to blow the eardrums out of evil to their lips.
He was as nonplussed as she. He held her in his arms and pressed her close,
telling her, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of them. You stay here, and call back
all your minions-not that I don’t think I can protect you, but just in case.”
She watched him dress hurriedly, strapping on his armor over wet skin, and run
outside, his weapons at hand and ready.
No mortal had ever come to her defense before. So when, snakes by her side and
undeads rising, she saw them wrestle him to the ground, disarm him, put him in a
cage (no doubt the cage they’d meant for her) and drive away with him, she wept
for Niko, who loved her but had been taken from her by the hated priesthood.
And she planned revenge-not only upon the priesthood, but upon Ischade, the
trickster necromant, and Randal, who should never have been allowed to get away,
and on all of Sanctuary-all but Niko, who was innocent of all and who, if only
he could have stayed a little longer, would have proclaimed in his own words his
love for her and thus become hers forevermore.
As for the rest-now there would be hell to pay.
THE VEILED LADY
OR
A LOOK AT THE NORMAL FOLK
Andrew Qffutt
The veiled lady traveled to Sanctuary with the caravan that originated in Suma
and had grown at Aurvesh. She was faceless behind the deeply slate blue arras or
veil that backed the white one. It covered her head like a miniature tent, held
in place by a cloth chaplet of interwoven white and slate. In her Sumese
drover’s robe of grayish, off-white woolen homespun, the veiled lady was not