‘A success, as always. I have not been in love like this for a long time. It is
pleasant. I almost do not mind knowing how empty and hurt I will feel as I watch
him grow old.’
‘Then why use something like the potion? Surely the catacombs themselves would
have been enough to convince a Hell Hound?’
‘Convince him of what? That the defences of Sanctuary should not be entrusted to
whores and courtesans? Except for your potion, there is nothing else to bind him
to the idea that we – that I should remain here as I always have. There was no
other way!’
‘You’re right,’ Lythande said, nodding. ‘Will he return to visit you?’
‘He will care, but I do not think he will return. That was not the purpose of
the drug.’
She opened the narrow glass-paned doors to the balcony overlooking the emptying
lower rooms. The soldiers were gone. She looked back into the room. The three
hundred gold pieces still lay half-counted on the table next to the empty
decanter. He might return.
‘I feel as young as I look,’ she whispered to the unnoticing rooms. ‘I could
satisfy every man in this house if I took the notion to, or if anyone of them
had half the magnificence of my Zaibar.’
Myrtis turned back to an empty room and went to sleep alone.
THE SECRET OF THE BLUE STAR
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
On a night in Sanctuary, when the streets bore a false glamour in the silver
glow of full moon, so that every ruin seemed an enchanted tower and every dark
street and square an island of mystery, the mercenary-magician Lythande sallied
forth to seek adventure.