'Pah! What would fleeing garrison troops want with a man who reads fifteen dead languages but can't pass water without someone to guide his hands?'

What indeed?

Dubro went back to his forge and Illyra stared over the bazaar walls to the palace which marked the northern extent of the town. Haakon, who had expected a less mysterious reaction to his news, muttered farewell and wheeled his cart to another stall for a more sympathetic audience.

The first of the day's townsfolk could he heard arguing with other vendors. Illyra hurried back into the shelter of the stall to complete her daily transformation into a S'danzo crone. She pulled Walegrin's three Ore cards from her deck and placed them in the pouch with her mother's jewellery, lit the incense of gentle-forgetting, and greeted the first querent of the day.

The scream brought Stulwig awake in pitch darkness. He lay for a long moment stiff with fear. Like any resident of old, decadent Sanctuary his first fleeting thought was that the ancient city, with its night prowlers, had produced another victim's cry of terror. This one was almost as close to his second-floor, greenhouse residence as-

His mind paused. Realization came, then, in a nickering self-condemnation.

Did it again!

His special nightmare. It had come out of that shaded part of his brain where he kept his one dark memory. Never a clear recall. Perhaps not even real. But it was all he had from the night three years and four moons ago when his father's death cry had come to him in his sleep.

He was sitting up, now, balancing himself on the side of the couch. And thinking once more, guiltily: if only that first time I had gone to his room to find out.

Instead, it was morning before he had discovered the dead body with its slit throat and its horrifying grimace. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. Which was odd. Because his father at fifty was physically a good example of the healer's art he anc" Alten both practised. Lying there in the light of day after his death, his sprawled body looked as powerful and strong as that of his son at thirty.

The vivid images of that past disaster faded. Stulwig sank back and down onto the sheep fur. Covered himself. Listened in the continuing dark to the sound of wind against a corner of his greenhouse. It was a strong wind; he could feel the bedroom tremble. Moments later, he was still awake when he heard a faraway muffled cry - someone being murdered out there in the Maze?

Oddly, that was the final steadying thought. It brought his inner world into balance with the outer reality. After all, this was Sanctuary where, every hour of each night, a life ended violently like a candle snuffed out.

At this time of early, early morning he could think of no purpose that he could have about anything. Not with those dark, dirty, dusty, windblown streets. Nor in relation to the sad dream that had brought him to shocked awareness. Nothing for him to do, actually, but turn over, and-

He woke with a start. It was daylight. And someone was knocking at his outer door two rooms away.

'One moment!' he called out.

Naturally, it required several moments. A few to tumble out of his night robe. And even more to slip into the tunic, healer's gown, and slippers. Then he was hurrying through the bright sunlight of the greenhouse. And on into the dimness of the hallway beyond, with its solid door. Solid, that was, except for the vent at mouth level. Stulwig placed his lips at his end of the slanted vent, and asked,

'Who is it?'

The answering voice was that of a woman. 'It's me. Illyra. Alone.'

The seeress! Stulwig's heart quickened. His instant hope: another chance for her favours. And alone - that was a strange admission this early in the morning.

Hastily, he unblocked the door. Swung it open, past his own gaunt form. And there she stood in the dimness, at the top of his stairway. She was arrayed as he remembered her, in her numerous skirts and S'danzo scarfs. But the beautiful face above all those cloth frills was already shaded with creams and powders.

She said, 'Alten, I dreamed of you.' | There was something in her tone: an implication of darkness. Stulwig felt an instant chill. She was giving him a sorceress's signal.

Her presence, alone, began to make sense. What she had to offer him transcended a man's itching for a woman. And she expected him to realize it.

Standing there, just inside his door, Stulwig grew aware that he was trembling. A dream. The dream of a sorceress.

He swallowed. And found his voice. It was located deep in his throat, for when he spoke it was a husky sound: 'What do you want?'

'I need three of your herbs.' She named them: stypia, gernay, dalin.

This was the bargaining moment. And in the world of Sanctuary there were few victims at such a time. From his already long experience, Stulwig made his offer: 'The stypia and the gernay for the dream. For the dalin one hour in my bed tonight for an assignation.'

Silence. The bright eyes seemed to shrink.

'What's this?' asked Stulwig. 'Is it possible that with your see-ress's sight you believe that this time there will be no evasion?'

Twice before, she had made reluctant assignation agreements. On each occasion, a series of happenings brought about a circumstance whereby he needed her assistance. And for that, release from the assignation was her price.

Stulwig's voice softened to a gentler tone: 'Surely, it's time, my beautiful, that you discover how much greater pleasure it is for a woman to have lying on her the weight of a normal man rather than that monstrous mass of blacksmith's muscles, the possessor of which by some mysterious power captured you when you were still too young to know any better. Is it a bargain?'

She hesitated a moment longer. And then, as he had expected after hearing the name of the third drug, she nodded.

A business transaction. And that required the goods to be on hand. Stulwig didn't argue. 'Wait!' he admonished. ^

Himself, he did not wait. Instead, he backed quickly out of the hallway and into the greenhouse. He presumed that, with her seeress's sight, she knew that he knew about the very special person who wanted the dalin. He felt tolerant. That prince - he thought. In spite of all the advice the women receive as to when they are, and are not, capable of accepting the male seed, the youthful governor evidently possesses his concubines so often that they are unable to divert his favours away from the one who - by sorceress's wisdom - is most likely in the time of pregnancy capability.

And so - a miscarriage was needed. A herb to bring it on.

Suppressing excitement, the dream almost forgotten in his state of overstimulation, the healer located all three herbs, in turn. The stypia came from a flowering plant that spread itself over one entire end of his big, bright room. Someone would be using it soon for a persistent headache. The gernay was a mixture of two roots, a flower, and a leaf, all ground together, to be made into a tea with boiling water, steeped, and drunk throughout the day. It was for constipation.

While he worked swiftly, deftly, putting each separately into a small pouch, Stulwig pictured Illyra leaving her little stall. At the opportune moment she had pushed aside the black curtains that blocked her away from the sight of curious passersby. His mental image was of a one-room dwelling place in a dreary part of the Maze. Coming out of that flimsy shelter at this hour of the morning was not the wisest act even for a seeress. But, of course, she would have some knowing to guide her. So that she could dart from one concealment to another at exactly the right moments, avoiding danger. And then, naturally, once she got to the narrow stairway leading up to his roof abode, there would be only the need to verify that no one was lurking on the staircase itself.