Robert Asprin - Thieves World

Trembling, she whispered, 'I swear.' And Lythande's heart went out in pity, for Rabben had used her ruthlessly; so that she burned alive with her unslaked and bewitched love for the magician, that she was all caught up in her passion for Lythande. Painfully, Lythande thought; if she had only loved me. without the spell; then I could have loved ... ,.

Would that I could trust her with my secrete But she is only Rabben's tool; her love for me is his doing, and none of her own will... and not real... And so everything which would pass between them now must be only a drama staged for Rabben.

'I shall make all ready for you with my magic.'

Lythande went and confided to Myrtis what was needed; the woman began to laugh, but a single glance at Lythande's bleak face stopped her cold. She had known Lythande since long before the blue star was set between those eyes; and she kept the Secret for love of Lythande. It wrung her heart to see one she loved in the grip of such suffering. So she said, 'All will be prepared. Shall I give her a drug in her wine to weaken her will, that you may the more readily throw a glamour upon her?'

Lythande's voice held a terrible bitterness. 'Rabben has done that already for us, when he put a spell upon her to love me.'

'You would have it otherwise?' Myrtis asked, hesitating.

'All the gods of Sanctuary - they laugh at me! All-Mother, help me! But I would have it otherwise; I could love her, if she were not Rabben's tool.'

When all was prepared, Lythande entered the darkened room. There was no light but the light of the Blue Star. The girl lay on a bed, stretching up her arms to the magician with exalted abandon.

'Come to me, come to me, my love!'

'Soon,' said Lythande, sitting beside her, stroking her hair with a tenderness even Myrtis would never have guessed. 'I will sing to you a love-song of my people, far away.'

She writhed in erotic ecstasy. 'All you do is good to me, my love, my magician!'

Lythande felt the blankness of utter despair. She was beautiful, and she was in love. She lay in a bed spread for the two of them, and they were separated by the breadth of the world. The magician could not endure it.

Lythande sang, in that rich and beautiful voice; a voice lovelier than any spell;

'Half the night is spent; and the crown of moonlight Fades, and now the crown of the stars is paling; Yields the sky reluctant to coming morning; Still I lie lonely.'

Lythande could see tears on Bercy's cheeks.

'I will love you as no woman has ever been loved.'

Between the girl on the bed, and the motionless form of the magician, as the magician's robe fell heavily to the floor, a wraith-form grew, the very wraith and fetch, at first, of Lythande. tall and lean, with blazing eyes and a star between its brows and a body white and unscarred; the form of the magician, but this one triumphant in virility, advancing on the motionless woman, waiting. Her mind fluttered away in arousal, was caught, captured, be-spelled. Lythande let her see the image for a moment; she could not see the true Lythande behind; then, as her eyes closed in ecstatic awareness of the touch, Lythande smoothed light fingers over her closed eyes.

'See - what I bid you to see!

'Hear - what I bid you hear!

'Feel - only what I bid you feel, Bercy!'

And now she was wholly under the spell of the wraith. Unmoving, stony-eyed, Lythande watched as her lips closed on emptiness and she kissed invisible lips; and moment by moment Lythande knew what touched her, what caressed her. Rapt and ravished by illusion that brought her again and again to the heights of ecstasy, till she cried out in abandonment. Only to Lythande that cry was bitter; for she cried out not to Lythande but to the man-wraith who possessed her.

At last she lay all but unconscious, satiated; and Lythande watched in agony. When she opened her eyes again, Lythande was looking down at her, sorrowfully.

Bercy stretched up languid arms. 'Truly, my beloved, you have loved me as no woman has ever been loved before.'

For the first and last time, Lythande bent over her and pressed her lips in a long, infinitely tender kiss. 'Sleep, my darling.'

And as she sank into ecstatic, exhausted sleep, Lythande wept.

Long before she woke, Lythande stood, girt for travel, in the little room belonging to Myrtis.

'The spell will hold. She will make all haste to carry her tale to Rabben - the tale of Lythande, the incomparable lover! Of Lythande, of untiring virility, who can love a maiden into exhaustion!' The rich voice of Lythande was harsh with bitterness.

'And long before you return to Sanctuary, once freed of the spell, she will have forgotten you in many other lovers,' Myrtis agreed. 'It is better and safer that it should be so.'

'True.' But Lythande's voice broke. 'Take care of her, Myrtis. Be kind to her.'

'I swear it, Lythande.'

'If only she could have loved me' - the magician broke and sobbed again for a moment; Myrtis looked away, wrung with pain, knowing not what comfort to offer.

'If only she could have loved me as I am, freed of Rabben's spell! Loved me without pretence! But I feared I could not master the spell Rabben had put on her ... nor trust her not to betray me. knowing ...'

Myrtis put her plump arms around Lythande, tenderly.

'Do you regret?'

The question was ambiguous. It might have meant: Do you regret that you did not kill the girl? Or even: Do you regret your oath and the secret you must bear to the last day? Lythande chose to answer the last.

'Regret? How can I regret? One day I shall fight against Chaos with all of my order; even at the side of Rabben, if he lives un-murdered as long as that. And that alone must justify my existence and my secret. But now I must leave Sanctuary, and who knows when the chances of the world will bring me this way again? Kiss me farewell, my sister.'

Myrtis stood on tiptoe. Her lips met the lips of the magician.

'Until we meet again, Lythande. May She attend and guard you for ever. Farewell, my beloved, my sister.'

Then the magician Lythande girded on her sword, and went silently and by unseen ways out of the city of Sanctuary, just as the dawn was breaking. And on her forehead the glow of the Blue Star was dimmed by the rising sun. Never once did she look back.

It was a dark and stormy night...

Actually, that Thursday night before Boskone '78 was a very pleasant night. Lynn Abbey, Gordy Dickson, and I were enjoying a quiet dinner in the Boston Sheraton's Mermaid Restaurant prior to the chaos which inevitably surrounds a major science fiction convention.

As so often happens when several authors gather socially, the conversation turned to the subject of writing in general and specifically to problems encountered and pet peeves. Not to be outdone by my dinner companions, I voiced one of my long-standing gripes: that whenever one set out to write heroic fantasy, it was first necessary to re -invent the universe from scratch regardless of what had gone before. Despite the carefully Grafted Hyborean world of Howard or even the delightfully complex town ofLankhmar which Leiber created, every author was expected to beat his head against the writing table and devise a world of his own. Imagine, I proposed, if our favourite sword-and -sorcery characters shared the same settings and time -frames. Imagine the story potentials. Imagine the tie-ins. What if...

What if Fafhrd and Mouser had just finished a successful heist. With an angry crowd on their heels, they pull one of their notorious doubleback escapes and elude the pursuing throng. Now suppose this angry, torch-waving pack runs headlong into Conan, hot and tired from the trail, his dead horse a day's walk behind him. All he wants is a jug of wine and a wench. Instead, he's confronted with a lynch mob. What if his saddlebags are full of loot from one of his own ventures, yet undiscovered?