Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

Aye, Hanse thought. She loves jewellery and thus the ring; cats are sacred to

her and thus the stone: the eye of a cat. Somehow it was pleasant thus to find

some small comfort of logic in all this that clearly had naught to do with

logic. Gods! He was involved with the very gods!

Mignureal came along just as he was departing. She asked about the handsome

clothing he carried! Obviously she had never seen it before, and Hanse blinked.

His eyes swerved in her mother’s direction. She was staring at her daughter.

“Into the house, Mignue,” she said, with uncommon sharpness. “See to the

preparation of the leeks and yeni-sprouts your father fetched home for dinner.”

Hanse went away thoughtful and shaken while Moonflower sat staring at nothing.

She was a mother, and she too was shaken, and passing nervous.

For Hanse the next twenty-six hours rode by on the backs of snails. He slept not

well and his dreams were not for the repeating.

Attired in such a way as to arouse the envy of a successful merchant, Hanse

completed his ascent to Eaglebeak just after the sun began sliding off the edge

of the world. Continuing cautious and too apprehensive to hurry, he picked his

way through a jumble of tumbled columns and jagged stones habited only by

spiders and serpents, lizards and scorpions, a few snails, and the most

insistent of scrubby plants. These owned Eaglebeak now, and Eaglenest. All here

had been murdered long and long ago. They were said still to haunt the place,

that merchant and his family. And so the hilltop and once-fine estate-house were