than heave the little girl across the room and get as far from her as mortally possible. But Vanda was back, ripping strips of cloth with her teeth, and the corridor resounded with approaching guards.

Illyra could do nothing but contain her revulsion ^as Vanda tended the wound and Cha-bos twitched and shuddered in her arms. The nursery shimmered with surreal absurdity: what manner of contagion could pos- sibly take root in a child whose very blood was poison? Then the visions came.

She was in the Beysib Empire, Seeing a nightmare world with a child's eyes. Giants stormed from living shadows with red-dripping steel in their hands. Cold, unyielding hands held her from behind and made the world go wild as they moved her from the familiar to the horrible.

A face swam before her: a face half her mother and half hard, grimac- ing giant-and the other part, the part that was not her mother, was in control. But mostly there was blood as the last fortress loyal to Shupan- sea fell to their enemies and the noblest individuals of the empire scram- bled for their lives like lowiy peasants.

Illyra, whose childish memory held scenes no less graphic, shared Chabostu's terror-and an unhealable outrage that not one of those gi- ants who habitually controlled her world took notice of her. Worse, her mother, Shupansea, seemed herself to have been reduced to gibbering.

In the starkly judgmental mind of young Cha-bos, Shupansea had usurped the attention and comforting that belonged to her. Cha-bos was unable to comprehend this inversion of the universe and so had trans- formed it into something she could understand: She had never felt like this before and she'd never seen so much blood before, so blood must cause the feeling. Must lead to the feeling inevitably.

And blood became the ultimate terror in her world.

Vanda worked furiously to cleanse and conceal the child's wound, well aware of the child's progressive fears if not of their cause. Though the guards had been assured that the injury was neither serious nor the result of any malfeasance, they raised a racket in the nearby corridors-primar- ily designed to prove to Shupansea (who had also been summoned) that they were diligent in their duties. Illyra watched the commotion from a greater distance. She had freed herself from the child's visions, thereby insulating herself somewhat from her own fear of the poisonous fluids still staining her arm. She had wisely resisted returning completely to the world of the frantic nursery.

The seeress remained detached from her surroundings until Shupansea crossed the threshold with Prince Kadakithis and a dozen courtiers in her wake. The Beysa dropped gracefully to her knees and attempted to take her daughter into her arms. Chabostu would have none of it and fought like a little demon to avoid her mother's attention.

"Your Serenity ... ?" Vanda interjected cautiously, cocking a finger ever so slightly to the bandage.

Knowing what would happen if the wound bled again, Shupansea withdrew her arms. "It has been very difficult for her," she explained softly and quickly to Illyra, speaking like any mother who had been shamed or rejected by her offspring rather than as the de facto ruler of Sanctuary-

Illyra, though she was the mother of a probable god, had no idea how to speak to one who was personally both goddess and queen. She cast a furtive glance toward Vanda whose nod, she assumed, meant she should treat Shupansea with the same calculated familiarity she accorded her paying visitors. "Children have their own minds," she said with a trace of a smile.

The Beysa had the good manners, not to stare, but her pet viper chose that moment to rustle through her undergarments and poke its jewel- colored head above her collar. It tasted the air, revealing its crimson maw and ivory fangs, then, while the women held motionless, it lowered itself onto Illyra's sleeve.

"Don't move," Shupansea cautioned unnecessarily.

The immense NO remained imprisoned until the beymt investigated the clotted blood on Illyra's sleeve with its darting tongue. Any thoughts of instant death were insignificant compared to the reality of the serpent's touch. With a stifled gasp, Illyra propelled herself out of the circle, fling- ing the serpent and the child in opposite directions.

Cha-bos cried, the snake disappeared, and Illyra was surrounded by a mixed cohort of palace guards. Rankan, Ilsigi, and Beysib by the look of them. they were united by the steadiness with which they kept their well- sharpened spears pointed at her throat.

The guards saw their duty; no one would blame them for not following procedure when the child of an avatar of one goddess was bounced on the floor by the mother of another. For once Sanctuary proved itself a place of law and due process. Not even the protests of the prince and the Beysa combined could free the S'danzo from the ordeal of reporting to the watch commander.

"There's nothing to worry about," the prince assured Illyra as he joined the bristling circle escorting her from the nursery. (Shupansea remained behind, watching her daughter and looking for her snake.) "It's just a formality. Sign your name a few times and it will all be over."

This brought little comfort to the seeress who signed her name with an X like almost everyone else in Sanctuary.

It might have been different if Dubro had accompanied his wife-for he had begun life destined to be a scribe, not a blacksmith, and remem- bered what he now had little use for. Unfortunately Deibro wasn't even at the forge when a liveried palace servitor made his appearance there, and Suyan was awed into incoherence.

Not that Dubro had told her where he was going when he banked the fire and lowered the leather awning that separated the entrance to his workplace from the entrance to Illyra's. He could hardly admit to him- self that he was going to the back wall where the other S'danzo seeresses made camp, to ask their advice.

He thought of Moonflower and was not the only person in Sanctuary that day or any other to gently mourn her untimely death. She'd been barely taller than Illyra but in all other respects she was built on Dubro's scale and he'd felt comfortable around her.

He reconsidered his whole plan as he entered the incense-rich, S'danzo quarter. He had decided to turn around and retreat to his own familiar world, when he was caught in the appraising glare of the woman who had replaced Moonflower as most indomitable among the seeresses.

"Greetings, blacksmith," the tall stick of a woman called. "What brings you up here?"

It was not done to walk away from the Termagant. She was the living embodiment of every tale ever whispered in the dark about the S'danzo. No sane man doubted that she would and could curse anything that crossed her path in the wrong light.

Dubro crumpled the lower edge of his tunic in his fists and took a step in her direction. "I have a question to ask-about the cards."

She looked him up and down, which took a moment or two, then pulled aside the curtain to her scrying room,

"Then come, by all means, and ask it."

The Termagant lived alone. No one dared ask or remember if she'd ever had a family. As far as the other S'danzo and all the rest of Sanctu- ary were concerned she had always been exactly as she was. An aura of timelessness hung over her-by gaudy S'danzo standards-austere cham- bers. Her wooden table was worn black and shiny from years of use.

Her cards were tattered at the edges, their images both faded and stained. She was a seeress who let no one but herself touch the amashkiki: the cards, the Guideposts of Vision. They cascaded from one knobby hand to the other as she settled on her stool.

"Tell me where to stop. Choose your first significance."

Dubro thrust his hands, palms outward, between himself and the flit- tering paper. "No," he stammered. "I do not choose cards. Illyra chose them."

The cascade came to an abrupt halt. "If she chose, what is your ques- tion?" she inquired, though surely she suspected the answer.

"She cannot read for those she loves. She would not lay down the cards-but certain ones fell from her hands. I believe that she cannot read for us-but I do not believe she cannot choose."

"For an overly large man, you are not without perception," the Terma- gant said between self-satisfied cackles. Dubro folded his hands and said nothing. "Very well, describe the cards you saw."

"There were five. I've heard her name them Orb, Quicksilver, Acom, Ocean, and Emptiness."

For ten or more years Dubro had stood outside Illyra's workroom, pointedly ignoring the wherewithal of her craft. Yet he had absorbed something despite the banging of his hammer. His eyes met hers and were not put off by the disbelief that grew there.

"Prime cards each and all," he averred.

Not to be outdone, the seeress set her own cards back in their silken nest with imperturbably steady hands. "I don't suppose you noticed the relation of the cards one to another as they lay? Reversed or covering?"

"They're all from her hands," he repeated.

"I see." A lengthy pause between them. "Well, then, I suppose it's safe to assume the simplest message: all images erect and alone. It will be easiest that way. You do want the simplest interpretation, don't you?"

Dubro nodded, unfazed by her sarcasm. They'd had dealings with this woman before. Her acid was as normal a part of her as a smile was to Illyra-or had been to Illyra.

"I take it you know that among the amashkiki there are five families: fire, ore, wood, water, and air, as correspond to the five elements from which the universe was made. Each family is led by its Prime and de- fended by its Lance. There are, of course, cards which do not fall into the families but they are of no concern here for you described only Prime cards. Every Prime card."

Again Dubro nodded. He had known that. The amashkiki had been generally adapted by the larger society around the S'danzo, though only they preserved its arcane functions. A gaming hand showing five Primes was worth a heavy bet.

"The Lances defend. They are rigid, sharp-edged, defined. The Primes, though, are the start of things." The gray-haired woman grinned. "And also the ends. Magicians like the Prime cards because they mean every- thing, you know. The appearance of a Prime simplifies the reading, she may have told you this; two Primes and it practically shouts. Five Primes is absurd-and you, blacksmith, I think, know that."

This time he grunted, but it meant the same as a nod.

"Perhaps she had just ordered the amashkiki and merely dropped the end cards?"

"She'd just sent out a visitor. If I thought it were an accident, I'd not have come here."

"Then you and she stand on the cusp. All has already been revealed to you. It wants only your feet upon the path."

Dubro nodded to himself, letting her statements shore up his own convictions. The old S'danzo's eyes narrowed. At her age, Sight was a secondary gift. Her chiefmost asset was her long knowledge of mortal behavior. The Termagant could read as much in a gesture as the S'danzo Sight might have revealed in her cards.

"If she waits much longer," the crusty woman admitted, "that path may well rise up to bite her feet. It is not to be denied." "But she will deny it, amoushka"-a S'danzo diminutive for grand- mother or elder seeress. "She sees Trevya wherever she turns, but her heart only grows harder."

The Termagant snorted. "She is a little fool who should by now know what happens when children get tangled up in the Sight and fate."

Even swollen with strong-backed workers from every comer of the empire, Sanctuary was still a small place where no one was by more than three or four degrees a stranger to anyone else. It took a determined insularity to live in rumorless ignorance; it was utterly impossible to live in privacy. The entire city had known about Illyra's first children and the Termagant was informed about her well-cared-for but unwelcome not- daughter.

"The longer your wife denies what her Sight has shown her, the more inevitable it becomes, blacksmith. Glimpsed once, fate is a weak thing subject to change and uncertainty-especially for the young. But repeat- edly glimpsed and denied, as Illyra has done ..." The Termagant shook her head and chortled softly to herself. "Ah, nothing in this life is acci- dental. Perhaps she knows what she's doing; not even Illyra is stronger than fate."

The interview had come to an end. There was another visitor hovering beyond the curtained doorway. Dubro scrunched down to pass under the lintel-

"Mind you," the old S'danzo added as the curtain slid across his back, "if you and yours are pawns in fate's game, you will not feel its hand upon your back."

Dubro shook his head and kept moving. He was suvesh; he expected clear answers when he went to an oracle and he ignored the ones that weren't. Visiting the S'danzo quarter had been a long shot at best: a rare submission to the gambling urge. He was satisfied that he had not lost anything by the inquiry and was not unduly distressed that he went away no wiser than he'd arrived.

It was about midday. The crowds were thick and his two assistants were gone for the day. He could go back to his forge and do a few hours of business in the old way-by himself-or he, like everyone else in his extended family, could take the rest of the day off. And, as it seemed a day for impulses, Dubro decided against the forge for once. He made his way through the town to the palace.

Walegrin and his men had the first of three great watches these days, coming on duty in the cold, predawn hours, then relieved at just about this time. Even if the man hadn't been his brother-in-law, Dubro would have chosen him over the other two watch commanders, the eminently corruptible Aye-Gophlan or the murdering Zip, to tell about Illyra's visions.

And lately, as Illyra suspected, they'd found a comfortable subject of conversation in their concerns for her. A hearty meal and a few mugs of ale in the all-male taproom of the Tinker's Knob might be just the cure for his own irksome malaise. The market-day crowds parted before him once his destination, the palace barracks, was fixed in his mind.

"There, you see, I told you it was nothing," Prince Kadakithis said with rather too much surprise in his voice to be entirely convincing.

Illyra nodded weakly. They might have at least warned her that her examiner would be none other than her own half-brother-and whatever other flaw Walegrin might have, his sense of family loyalty was above reproach. He'd made it plain that it was reasonable to panic when one of those infernal snakes was around.

"I'm certain the kitchens have got more than enough food. Shall I have the guards escort you there? I'd go myself, but ..." The prince cast his eyes upward-in the general direction of not only the nursery but the Hall of Justice and Torchholder's suite of exchequer and registry. Neither husband nor ruler, yet somewhat more than a decorative figure- head, Kadakithis showed his adolescence more these days than he had seven years ago when he had first arrived as a naive puppet. He was growing but not yet grown.

"Thank you, I can find it myself," Illyra assured him.

He seemed genuinely relieved and took off at a decidedly unregal trot. Illyra had a flash vision of him seated on a steel-colored stallion, then nothing, as her thoughts turned to the aromas wafting out of the beehive- roofed kitchen. They'd recognize her there and accord her the same distant politeness the other palace retainers did: they knew they were better than some S'danzo wench from down in the Bazaar even if she did have the ear of royalty and the gods.

With a tightly woven basket, worth more than the food it contained, slung in her shawl, Illyra strolled into the bright forecourt. She might wander along the General's Road to the hills where the trees had turned a hundred shades of red, gold, and orange. Or she might go to the Prom- ise of Heaven which was usually deserted by daylight. Or she might ...

Illyra's musings stopped short when she caught sight of a familiar figure passing under the West Gate. Dubro-and though she herself had told him to seek out Walegrin her heart began to pound. Once or twice- when she'd been a child and the blacksmith her protector, not her hus- band-she'd run away from him, but never in recent years. Until now. She scooted behind a water cart, crouching over her basket, pretending to examine its contents.

She waited, cried, and thought of Cha-bos who hadn't known how to count to one hundred. When her tears had dried she decided it was safe. She headed in the direction she was now facing-to the back corner of the palace, past the ornate gate where priests and gods made their com- munion with temporal authority.

The palace stoneyard was here, ready for the next round of palatial repairs, and the huge water cisterns to sustain the inner fortress in times of siege. Though far from lost-she could still see the water cart-Illyra had entered unfamiliar territory and did not know the name of the little gate she discovered there. Or even if it was a deliberate gate and not one of Molin Torchholder's bright ideas. It seemed, judging by the dust, to be the main conduit between the work gangs and the palace.

"Hey, sweetheart, got anything in there for me?" a half-naked roustabout called from farther down the path.

"No, just my own meal."

"You're sure? A pretty little piece like you shouldn't be out here eating alone ..."

Illyra understood, then, what he had in mind. She blushed radiantly;

he laughed heartily and she ran through the nameless gate into the jum- bled red sandstones piled beyond it. Indignation got the better other; she wished all manner of minor disasters upon the workman who had not recognized her as a happily married matron and implied propositions never suggested to a S'danzo seeress.

She ate the creamy cheese without tasting it. The fire of her shame burned inwardly now, illuminating the misunderstanding with which the world treated her. It wasn't as if she asked for so much, Illyra reminded herself. It was pure selfishness and stubbornness that kept those who claimed to love her from understanding that her world-her promise of happiness-had ended when Lillis died. If they really loved her they would commiserate with her and cease their meaningless efforts to jolly her out of mourning.

Her life was a tragedy: a slow dirge relentlessly playing between Lillis's death and her own. She'd become a martyr-and was comfortable with that identity.

"You should not scowl so."

Illyra sent the basket flying and stared into the sun, unable to recog- nize the man who spoke so familiarly to her.

"And you should be more careful where and how you make your personal storms."

Not about to be scolded by a stranger-or anyone else, for that matter -Illyra was tempted to break her private vows and launch a full-fledged S'danzo curse in his direction. But something she did not understand restrained her. She clambered down from her perch and gathered her scattered meal instead.

From this angle, away from the sun, he was easier to see but no more recognizable. Not that there weren't a dozen incomprehensible languages spoken these days along the walls-but this one wasn't a stoneworker. Even Tempus, silhouetted by a bloody setting sun, was not so timeless and out of place as this man seemed to be. Moreover, she could not See him or his shadow which boded ill when Sanctuary itself was remarkably free of magic.

"I'm a free woman," she said petulantly, climbing onto a different stone where the light was better and she could look straight into his eyes.

"Not here you're not."

He was calm, not threatening; speaking simple facts as if there were something obvious she had overlooked. But what could be overlooked sitting on forgotten rubble with her back to the main path?

"Look down," he suggested in a bemused and paternal manner.

Down. The dirt was red where years of storms had had their way with the sandstone. Nothing grew there. Nothing was buried there. She couldn't See anything.

"Where you're sitting. Where you've been sitting this past hour."

Well, that. It was rubble, after all. These stones had been dressed and shaped into a building once, a long time ago. Not as if these were the only rocks around with little chips and bumps of some forgotten language on their sides. Lords and frogs, it could be Rankene for all she would know, wind-blasted as it was and illiterate as she was.

She took a mean-tempered bite out of her fruit and jawed it pointedly. "So?"

"Are you blind, child?"

This stranger with his beaten, bronze-colored armor and his probing, dark eyes deserved nothing less than a S'danzo curse; Illyra decided. His stare was worse than a Beysib's and his high-and-mighty attitude worse than that. He'd be less arrogant when the S'danzo were through with him. She wrapped her thoughts in the ancient forms, then dug deep in her memory to find the ritual words that would merge her desire with the Sight.

He sprang at her, though she prepared her curse in silence, and wres- tled her from the stone with his hand locked firmly over her mouth.

"You fool," he exclaimed, dropping her to the ground. "You blind, hopeless fool. How many times has Sanctuary been damned by petty curses uttered in ignorance by petty fools who don't recognize sanctity when they see it?"

Illyra swept the dust from her skirt as she stood. He was too sincere in his protests, too secure to challenge directly. "Who are you to scold me?" she muttered, watching the ground- "Who made you the guardian of Sanctuary? You're just another stranger come to work on the walls. It's my home and I'll send it to hell and back if I want to."

"You're more the fool than I thought, Illyra the Seeress."

"All right, I don't want to damn it to hell. I'd love to see a Sanctuary where flowers bloomed along the streets and honest people didn't have to hide after sundown. I'd love to see a Sanctuary where men loved their wives, wives loved their children, and children had a chance to grow up with food in their bellies.

"Who wouldn't want Sanctuary like that? But Sanctuary's Sanctuary and it never changes."

She raised her eyes to glower at him and to make him think better of whatever he had meant to say next

"If you could bring yourself to take care of it, it might change into something better Maybe even something you could love "

"That'd be the day Who are you, anyway9"

"Call me a shepherd "

Illyra cocked her head at him Whatever he was, the only sheep he saw were dead, cooked, and served to him on a platter Some errant warrior, more likely She noticed he'd left a horse drop-tied back on the path, and noticed that no one was coming or going on the path, either It was not really a good idea to argue with one whose saddle and weapon belt bristled with a dozen modes of death

"All right, I give Sanctuary my blessing-"

"From the rock "

She seated herself on the first stone and made a show of clearing her throat "I give Sanctuary my blessing," she repeated A gust of wind carried dust into her eyes, that, and the back-lighting sun made it impos- sible to see him clearly "Let its people live m peace Let its governors rule wisely Let its walls be strong and its stewpots full.

"There, is that more like it7" she demanded, squinting into the sun

"You forgot love "

"Right, husbands love wives, wives love children, children . . oh, children love whoever they want "

"It's a start," the unlikely shepherd confirmed "Mighty trees and the like. Are you thirsty9"

He unslung a wineskin and offered it to her Thinking he meant to embarrass her, Illyra took it Not that many townswomen could aim the bladder and catch the stream without covering themselves with wine She could She'd learned to drink from a skin-and not from a borrowed vision, either It was one of the very few things her father had taught her The wine wasn't half bad a bit tamnc, perhaps, but not local She caught a last drop and handed the skin back to him, smiling like a well-fed cat

"Thank you," she said and noted with some satisfaction that she'd surprised him with her skill

He tipped the wineskin up and maneuvered himself beneath it so his back was almost touching her and he, too, faced the sun Illyra couldn't imagine why he twisted around that way, when it was apt to make him miss his aim Wine spurted past his ear, landing on the red stone

"Watch what you're doing," she snapped, hastily lifting her skirt out of the way as she spoke

But he squeezed the skin again and left a goodly stain across the worn inscription before adjusting his arms and getting a decent mouthful of wine Odd that a warrior, or a shepherd for that matter, would be so clumsy with the wine Hard, even, to believe it had been an accident- especially when she caught him looking back at her and grinning

"Out of practice," he said, and she did not believe him at all

"I'd best be leaving It's getting late I live

Illyra hesitated and thought better of telling him where she lived, not that her heart believed it would help her if this stranger took it into his head to pay her and Dubro a visit. She slid carefully from the stone, avoiding him as much as the wine, and put the substantial remains of her lunch in the shawl-sling It seemed prudent to back away from the stone. He was still gnnmng when her heel touched the path, then he laughed and she shot through the gate.

In truth it wasn't that late, barely past midaftemoon, and she hadn't intended to return to the Bazaar before sundown The day was still pleas- antly warm, and there wouldn't be many more like this until the next spring She might still wander along the General's Road and headed that way-back through the forecourt and along the Governor's Walk

Haakon the vendor was prowling his afternoon route, singing a song of nutmeats and pastry. Despite the food she'd eaten and the food she ear- ned, they made her mouth water.

"Copper bit," the vendor said when she started to approach him, then, when he finally recognized her, added in a much softer voice, "for two "

Ulyra smiled and gave him the battered coin she'd received in the morning. Because she'd bought two, he wrapped the second one m a scrap of translucent parchment and tucked it into the folds of her shawl

"Delicious," she confirmed, biting into the sweet and savory confec- tion

"Best to share "

He meant to share with Dubro but the face that came into her mind was Suyan She wondered if the wet nurse had ever even tasted one of these uptown luxuries Not likely Suyan claimed she had grown up Downwind, though Walegnn had found her in a Shambles house Illyra imagined the look on Suyan's face when she bit through the still-warm pastry shell to the nutmeats within She changed direction and hurried along the street to the Bazaar

The forge was empty but before Illyra could become concerned she heard Trevya crying and ran the last little way

"I brought you a pastry," she announced as she pushed through the curtain

Suyan smiled but it was almost lost amid her unsuccessful efforts to quiet the infant

"Here, I'll hold her They really taste best when they're warm "

She picked the child up and found, not surprisingly, that she fit snugly into the crook of her arm and that she remembered how to rock her arms a bit and wiggle a finger or two as a distraction. And as Illyra's fingers were shiny with butter and nutmeats, Trevya found them fascinating. She pulled them into her mouth and sucked contentedly. Illyra felt the sharp ridge of the tooth that had caused this latest round of wailing.

"She's getting her milk teeth."

Suyan gulped a mouthful of pastry. "Not milk teeth, I'll warrant?" Another of her lilting questions, but this one came with a furtive smile,

"Not milk teeth then. She'll soon be ready for gruel and a bit of por- ridge in the morning, I used to like to make porridge-especially in winter."

The happiness in Suyan's face wavered. Illyra could almost see her

thinking of where she'd been before they'd brought her to the forge.

"We'll still need someone to take care of her. I'm S'danzo, not ..." Illyra hesitated, wondering why she'd been about to say she wasn't Trevya's mother. Neither was Suyan, for that matter. And other S'danzo women had children underfoot all the time. "Well, Trevya should have someone watching her all the time," she decided after a puzzling mo- ment. "It's dangerous here, with the forge. Not like some other places where the worst that could happen is a bumped knee."

The tension left Suyan in a great sigh. She ate the rest other pastry but left the baby in Illyra's arms- They talked then, in the afternoon light, as they had never talked before, though not about anything of importance. They talked about the foods Dubro liked, and the ones he didn't; and the bolts of brightly colored cloth that had just arrived in a caravan from Croy; and whether the journeyman had a wife in his future.

Illyra stole a look at the future, then shook her head. "I can't See a thing," she murmured and remembered what she had said out on the rock. For a heartbeat her blood went cold. He had tricked her. That strange man who was not a shepherd had tricked her into casting an unprecedented curse over Sanctuary: a S'danzo blessing. Not that there was such a thing as a S'danzo blessing. "Everyone's a child, one way or another-"

"I didn't hear you?"

Suyan leaned closer but Illyra did not repeat herself. She was, after all, only one S'danzo and Sanctuary was Sanctuary and not likely to change very much no matter what she did. But she would have to, if she ever saw him again, thank the shepherd for setting her free, at least.

Someone is always awake in Sanctuary especially when others are sleeping.

-Universal absolute

When she saw that he had wakened, she returned to the bed, mostly dressed but not quite. She bent down, exotically pale hair streaming long, to brush the top of his nose with her lips.

"We fell asleep," she told him. "I've got to go! It's terribly late."

Lazily, muzzily, he lifted a hand to try to capture a dangling lobe of her chest as she bent. She straightened swiftly with a little chuckle and finished closing her latch-front tunic.

"Awww ..." he began, lazy-muzzy, and the sound slid off into a yawn.

She started for the door. He saw her pause, lift a hand to her temple, up under the newly silvered hair she had combed partially free of the tangles the two of them had put in it. She turned back. Moonlight admit- ted by the open window let him see that she was frowning.

"My earrings," she murmured, hurrying back to the little table beside the bed.

A moment later: "Darling? Didn't I put my earrings right here? They're-they're gone!"

"Muss've dropped 'em on th' floor," he said without concern, and yawned again.

Watching her, smiling a little, remembering. Watching her go to her knees beside the bed in her search was fun, and he entertained a little fantasy about that.

"They're not here, Cusher! Please get up and help me. Could you light the lamp? Those are good eardrops!"

Eight or nine minutes later the bedclothes were on the floor and they had even searched his abandoned clothing, lest her missing dangles of gold and jade and topaz had somehow gotten entangled in the attire he had hurriedly dropped to the floor, hours ago. By then she was sobbing and babbling about how the baubles had been gifts from her grand- mother, years and years ago.

At last Imaya-the lady Imaya Rennsdaughter, if truth must be told- gave it up and left. By now fully as awake as she, Cusharlain latched the door after her.

A better man would escort her home, he mused. Down to the street, at least. Absently scratching his thigh, he realized that he was still naked. He regarded his clothes, forlornly strewing the floor. Then, one eyebrow up, he looked at the window. Of course it was open, but after all! It wasn't as if this room was on the first floor!

Naked, he padded to the window and looked out. He saw nothing; only other buildings and the dark alleys and streets among them; only Sanctuary, tired and snoozing in the moonlight. He looked down, then, down three flights, leaning out a bit with his hands on the sill, and then up. A little shiver ran over him and he ignored it. He twisted his head to cast thoughtful glances to either side.

Cusharlain straightened, sighing. "Damn," he muttered aloud.

This room was inaccessible save by the locked door, and it had still been locked when she'd thought to check it while he shook the bedsheet for the third time. He remembered the same as she did. After one of those pretty earrings had pricked his arm during their horizontal em- brace, she had removed them both. He had watched because he liked the way her bare breasts moved when she lifted her arms to her ears. He had seen her; she had laid them on the little table right there, just beside her side of the bed.

And we made love, and drifted off, he mused, staring at the open win- dow. And while we were sleeping someone came in that window and took those earrings, not to mention what I chose not to tell her: the moneypouch sewn into my leggings! Except that no one in Sanctuary could possibly do such a thing. No one's good enough.

One man was able; one man had both the climbing skill and the stealth to have accomplished this impossibility. He could have done it. but he's gone; left quite a while back. Over a year? Yes, by all the gods; well over a year ago.

Nevertheless someone came in thai window and took her earrings and my purse, while we were right here sleeping!

Damn! The little bastard's back in town!

"I'm a carpenter, Spellmaster. Was." The man with the hound-dog face held up his hand to display its severely restricted use, especially to a carpenter.

Strick showed the fellow a compassionate expression. All his recent weight loss accounted for the droopy aspect of his face; long-stretched skin still hung in the memory of former jowls and "plump" cheeks.

"Wints told me before you came in that you are a better than good carpenter, Abohorr, and that you've recently lost fifty or so pounds. He did not say that you had also lost your thumb."

"Want to hear how I lost it?" "No," Strick said, regarding the still upraised hand and its thumbless state. He knew of the occupational hazards of carpenters and woodcut- ters, and was not interested in particulars doubtless both gory and overlong in the telling. "That is, telling me would be of no value to either of us. And I have to tell you at once that I can't do a thing about that thumb, Abohorr."

Abohorr heaved a big sigh. He nodded. "Figured that. The-the point is, Spellmaster ... I don't want to carpenter no more. Tired of it. I mean I was even afore this happent to m'thumb, I swear by Anen's beard I was. I know you have a lot of contacts and a real name for helping people, and so ..."

The formerly fat Maze-dweller waved that maimed hand while he looked sadly yet hopefully at the very big man behind the desk draped in rich blue. The man who had already made such a change in Sanctuary and its troubled, surely damned people. A foreigner with an odd accent, come here from up north somewhere!

"My abilities don't extend to-to ... hmm. I'm not sure what it is you want of me, Abohorr." Strick's pronunciation of "want" rhymed with "font" or his extreme shortening of the o in "lost."

His visitor rose swiftly. Even standing, he maintained his deferential aspect, so that he didn't seem to be looking down upon the seated man in his plain blue tunic.

"I'd do anything for you, Spellmaster. I'll pay you for yer time, too, 'f I'm wasting it. Just-well, just let me know if you hear of anything; a job I might fill. I'm big, and strong, and a damned good worker, Spellmaster. I'm used to a lot of work. You've got a lot of contacts and everybody's talkin' about all the people you've helped, Spellmaster- If you hear of anything ... well, Wints-yer helper Wintsenay, I mean-knows where to find me."

Strick nodded. "Wintsenay suggested that you come?" "I don't want to get him in no trouble ner nothing, Spellmaster. We was talking, an' he sort of did, just sort of."

"Urn." The spellwright's expression did not change, which took effort. "Uh, well, anyhow, uh-what do I owe you, Spellmaster?"

Strick showed his visitor a very small smile and a small shake of the big head that was covered to midforehead, midcheek on each side, and the base of his nape by the snug cap of leather dyed dark blue. No one had seen this man's bare head, or a sign of hair. They saw the cap, and the strangeness of deep blue tunic over matching leggings. Strange, and dull. The medallion, a plugged gold piece he always wore, did little to alleviate the severity of his attire. Oddly, the medallion nearly matched his large and droopy mustache.

"I've done nothing for you, Abohorr. You owe me nothing. You're sure that you don't want to fight back and cope-to be the best one-thumbed carpenter Sanctuary ever saw or heard of? That I can help you with!"

"I just don't want to go back to carpenterin', Spellmaster," the poor fellow said, and with several expressions of thanks and apologies, he left the office of the man from Firaqa.

Strick waited a minute or so to allow him time to get down the steps and to the door of what he referred to as "my shop" before shouting,

"Wints!"

The man formerly described as "an overage street urchin" was much less than a minute in making an appearance. Wintsenay was a changed man, now, with good steady employment and the blue livery of Strick tiFiraqa.

"Sir!"

"You suggested to your friend Abohorr that he come see me," Strick said grimly, fixing the other man with a stem face and a pointing finger bigger than any of those of the carpenter or ex-carpenter who had just departed. "You know bloody well I can't do anything about a lost thumb, Wints! I wish you'd never learned my curse-that I have to help or try;

can't not help to try, especially when I'm asked."

Wintsenay started to expostulate, to deny. He broke that off and looked down at the nice carpet someone of wealth had recently presented his master. Like the medallion, it was another expression of gratitude for another of the white wizard's services.

"I'm sorry, master. He's a good man, Ab is. Used to be so fat and strong and jolly all the time, you know. Now he looks like somebody's huntin' dog that's been run hard for a solid week of nights. He sure needs and deserves somebody's help."

"You play tricks with me, sirrah Wintsenay, and so will you need somebody's help. Now get your treacherous butt out of here and take the rest of that ugly corpus with it."

Wints understood the first part well enough, and acted on it. He was setting his slow brain to the working out of the rest of his master's meaning as he departed, touting at speed.

Strick sighed, shook his head, and slapped an inordinately big hand down on the fine cloth covering his desk: a large piece of deep blue velvet that trailed gold tassels on the side facing the visitors' chair. After a moment he spoke, loudly but not shouting as before.

"Avneh?"

A girl in her teens bustled in, also in the distinctive blue of Croy:

Strick's color. Former streetgirl, former hangerout at the low dive called Sly's Place, former alcoholic, former aspiring whore. Now she was recep- tionist and devoted servant of the man who had rescued her. Servant, as in acolyte of a god. He called her niece and enforced her calling him "uncle" in self-defense: the grateful teenager had wanted to give herself to him in every way. She had also just outgrown one tunic ofCroyite blue and had to have a new one to accommodate her steadily plumpening body.

"What can I get you. Uncle StrieeEEEE!"

She was staring past him when she broke off to emit that loud, pro- longed e sound- Her seated "uncle" astonished her by the speed with which he rose, pounced three feet sidewise, and whirled. An obscenely long knife had appeared in his hand. He and Avenestra stared at the intruder while the latter stared at the big man and the ready blade nearly as long as a sword.

He was dark, lean and rangy at medium height. Jet black of hair and the eyebrows that almost met above a falcate nose. His eyes were nearly as black as his hair. He wore a plain green tunic, nicely tanned leather leggings, short buskins, and several knives. They included one that was a mate to Strick's outsized blade. Lifting his gaze to Strick's blue eyes, he elevated his arms a bit as well.

"Mother Shipri have mercy. Hansel" Avenestra said. "Only you could have gotten in here 'thout being seen by Frax 'n' Wints 'n' me! But when did you get back in town? I thought maybe you was dead!"

" 'Were' dead, Avenestra, damn it," Strick said without turning or looking at all away from the intruder, "and get out of here. Tell Frax and Wintsenay to be still, and hold visitors for a few minutes."

"That's really Avenestra?" the intruder said a few seconds later. "She sure looks better'n she used to. Even working on getting fat' Yours?"

"My 'niece,' assistant, and sometime cook, and that's all. I told Ahdio what you said: that you hadn't taken the red cat, but that it followed you, even out on the desert."

"You've got a good memory, Strick of Firaqa."

"Umm- Come on around to the proper side of the desk. Yes, I remem- bered to pass on to Ahdio the message you gave me when we met on the road to Firaqa, and I recognized you too-once Avenestra called you by name. I've heard it rather more than once since I came to Sanctuary. You aren't exactly unknown in this town."

Wiry and youthful, walking almost catlike on the balls of his feet rather than the heels, the dark, youthful-looking man rounded the desk and stood beside the chair set there for clients; supplicants.

"Neither are you, Strick. Didn't take you long to gain a reputation in my town. And that day in the forest I thought you were a weapon-man on the run! You came to help my town-so're you going to get rid of those fish-eyed snake-turds from oversea?"

"Afraid not, Hanse. The Beys are here to stay."

"Heard that. Sure going to take some getting used to. Is it true about you?"

"How would I know?"

Hanse came very close to smiling. "That you deal in white magic only-"

"Yes."

"That's a switch, in Sanctuary! And is it true that every blessing from you also comes with some sort of curse?"

"Of sorts. The Price, in addition to the payment in coin or goods. Avenestra, for instance, no longer needs or wants to get drunk every night-but developed a rather grievous craving for sweets."

"Which explains her new, uh, plumpness," Hanse said, nodding.

"And you, Hanse. We met only briefly, long ago. Have you come here on business?"

"No. Just wanted to say hello. I mean, we did meet, however briefly that day months and months ago, and gave each other a little informa- tion about Firaqa and Sanctuary-carefully." Hanse chuckled-

"I remember that each of us was very wary indeed of the other, yes, that day on the road up in Maidenhead Wood. You had a young woman with you, I remember-and of course the singularly large cat. Red."

Hanse nodded. "Aye. Name's Notable. First cat I ever hked. First cat I ever didn't dislike! As soon as I came here-"

"From Firaqa?"

"Uh, well, aye, along with a, uh, stopover along the way. As soon as I got here I went to Sly's. I left Notable with goodole Ahdio, who told me about you. Hearing a lot more about you from other people was easy. You responsible for this ridiculous silver hair so many people have bro- ken out in?"

"I suppose."

"Not the bare-jigglies fashion though, hmm? That came from the snake-eyed fish-faces."

"Urn. You might try to stop calling them names, Hanse. Fact is fact, and the fact of their continuing presence in Sanctuary has to be ac- cepted."

"I'll work on it," Hanse said without enthusiasm. "Lots of other changes since I left. Lots of construction work-reconstruction work. Noticed repairs to this building and the new paint job outside, too; really like blue, don't you! You were wearing mostly dust last time I saw you- first and last time. And liveried guards, too. Even Avenestra in matching blue. Pretty place, your 'shop.' Handsome cover on that table; handsome carpet, too."

Strick continued to gaze at him from those large blue eyes above the droopy, yellowish-russet mustache. He shrugged.

"I'm also hearing about mysterious disappearances in town, and ru- mors of slavers, operating right here in Sanctuary?"

"A lot of people are trying to learn more about that, Hanse. It appears to be fact, aye. Be careful, should you chance to be out after dark."

Hanse laughed aloud. After a few moments Strick's big mustache twitched in his small smile.

"I'm sure I'd be interested in your impressions of Firaqa, Hanse, and how you fared there. But I do have some visitors waiting, downstairs."

"You'll be interested in hearing a few things, all right." Hanse assured him. "Do these names mean much to you; Thuvarandis, and Corstic, and Arcala?"

Strick blinked. Slowly, he sat. He gazed expectantly across his desk at the younger man. The names of those three men meant plenty to him, as Hanse had assumed.

Briefly, he outlined his activities and adventures in Firaqa. He ended the abbreviated narrative with the ghastly happenings in the wizard's manse, and the outcome.

Strick sat staring. "He is dead?"

"Very."

Strick slapped the blue-draped desk he called his worktable. "Dead! About time! You've rendered Firaqa a great service then, Hanse. That was a genuinely wicked man."

"That," Hanse said in a voice dry as the desert, "I know." After a silent moment he said, "And you've rendered good service in Sanctuary, too. Just a pair of do-gooders to each other's towns, aren't we!"

"Urn." Strick made muttering noises about having to go back and forth from his fancy villa every day, ending with "I'm a man of the people who'd rather live in town."

"Why, I can help you with that," Hanse assured him, all wide-eyed. "Be happy to accept the villa as a gift, Strick." With a wry smile, Strick asked who owned the Vulgar Unicorn. At last Hanse let his wiry form slide down into the chair across the desk from the master of white spells. "Old Earrings' You've asked me something I know. Unless the place has changed hands since I left, the owner's the physician Nadeesh, on the Street of Goldsmiths. Can't miss him. He wears moonstones." Hanse held up two fingers. "Two. Earrings. Stones black as a tax collector's heart."

"Nadeesh the physician," the big man repeated. "Thanks, Hanse. Oh -where are you staying?

Hanse's expression became bland and blank, the business face of the thief called Shadowspawn. "I ... get around, Strick. If you should want me for anything, just leave word at the Vulgar U or at Sly's."

Strick nodded. "Oh, and your young woman-I gave her my amu- let ..."

"Which served her, me, and Firaqa mighty well," Hanse assured him. "Let's, uh, talk about that some other time, all right? I have a young woman with me. Odd that you mentioned Old Earrings, or asked about him-I picked up a nice pair of earrings just last night, as a present for her. Silky. Well, actually her name is Vivispor, but who cares-just a girl I, uh, picked up in Suma."

"You ... 'picked ... up' ... a pair of earrings."

"Right," Hanse said equably, and was hasty to cut off further com- ment or queries with "And I'm fresh out of a cat. You know, I really got accustomed to havin' that damned cat with me. I hate to admit it, but I already miss-oh, No!"

For the second time within a half hour or so, Strick sat gazing at a person on the other side of his worktable who was staring past him in surprise unto shock. Since Hanse did not shriek or reach for one or more of his several weapons, however, Strick refrained from giving another demonstration of his swiftness and the fact that he was armed.

Besides, this visitor soon announced its presence in its own voice; a very low and sweet voice at that:

"mew."

"Damn it. Notable, you sneaked out of Sly's and followed me again! Up the side of the building next door, even!"

So that's how he accomplished his not-so-impossible surprise entry!

"I'm sorry, Strick. C'mere, you dam' cat. He always makes that sick- eningly sweet li'l kitten sound when he hears aggravation in my voice and he thinks he deserves a tongue-lashing. Come ... Here, Note ... able!"

"mew?"

Strick sat very still while the red cat-unduly, unequivocally, and al- most unconscionably large-trotted tippy-toe past him and, an instant after Hanse said "No, Notable!" and started to duck, precipitately ap- peared on the lap of the seated young man's tunic. Hanse grunted and gave the spellwright an unusually, unconditionally, and decidedly un- wontedly subdued and guilty look.

"I'm, uh, sorry, Strick."

"It looks very much as if Notable has decided he is your cat, Hanse, not Ahdio's."

"Aye, I know," Hanse said. His voice was sad, though .his face was not.

"Once a cat makes up its mind ..."

"Alleged mind. Aye, I know. It's just that Ahdio's so damned big ..."

"Urn. Let's hope he's big about understanding, too. Hanse ... listen, I need a favor. Two."

"Uh."

"Take Frax and Wints out and show them how you got in here. Tell them I want them to make any changes necessary to make sure no one can do it again."

"Strick, I swear: no one else could."

Strick sat staring at him in silence until Hanse had to exert his strength to keep from looking down. The expression of wide-eyed innocence that had long served him well with others didn't work with this man. This maker of spells was different. Strick was like ... like no one.

At last Hanse asked, "What's the second favor?"

"Don't ever come in that way again."

"Strick, I swear I won't."

"Good. Thanks. Otherwise, Hanse, good to see you and thanks for the information about this Nadeesh. We must get together and talk again. After hours, and normally."

"Uh." After a time Hanse said, "Damn! You just dismissed me, didn't you?"

"I work days, Hanse. People are waiting."

Hanse gazed at him, his mouth slowly widening. "Strick, you're really something! Let's go, Notable, you dam' cat."

On the way out he saw that Strick hadn't exaggerated: two others sat in the downstairs waiting room. One had the look of a Rankan of sub- stance. Strick sure is doing well by doing good here, Hanse mused, and winked at the icily staring blue-uniformed man with the sword and dag- ger. Ex-palace guard, Hanse was sure. He recognized Wints, too, but pretended not to notice. A shaking sight, Wints decently dressed, shaved, and looking as if he knew who he was!

A few steps down the street called Straight, Notable pacing at his side, he saw still another woman with silver hair. Strick had started this craze? Damn, why? A man never knows whether a woman's dyed, prematurely gray or extraordinarily well preserved!

Avenestra ushered in a well-dressed Rankan noble.

Strick swiftly learned that Noble Abadas was new in Sanctuary; he was cousin to Theron, the new emperor-by-his-own-hand. Noble Abadas was of medium height, perhaps ten pounds overweight, with receding light brown hair and reddish mustache, big ears, and stubby fingers. Superb eyes the color of doeskin met Strick's directly, which was impressive. Abadas was just arrived from Ranke with his daughter and, unusually, a single servant. He wanted a good place to live, he said, and planned to staff with Ilsigi; locals-

Odd Rankan, Strick thought. Seems to be a liberal who wants to show what a good fellow a Rankan can be; particularly the ... agent?-spy? -of the new emperor!

"I have deposited funds with a local banker. You know Renn."

Strick nodded. Renn was one of the two men he banked with, both Ilsigi.

"He showed me around a bit," Abadas said. "I have to say that I saw two places I love, Spellmaster. One, a villa, turns out to be yours!"

"Ah."

By the time Noble Abadas departed Strick's place of business, the two foreigners to Sanctuary had made a business arrangement. Strick was happy to have leased the villa he bought from Izamel (since old Izamel and other wealthy, old-money Ilsigi kindly loaned him the money) to Abadas for an amount that was a shade more than Strick's loan pay- ments and taxes. The current inflation helped; Strick had recently bought the place at what were now called "old rates"; prereconstruction rates! Their deal made both men happy.

Strick called in his man-of-all-tasks.

"Wints, go to Cusharlain. Tell him I am looking for a large place in town, preferably a house I can also use as a shop. All right?"

"Yes sir. Oh, are you-"

"Good. Then go to Gilla Lalo'swife. Ask that good woman whether any of her children or relatives would like good employment with a decent Rankan noble. All right?"

"Yes sir. Sir, I-"

"Aye, I am sure that you know of some prospective servants for the household of the lord Abadas, Wints. Just go on about my business my way, for now."

Wintsenay went.

In the next hour Strick saw four people. He refused to do anything at all for the one who wanted vengeance on a landlord, used a minor spell and an unnecessary foul-tasting concoction to get rid of the really ugly warts on another's face, told a third sadly that he could do nothing about the long-twisted leg but secretly made a spell to make the poor woman more accepting, at least, and told a sufferer of persistently upset stomach that he needed to go to a physician, at once. It wasn't.as if anyone was gong to cure the rampant malignant growth Strick saw in the too-young man's upper intestine, but at least he could go through his final weeks of life in a drugged state. For all this the spellwright took in three pieces of silver and a nice bolt of cloth of a color he did not desire. Well, he could trade it, or use it as gift goods.

Avenestra came in, chewing.

"No one else is waiting, LJncie. I hung out the 'closed' sign as you said."

"Good!" He rose and stretched.

"Ooooh! What a beautiful bolt of cloth!"

"You like that, Avneh?"

"It's just beautiful. Uncle! I love paisley!"

"Hmm. We may not be able to do anything about your craving for sweets, poor baby. But show me that you can come in here without chewing on something and we'll see what we can have made for you from this."

"Oh I'm sorry, Uncle. Mother Shipri make me strong!"

Strick patter her shoulder, turning a little sidewise to avoid being hugged (with hands one of which he saw was sticky from some pastry), and hurried downstairs to collect Fulcris. Leaving Avenestra "in charge" and Frax on guard, Strick and his other aide headed for the Street of Goldsmiths.

Nadeesh the leech had heard of the foreign spellwright who had come here to be of such value to Sanctuary, both physically and psychologi- cally. His sad-looking servant ushered the visitors in to his master. Nadeesh the leech was a cadaverously thin man with hair that began at about the midpoint atop his skull and dangled stringily in long ugly strands of corpse-gray. He looked to be seventy or more. He also, Strick and Fulcris discovered, wore only one earring. Attired in a paradoxically bright tunic that appeared to be draped over mere bone, he sat weakly in a chamber made dim by drawn drapes. Strick saw at once that he was in bad shape, and not just from the healed wound that showed his left earring had been torn from him. The fellow looked far too old for his age, which he said was "about fifty."

"What do you think is wrong with you, sir?"

"Can't find a cause, sir. Just last night a friend-a fellow physician- suggested that it might be ... a spell,"

Strick saw the little shiver that went through this too-thin man as he spoke those words. Showing confidence and making sure to project it, Strick suggested that he look. Nadeesh agreed, nervously.

"What-what do you need to do?"

"I need for you to give me something of value, and then just lie back and try hard not to think of anything at all. I will have my hands on your shoulders, that's all."

The physician snorted. "Only the gods know how many patients I've said that to-and all of us knowing all the while that it's completely impossible!"

With a little smile, Strick accepted the proffered coin and set his hands on shoulders that might have been mere bone covered by the other man's yellow tunic- The Firaqi wizard was quite able to stare at nothing.

It took him only seconds to discover the cause of Nadeesh's malaise.

"Your friend was right, leech. Someone has set a dark spell on you."

Nadeesh moaned.

"Hmm. And left a barrier. Perhaps you would think of an opening gate, opening doors, a cave with a wide open mouth ... no no, please be still but not stiff ... hmm."

A little work discovered the impossible: the spell came from a dead man. One Marype, the son of a mage named Mizraith and long appren- ticed to a shadowy mage name Markmor. The problem was that every- one knew Marype was dead! Except that this spell is not that old. Marype is vehemently alive! Furthermore he's past the apprentice stage-past jour- neyman, by the Flame! Strick concentrated, began to sweat ... and soon realized that the severity of Nadeesh's affliction was because Marype had gained possession of something belonging to the physician.

"Ah, the earring, and thus a bit of blood!"

"Wh-what?" The wizened physician's voice quavered.

Strick released those frighteningly bony shoulders and sat beside the man who looked far too old for the age he claimed. The spellmaker would have bet that before this malignant spell the physician had looked fifteen years younger.

"How did you lose your earring?"

"Late one night about two months ago I was set upon by footpads and -by the gods! This began about then! I have lost very much weight in these past two months, Strick, and of course strength as well."

"Urn. Those were not footpads, Nadeesh, but men hired for a definite assignment. A dark mage who hates you used them to gain possession not only of your earring but, since it was torn from your ear, a bit of your blood as well. It has enabled him to make a powerful spel! indeed."

"How do you know this?"

"Do you answer your patients when they ask you such a question?"

"No. And usually I cannot answer this one; What is to happen to me?"

"You already know. You are wasting away; no one would know that it's the result of an inimical spell. I'd say this sorcerer intends your death."

Nadeesh surprised his visitor with a string of words concerning the unnamed mage, his sexual activities, and his mother. Then:

"Who is it? Who has done this, Spellmaster?"

"That I cannot say," Strick said, as perfectly capable of lying when he deemed it wise as any physician. "What mage hates you so much?"

"None! I mean-I've no idea."

"You've never treated a sorcerer?"

"Not knowingly."

"Urn. In that case, have you refused treatment to a sorcerer?"

"Not knowingly," Nadeesh repeated. After a few seconds he added, "But now one is going to murder me."

"Is murdering you," Strick said, staring at nothing. "Unless we can do something about it."

Nadeesh lurch up, gasping with effort. "You think you can?"

"One can always try. In this case, one must."

"I don't understand."

"Never mind. You are too good a man to be murdered this way with- out my trying to stop it."

A long sigh escaped the pitifully wizened man, and Strick heard the rattle in his scrawny throat.

"Bearing in mind that I am a spellwright, not a physician, let us dis- cuss the bill in advance."

Nadeesh's smile was hideous, but genuine. "You certainly have me, sir. Name the price and I shall agree. Understand that if the patient dies, however, he cannot pay."

Despite the gravity of the complaint of his "patient," Strick laughed aloud.

They discussed his bill.

Hanse noted more construction/reconstruction on his way to pay a visit to Mignureal's widowed father. It was not something Hanse wanted to do. He had loved Moonflower, Mignue's gross diviner of a mother; he was able to admit that to himself, now. Ahdio and a couple of others at Sly's Place last night had already observed that the dark, youthful man called Shadowspawn was "different." They were right. Events on the desert and up in Maidenhead Wood had changed him a bit; the Mignureal experience had enforced responsibility and changed him ac- cordingly; the constant dark shadow of sorcery and ghastly events in Firaqa had changed and matured him; and so had more recent experi- ences in Suma.

The presence of the outsized red cat strolling along at his side, tail high, attracted plenty of looks. Hanse's eyes and the presence of so many sharp blades worn openly here and there about his person persuaded people to keep their comments to themselves or low-voiced. Once he did hear a scornful laugh and knew it for a deliberate attempt at provocation. He didn't even turn. Shadowspawn was "different," yes.

At the shop where Mignureal's father Teretaff sold this and that . - . item, he was admitted by one of Mignureal's dark-haired and dark-eyed younger sisters. Since their number was several and Hanse had never been interested in children, he wasn't sure of this one's name. Odd, how she had bloomed in so short a time. Girls had a way of doing that, and the S'danzo did seem to bloom earlier than others.

He entered into warmth made heavy by a fragrant mix of odors, aro- mas, smells, scents of foods and leather and spices and perfumes and other herbal ... things. The shop had always been cluttered. It was more so now, with Moonflower dead.

"Does your father have a, uh, woman friend?" he asked, feeling sneaky, and was not displeased by the shaking of a large-eyed head. What was this girl, about thirteen? That meant that the next one-the boy Cormentaff-was fourteen. Another member of the family was pushing sixteen too, as he recalled. The one with red hair, or almost red. What was her name, anyhow?

This one made girlish noises over Notable, who eluded her attempts to pet him. The cat disappeared behind a counter.

"He, uh, he's a one-man cat," Hanse explained. "Notable, if you knock anything over or get into anything it will go hard with you!"

"Mraow."

Hanse was not happy to discover that Teretaff already had a visitor. The aged S'danzo "chief" with the implacable eyes and straight mouth and the usual multicolored, modestly cut garb barely acknowledged Hanse's presence. Hanse was determinedly respectful. The Termagant was not visiting Teretaff, he realized; she was interested in the almost- sixteen-year-old. Now both stared at Hanse, Jileel from huge round eyes the color of walnut wood flanked by a great deal of hair the color of a roan horse. Her blouse was striped yellow and green and was unaccount- ably stuffed; under a multiprint apron, her skirts showed six or nine other colors and hues.

"You left here with my daughter," Teretaff said, but it was a question rather than an accusation.

"Precipitately," the Termagant said, straight-mouthed and flat-eyed.

Suddenly Hanse has to tell them, no matter the consequences: "Yes. When I found Moonflower I went wild. I started running, ran into a fish -a, un, Beysib, and killed it. Her. I think it was the one who ki- who ..."

"Oh, I do hope it was!" the almost-sixteen-year-old said ferociously, in a rather throaty voice.

"Jileel!" the Termagant snapped, inadvertently helping Hanse by pro- viding the girl's name.

Teretaff glanced at her, and back to Hanse. "I hope so too, Hanse. She did like you, my wife."

Hanse was surprised to hear himself say, "I loved her, Teretaff."

All three of the others blinked. At last the old woman said, "You have changed, young man."

Hanse nodded. "We endured much. We even accomplished much, up in Firaqa."

"Firaqa?"

"A city far north. Strange people with a strange religion. Ruled by a sort of council of sorcerers. The chief was also the most evil and I sup- pose the most powerful. He's dead, now. Teretaff, Termagant ... Mignureal's powers soared, in Firaqa. She was glad to find a small colony of S'danzo. They were unwelcome in Firaqa; S'danzo, I mean. That's no longer true. She ... Mignureal has remained there, Teretaff. She's an accomplished Seer, now, an amoushem. Did I say that right?"

"Yes!" the Termagant said, astonishing Hanse by the sudden happy light in her eyes. "So! She flowered, then, and is respected, with the Ability."

"Yes. She Sees, Termagant, Teretaff; Mignue Sees beyond anyone else in Firaqa."

"She will do well there, then," Teretaff said, with some happiness and pride mingled with sadness. Tears had appeared in the walnut eyes of the girl beside the old woman, to hear that her sister was not coming back. "But-you are here and she there?"

Hanse nodded. "It was not easy. Oh, we had our troubles-probably mainly because we were under the shadow of sorcery all the time. But I think we will always love each other. It's just that I had to come back, and she felt she had to remain there. She is happy there. Established."

"I am glad for her," Jileel said but her voice quavered and she sniffed.

'I am delighted'" the Termagant said, and again she astonished Hanse, by proving that grim mouth could smile.

Hanse wondered whether Teretaff might have been less equable about this news had the Termagant not been present, and so enthusiastic. Al- most he wished that Jileel were not present. She kept staring at him, staring with those huge dark brown eyes. She always had, he remem- bered, when he had come to see Moonflower and then Mignureal, but now it seemed different. She was older, with the cusp of womanhood newly sealed upon her. And ... could that be she in there, rather than the family laundry or a couple of smuggled melons, making her blouse stand out and strain so? Mignureal had not been constructed so! Of course her mother had been, but Moonflower had been huge everywhere, a truly obese woman whose size had made walking difficult for her. (She also remained the most beautiful woman Hanse had ever known. It was she who taught him, just by being, that beauty was not something a person wore, like clothing or skin, but was inside; it was something a person was.)

He produced the bag and handed it to a surprised Teretaff. It jingled.

"From Mignureal," Hanse told him.

"From Mignureal?" Now it was TeretaflPs eyes that glistened wetly.

Hanse pretended not to notice. He nodded. "She insisted. She is doing well. That is for you and her sisters and brother, she said. It is, uh, considerable Firaqi gold, Teretaff. Gold because that way 1 had fewer coins to carry. Be sure to go to a decent bank to get a fair exchange on those flame-marked coins, now."

Teretaff smiled, then laughed, and embarrassed himself when laughter became sobs. In manner womanly, his daughter Jileel went to embrace him- Uncomfortable, Hanse began backing.

"I have to go now." He swallowed. "Got an appointment, you know."

"Young man."

Hanse swallowed again. "Name's Hanse, ma'am."

"Hanse, then. And I am called the Termagant. You know that I am the senior amoushem; first among the S'danzo with the Ability. Moonflower liked you. I know, and Mignureal ... well. I admit that I never had much-I never had any use for you. That has changed. You may consider me friend. Hanse.

Still again Hanse swallowed. It was his way not to act honored, but he could not escape the feeling that this was like being acknowledged friend by the Prince-Governor, as he had been. Suddenly his stance changed, and his grin was the old cocky one.

"My occupation hasn't changed. Termagant."

She blinked. "I do not hear you. A friend entrusted a bag of money to you for her father, and you brought it this long way."

Damn! "Uh ... well, that's different. You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"What?"

Hanse shrugged. "I've got my reputation to think of."

"But young ma- Hanse, it is a bad reputation!"

Hanse nodded. "It's mine, Termagant."

Between the old woman and her father, with her arm around him, Jileel giggled.

The Termagant shook her head. "I, however, have spoken. You are to consider me friend, Hanse."

"I'll remember. I have to go now."

As he left, he heard the Termagant's voice: "Very well now, Jileel, let's test you again to see if that really was the Sight ..."

Hanse hurried on, clucking to Notable, thinking of the considerable amount of money he had secretly left with that banker in Firaqa for Mignue, dear Mignue ...

He found a decent place to live, in Red Court in the Maze, and de- lighted the proprietor by laying down a few coins in advance. Silky the ever supple and ever ready was for testing the bed; this soon after leaving Mignureal's family, Hanse just couldn't. He also couldn't admit that. He pointed out the need to find her employment, and they wandered. Some- time that afternoon he realized that he had no intention of living with the tan-haired girl he and his loneliness had acquired up in Suma. All right, he could handle that; he was not stuck with her and besides she was obviously not charmed with the Maze, Hanse's natural habitat.

He did succumb to Silky's importunings to buy a melon. As he cut it, he noticed that the wooden handle of his favorite knife was loose.

"Damn!"

Next he noticed that she was talking animatedly with another of the pedlar's customers, a Rankan. Good, he thought, and without any com- punctions at all he walked away. Silky wasjust Silky, a passing fancy, but a defective knife was serious business. Using this cut-through and that, he was soon on the Street of Tanners. Three blocks down from Sly's Place was Zandulas's Tannery; one had only to follow one's nose to find it and the busy establishment of Zandulas's next door neighbor, Cholly. Cholly the Gluemaker was the man to see. Oh, his real name was Chollander, but only his wife called him that. Cholly performed a number of impor- tant services for Sanctuary, including the making of glue. In a town where bodies tended to appear with the morning sun and tended never to be claimed by anyone, a man who had use for them and thus rendered a free corpse-collection service was valuable. Come to think, "rendered" was the right word for the main part of Cholly's activities.

The bear-sized man with the barrel belly greeted Hanse heartily and with surprise. "Why haven't I seen you for so long, Hanse? Must be a year or more."

Cholly was alone in his smelly, cluttered place of business, meaning that his two assistants were out on this errand or that. Taking orders for delivering glue, probably, or the ancillary products of Cholly's trade. Selling jewelry, perhaps, or slightly used clothing. A bone or two, maybe. Or nice long hair, perhaps, to make nice wigs.

Briefly and without much patience, Hanse told Cholly where he had been.

"I had no idea, Hanse' Oh-I guess you left before that sexy Rankan gladiator came to town, didn't you?"

"How can a gladiator be s- oh. You mean Chenaya Nutcracker? We, uh, met, Cholly."

"Oh? Surprised you don't grin when you say that, Shadowspawn. Surely Milady Swagger either insulted you, tried to kill you, or bedded you. Or all three."

Hanse clamped his teeth. "She bedded me, Cholly. That's the way it was, too-she collected me. took me home, and bedded me. She's good- looking and she's cat-supple, I'll give her that. Bed is another matter. I didn't enjoy it with her and we will not be doing it again. I prefer women."

Cholly saw the expression and heard the tone. Considerately and wisely, he nodded and said nothing at all. Then his visitor laid the wounded knife on his counter and the huge man shifted to his business demeanor. He picked it up in a big meaty hand, examined it, said "hmm" twice, and shrugged.

"Easily fixed, Hanse. Let's just make repairing this a welcome-home gift," Cholly said, already starting to work. "We'll use dry-tack. It's a special sort of glue I made up; sticks by pressure." He grunted softly; a man the size of Chollander the Gluemaker seldom found tasks large enough to require large grunts. "There. Now we apply the dry-tack wet, so, and allow it to dry. We don't have to wait long. I remember this old knife from years back. A really superior blade! Oh-you, ah, pick up any new knives up in Furakka?"

Hanse showed him a couple, knowing this lover of knives would con- sider both of them exotic because they were of foreign manufacture. "The really fancy one was a gift from the head mage up in Firaqa, a man named Arcala."

"Hmp! Never knew you to stay around a mage long enough to receive a gift! Hard to imagine, from a fellow who hates sorcery worse than anybody!" Cholly said, admiring it and the other knife Hanse handed him, a normal enough sticker. He examined both with the respect and care of a man who knew knives. "Nice," he said, laying them down. "Here, look at this pretty thing while I finish the job on your old knife." He placed in Hanse's hand a dagger whose blade was inlaid with silver.

Sensing trade negotiations, Hanse naturally found it necessary to de- mean the seeming treasure. "Uh. Pretty," he said casually. "I'll bet this fancy inlay weakens the blade, though."

Sensing an impending trade, Cholly snorted and made a chuckling noise to show Hanse how silly that was. It was also subject-changing time:

"Ah yes, this is good now, Hanse- Dry-tack's a really good bonder. I'm proud of it. It won't stick to slippery surfaces, see, like wax or grease. Or soap. On the other hand it's easy to peel it off smooth, polished surfaces."

"In that case how can it be strong enough for a knife I need to trust?"

"I said 'peel' it off, Hanse. Pulling it off, breaking the bond-that's another matter. Believe me, I could glue a handle onto a horse's back and lift him by it. If I could lift a horse, I mean. It's strong."

That triggered a thought, but Hanse was careful to sound casual when he asked how one got the stuff off.

Cholly gestured. "Oh, I have a remover for it! Had to come up with that!"

"Uh. I guess," Hanse said, and decided it was time to swing back to the potential trade: "How strong d'you think this silvered blade is?"

"It's a dagger, Hanse. I mean, it isn't as if you're going to try throwing it or chopping trees, is it?"

The ritual of leading up to a transaction had begun. The dickering had to come first, of course, and the deliberate dropping of the subject for friendly converse before returning to another offer or "suggestion" of offer. This time the process took only fifteen or eighteen minutes. When Hanse left, Cholly had both Firaqi knives in exchange for the inlaid dagger and a pot of the dry-tack Hanse called "Cholly's Dry Stickum." The gluemaker threw in the remover as a courtesy. Their deal made both men happy-

Hanse returned to the area where he had left Silky. The melon pedlar had gone on, and apparently so had Silky. A little asking around apprised him that the tan-haired Sumese girl had departed, with that blond Rankan. While Hanse's pride was wounded a bit, he was not unhappy. He did seem to be stuck with the big red cat. By that evening he had left Notable with Ahdio twice. The moment a door was opened. Notable hastened to use it and seek out Hanse.

"All right, you damn' cat, let's go home and drop off my new pot of glue! You'll need to sniff out the place anyhow."

Notable swerved sharply to bang his flank into Hanse's leg. "Maowr!"

"No."

"mew?"

"No, damn it. Notable, we will not stop and get you a beer now!"

Strick's rule was that people came to him; he went to no one. For this interview he had long wanted, however, he would have gone to the pal- ace. Prince-Governor Kadakithis would not hear of it. Instead, secretly, in disguise and terribly early on a Fourday morning as agreed for his convenience and security, he arrived in Strick's "shop." In this absolute privacy and confidence, the handsome young Rankan of about Hanse's age and size astonished Strick; he admitted that he was less than he wished to be and had decided that it was because he was too indecisive; fearful of what the Ilsigi would think of him.

"The young half-brother of the emperor," he said quietly, tapping his chest while studiously not-looking at the spellwright, "always had to be careful not to offend or even be very visible, you see. Abakithis-the emperor-was that sort of man. In time, though, he decided that I wasn't invisible enough. He shipped me out here. The goal was not to do any- thing for Sanctuary or for me, but to get me out of Ranke!" Kadakithis sighed. "So, I felt the need to prove something, to do well. Trying too terribly hard, I was overzealous in trying to clean up this town. In taxing the Red Lantern Houses and ... other things."

Strick sat very still. He said absolutely nothing and more, he made no sound.

Embarrassedly looking at the wall to his right, Kadakithis went on in that sadly quiet voice: "This morning Lord Abadas, the new emperor's cousin, visited to present himself formally. I disgusted me. I was posi- tively ingratiating."

After a time he turned his head to look at Strick from pale blue eyes. "Your efforts and actions were understandable," Strick said just as quietly. "And with Lord Abadas as well. The man is surely here to keep an eye on you for his cousin, isn't he. After all, you're half-brother to ... Emperor Theron's predecessor in the imperial chair."

Kadakithis shook his head. "No, Strick; I have come to like this town, both from sympathy and feeling a part of it. If I'm to amount to anyth- if I'm to help these people in anything approaching the way you have, I'll need ..." The Prince-Governor broke off in embarrassment.

Strick didn't need to hear the words. "I like Sanctuary and its sorely stressed people, too, lord Prince, and ... I must help, I have no choice."

"I have heard that mysteriousness before, Spellmaster, but I will not pry. I believe you. If it is pain, then I am sorry. Both of us know pain."

"And so am I sorry, lord Prince, so am I. Now I must warn my lord Prince about the Price."

Kadakithis nodded. "Naturally I have heard about that, too- I want that help you've given so many others, Strick."

"The Price is the Price, Prince Kadakithis. It is beyond my control. Sometimes it is severe and sometimes it is readily bearable. I have no control over it."

"I know these things, Strick. I said I want that help you've given so many others. While I am called Kittycat, you are being called Hero of the People. Is a prince of the people not a person? Shall a prince be treated as less? Shall a prince be fearful of the Price? I know about it, Strick. Must a prince cajole?"

Strick rose and bowed. "Noble Lord Prince! I have desired this meet- ing for months- These people deserve more of their gods and their rulers. Now you embarrass me; I have wanted to be of aid to you, as you know. The warning, believe me, is something I give to everyone who comes here. I must."

Kadakithis nodded. And sat looking expectant. Waiting.

Strick called Avenestra, but met her at the door. She knew that she was not to enter as usual and not even to see this visitor, and was able not to try. He let the prince hear him bid her prepare "Saksaraboonmga." She already had the drink's revolting but harmless ingredients ready, except for a bit more stirring to mix the vegetable colors of purple and green. She hurried to do so. Strick waited at the door; Kadakithis sat very still, staring at nothing past the Firaqi's empty chair. Avenestra reappeared from the other room to hand her savior a silver goblet. Strick paced over to set it on his worktable before his visitor. Kadakithis stiff- ened, bent forward to peer into the cup, stiffened the more, and tensed his face. Then, as if accepting a mandated cup of poison, he bravely reached for it.

"A moment, my lord Prince. Give me something of value."

First Kadakithis gave him a look. "I suppose the ritual bans the use of the word 'please'?"

Strick stood gazing at him. He said nothing. True, this was a prince royal of Ranke and governor of this city-co-governor, at least, with his alien companion. Torezalan Strick tiFiraqa, however, was Tbrezalan Strick tiFiraqa, Spellmaster and Hero of the People.

From within his pillow-stuffed brown tunic the disguised prince slid a tiny, beautifully carven box. He set it on the desk and opened it to reveal a single pearl. As if ritually, Strick only touched it. And looked expec- tant.

With obvious misgivings and distaste for the concoction Strick had been at pains to make unpleasant in appearance, odor, and flavor, Prince Kadakithis drank it down. All of it, without lowering the cup. The man did know, Strick mused, how to take medicine!

Lowering the drained goblet, Kadakithis shook his head. "And people think it's easy being a royal! By all gods, Strick, what's in that stuff!"

"Nothing to harm you, lord Prince. A secret formula I have of a Zimmanabuniga wizard far to the west."

With hands on the lean blond's shoulders, Strick told him that he was decisive, charismatic, and had no need to lack confidence, "for charisma and more importantly your intelligence will carry you through, to the benefit of Sanctuary. You must think much on this, particularly before sleep and before rising."

The Rankan Prince-Governor of Sanctuary stood and gripped the far bigger man's hand. Strick noted that the young man stood more erect than when he had entered. For a few moments they stood gazing into each other's eyes. Then Kadakithis swung, drew his hooded cloak again about himself and his padded tunic, and left. With, Strick noted, a firmer and more confident tread than when he had entered.

Strick sighed. Charlatan, he grumbled at himself, hardly for the first time. That handsome young man was already charismatic and decisive! It's just that now he Believes!

Then the spellwright sent Wintsenay to pass the word; Strick needed to see Hanse.

Kadakithis paid the Price. That same Fourday afternoon he received word that Taya had fled the palace.

Shupansea was amused: "Well after all, she came here as your concu- bine, my love. And, however pampered, she's had nothing to do for a long, long while now!" Then: "On the other hand, I would recom- mend-"

"Never mind," Kadakithis said with cool decisiveness. "I have already decided to take no action whatsoever. This cannot reflect badly on me, but will serve as further proof of how truly you and I love each other."

Shu-sea blinked. "Well. How very clever-no, how very intelligent of you, my love!"

Yes, he thought. And the point is, this is obviously the Price I must pay for Strick's help. even if it costs me face.

An hour later a bank messenger arrived to tell Strick that someone had just deposited sixty unshaved golden Imperials to his account, each coin bearing the face of the previous emperor. Strick smiled and nodded. He knew who it was from, and wondered what other Price Kadakithis was paying.

A short time later, Hanse responded to Strick's request to visit. He met the young Lady Esaria on her way out. Neither recognized the other because neither knew the other.

Somewhere, the goddess Eshi smiled.

"Hanse," Strick said without any preamble at all, "a man needs your help. A client needs a service only you can perform."

Hanse put on his face of sweet innocence. "I can't imagine what you mean."

Strick's smile was cursory; dutiful, "A wall or two needs to be scaled. A house and a room or two need to be entered. An item needs to be fetched."

"Ah! I've heard of just the roach you need. He's called Shadowspawn, I believe."

"Do you think he will perform this service?"

"Probably. He usually works for himself. But, if the price is right ..." Hanse gestured eloquently. "Tell me about this ... mis- sion."

"The price is right," Strick said, and told him about the mission.

"Oh, no! Not a sorcerer!"

"Hanse! After your experiences with the real thing up in Firaqa, this boy will pose you no problem. True, he was apprentice to Markmor the Archmage, but Markmor was found dead even before I came here. A lot of mages have come and gone, Hanse."

Hanse nodded. "I remember that big one with the blue star on his forehead ..."

"Lythande," Strick said.

"Lythande! Odd name for a man!"

"That one will not be back, Hanse. Lythande does not like this town at all, and will never be back."

"You know a lot, Strick. for a newcomer who's been here only a few months."

Strick nodded. "Yes. I make it my business to learn things. Sanctuary is my business, now. And I, believe me, am here to stay. And we were discussing a certain venture concerning a roach and one Marype."

"Oh but Father Us, how I hate sorcery!"

Strick stared. "Perhaps you will refer me to a brave professional, then."

"Bastard!" The professional thief made a show of his sigh. "What does he have that you want ... acquired?"

Strick held out his hand. An earring gleamed brightly in his palm: a glowing black stone caged in good gold. "The mate to this. It was torn from its wearer's ear and now that swinish mage is using it to harm him."

"Nadeesh," Hanse murmured, and sighed. He nodded, gestured.

Strick told him a bit more. Reluctantly, Hanse named a price. Discon- certingly, Strick did not even bother to dicker. He rose, placed the ear- ring in Hanse's hand, bade him grip it and try to visualize its mate, and laid hands on the best cat-thief in Sanctuary.

"Now. You will be able to find it, once you're in its proximity. If it is in a container, bring it that way. This is important."

Once more Hanse sighed. "A sorcerer! Gods, how I hate sorcery!"

Strick merely gazed at him.

The younger man rose. "It will be done, Strick," Shadowspawn said casually, on his way out.

Strick surprised him with the standard benison on a thief: "May the night-dark cloak cover you and your actions this night," Meanwhile the spellwright was thinking: How interesting. He keeps company with an ensorceled cat and wears a dagger that's the product of sorcery. Hates it, hmm?

Hanse wandered his town, thinking and working to relax as he pre- ferred to do before an important reaching venture. He noted reconstruc- tion, a purse-cutting, the painting of various buildings, the large number of foreigners imported to handle the work. Occasionally he returned-or ignored-a startled greeting. He saw Beysib mingling with Ilsigi and Rankans. Near the marketplace he was surprised to see large dark eyes peeping at him; the girl he had thought of only as Mignue's little sister. He pretended not to notice. Beard of Us' Jileel! All grown up and seem- ingly smuggling watermelons-and still staring!

Noise at a wall's reconstruction site attracted him. He ambled that way, seeing that it was a real uprising. While disgruntled Ilsigi laborers mutter-muttered, refusing to work, a big fellow harangued them. He was ranting loudly about the way these walls were wrecked, among other destruction and deaths, and how the gods were angry at Sanctuary, and why should "we fix and put back a wall for those damned oversea Beys occupying our palace!" Imported workers meanwhile stood away. Unin- volved, they performed that act known as honoring the strike, meaning they stood or sat around enjoying the break.

Some of the bully's words made sense to Hanse Things were bad here when I left, and obviously got a lot worse. I hate these loudmouthed rabble-rousers, but ...

Suddenly a lean, blond young man appeared, wearing a leather apron over his well-made blue tunic. He commenced working. Stone dust flew. Brave fellow, Hanse thought. Brave fool! Then he frowned, seeing the ranter pick up a jagged chunk of stone and take aim at the sole worker ...

Almost out of sight, the three Beys sent by Shupansea to watch over her beloved drew bowstrings to slay the rabble-rouser in defense of Kada-

And Hanse threw. His flat lozenge of knife rushed to slice across the back of the big fellow's hand so that he dropped the stone with a scream. Another scream followed: he had dropped it on his own foot. Laughter rose as he danced, simultaneously squealing and cursing.

The Beysibs lowered their bows and went back to looking invisible while everyone watched the dark, wiry young man who came running into the work area, wearing a good green tunic and nice doeskin leggings. The daring young worker in the leather apron, having retrieved the thrown knife, stared while the newcomer faced the loudmouth.

"Go away, Tarkle," Hanse shouted. "All that babble you've been giv- ing out is just that-everybody knows you just don't like to work."

The big rabble-rouser with the bloody hand, once again discovering that bullying was becoming a more and more hazardous pastime, glowered and made surly noises. He also noticed the deadly eyes and several other knives on the person of a known expert he had thought was long gone from Sanctuary. Tarkle backed off-limping. Suddenly Hanse and leather-apron were exchanging stares of recognition:

"Prince!"

"Hanse!"

Excited noises went through the assemblage along with the usual rum- ble-rumble as they watched the Prince-Governor himself pounce onto a high spot and extend a hand to Hanse.

"See who works on the walls of Sanctuary?" Kadakithis called, in a loud clear voice. "A Rankan! See who saves him from a murderous bully who knows not what he's doing?-an Ilsig ... my friend."

Hanse's eyes rolled. Oh blast! There goes my credibility!

Kadakithis spoke on, startling all of them with his confidence and charismatic eloquence. They cheered! His people went back to work- with Kadakithis.

Damn, Hanse thought cheerlessly, stooping to grasp a big cut slab of stone. I'm stuck! I can't just walk off and leave the Prince-Gov working like a Downwinder! But ... damn! Work! Me!

Since Markmor's death, Hanse learned the following Eshday afternoon from one of the fixture/characters of the Maze, the street cleaner and trash picker called Old Thumpfoot, the quite young Marype had secretly set himself up in Lastel's villa, whether legally or otherwise.

"How nice," Shadowspawn murmured, meandering along the Serpen- tine. He knew that well-appointed villa, and the late Lastel/One- Thumb's secret. All he had to do was use the tunnel connecting the house with a House; the brothel called Lily Garden. True, he had an idea about Cholly's dry-tack, but he'd try that another time. Cheered by that pros- pect, he dropped in to the Vulgar Unicorn for a piece of cheese and an apple. He'd eat a proper meal afterward, if his stomach agreed. He tar- ried, more than civil and almost loquacious to the surprise of a couple of old acquaintances. He left their company at sunset, taking a small pail of beer home to his new second-floor room. Notable was happy to see him and more than happy with the beer. He lapped with gusto while Hanse stretched out to rest and think.

No question about it, entry will be like slicing pie. Now what am I likely to need? he thought, and his smile faded. Blast. Here previously, and up in Firaqa, he had grown accustomed to Mignue's warnings and direc- tions!

Suppose I'm in and it turns out that I should have brought a brown crossed pot, or a copper kettle, or ...

"Gulp," he said aloud, trying to shame himself out of unwonted ner- vousness that was as uncharacteristic as his affability to the Vulg.

Notable looked up from his whisker-grooming. " 'rraow?"

"I said cats aren't supposed to belch, you beer-guzzling greedbag."

Hanse directed his thoughts to Nadeesh, and from that unfortunate man to Strick. That man's going to make a Difference, he reflected. Al- ready has! Twice he shocked Notable by lurching up into a sitting posi- tion and snapping a throw. He had not told his landlord why he had grunted up here to his room with the old wooden wheel. It was inordi- nately thick and joined by pegs rather than nails. Braced against the wall farthest from the bed with the iron rim removed, it made a nice target. The throwing star he sent straight into the hub; the slender wafer of a knife from its sheath on his right upper arm missed by an inch.

"Must be getting old," he muttered, swinging off the bed to retrieve both missiles. Pacing back to the bed, he whirled and threw. The flat, hiltless and guardless knife appeared in the hub. Tired of the violent nonsense, Notable said "rrawwrr!" and pounced.

"Ouch! How'd you like to become my favorite target, Notable you dam' cat?"

A couple of hours later he rose again and stripped, to change into his blacks; his work clothes. Notable seemed already to understand this rit- ual, whether or not cats saw colors: the big red animal pounced up onto the shelf under the window and looked from it to his human.

"You're right," Shadowspawn said, double checking the lock on his door. "That's the way we go out tonight, m'friend."

They did.

An hour later, both of them had easily gained silent-entry to the large house formerly occupied by one Lastel/One-Thumb and now the lair of a young mage many thought dead. Hanse was sure they were wrong, al- though by now he had heard tales of the legions of walking and indeed wandering dead who had plagued Sanctuary's streets during his absence. No. Marype was alive. A look in the kitchen provided evidence of occu- pancy and recent cooking. A bed on the second floor had been used recently. In fact that bed looked as if Marype had lately entertained company. The tall cabinet-like press contained clothing. Not that of the departed Lastel, surely; expert eyes found membranous black gloves and noted that the thumbs of both were expanded by wear. On the point of keeping those nice thin gloves, the silent intruder decided against it. He'd steal nothing from the lair of a sorcerer; only that property of another which he was here to retrieve. He departed the bedroom without search- ing further, remembering the spellwright's words that he would know when he was nigh Nadeesh's earring.

Soft-soled buskins as silent on good carpet as Notable's pads, a living shadow roamed dim corridors and stepped briefly into well-furnished chambers. Some had been long closed, he saw; he passed them without opening their doors. Man and cat saw no one and heard no sound. Nota- ble gave no indication that he scented any. Once he paused, head and one foot uplifted, and his companion went to the corridor wall like a shadow. A dark knife had materialized in his hand even as he squatted. Notable ambled over. Shadowspawn didn't touch the animal, waiting for any further indication of danger. Notable gave none. After several silent mo- ments his human tapped his back with the knife.

"Dumbhead," Shadowspawn whispered, and Notable immediately commenced purring. "Shhh!" He rose and ghosted on, purring cat pacing close by.

At last they came to a room containing a worktable and things that made the hair twitch on Shadowspawn's nape and writhe under his working blacks. Notable's purring stopped as if sliced. Ogods, how I hate sorce-

Abruptly he knew that the earring was in that nice little mahogany casket. Nice work, Strick. On the point of opening the box, he paused, cocked his head, and stepped to one side. From there he flipped up the lid with the point of one of his knives. He heard the concealed trigger and watched the slender dart fling itself straight up into the ceiling with a tiny thunk of impact. Notable went into a low crouch while Shadowspawn nodded at sight of the little box's contents. Bloodstains, too. Still using the knife, he tipped the lid and waited alertly. Nothing happened save that the lid dropped almost noiselessly back into place. On the point of snatching it and departing this silent chamber whose contents made him horripilate, he spotted several strands of hair on the table. He popped them into the box, wrapped it in a nice strip of scarlet cloth off the table, and slipped it into his black upper garment. With rather unseemly haste, he vacated the chamber of Marype's sorceries.

Easy as slicing pie. he reflected as he hurried down to the concealed entry to the old tunnel. Just as good as ever, without any help from Mignureal or anyone else!

In that musty old tunnel he heard a rat and saw another and then he saw ghastly eeriness. Ghost images seemed frozen, locked in eternal com- bat. It looked like-could that be old One-Thumb? Surely not, he thought, and that was when the rat pounced.

It was big, a rat the size of a normal cat, which Notable was not. Shadowspawn was only just able to duck, flailing. The cat had already pounced at the rat with a long ugly "Rrrawwwww," and Hanse smiled in anticipation of a swift squeaky massacre. A flurry of action wiped away his smile and brought a grunt from his throat; a big red shape went hurtling backward to flop loosely on hardpacked earth.

"Notable!"

Shadowspawn slammed a throwing knife into the rat, then another. His eyes went wide and he felt his nape hairs stir again at sight of both blades passing through the creature, bloodlessly. Shock immobilized him long enough for the rat to leap upon him and sink its fangs into his arm. Hanse groaned and bit his lip while he clamped the unnaturally heavy beast with his right hand. The rat felt just as strong as he. Its fangs were like thick needles and the pain was awful when he tried to pull the huge rodent away. Sweat coated him in seconds. Despite the fact that the other knives had accomplished nothing against what was obviously sorcery, he could not give it up. Even as the rat-thing gnawed him and his brain began to stagger in a red haze of pain, a terrified Shadowspawn drew Cholly's dagger and stabbed, slashed.

With a shriek and a horrid jolt that made him cry out, the sorcerous thing vanished. So did the pain in Hanse's arm and the mark there. Yet his glance showed him a satisfying smear of blood on the dagger's silver- inlaid blade. Pouncing to take up the unconscious Notable, Shadow- spawn ran.

I didn't name Strick a high enough price!

Emerging like the shadow of a ghost into the Lily Garden, he ducked an amorously entwined couple who never saw him. A downward glance showed him that the big heavy cat in his arms had one eye slitted open. It gazed greenly up at him.

"Oh, Notable, you omery faker! See who gets the beer after this night's work!"

Notable made a distinctly unpleasant remark. Hanse tarried to be cute with the Lily Garden's proprietor, Amoli, but not for long.

A few minutes after his departure, Amoli was bustling along the tunnel to tell Marype a few things ...

Early Anenday morning Strick himself arrived at the home ofNadeesh the leech. Using the earring with its brown-stained post, Strick easily "cured" the physician- Nadeesh upheld his bargain: he agreed to sell the Vulgar Unicorn (which he wanted to get rid of anyhow!) to Strick tiFiraqa. Strick kept the sorcerer's box and the few strands of human hair. Marype's hair.

"There, Snapper Jo. Do you have any further doubts that I have power over you?"

The cowering demon shook its hideous head.

"Good," the new owner of the Vulgar Unicorn said. "You've just been replaced. Go find other employment."

By the following night a native Ilsigi had been installed as night bar- man at the Vulg; seeing that former carpenter Abohorr had lost a digit, everyone immediately delighted in calling him One-Thumb. Later that evening those same patrons were astonished and proud to see in their favorite haunt here in the very heart of the Maze: the white spellmaster Strick and Lady Esaria (with two bodyguards, of course). They seemed to have a nice time. Even drunks were sensible enough to say nothing untoward to the spellmaster's lady.

No one knew that Strick owned the place. As a matter of fact hardly anyone knew that Nadeesh had owned it. Most patrons did like the new serving girl. Silky, with her odd accent.

That same Moondy night Hanse ambled along, richer by quite a bit and actually trying not to swagger. As he passed an alley he was hit by a stagger spell, grabbed by three large toughs, punched, drugged, bound, gagged, and popped into a big cloth bag. Callous men hurried him to the waterfront. Their bagged burden thought of the stories he'd heard of slavers, right here in Sanctuary. Groggily he recognized one voice among the three: Tarkle. In the rope-bound sack, Hanse was boosted onto the ship Asienta and tumbled into the hold with a mild splash. He listened to the hatch being screwed down tightly. Groggily he heard that the ship sailed tomorrow for the far Bandaran Islands.