10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

He thought of Moonflower and was not the only person in Sanctuary that day or any other to gently mourn her untimely death. She’d been barely taller than Illyra but in all other respects she was built on Dubro’s scale and he’d felt comfortable around her.

He reconsidered his whole plan as he entered the incense-rich, S’danzo quarter. He had decided to turn around and retreat to his own familiar world, when he was caught in the appraising glare of the woman who had replaced Moonflower as most indomitable among the seeresses.

“Greetings, blacksmith,” the tall stick of a woman called. “What brings you up here?”

It was not done to walk away from the Termagant. She was the living embodiment of every tale ever whispered in the dark about the S’danzo. No sane man doubted that she would and could curse anything that crossed her path in the wrong light.

Dubro crumpled the lower edge of his tunic in his fists and took a step in her direction. “I have a question to ask-about the cards.”

She looked him up and down, which took a moment or two, then pulled aside the curtain to her scrying room,

“Then come, by all means, and ask it.”

The Termagant lived alone. No one dared ask or remember if she’d ever had a family. As far as the other S’danzo and all the rest of Sanctu- ary were concerned she had always been exactly as she was. An aura of timelessness hung over her-by gaudy S’danzo standards-austere cham- bers. Her wooden table was worn black and shiny from years of use.

Her cards were tattered at the edges, their images both faded and stained. She was a seeress who let no one but herself touch the amashkiki: the cards, the Guideposts of Vision. They cascaded from one knobby hand to the other as she settled on her stool.