Magic in Ithkar Read Free Page B

want, of, me.”
    “When I was young I was very beautiful, very graceful, very much admired and desired by men. So supple was I in the dance, possessing a fluid and boneless grace, that princes were entranced. So white was my skin that lords and barons swore the petals of white roses seemed sallow next to my flesh. At thirteen I became the mistress of a great baron. In the springtide of my youthfulness I was deemed the most desirable woman in the realm.”
    “Tell, me, what, you, want, of, me,” said the dull, deep voice.
    “I wish to be in the springtide of youth, my white body fairer than before, the supple grace of my movements even more graceful than they were when I was young.”
    “It, is, done,” said the goblin.
    A milky radiance filled the dark glass, and swirled from it to envelop the naked old woman. It tingled with a delicious warmth as it seeped into her flesh. She felt a momentary thrill as it sank into her very bones, and then . . .
    She uttered an involuntary cry, between a gasp and a moan as her body reshaped itself uncannily. And then she gave voice to a shrill shriek of pure panic, which the guards at the door could not help but hear. They looked at one another apprehensively.
    They had been commanded not to disturb their mistress on any account. But thieves and assassins were not unknown, even at the great fair. So the younger of the two men raised his voice.
    “My lady? Do you require assistance?”
    There came no reply from within. Summoning up his courage, the guard parted the flap of the tent and peered within. He saw the usual appointments, but no intruder. The silken raiment his mistress had worn was draped across the back of a carven chair. But the Lady Ais herself did not seem to be in sight. There was nothing else strange to be seen but a dully glistening chunk of black crystal upon a tabouret.
    The burning candles and the parchment and the smoking herbs in the brass dish he did not even notice. For his gaze was fixed almost instantly upon the carpeted floor of the pavilion.
    There a slim white figure writhed with supple and boneless grace. It was small and slim, and whiter than fresh cream or even the petals of the white rose, and its eyes were amethystine. It was very beautiful.
    With a cry of revulsion and alarm, the young guard sprang into the tent and crushed the narrow, wedge-shaped skull of the young white serpent under his heel.
    In the gloom of its dark prison, the goblin smiled a slow, slow smile.

To Take a Thief
C. J. Cherryh
    Sphix meant a small sly animal; a thief and nuisance in fowlyards and brooderies. And Sphix meant Sphix himself, who was lean and long-eyed as his namesake, as hungry and as full of hubris when hunger drove him.
    But not straight to the target. To go any straight line, his master Khussan had taught him, was predictable; and to be predictable was to be dead (no matter that Khussan was lately dead himself, swinging from the gibbet far down on dockside, far from nobles’ tents and merrymakers and the festive business of the commons).
    Thus for mistakes. And ambitions.
    Sphix moved the way Khussan had taught him, all ease and smiles—handsomer than Khussan, coming up on manhood but not yet arrived. He had the long eyes of the east; the dark curling hair of the west; the swarthy complexion of the north—in fact, Sphix imagined all sorts of lineage for himself. His mother had no memory, she said, where she had come from, only of wandering the aisles of tables amid the color and the noise ’til old Melly took her in and taught her serving; and she had a thousand lovers (some lords) of every land in all the world.
    Mostly he remembered drunken louts and his mother dying the hard way, of one of Melly’s cures; but those were the bad days—his father was a lord: his mother told him so. Her last lover was Khussan, who beat her when he was drunk and made her laugh when he was not.
    But his true father was a lord: his true father was all of Ithkar Fair. Like the