Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

the sword-hilt, the slight lowering of one eyebrow and remembered that the dance

was her freedom.

Seylalha brought one hand through the tangled mane of her hair, pointed two

fingers to her musicians. They struck a ragged, jarring chord to mark their own

apprehensions but the tam-bourist found her throbbing drone and the dance began.

At first she felt the uneven ground beneath the rug and the damp spots upon it,

just as she saw those icy eyes and the outstretched fingers. Then there were

only the years of practice. the music and the desperation of the dance itself.

Three times she felt herself collapse on a misplaced foot; three times the music

saved her and, writhing, twisting, she caught herself with will-driven muscles

that dared not feel their torture.

Her lungs were on fire, her heartbeat louder than the droning tambour and she

danced. She heard only the pounding rhythms of the music and her heart; she saw

Azyuna, dark and voluptuous, as she had first performed it before her long

toothed, bloodstained brother.

The god Vashanka smiled and Seylalha, honey-hair and sea-green silk twined

together, began the dervish finale of the dance. There was a salt-metal taste in

her mouth when she doubled into a barely controlled collapse on the carpet,

limbs trembling and glimmering with sweat in the torchlight.

Darkness hovered at the end of her thoughts, the total darkness of exhaustion

and death; a freedom she had not anticipated, but in the still-bright centre of

her thoughts she saw first the bloody god then the white-and-honey stranger,