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

though the sky was clear, that fishermen said were the last ripple from some

great storm far out to sea.

Oh my beloved, she thought in anguish, what bitter storms are raging in the far

reaches where you wander now?

The children were waiting for her when she came out of the studio, all of them

except for her oldest, Wedemir, who was ajunio”-master with the caravans. Her

daughter Vanda had gotten leave from her Beysib lady when Gilla sent for her,

and sat now with Alfi on her lap, looking at her mother with a fair

approximation of the flat Beysib stare. Even her second boy, Ganner, had begged

time from his apprenticeship with Herewick the Jeweller to come home. Only

eight-year-old Latilla, playing with her doll on the floor. seemed oblivious of

the tension in the room.

Gilla glared back at them, knowing they must have heard her argument with Alten

Stulwig. What did they expect her to say?

‘Well?’ she snapped. ‘Stop looking at me like a batch of gaffed cod! And

somebody put the teakettle on!’

Lalo was following the scent, familiar as the stink of a man’s own closestool,

of sorcery.

He knew this much about the strange existence he was caught in now – even a

dauber whose only magic had flowed through his . fingers could smell sorcery

here, and though in that other life Lalo had been wary of wizards, he had not

been quite wary enough, and that was the start of the road that had led him

here.

There, for instance, was the gaudy presence of the Mageguild. a mixture of

odours from the faint aromas of the magelings to the full-blown, exotic