Niko gazed after Randal as the mage ran, full-tilt, into the bushes. He nodded. "Now it's just the two of us, is that it?"

"Well ..." she temporized, "there are my snakes, of course." She was primping up her beauty in a way he couldn't see, letting her young and girlish simulacrum come forward, easing the evil and the danger in her face and form. By all she revered, did she love this boy with his hazel eyes so clear and his quiet soul. By all she held sacred, the feel of his hand on her back as he ushered her into her own house in gentlemanly fashion was unlike the touch of any man or mage she'd ever known.

She wanted only to keep him. She sent away the snakes, having to discorporate one who objected that she would then be defenseless, open to attack by man or god.

"Take that silly armor off, beloved, and we'll have a bath together," she murmured, preparing to spell water, hot and steaming, in her gold-footed tub.

And when she turned again, he'd done that and stood before her, hands out to strip her clothes away, and his body announced its intention to make her welcome.

Welcome her he did, in hot water and hot passion, until, amid the moment of her joy and just before she was about to begin a rune to claim his soul forever, a commotion began outside her door.

First it was lightning that rocked her to her foundations, then thunder, then the sound of many running feet and chanting priests as all Vashanka's priesthood came tramping up her cart-track, battle-streamers on their standards and horns to blow the eardrums out of evil to their lips.

He was as nonplussed as she. He held her in his arms and pressed her close, telling her, "Don't worry, I'll take care of them. You stay here, and call back all your minions-not that I don't think I can protect you, but just in case."

She watched him dress hurriedly, strapping on his armor over wet skin, and run outside, his weapons at hand and ready.

No mortal had ever come to her defense before. So when, snakes by her side and undeads rising, she saw them wrestle him to the ground, disarm him, put him in a cage (no doubt the cage they'd meant for her) and drive away with him, she wept for Niko, who loved her but had been taken from her by the hated priesthood.

And she planned revenge-not only upon the priesthood, but upon Ischade, the trickster necromant, and Randal, who should never have been allowed to get away, and on all of Sanctuary-all but Niko, who was innocent of all and who, if only he could have stayed a little longer, would have proclaimed in his own words his love for her and thus become hers forevermore.

As for the rest-now there would be hell to pay.

THE VEILED LADY OR A LOOK AT THE NORMAL FOLK by Andrew Qffutt

The veiled lady traveled to Sanctuary with the caravan that originated in Suma and had grown at Aurvesh. She was faceless behind the deeply slate blue arras or veil that backed the white one. It covered her head like a miniature tent, held in place by a cloth chaplet of interwoven white and slate. In her Sumese drover's robe of grayish, off-white woolen homespun, the veiled lady was not quite shapeless; she appeared to be either fat or with child. True, others often scarf-muffled their lower faces against the cold, but the point was that the veiled woman never, never showed her face above the eyebrows and below her large medium-hued eyes.

Naturally the caravanseers and her fellow pilgrims wondered, and speculated, and opined and discussed. An innocent child and a rude adult-or-nearly were actually so crude as to ask her why she was hiding behind a veil and all that loose robe.

"Oh my cute little dear," the veiled lady told the child, cupping its plump dark cheek with a nice and quite pretty hand, "it's the sun. It makes me break out all in green warts. Wouldn't that be awful to have to look at?"

No such touch accompanied the veiled lady's response to the rude almost-woman who breached the bounds of gentility and mannered decency by asking the same question.

"Pox," the veiled lady said tersely. The questioner, while bereft of the sensitivity to blush or even apologize, said no more. Eyes widening, she abruptly remembered that her presence was required elsewhere.

(The first "explanation" was pooh-poohed, though not directly to the veiled one; if that were so, a fellow pilgrim wisely observed, then why were her hands not gloved, and why were they so pretty-a lady's hands? The second explanation was considerably more troubling. It was suspect, but who wanted to take a chance on catching some pox or other? People began to keep their distance, just in case.)

The big good-looking guard from Mrsevada was rude, too, but in a different way. He knew what flashing those good big teeth in that handsome face would get him. It had got him plenty, and would again. Having assured his comrades that he would soon bring them the answer, he addressed her with cocky confidence.

"Whatcha hiding under all them robes and veil, sweets?"

"A syphilitic face and a pregnant belly," the faceless woman told him. "Want to visit me in my tent tonight?"

"Uh-I uh, no, I was just-"

"And what are you hiding behind that totally phony smile, swordsman?"

He blinked and the dazzling smile faded away in patches, like the dissipating of those fluffy white clouds that signify nothing.

"You have a sharp tongue, pregnant and syphilitic."

"That," she told him, "is true. You can understand that I don't like men with winning smiles ..."

The handsome guardsman went away.

After that, no one asked her questions. Furthermore, the guardsmen, her fellow travelers, and the caravanseers not only left her alone, but indeed shunned the veiled woman-who after all could surely be no lady ... !

She had paid her way-the full charge, too-without argument or complaint and with only the modicum of dickering that showed her to be human, though not .arrogant. (Most nobles showed their arrogance either by stating their own price and paying it-usually less than what could be considered fair. Others at once paid what was asked, so as to show that they were far too well off and noble to dicker with mere clerks and caravan masters or booking stewards.) She had brought her own water and foodstuffs. She stayed to herself and caused no trouble, while giving others something to talk about. She was no trouble at all.

The tall caravan master, his gray-shot beard and easy confidence reminders of his experience, did not believe that she was syphilitic, or pocked, or sun cursed, or pregnant either. Nor did he view her as sinister merely because she refused to show her face. Thus Caravan Master Eliab was not pleasant to the little delegation of three women and the prideless husband of one of them, when they came to demand that the veiled person reveal and identify herself on the grounds that she was mysterious and therefore sinister and Frightening The Children.

Master Eliab looked down upon them, literally and figuratively. "Point out to me those children who are affrighted of the Lady Saphtherabah," he said, making up an impressive name for in truth she had signed on with him simply as "Cleya," a name common in Suma, "and I shall make them forget her by giving them something else to be fearful of."

"Hmp. And what might that be. Caravan Master?"

"ME!" he bellowed, and he transformed his bushily bearded face into a fearful scowl. At the same time he swept out the curved sword from his worn paisley patterned sash. Curling his other hand into a claw, he pounced at them.

He took only the one big lunging step, but the members of the delegation took many. Squealing and worse, four disunited individuals fled his company.