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

door was locked, as promised, but she quickly found the handholds that had

been chipped into the outer walls. Her cloak fell back as she climbed and,

had there been light enough to reveal anything, it would have shown a man’s

trousers under a woman’s tunic and a mid length sword slung low on her left

hip. She swung herself over the cornice and dropped into the littered courtyard

of a long-abandoned shrine.

A single patch of moonlight, brilliant and unwelcome here in the Maze, shone

amid the rubble of what had been an altar. Holding her cloak as if it were the

source of all bravery and courage itself, Cythen knelt among the stones and

whispered: ‘My life for Harka Bey!’ Then, as no one had forbidden it, she drew

her sword and laid it across her thighs.

Lythande had said – or rather implied, for magicians and their ilk seldom

actually said anything – that the Harka Bey would test her before they would

listen to her questions. For Bekin’s sake and her own need for vengeance, Cythen

vowed that they would not find her wanting. The slowly shifting moonlight fed

her terror, but she sat still and silent.

The darkness, which had been a comfort while she had been a part of it, now

lurked at the edge of her vision, as her memories of better times always lurked

at the edge of her thoughts. For a heartbeat she was the young girl she had once

been and the darkness lunged at her. A yelp of pure terror nearly escaped her

lips before she pushed both memory and old feats aside.

Bekin had been her elder sister. She had been betrothed when disaster had