Uneasy alliances - Thieves World 11 by Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey Page A

where it chose:, he did not care whether it was a shelter or over the cliffs: let it choose. The White Foal,
    beyond the trees, was roiled and muddy, and looked friendlier than the town did.
    Ischade sat down, at the table in the house that was somehow larger inside than outside, and which had more rooms and windows than appeared from outside. She sat in her cluttered living room, where the cloaks of former lovers, like torn moths' wings, gave riotous color to the
    floor, the couch, the chairs, the bed, cloaks and bright cloth and here and
    there a trinket which a careless foot might tread upon and break ... of no interest to her these days, these gray and deadly daysShe rested her elbows on the table and her face within her hands, and went into that nowhere place which she had learned to find within herself, as the Stepson Niko had had it, that inner landscape which in her case was a maze of many doors, each one with a key and a lock. The hallway was safe. It had turnings and there were dark places, and there were doors that rattled ominously and clamored with lost voices, doors which weakened if she thought of the thing behind themSo she did not. But somewhere, somewhere down the hall, there was a door still open. She knew that there was. She sensed it. And it was in that darkness far down the hall, where she did not willingly go. She might go up to that door and try to slip up on it and slam it quickly and lock it. But she was
    paralyzed with dread of it, that what was inside would remain tranquil 248 UNEASY ALLIANCES
    for years if she did not attempt it. There would be time. There would be time to gather strength—
    There was a room within which was treasure. A blue fragment spun within that room, power, secret power, filched from the ruin of magic in Sanctuary. She had hid it within herself, in that place where no other mage could go without killing her, and she, by the very curse that created
    her, could not die.
    There was that place far away in the dark, where something waited—
    almost she could see it, red-eyed and smiling at her within that room at the end of the hall.
    And there were the doors behind which she had shut away everyone who trusted her. She held those keys. She kept them in the room with the fragment of the Globe of Power.
    It was her virtue, her sole virtue, that she listened to their rattling and
    their clamor at her sanity, when everything in her ached to let them out,
    to have them with her, vulnerable to that thing that waited down there, in the dark.
    Especially StratonYou healed the damn horse, couldn't you help me?
    She hurt inside.
    Heal him—yes. And prove to him by that, that she had not forsaken him, that there was hope for him and her.
    And after that, after that—
    She saw him lying still as all her other lovers, by morning light. It was
    the very fact that he loved her, that would damn him. He could not, now, take his healing as a kindness. No, to him, it would be an absolution. It
    would bring him to her as he had been—but more insistent, more himself, more violent and more desperate to prove his manhood after what he had suffered—
    —and that was the very thing that would kill him. That was the nature of her curse.
    The thing in the dark snickered filthily. // knew. It was amused by her helplessness, when she was one who held what it wanted. Go to Randal, she thought. Seek help in the Mageguild. But that would precipitate things for which she was not yet ready. She knew that she was not ready and would not be ready perhaps for years. She was far too unbalanced now. The tides of need and satiation which ruled her with the changing moon—were running too high, too violent. She prowled the Maze and the Downwind and sometimes the high streets near the palace, and dead happened, happened with more frequency than made her feel safe with anything she valued.

THE BEST OF FRIENDS 249
    She needed, that was the unpalatable truth, needed sex the way Strat needed drink, to deal with the