"I don't know... It doesn't seem... Are you really hungry?"

"Hungry?" Polo said. "Big guy is putting eye on horse across square, same being prizest mount of Chief Justiciar of Damhorst."

"Well, come along then. I don't guess it'll hurt to give you dinner. But you'll have to promise me something."

Mocker sighed, "Same being?"

"Let Polo tell me about the priest and the magic staff."

"Disgusting!" Tubal growled as Mocker stuffed him into his travelling kit. "Absolutely shocking," the puppet muttered from inside.

Mocker grinned.

Kirsten maintained a small townhouse on the edge of Damhorst, in the shadow of Baron Breitbarth's grim old castle. An elderly maid-cook constituted her staff. Sir Wulf had been one of those highwayman-knights, and only marginally successful. He had left Kirsten the house, one gold trade noble, and a small leather bag of jewels she had found inside his shirt after he died in her arms. The gold would carry her a month or two, and the jewels several years more, but she was hardly fixed for life.

Mocker reiterated his remark to the effect that her beauty was her fortune.

The visit for a meal turned into a month-long stay. Daily, Mocker would spread his mat in the square—he insisted that he had his pride—and would pursue his routines. Sometimes he was successful. People enjoyed the entertainment portions of his spiel. More often than not, Kirsten would come and watch. He seemed to have an infinite store of blarney.

Evenings he amused her with tales from the east. She was particularly fond of Tubal and Polo, who were famous puppet-show characters east of the Mountains of M'Hand. The contest of city-slicker with simple farm boy seemed to have a universal appeal. The traditional plays were all adaptable to rural or urban audiences.

Time, proximity, and loneliness worked their devious magics. Mocker and Kirsten became more than accomplices, then more than friends.

Handling Kirsten's father took little imagination. Mocker used earnings from the square to pay a couple of thugs to escort the man out of town. He had no trouble understanding the message in his lumps and bruises. He kept travelling.

Kirsten never learned about that, of course. She remained amazed that the old man had paid but the one friendly visit.

Mocker began to feel vaguely lost. He had had plans. Nebulous things, to be sure, but they had been plans. They were going by the board because of a chance-met woman.

He had become involved with a human being on more than an adversary or use level. He did not know how to handle it. Nothing like it had ever happened before.

The deeper he got, the more uncomfortable he became.

He almost panicked the day Kirsten mentioned that she had been to see a priest, and that the priest wanted to see him too. He barely restrained himself from flight.

A few days afterward Kirsten swore, "Damn! Do you have any money on you? Mine's gone."

He lied, shaking his head. "Has been abominable week. Autumn rains. Getting too cold, too muddy."

"I guess it means selling the jewels. I talked to Tolvar last week. The goldsmith on the High Street. He said he'd make me a good price. Why don't you run them over and see what he'll offer?"

"Self? By night? In town thick with rogues and thieves?" His heart hammered. He could not picture himself lasting five minutes with a fortune like that on him.

His world-view crippled him. He saw in everyone the thief he was himself.

"You can handle yourself, darling. I've seen you. Besides, who would know that you're carrying them?"

"Everybodys. Self, being nervous, would worry out loud... "

"Don't be silly." She shoved the leather bag into his pudgy hands. "Go on. Or we won't have anything to eat tomorrow."

He went. His intentions were honorable. Kirsten was his first love. Temptation did not bite him till he entered the High Street itself.

He froze.

He thought about everything jewels could buy. About Kirsten and an imminent visit to a priest. About opportunities in games of chance opened by unlimited betting funds. About that damned priest...

He panicked. This time he did run.

He did not realize that he had left his donkey and props till he was over the border into the kingdom of Altea.

By then it was too late. He could not go back. He had damned himself with Kirsten forever.

It hurt. A lot. For weeks the pain kept him contained within himself, and out of trouble.

But the ache just would not go away. He began drinking to deaden it. And in Alperin, a small town in southern Altea, while drunk, he wandered into a dice game.

His luck was terrible. His mental state contributed nothing to intelligent betting. Before they let him go he was broke again, having retained just enough common sense to have earlier re-equipped himself with the tools of his dubious trade.

The exigencies of surviving an Altean winter banished Kirsten from his thoughts. He had no time for her. She fled him forever.

With her went his proud resolutions about gambling and thieving.

He ceased giving a damn about tomorrow. His future looked too bleak. He could no longer scrutinize it. And the less he cared, the bleaker it became.

He had fallen into a paradoxical trap. Though filled with a lust for life and learning, he was systematically eradicating tomorrows with wine and stupid crimes.

Tamerice lay south of Altea, a long snake of a kingdom squished between the Kapenrung Mountains and the Altean frontier. Mocker drifted into Tamerice with spring. His successes had been just frequent enough to keep body and soul together. His weight had declined. He had developed a shakiness which occasionally betrayed him when he tried one of his more complicated tricks.

He drew his best response when he stooped to entertaining. Tamericians enjoyed the Tubal and Polo plays. But a false pride or unconscious death wish drove him. He performed only when gnawing hunger compelled it.

He reached the town of Raemdouck the day after a carnival had arrived, and spread his mat beside the road the Raemdouckers followed to the field where the carnival had raised its tents. A pre-selected traffic helped him marginally.

His third morning there, before traffic picked up, he had a visitor. The man was tall, lean, and had tight, dark eyes in a hard face. Policeman? Bandit? Mocker wondered nervously.

The man sat down facing him, stared for more than a minute.

Mocker wriggled. A demon ground coarse salt into his nerve endings.

"I'm Damo Sparen," his visitor finally announced. His voice was as cold and hard as his appearance. "I own the carnival. I've been watching you."

Mocker shrugged. Was he supposed to beg forgiveness for bleeding off a miniscule portion of the man's revenues?

"You're interesting. One of the nastier cases of self-abuse I've seen. Talent bleeds out of you, and you waste it to the last ounce. Do you want to die young?"

Mocker gulped. "Maybeso. In thousand years, or two." He grinned weakly. He was scared. "What is going on here?"

"I wanted to tell you something. I'm no diviner, but this prediction doesn't require the skills of a necromancer. You will die. Soon. Unless you mend your ways."

Mocker's fear tightened its noose.

"You keep cutting purses, somebody's going to cut your throat. Before summer's done. You're too damned clumsy."

Mocker swallowed the lump in that throat. He was bewildered. The man sounded like an evangelist.

"My eastern friend, I'm going to give you a chance to see Old Man Winter again. I'm looking for someone with your talents and not much conscience. I could use you. If we could dry you out and knock a little sense in your head. You've got the skills, but they're in bad shape."

"Self, am unsure hearing is accurate. Explicate, please. Am being offered position?"