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

passed through this door and came home to me. Where he has gone, I can go too.

Gilla fet the knocker fall.

The door opened silently. The blind servant of whom she had heard was standing

there, with a silken blindfold in his hand. Licking lips that were suddenly dry,

Gilla tied it around her head and let the servant take her hand.

At least she had the advantage of knowledge. Lalo had told her about Darous, and

the blindfold, and the peculiar guardians that laired in the sorcerer’s entry

hall. But the sound of scales on stone and the sense of myriad bodies slithering

about her nearly undid her, for snakes were her particular fear. They ‘re not

snakes’, she told herself. They’re only basilisks’. But her fingers tightened on

the cool hand of her guide and she was breathing hard when they emerged into

another chamber in which some musky incense mingled sick-eningly with the smell

of sulphur.

The blindfold was taken away and Gilla looked around her with a sigh. The stone

walls were stained with carbon, and a melted tangle of metal that had once been

a brazier lay in the middle of the floor. A daybed was set into an embrasure in

the marble walls, and after a moment Gilla realized that the huddle of rich

fabrics upon it covered a man. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and

stared at him.

‘After the bull, the cow,* Enas Yorl said tiredly. ‘I might have known.’

‘Lalo?’ Gilla saw the thin hand that lay upon the velvet quiver, shift, and

become a more muscular member whose skin bore a thin dusting of bluish scales.