Anthology: Thieves World: Turning Points

This time the syllable struck like a blade against the bounds of his mind, and the torrent came loose. He felt the sudden need to pull the small notebook out, to show his Great-grann-nanna what he did, to make her proud of him. He reached for the book.

And something large and heavy slammed into him, knocking him against the side of the door. Something sharp broke inside Heliz's mind, and he realized that he had fallen beneath one of Jennican-dra's own words of power.

Lumm, rubbing his shoulder, bellowed, "Use it, Heliz! Use it on her!"

Heliz looked at the staver. "But the town…"

"Will be my first test of power," said Jennicandra, and she shouted, "NOW, GIVE ME THE WORD!" and added her word of power. Behind her, the rock-ape bellowed in chorus.

Heliz opened his mouth and screamed, bellowed the word of power that had been unspoken these many months. It was a short word, but charged with the power of sun and stars and earth and creation. It pulled fury with it, and detonated right where Jennicandra was standing.

And as Heliz shouted the word, he changed it, twisting it in his mind and his throat to merge it with the diminutive form he had discovered earlier in the evening. He appended it more as a hopeful prayer than as a real attempt to control the damage.

A bright light flashed, one that Heliz had seen once before, long ago in the tower. It blossomed outwards, encasing his great-grandmother, the rock-ape, and licking at the entrance of the manor itself. Yet it was contained, folded back upon itself by its diminutive suffix. It looked as if a massive ball of lightning had detonated among the manor houses, turning the region to brief, sudden day.

And as suddenly as it appeared, it diminished again, collapsing like energy without matter to house it, pulling itself inwards and evaporating in a single point. The area in a fifty-foot circle was blasted black, and the stone front of the manor house was charred and blackened. All that remained of the rock-ape was a pair of roughly hewn feet, which could be imagined as being anthropoid only with a vivid imagination. Of the Great-grandmother of the

Crimson Scholars there was no sign. The rain was falling again in the courtyard, and the thunder grumbled in the sky like a god disturbed from its slumbers.

Lumm helped Heliz to his feet. The linguist had not realized he had collapsed.

"You got her," said Lumm, self-satisfaction in his voice.

Heliz shook his head. "I did this to her before. She survived that."

"No, you got her," assured Lumm. "If she lived through that, she's a better thesaurus, or sorceress, or whatever, than she should be."

Lumm thumped down the broad steps of the manor house, then turned. "You coming?"

Heliz was quiet for a moment, wrestling with his thoughts. "Yes. Let me take you to the Unicorn. I suppose I owe you a drink."

Lumm shook his head, then spat, "You owe me a house , linguist." He growled, "And I just hope you like working in the central courtyard, because that's where you're going to be until you pay me back."

And with that the barrel-maker headed down the slope, listening as he walked for the footsteps of the linguist behind him.

One to Go

Raymond E. Feist

The flea moved.

Jake the Rat held motionless, ignoring the irritation as the tiny bloodsucker sought out another location where he could visit more misery upon the old thief. Jake could feel the tiny parasite hop down his right calf toward his ankle, already covered in scab-capped welts. Slowly, with a patience born of a lifetime spent being patient, he moved his leg, bringing it to a point where his gnarled fingers could lash out and seize the tiny malefactor.

"Ah ha!" he shouted in triumph as his still nimble digits struck downward, fetching up the flea between calloused forefinger and thumb. "I have you!"

"Wot?" asked Selda.

"Damn flea that's been biting me for the last hour. I got it!"

Selda had been tending her knitting. She put down the two bone needles and sat back in the rickety chair she had appropriated for that purpose approximately five seconds after entering the hovel for the first time, seven years earlier. Fixing her husband with a baleful gaze she said, "Ain't that wonderful! Now you can set about catchin' the other thousand or so wot's still in residence with us."

Ignoring her sarcasm, Jake held the tiny creature up for inspection. He moved it closer and farther away under the dim light of the lantern above the table and couldn't quite seem to get it into focus. "Damn," he muttered. "Are these fleas smaller than they used to be?"

"No, you old fool. It's your eyes wot ain't what they was."

Not taking his eyes from the tiny bloodsucker, he muttered, "Nothing wrong with my eyes, old woman. I can still spot a watchman a mile away." He rolled the flea between thumb and forefinger, very hard. "You've got to mess them around a bit," he said as if conducting lessons on the execution of vermin. "They've got hard shells and if you just try to squash them, they'll leap away. But if you roll them hard, it breaks their legs or something and they just sit there." He did so and deposited the flea on the table. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw the insect twitch. Deriving satisfaction from the thought that the thing might be suffering in retribution for the misery inflicted upon others, Jake hesitated a moment, then drove a bone-hard thumbnail into the wood, bisecting the tiny creature. "And there you have done with it!"

"Well, pleased as princesses on a shopping trip about decapitating a bug, isn't he?" said Selda. "Why you go to such lengths about it when most people just swat the damn things is beyond me."

"It keeps me relaxed while I'm waiting," he answered.

She knew that. She knew everything about Jake. Selda and Jake had been together for thirty years. They'd even had a child together once, though the boy had run off when he was twelve. They had called the boy Jaxon. They'd heard he'd become a sailor, but didn't know if it was so. Neither had mentioned his name to the other since the day he had left. Both knew to do so would be to open the debate as to who had been responsible for the boy's leaving, and both knew that would be the end of them. So they remained silent on that one matter.

But on any other subject, they had argued so often and so repeatedly that each could hold the argument even if the other was off somewhere. But tonight was different.

Jake looked over at Selda and said, "Wot? You ain't going to say something about relaxing?"

She put down her knitting. With a scolding tone she said, "And wot good would it do? None at all. It's a sad situation we're in, in'it? And there's nothin' for it but for you to go off and get yourself killed, you old twit."

He stood from the other chair, as he always thought of it, her chair and the other chair, and made his way around the table to where Selda sat, clutching her needles in hands so tight her knuckles showed white. "Who you callin' an 'old twit,' you old shrew?"

She jabbed at him with the needles and shouted, "You, and you are an old twit, you old twit." Eyes rimming with tears she said, "You're going to get yourself killed, then where'll I be?"

He easily avoided the jabbing needles and bent over her. She turned her head aside and tried to brush him away with both hands, but he would have none of it, circling her in his arms as he had tens of thousands of times in the past. "It'll be good, you'll see," he said.

Tears ran down her cheeks and she said, "I'm frightened, old man." Suddenly she leaned into him and clung to him as if fearful of letting him go. "Must you?"

"I must. I told you, old woman, three jobs and we'd be out of this pest hole."

Showing the resiliency he had known for most of his adult life, she pulled away and shouted, "Aye, and whose bit of thunderous wisdom was it brought us to this pest hole, this 'Sanctuary,' out here at the edge of nowhere, in the first place?"