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kind of 'spellmaster' you are!"
Strick smiled. Never, never could his friend, who had been a model of
truculence all his life, understand why Strick was so accepting, so
understanding, so extremely slow to take offense. "Restoring a dead cat to
life," the white mage said quietly and without turning, "would not be an act
for good, and I can perform only that kind of magic. And besides, cats make a
point of breeding quite well enough that we need not help increase their
number by granting immortality to some. I hope you soon adopt one, or more
likely, that one adopts you," he told the vendor.
"Sleeks was one of a kind," she said wistfully, "but you are a great man,
Spellmaster. You did a great service for my sister-in-law when you dispelled
the wart off her nose."
His smile was small, a slight change in the shape of his mouth. "Apparently
whatever inconvenience or thorn in the flesh she had to accept in return for
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her improved appearance is bearable," he said.
The woman smiled across the counter at him. "Something else did happen just
like you warned her it would, and she is marked but neither she nor her
husband my brother minds as much as they did that damned wart!"
Naturally Strick asked no questions, and nodded. Having paid for and accepted
a small packet of vegetables, he turned to walk away. He was brought up short.
The fellow who had spoken from behind him and been all but ignored moved
swiftly to bar his way. "So you can't do nothing that ain't good, huh?"
His chest was out and his hands were balled into fists the size of small
loaves.
"Putting a wart on that snotty bully's nose of yours," the dark man just
behind Strick's shoulder said, bracing the considerably larger accoster with a
very steady gaze, "would be no bad act."
"Why, you little piece of cat sh "
The bully was interrupted by a third male voice, from behind him. "Say,
citizen, do you really think it's smart to go messin' around with a real live
wizard
?"
The bully wheeled on his accoster, who was a burly swordslinger hired by the
market manager to police the place and protect its users. No longer a young
man, he was intelligent enough to be standing about a yard back, holding a
one-handed crossbow aimed at the bully's middle. It was cocked.
"Huh!
Big man
! Tough when you've got that sticker aimed at my gut, arencha, old fart!"
Again Sirrah Hostility heard a hostile voice from behind: "Argalo, Would you
have to arrest me if I was to crack the skull around this ugly little fellow's
big noise-hole with my little walking stick?"
The security man moved his head a little to look past the man he accosted.
"Oh, hello there, Hanse I
mean Chance! Killed anybody so far this week?"
Hanse-I-mean-Chance laughed. The former bravo he called Ar-galo laughed.
Strick laughed. Several others nearby laughed. The heavily intimidated bully
proved that he retained a modicum of intelligence by suddenly remembering his
urgent need to be somewhere else.
Thanks and good wishes were exchanged, and Strick bought some fish that
smelled good enough to eat provided he didn't put it off, and he and Chance
made their way to the east entry to the marketplace.
There, just inside, they had time to sit down and, without incident, knock
back a small measure of wine.
Then it was about time to step outside and look for transportation.
It had arrived: here was Strick's man Samoff with the one-mule-cart which the
Spellmaster chose over a carriage, in order not to look as well off as he was.
It was in accord with Strick's desire that Samoff of the thick, droopy,
rust-colored moustache wore nothing that even approached livery. He who had
named the mule "Killer" dressed as he wished and wore arms as he wished. In
his case that meant he was well armed with sword and dagger and crossbow and
back-up knife, and as mean-looking as he could look in mostly leathers with
boots well up his thighs and his big wide-brimmed old desert hat with a
sweat-stain about the size of some small animals. He was a much wrinkled man
of one and fifty who had put in a lot of years traveling from town to town
across the desert as a caravan scout. The job meant keeping to himself and
riding ahead and on the flanks all along the way, on the alert for possible
menace.
Samoff was a man of few words and considerable respect who knew how to use his
weapons, although he was handicapped by an old leg injury.
He knew he was lucky to be employed by the Spellmaster, too, who also provided
food and housing, and had spelled away the personal problem that Samoff called
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the worst: a pair of feet whose sweat had smelled worse than a hound-dog's
mouth. Samoff was also privy to the former life of his boss's dark, unfriendly
looking friend. One afternoon a couple of years back he had heard an old
acquaintance of
Chance ask him if the change of name really worked; what about people who had
known him as Hanse the roach for many years?
"They are mostly all dead," Chance replied, and no one could disbelieve that,
for nearly everyone who had lived in Sanctuary a half-century ago no longer
lived anywhere.
Today Samoff greeted that man, along with his employer, with respect. He was
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