Klikitagh!
Jarveena clapped hand to forehead. How was it possible? All day, since finding herself back at Melilot’s, she had thought of nothing but cargo manifests and market prices and percentages! And^ the fat one had not even commented on her willingness to spend the time with him, when normally she would have been with the magician . . .
And sundown now impended!
“No! No!” she cried. “Don’t hold me back an instant more!”
Incontinently she took to her heels,
The way from the harbor to Prytanis Street had never seemed so long, or so beset with moving obstacles. She lost count of the number of people she jostled against, the number of futile curses that were hurled after her. the times she herself cursed patrolmen shouting to know why she was running, imagining her to be a thief or cutpurse fleeing from her latest victim.
Somehow, though, they realized: she was not running away from, but toward . . .
The twin pillars of her destination loomed in the gloaming, accorded a wide berth by the foot passengers on their way to sunset service at the nearby temples. And small wonder. At the foot of each reposed a sleep- ing basilisk, secured at neck and leg with silver chains. As Jarveena rushed toward them, they became alert. Heads raised, they snuffed the air and listened, pondering in their slow reptilian way whether or not to open their eyes and cast their petrifying glare upon her.
Enas Yorl had said, “I’ll teach you how to call them by name-“
But he hadn’t!
She stopped dead, searching the corridors of memory. No! She had no idea what she must say!