and certainly she boasted enough of the princes and wizards and travellers who
had paid great sums for her love. She was beautiful still (and of course there
were those who said that Lythande did not pay her, but that, on the contrary,
Myrtis paid the magician great sums to maintain her ageing beauty with strong
magic) but her hair had gone grey and she no longer troubled to dye it with
henna or goldenwash from Tyrisis-beyond-the-sea.
But if Myrtis were not the woman who knew how Lythande behaved in that most
elemental of situations, then there was no woman in Sanctuary who could say.
Rumour said also that Lythande called up female demons from the Grey Wastes, to
couple in lechery, and certainly Lythande was neither the first nor the last
magician of whom that could be said.
But on this night Lythande sought neither food nor drink nor the delights of
amorous entertainment; although Lythande was a great frequenter of taverns, no
man had ever yet seen a drop of ale or mead or fire-drink pass the barrier of
the magician’s lips. Lythande walked along the far edge of the bazaar, skirting
the old rim of the governor’s palace, keeping to the shadows in defiance of
footpads and cutpurses, that love for shadows which made the folk of the city
say that Lythande could appear and disappear into thin air.
Tall and thin, Lythande, above the height of a tall man, lean to emaciation,
with the blue star-shaped tattoo of the magiciaft-adept above thin, arching
eyebrows; wearing a long, hooded robe which melted into the shadows. Clean