this pitiable Enas Yorl.’
Yet some hope glimmered, like the red pits he had to wear for eyes, in the
knowledge that at least one person in the world thought more kindly of him than
he did himself. At length, with a snorting laugh, he covered the scrying-glass
and settled down resignedly to wait out the implacable transformation, a little
comforted by knowing that so far he had never been the same shape twice.
THE FACE OF CHAOS
by Lynn Abbey
The cards lay face down in a wide crescent on the black-velvet-covered table
Illyra used for her fortune-telling. Closing her eyes, she touched one at random
with her index finger, then overturned it. The face of Chaos, portrait of man
and woman seen in a broken mirror. She had done a card-reading for herself; an
attempt to penetrate the atmosphere of foreboding that had hung over the
ramshackle cloth-and-wood structure she and Dubro, the bazaar smith, called
home. Instead it had only brought more anxiety.
She went to another small table to apply a thick coating of kohl to her eyelids.
No one would visit a young, pretty S’danzo to have their fortune told, and no
stranger could enter her home for any other reason. The kohl and the formless
S’danzo costume concealed her age in the dimly lit room, but if some love
deluded soldier or merchant moved too close, there was always Dubro under the
canopy a few steps away. One sight of the brawny, sweating giant with his heavy
mallet ended any crisis.
‘Sweetmeats! Sweetmeats! Always the best in the bazaar. Always the best in