Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

When Sanctuary’s denizens realized that no wards protected the haughty sorcerers, that spells paid for and tendered wouldn’t work, that the Mageguild’s collective foot had been lifted from llsig and Rankan neck alike, the Hazards’ lives would be at risk.

So finding a way to render the grounds and walls malleable to magic was not simply an exercise: The Hazards might need an unbreachable fortress in which to hide from angry clients.

And Randal, whose magic was less affected than the local mages’, who had a dream-forged kris at his hip and the protection of the very lord of dreams, had been called upon to aid his guild’s relatives-though when the guild had been all-powerful, they had not liked the Stepsons’ wizard nearly so well as now.

“It’s not me, you know,” Randal was trying to explain to the First Hazard, whose war name was Cat and who looked more like a Rankan noble than a practiced adept who’d earned such a name. “My magic, such as it is,” Randal went on modestly,

“is part curse and part dream-spawned-not dependent on whatever forces have been weakened in the south.”

The Rankan adept looked at the Tysian wizard narrowly, then wondered aloud,

“It’s not some power play of Nisibisi origin, then? Nothing Torchholder, Roxane, and the rest of you northern wizards have dreamed up?”

Randal sneezed and wiped his freckled nose on his sleeve, ears reddening in embarrassment: “If I were so powerful as that, couldn’t I rid myself of these damnable allergies?” His affliction was back, the one concomitant he’d experienced of the local adepts’ distress: Pollen, birds, and especially furred creatures could bring him to a paroxysm of distress. Once he’d had a handkerchief which quelled them, and then he’d had a power which suppressed them. Now he had neither.