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

while Haught and Moria likewise ‘ scrambled for weapons. He whirled about, his

shoulders to the wall, and there was no one there at all, but the lightning

flashes casting a lurid glow on the flooded cobbles outside, and the door

banging with the wind.

Terror loosened his bones, set him shivering; instinct sent his hand groping

after a cloak, his feet moving towards the door, his sword in hand the while he

whipped the cloak about himself, towellike. He leapt out suddenly into the rain

swimming alley, barefoot, trusting the corners of his eyes, and swung at once-to

that side that had anomaly in it, a tall shape, a cloaked figure standing in the

rain.

And then he was easy prey for anything, for that cloaked form, its height, its

manner, waked memories. He heard a presence near, Haught or Moria at his back,

or both, but he could not have moved, not from the beginning. That figure well

belonged with ghosts, with witchery, with nightmares that waked him cold with

sweat. Lightning flashed and showed him a pale face within the hood.

‘For Ils’ sake get in!’ Moria’s voice. A hand tugging at his naked shoulder.

But it was a potential trap, that room, lacking any other door; while

somewhere, somehow in his most secret nightmares he knew, had known, that

Ischade had always known how to find him when she wished.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘Come to the bridge,’ the witch said. ‘Meet .me there.’

He had gazed once into those eyes. He could not forget. He stood there with the

rain pelting him, with his feet numb in icewater, his shoulders numb under the