Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

noncommittal way that almost passed for deference, “Salutations, Ash. What

brings you into so poor a realm?”

Askelon’s proud lips parted; the skin around them was too pale. It was a woman

who held his arm; her health made him seem the more pallid, but when he spoke,

his words were ringing basso profundo: “Life to you, Riddler. What are you

called here?”

“Spare me your curses, mage.” To such a power, the title alone was an insult.

And the shadow lord knew it well.

Around his temples, stars of silver floated, stirred by a breeze. His colorless

eyes grew darker, draining the angry clouds from the sky: “You have not answered

me.”

“Nor you, me.”

The woman looked in disbelief upon Tempus. She opened her lips, but Askelon

touched them with a gloved hand. From the gauntlet’s cuff a single drop of blood

ran down his left arm to drip upon the sand. He looked at it somberly, then up

at Tempus. “I seek your sister, what else? I will not harm her.”

“But will you cause her to harm herself?”

The shadow lord whom Tempus had called Ash, so familiarly, rubbed the bloody

trail from his elbow back up to his wrist. “Surely you do not think you can

protect her from me? Have I not accomplished even this? Am I not real?” He held

his gloved hands out, turned them over, let them flap abruptly down against his

thighs. Niko, who had been roused from deep meditation in the barracks by the

cold which had spread sleep over the waking, skidded to a halt and peered around

the curve of the fence, his teeth gritted hard to stay their chatter.