She showed him a wall flickering with runes and magic signs. Zaibar went totouch it and found his fingers singed for his curiosity.

'These warding walls keep us safe now, but they will fade if we are not here torenew them properly. Smugglers and thieves will find the entrances we have keptinvulnerable for generations. And you, Zaibar, who wish that Sanctuary willbecome a place of justice and order, will know in your heart that you areresponsible, because you knew what was here and let the others destroy it.'

'No, Myrtis. So long as I live, none of this shall be harmed.'

'There is no other way. Do you not already have your orders to levy a secondtax?'

He nodded.

'We have already begun to use the food stored in these basements. The girls arenot happy; the merchants are not happy. The Street will die. The merchants willcharge higher prices, and the girls will make their way to the streets. There isnowhere else for them to go. Perhaps Jubal will take-'

'1 do not think that the Street will suffer such a fate. Once the princeunderstands the true part you and the others play, he will agree to a nominaltax which would be applied to maintaining the defence of Sanctuary and thereforebe returned to you.'

Myrtis smiled to herself. The battle was won. She held his arm tightly and nolonger fought the effect of the adulterated qualis in her own emotions. Theyfound an abandoned officer's quarters and made love on its bare wooden-slatsbed. and again when they returned to the parlour of the Aphrodisia House.

The night-candle had burned down to its last knob by the time Myrtis releasedthe hidden bolt and let the Hell Hound captain rejoin his men. Lythande was inthe room behind her as soon as she shut the door.

'Are you safe now?' the magician asked with a laugh.

'I believe so.'

'The potion?'

'A success, as always. I have not been in love like this for a long time. It ispleasant. I almost do not mind knowing how empty and hurt I will feel as I watchhim grow old.'

'Then why use something like the potion? Surely the catacombs themselves wouldhave been enough to convince a Hell Hound?'

'Convince him of what? That the defences of Sanctuary should not be entrusted towhores and courtesans? Except for your potion, there is nothing else to bind himto the idea that we - that I should remain here as I always have. There was noother way!'

'You're right,' Lythande said, nodding. 'Will he return to visit you?'

'He will care, but I do not think he will return. That was not the purpose ofthe drug.'

She opened the narrow glass-paned doors to the balcony overlooking the emptyinglower rooms. The soldiers were gone. She looked back into the room. The threehundred gold pieces still lay half-counted on the table next to the emptydecanter. He might return.

'I feel as young as I look,' she whispered to the unnoticing rooms. 'I couldsatisfy every man in this house if I took the notion to, or if anyone of themhad half the magnificence of my Zaibar.'

Myrtis turned back to an empty room and went to sleep alone.

On a night in Sanctuary, when the streets bore a false glamour in the silverglow of full moon, so that every ruin seemed an enchanted tower and every darkstreet and square an island of mystery, the mercenary-magician Lythande salliedforth to seek adventure.

Lythande had but recently returned - if the mysterious comings and goings of amagician can be called by so prosaic a name -from guarding a caravan across theGrey Wastes to Twand. Somewhere in the Wastes, a gaggle of desert rats - two-legged rats with poisoned steel teeth - had set upon the caravan, not knowingit was guarded by magic, and had found themselves fighting skeletons that howledand fought with eyes of flame; and at their centre a tall magician with a bluestar between blazing eyes, a star that shot lightnings of a cold and paralysingflame. So the desert rats ran, and never stopped running until they reachedAurvesh, and the tales they told did Lythande no harm except in the ears of thepious.

And so there was gold in the pockets of the long, dark, magician's robe, orperhaps concealed in whatever,'dwelling sheltered Lythande.

For at the end, the caravan master had been almost more afraid of Lythande thanhe was of the bandits, a situation which added to the generosity with which herewarded the magician. According to custom, Lythande neither smiled nor frowned,but remarked, days later, to Myrtis, the proprietor of the Aphrodisia House inthe Street of Red Lanterns, that sorcery, while a useful skill and filled withmany aesthetic delights for the contemplation of the philosopher, in itself putno beans on the table.

A curious remark, that, Myrtis pondered, putting away the ounce of gold Lythandehad bestowed upon her in consideration of a secret which lay many years behindthem both. Curious that Lythande should speak of beans on the table, when no onebut herself had ever seen a bite of food or a drop of drink pass the magician'slips since the blue star had adorned that high and narrow brow. Nor had anywoman in the Quarter even been able to boast that a great magician had paid forher favours, or been able to imagine how such a magician behaved in thatsituation when all men were alike reduced to flesh and blood.

Perhaps Myrtis could have told if she would; some of her girls thought so, when,as sometimes happened, Lythande came to the Aphrodisia House and was closetedlong with its owner; even, on rare intervals, for an entire night. It was said,of Lythande, that the Aphrodisia House itself had been the magician's gift toMyrtis, after a famous adventure still whispered in the bazaar, involving anevil wizard, two horse-traders, a caravan master, and a few assorted toughs whohad prided themselves upon never giving gold for any woman and thought it funnyto cheat an honest working woman. None of them had ever showed their faces -whatwas left of them - in Sanctuary again, and Myrtis boasted that she need neveragain sweat to earn her living, and never again entertain a man, but would claimher madam's privilege of a solitary bed.

And then, too, the girls thought, a magician of Lythande's stature could haveclaimed the most beautiful women from Sanctuary to the mountains beyond Ilsig:not courtesans alone, but princesses and noblewomen and priestesses would havebeen for Lythande's taking. Myrtis had doubtless been beautiful in her youth,and certainly she boasted enough of the princes and wizards and travellers whohad paid great sums for her love. She was beautiful still (and of course therewere those who said that Lythande did not pay her, but that, on the contrary,Myrtis paid the magician great sums to maintain her ageing beauty with strongmagic) but her hair had gone grey and she no longer troubled to dye it withhenna or goldenwash from Tyrisis-beyond-the-sea.

But if Myrtis were not the woman who knew how Lythande behaved in that mostelemental of situations, then there was no woman in Sanctuary who could say.Rumour said also that Lythande called up female demons from the Grey Wastes, tocouple in lechery, and certainly Lythande was neither the first nor the lastmagician of whom that could be said.

But on this night Lythande sought neither food nor drink nor the delights ofamorous entertainment; although Lythande was a great frequenter of taverns, noman had ever yet seen a drop of ale or mead or fire-drink pass the barrier ofthe magician's lips. Lythande walked along the far edge of the bazaar, skirtingthe old rim of the governor's palace, keeping to the shadows in defiance offootpads and cutpurses, that love for shadows which made the folk of the citysay that Lythande could appear and disappear into thin air.