Thieves World 01 – Thieves World by Asprin, Robert

of the palace grounds and rushed towards the back entry, via Silk Corner.

Melilot being rich, he could afford locks on his doors; he had given her a heavy

bronze key which she had concealed in her writing case. She fumbled it into the

lock, but before she could turn it the door swung wide and she stepped forward

as though impelled by another person’s will.

This was the street – or rather alley. This was the door with its overhanging

porch. Outside everything was right.

But inside everything was absolutely, utterly, unqualifiedly wrong.

4

Jarveena wanted to cry out, but found herself unable to draw enough breath. A

vast sluggishness took possession other muscles, as though she were descending

into glue. Taking one more step, she knew, would tire her to the point of

exhaustion; accordingly she concentrated merely on looking about her, and within

seconds was wishing that she hadn’t.

A wan, greyish light suffused the place. It showed her high stone walls on

either side, a stone-flagged floor underfoot, but nothing above except drifting

mist that sometimes took on an eerie pale colour: pinkish, bluish, or the sickly

phosphorescent shade of dying fish. Before her was nothing but a long table,

immensely and ridiculously long, such that one might seat a full company of

soldiers at it.

A shiver tried to crawl down her spine, but failed thanks to the weird paralysis

that gripped her. For what she was seeing matched in every respect the

descriptions, uttered in a whisper, which she had heard of the home of Enas