Thieves World 5 – The Face of Chaos by Asprin, Robert

has shown at the executions. It is said that the Blood of

Bey, the envenomed blood, flows only in the veins of the true

rulers of the Beysib, but you and I, who know magic and

gods, know that this is most likely untrue. Perhaps not

even Shupansea knows how far the gift is spread, but surely

she knows she is not the only one …

A weeping ulcer on Yorl’s hand burst with a foul odour, and a vile ichor seeped

on to the parchment. The ancient, cursed magician groaned as he swept the fluid

away. A ragged hole remained on the parchment; grey-green bone poked through the

ruined flesh of his hand. The movement, and the pain, had loosened his cowl. It

fell back to reveal thick, chestnut-coloured hair, which glittered crimson and

gold in the candlelight – his own hair – if the truth were known or anyone still

lived who remembered him from before the curse.

He did not often feel the pain of his assorted bodies; the curse that disguised

him in ever-shifting forms did not truly affect him. He still felt as he’d felt

the instant before the curse had claimed him. Except – except rarely when in

mocking answer to a yearning he could not quite repress, he was himself again:

Enas Yorl, a man twice, three times the age of any other man. A shambling,

rotted-out wreck who could not die; whose bones would never be scoured clean in

the earth. He hid the radiant, unliving, and therefore uncursed, hair.

The ulcer was congealing with a faintly blue, scaly iridescence. Yorl prayed, as

much as he ever prayed and to gods no mortal would dare worship, that sometime