Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

Please, Lord Ils, Jet it be here… sixty-eight… Shalpa help me, sixty nine,

seventy?

His fingers closed on a rusting semicircle of iron, and stifling a gasp of

relief he hauled himself upward, though his fingers slipped on the rungs. The

splashing behind him slowed as if his enemy had paused to listen, then became a

tumult as Zanderei began to run.

Lalo gained the top, shoved the wooden cover aside, and heart bursting, rolled

over the edge into the clean air. But he could not rest now, not yet, not until

the trap was sprung. Summoning strength where he had thought there could be no

more, he hauled the cover over the shaft and drove home the wooden bar. And

without waiting to see if it would hold, he staggered back to the first shaft

and did the same thing there.

Then he sank to the cobbles beside it, pulse hammering, knowing that this last,

god-given strength was gone and he could do not more. This was the only place in

the network of sewers where two shafts entered the conduits so close together.

Zanderei was trapped there now.

How sweet the air was to his lungs. From some upper room Lalo heard the tinkle

of a gittem and a woman’s low laughter. A soft wind comforted his burning

cheeks-a sea wind. And then Lalo remembered with mingled satisfaction and horror

that Zanderei was doubly doomed. With the sea wind would come a rush of dark

water from the Swamp of Night Secrets, propelled by the tidal bore.

“You-Assassin-you’ve done well-but what made you think you could win this game

with me?” Lalo whispered through cracked lips. Laughter rasped his throat, and