Thieves World 7 – The Dead of Winter by Asprin, Robert

toward the great pile-a graceful, dark-robed figure, small against the great

expanse of dark, dusty paving: and trotting beside her went the little dog.

There on the threshold Siveni glanced at Mriga. “Mriga, quick,” she said, “do

all of us a favor. Let me do the talking in there.”

Mriga stared. “Sister, what’re you thinking of?”

“Prices,” Siveni said. “Just as you are. Look. You’ve enough power to pay her

off afterward-“

“And where are you planning to be?”

“Don’t start,” Siveni said, “we’re losing her.” And she went after Ischade.

Mriga went after Siveni, her heart growing cold. “Anyway, this is my priest

we’re talking about,” Siveni was saying.

“‘Your’-T. Siveni, don’t you dare-“

The great steps up to the Palace loomed, and Ischade was a third of the way up

them by the time the goddesses caught up with her and Tyr. Silently they went up

the rest of the stairs together, and Mriga was aware of her heart beating hard

and fast, not from the climb. They passed over a wide porch, floored in jet, and

a doorway loomed up before them, containing great depths of still, blackness,

silent, cold. Against that dark Siveni’s spearhead sizzled faint and pitiful,

the smoking wick of a lamp of lightnings, drowning in the immensity of night.

They slipped in.

Far, far down the long hall they had entered-miles and years down it-some pale

light seethed, a sad ash-gray. It came from three sources, but details took much

longer to see. The four of them had walked and walked through that silence that

swallowed every sound and almost every thought before Mriga realized that the