' You are touched by the same curse! You lie with your husband yet have no children.'
Illyra shrank back ashamed. 'I ... I use the S'danzo gifts; I must believe in their powers. But you seek the power of steel and war. You need not believe in S'danzo; you need not fear them. You ran away - you escaped! The only curse upon you is that of your own guilt.'
She averted her eyes from his face and collected her cards carefully lest her trembling fingers send the deck flying across the rough-hewn floors. She shook out her cloak, getting relief from her anger in the whip-like snap of the heavy material.
'I've answered your questions. I'll take my payment, if you please.' She extended her hand, still not looking at his face.
Walegrin unfastened the suede pouch from his belt and placed it on the table. 'I'll get the torch and we can leave for the bazaar.'
'No, I'll take the torch and go alone.'
'The streets are no place for a woman after dark.'
'I'll get by - I did before.'
'I'll have one of my men accompany you.'
'All right,' Illyra agreed, inwardly relieved by the compromise.
From the speed with which the soldier appeared Illyra guessed he had been right outside all along and party to everything that had passed. Regardless, the man took the torch and walked slightly ahead of her, attentive to duty but without any attempt at conversation until they reached the bazaar gates where Illyra had to step forwards to guide them both through the maze of stalls.
She took her leave of the man without farewell and slipped into the darkness of her home. Familiarity obviated need for light. She moved quickly and quietly, folding the clothes into a neat bundle and storing the precious pouch with her few other valuables before easing into the warm bed.
'You've returned safely. I was ready to pull on my trousers and come looking for you. Did he give you all that he promised?' Dubro whispered, settling his arms around her.
'Yes, and I answered all his questions. He has the formula now for Enlibar steel, whatever that is, and if his purposes are true he'll make much of it.' Her body released its tension in a series of small spasms and Dubro held her tighter.
'Enlibar steel,' he mused softly. 'The swords of legend were of Enlibar steel. The man who possesses such steel now would be a man to be reckoned with ... even if he were a blacksmith.'
Illyra pulled the linen over her ears and pretended not to hear.
'Sweetmeats! Sweetmeats! Always the best in the bazaar!
Always the best in Sanctuary!'
Mornings were normal again with Haakon wheeling his cart past the blacksmith's stall before the crowds disrupted the community. Illyra, one eye ringed with kohl and the other still pristine, raced out to purchase their breakfast treats.
'There's news in the town,' the vendor said as he dropped three of the pastries onto Illyra's plate. 'Twice news in fact. All of last night's watch from the garrison took its leave of the town during the night and the crippled scribe who lived in the Street of Armourers was carried off amid much screaming and commotion. Of course, there was no watch to answer the call. The Hell Hounds consider it beneath them to patrol the law-abiding parts of town.' Haakon's ire was explained, in part, by his own residence in the upper floors of a house on the Street of Armourers.
Illyra looked at Dubro, who nodded slowly in return.
'Might they be connected?' she asked.
'Pah! What would fleeing garrison troops want with a man who reads fifteen dead languages but can't pass water without someone to guide his hands?'
What indeed?
Dubro went back to his forge and Illyra stared over the bazaar walls to the palace which marked the northern extent of the town. Haakon, who had expected a less mysterious reaction to his news, muttered farewell and wheeled his cart to another stall for a more sympathetic audience.
The first of the day's townsfolk could he heard arguing with other vendors. Illyra hurried back into the shelter of the stall to complete her daily transformation into a S'danzo crone. She pulled Walegrin's three Ore cards from her deck and placed them in the pouch with her mother's jewellery, lit the incense of gentle-forgetting, and greeted the first querent of the day.
THE DREAM OF THE SORCERESS by A. E. Van Vogt
The scream brought Stulwig awake in pitch darkness. He lay for a long moment stiff with fear. Like any resident of old, decadent Sanctuary his first fleeting thought was that the ancient city, with its night prowlers, had produced another victim's cry of terror. This one was almost as close to his second-floor, greenhouse residence as-
His mind paused. Realization came, then, in a nickering self-condemnation.
Did it again!
His special nightmare. It had come out of that shaded part of his brain where he kept his one dark memory. Never a clear recall. Perhaps not even real. But it was all he had from the night three years and four moons ago when his father's death cry had come to him in his sleep.
He was sitting up, now, balancing himself on the side of the couch. And thinking once more, guiltily: if only that first time I had gone to his room to find out.
Instead, it was morning before he had discovered the dead body with its slit throat and its horrifying grimace. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. Which was odd. Because his father at fifty was physically a good example of the healer's art he anc" Alten both practised. Lying there in the light of day after his death, his sprawled body looked as powerful and strong as that of his son at thirty.
The vivid images of that past disaster faded. Stulwig sank back and down onto the sheep fur. Covered himself. Listened in the continuing dark to the sound of wind against a corner of his greenhouse. It was a strong wind; he could feel the bedroom tremble. Moments later, he was still awake when he heard a faraway muffled cry - someone being murdered out there in the Maze?
Oddly, that was the final steadying thought. It brought his inner world into balance with the outer reality. After all, this was Sanctuary where, every hour of each night, a life ended violently like a candle snuffed out.
At this time of early, early morning he could think of no purpose that he could have about anything. Not with those dark, dirty, dusty, windblown streets. Nor in relation to the sad dream that had brought him to shocked awareness. Nothing for him to do, actually, but turn over, and-
He woke with a start. It was daylight. And someone was knocking at his outer door two rooms away.
'One moment!' he called out.
Naturally, it required several moments. A few to tumble out of his night robe. And even more to slip into the tunic, healer's gown, and slippers. Then he was hurrying through the bright sunlight of the greenhouse. And on into the dimness of the hallway beyond, with its solid door. Solid, that was, except for the vent at mouth level. Stulwig placed his lips at his end of the slanted vent, and asked,
'Who is it?'
The answering voice was that of a woman. 'It's me. Illyra. Alone.'
The seeress! Stulwig's heart quickened. His instant hope: another chance for her favours. And alone - that was a strange admission this early in the morning.
Hastily, he unblocked the door. Swung it open, past his own gaunt form. And there she stood in the dimness, at the top of his stairway. She was arrayed as he remembered her, in her numerous skirts and S'danzo scarfs. But the beautiful face above all those cloth frills was already shaded with creams and powders.
She said, 'Alten, I dreamed of you.' | There was something in her tone: an implication of darkness. Stulwig felt an instant chill. She was giving him a sorceress's signal.