Robert Asprin - Thieves World

A wan, greyish light suffused the place. It showed her high stone walls on either side, a stone-flagged floor underfoot, but nothing above except drifting mist that sometimes took on an eerie pale colour: pinkish, bluish, or the sickly phosphorescent shade of dying fish. Before her was nothing but a long table, immensely and ridiculously long, such that one might seat a full company of soldiers at it.

A shiver tried to crawl down her spine, but failed thanks to the weird paralysis that gripped her. For what she was seeing matched in every respect the descriptions, uttered in a whisper, which she had heard of the home of Enas Yorl. In all the land there were but three Great Wizards, powerful enough not to care that their true names were noised abroad: one was at Ranke and served the needs of the court; one was at Ilsig and accounted the most skilful; the third, by reason of some scandal, made do with the slim pickings at Sanctuary, and that was Enas Yorl.

But how could he be here? His palace was on - or, more exactly, below - Prytanis Street, where the city petered out to the south-east of Temple Avenue.

Except...

The thought burgeoned from memory and she fought against it, and failed. Someone had once explained to her: Except when it is somewhere else.

Abruptly it was as though the table shrank, and from an immense distance its farther end drew close and along with it a high-backed, throne-like chair in which sat a curious personage. He was arrayed in an enormously full, many layered cloak of some dull brown stuff, and wore a high-crowned hat whose broad brim somehow Contrived to shadow his face against even the directionless grey light that obtained here.

But within that shadow two red gleams like embers showed, approximately where a human's eyes would be.

This individual held in his right hand a scroll, partly unrolled. and with his left he was tapping on the table. The proportions of his fingers were abnormal, and one or two of them seemed either to lack, or to be overprovided with, joints. One of his nails sparked luridly, but that ceased after a little. Raising his head, after a fashion, he spoke.

'A girl. Interesting. But one who has ... suffered. Was it punishment?'

It felt to Jarveena as though the gaze of those two dull red orbs could penetrate her flesh as well as her clothing. She could say nothing, but had nothing to say.

'No,' pronounced the wizard - for surely it must be none other. He let the scroll drop on the table, and it formed itself into a tidy roll at once, while he rose and approached her. A gesture, as though to sketch her outline in the air, freed her from the lassitude that had hampered her limbs. But she had too much sense to break and run.

Whither?

'Do you know me?'

'I...' She licked dry lips. 'I think you may be Enas Yorl.'

'Fame at last,' the wizard said wryly. 'Do you know why you're here?'

'You ... Well, I guess you set a trap for me. I don't know why, unless it has to do with that scroll.'

'Hmm! A perceptive child!' Had he possessed eyebrows, one might have imagined the wizard raising them. And then at once: 'Forgive me. I should not have said "child". You are old in the ways of the world, if not in years. But after the first century, such patronizing remarks come easy to the tongue ...' He resumed his chair, inviting Jarveena with a gesture to come closer. She was reluctant.

For when he rose to inspect her, he had been squat. Under the cloak he was obviously thick-set, stocky, with a paunch. But by the time he regained his seat, it was equally definite that he was thin, light-boned, and had one shoulder higher than the other.

'You have noticed,' he said. His voice too had altered; it had been baritone, while now it was at the most flattering a countertenor. 'Victims of circumstance, you and I both. It was not I who set a trap for you. The scroll did.'

'For me? But why?'

'I speak with imprecision. The trap was set not for you qua you. It was set for someone to whom it meant the death of another. I judge that you qualify, whether or not you know it. Do you? Make a guess. Trust your imagination. Have you, for example, recognized anybody who came to the city recently?'

Jarveena felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She folded her hands into fists.

'Sir, you are a great magician. I recognized someone tonight. Someone I never dreamed of meeting again. Someone whose death I would gladly accomplish, except that death is much too good for him.'

'Explain!' Enas Yorl leaned an elbow on the table, and rested his chin on his fist ... except that neither the elbow, nor the chin, let alone the fist, properly corresponded to such appellations.

She hesitated a second. Then she cast aside her cloak, tore loose the bow that held the cross-lacing of her jerkin at her throat, and unthreaded it so that the garment fell wide to reveal the cicatrices, brown on brown, which would never fade, and the great foul keloid like a turd where her right breast might have been.

'Why try to hide anything from a wizard?' she said bitterly. 'He commanded the men who did this to me, and far far worse to many others. I thought they were bandits! I came to Sanctuary hoping that here if anywhere I might get wind of them - how could bandits gain access to Ranke or the conquered cities? But I never dreamed they would present themselves in the guise of imperial guards!'

'They ...?' Enas Yorl probed.

'Ah ... No. I confess: it's only one that I can swear to.'

'How old were you?'

'I was nine. And six grown men took pleasure of me, before they beat me with wire whips and left me for dead.'

'I see.' He retrieved the scroll and with its end tapped the table absently. 'Can you now divine what is in this message? Bear in mind that it forced me hither.'

'Forced? But I'd have thought -'

'I found myself here by choice? Oh, the contrary!' A bitter laugh rang out, acid-shrill. 'I said we're both victims. Long ago when I was young I was extremely foolish. I tried to seduce away the bride of someone more powerful than me. When he found out, I was able to defend myself, but ... Do you understand what a spell is?'

She shook her head.

'It's ... activity. As much activity as a rock is passivity, which is conscious of being a rock but of nothing else. A worm is a little more aware; a dog or horse, much more; a human being, vastly more - but not infinitely more. In wildfire, storms, stars, can be found processes which with no consciousness of what they are act upon the outside world. A spell is such a process, created by an act of will, having neither aim nor purpose save what its creator lends. And to me my rival bequeathed ... But no matter. I begin' to sound as though I pity myself, and I know my fate is just. Shall we despise justice? This scroll can be an instrument of it. Written on it are two sentences.

'Of death.'

While he spoke, there had been further changes under his concealing garb. His voice was now mellow and rich, and his hands, although very slender, possessed the ordinary number of joints. However, the redness still glowed.

'If one sentence is upon Commander Nizharu,' Jarveena said firmly, 'may it be executed soon.'

'That could be arranged.' A sardonic inflection coloured the words. 'At a price.'

'The scroll doesn't refer to him? I imagined -'

'You imagined it spelt his doom, and that was why he was so anxious about its loss? In a way that's correct. In a way ... And I can make certain that that shall be the outcome. At a price.'

'What - price?' Her voice quavered against her will.

He rose slowly from his chair, shaking his cloak out to its fullest; it swept the floor with a faint rustling sound.

'Need you ask, of one who so plainly is obsessed by lust for women? That was the reason for my downfall. I explained.'