she had turned towards the cutter. Either her voice had dropped an octave, or
the caravan-master’s mind was freezing down in sudden terror. The white tendrils
of Star’s hair blazed and seemed to writhe.
The cutter’s bow lifted. The boat disappeared stern-first with a rush and a roar
and the screams of her crew. A huge, sucker-blotched tentacle uncoiled a hundred
feet skyward, then plunged back into the glowing sea.
Samlor’s hands found the oars again. His mind was ice, and his muscles moved
like flows of ice. ‘Yes, Star,’ he heard his voice say. ‘We can go back to
Cirdon now.’
MIRROR IMAGE
Diana L. Paxson
The big mirror glimmered balefully from the wall, challenging him.
Even from across the room, Lalo could see himself reflected – a short man with
thinning, gingery hair, tending to put on weight around the middle though his
legs were thin; a man with haunted eyes and stubby, paint-stained hands. But it
was not his reflection empty-handed that frightened him. The thing he feared was
his own image copied on to a canvas, if he should dare to face the mirror with
paintbrush in hand.
A shout from the street startled him and he went softly to the window, but’it
was only someone chasing a cutpurse who had mistaken their cul-de-sac for a
shortcut between Slippery Street and the Bazaar. The strangeness of life in
Sanctuary since the Beysib invasion, or infestation, or whatever it should be
called, gave simple theft an almost nostalgic charm.
Lalo gazed out over the jumble of roofs to the blue shimmer of the harbour and