10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

Her visitor shuffled awkwardly to her feet. Illyra confirmed her suspi- cion that she was a few months shy of giving birth and poorer than Suyan had been when they’d found her.

“Take back your coin.”

“Will it change things?”

“No, but it will buy you today’s food and tomorrow’s, too.”

“I won’t need food tomorrow,” the girl shouted through her sobs as she ran from the room.

But she will, Illyra thought, weighed down by the Sight of a pale woman and a scrawny child. There’s no death for her. And no life either.

The clanging of three hammers brought her out of her visions. Dubro was tapping the cadence and the other two were beating the red-hot iron. One of them had it right-tap, bang; tap, bang-but the other, probably the apprentice, was off the mark and stuttered against the metal. The forge reverberated with an unnatural rhythm that penetrated deep behind Illyra’s weary eyes.

“Can’t you get it right!” Illyra snarled, thrusting head and shoulders through the anteroom drapes.

The percussive chorus came to an immediate halt with an aghast look on the faces of the younger men and a knowing, concerned one on Dubro’s.

“Learning’s not easy,” her husband said cautiously, his blue eyes nar- rowed to unreadable slits.

“What, then, is he learning? How to give me a headache?”

Dubro nodded twice, once to his men who laid down their hammers and the second time to his wife as he approached her. He wrapped his arm gently around her and brought her into the anteroom beside him. Just as the forge was his true home-a place built to his scale and com- fort-so the scrying chamber was Illyra’s true home and it made him seem an unwelcome giant scraping his head on the rafters, yet unable to sit, as the visitor’s chair would not take his weight.