'Not killing wizards, if that's your worry. My business is private, and it need not intrude on yours.'

'And if I engaged you?'

'In what regard?'

'To spend one night with me.'

'You're mad.'

'I might become so - I don't age, you see. And that's the difficulty.'

'You're not afraid? You're looking to die? Is that the cause of all this?'

'Ah, I'm afraid at times. At times like this, when the shape is good. But it doesn't last. There are other times... and they come. And I never grow old, Ischade. I can't detect it if I do. And that frightens me.'

She regarded him askance ... he was handsome, very. She wondered if this had been his first shape, when he was young, that brought his trouble on him. It was a shape fine enough to have done that. The eyes were beautiful, full of pain. So many of her young men of the streets were full of that pain. It touched her as nothing else could.

'How long has it been,' he asked, setting his hands on her shoulders, touching ever so gently, 'since you had a lover worth the name? And how long since I've had hope of anything? We might be each other's answer, Ischade. If I should die, then that's one way out for me; or if I don't - then you're not doomed to lose them all, after all, are you, Ischade? Some of my forms might not be to your taste, but others -1 have infinite variety, Ischade. And no dread of you at all.'

'For this you hunted me down? That was it, wasn't it - the amulet, a way to draw yourself to me -'

'It costs you nothing. No harm. So small a thing for you, Ischade...'

It tempted. He was beautiful, this moment, this one moment, and the nights and the years were long.

And then the other chance occurred to her and she shivered, who had not shivered in years. 'No. No. Maybe you're set to die, but I'm not. No. Oppose two curses the like of ours - half the city could go in that shock, not to mention you and me. The chance of that, the merest chance - No. I'm not done living...'

He frowned, drew himself up with the least tremor about his lips, a look of panic. 'Ischade...' The voice began to change, and of a sudden the features starting with the mouth wavered, as if the strain had been too much, too long and dearly held. The scales were back; and 'No,' he cried, and plunged his face into hands which were not quite still hands. The draperies billowed, the very air rippled, and 'No...' the air sighed after him, a vanishing moan, a sob.

A second time she shivered, and looked about her, distracted, but he was quite gone.

So, well, she thought. He had had his answer, once for all. Her business took her here and there about the empire, but she discovered a liking for Sanctuary as for no other place she had known ... and it was well that Yorl took his answer, and that it was settled. New tasks might come. But at that moment she thought of the river house. This lodging was too well known for the time; and she might walk to the river... might meet someone - along the way.

The wine splashed into the cup and such was Hanse's state of mind that he never looked to see who served, only hoisted the cup and drank a mouthful.

'That's good,' he said; and Cappen Varra across the table in the Unicorn watched him shake off the ghosts and lifted his own cup, thinking ruefully of a song abandoned, a tale best not sung at all, even in the safe confines of the Unicorn. The city would be full of questions tomorrow, and it was well to know nothing at all... as he was sure Hanse planned to know least of all.

'A game,' Cappen proposed.

'No. No dicing tonight.' Hanse dug into his purse and came up with a silver round, laid it carefully on the table. 'That's for another pitcher when this is done. And for a roof tonight.'

Cappen poured again, topping off the cup - a wonder, that Hanse bought drinks. Hanse flinging money about as if he wished to be rid of it.

'Tomorrow on the game,' Cappen said, in hope.

'Tomorrow,' Hanse said, and lifted the cup.

*

Blind Darous poured, the cup held just so for his finger to feel the cool of the liquid ... measured it carefully and extended the filled goblet towards his seated master. The breathing was hoarse tonight. A hand took the stem of the cup most delicately, not touching his fingers at all, for which Darous was deeply grateful.

And towards the river, a house apart from others ... which seemed oddly discontinuous from its surrounds: in squalor, it had a garden, and a wall; and yet had a quaint decrepitude. Mradhon Vis stood outside the gate - sore and much out of sorts. She was there: she had found herself a young man much the image of Sjekso, who presently held the warmth and the light inside.

He had walked that far.

And finally, knowing what he knew, he did the harder thing, and walked away.

A GIFT IN PARTING by Robert Asprin

The sun was a full two handspans above the horizon when Hort appeared on the Sanctuary docks; early in the day but late by fishermen's standard. The youth's eyes squinted painfully at the unaccustomed brightness of the morning sun. He fervently wished he were home in bed ... or in someone else's bed ... or anywhere but here. Still, he had promised his mother he would help the Old . Man this morning. While his upbringing made it unthinkable to break that promise, his stubbornness required that he demonstrate his protest by being late.

Though he had roamed these docks since early childhood and knew them to be as scrupulously clean as possible, Hort still chose his path carefully to avoid brushing his clothes against anything. Of late he had been much more attentive to his personal appearance; this morning he had discovered he no longer had any old clothes suitable for the boat. While he realized the futility of trying to preserve his current garb through an entire day's work in the boat, newly acquired habits demanded he try to minimize the damage.

The Old Man was waiting for him, sitting on the overturned boat like some stately sea-bird sleeping off a full belly. The knife in his hand caressed the stray piece of wood he held with a slow, rhythmic cadence. With each pass of the blade a long curl of wood fell to join the pile at his feet. The size of the pile was mute testament to how long the Old Man had been waiting.

Strange, but Hort had always thought of him as the Old Man, never as Father. Even the men who had fished these waters with him since their shared boyhoods called him Old Man rather than Panit. He wasn't really old, though his face was deceptive. Wrinkled and crisscrossed by weather lines, the Old Man's face looked like one of those red clay riverbeds one saw in the desert beyond Sanctuary: parched, cracked, waiting for rain that would never fall.

No, that was wrong. The Old Man didn't look like the desert. The Old Man would have nothing in common with such a large accumulation of dirt. He was a fisherman, a creature of the sea and as much a part of the sea as one of those weathered rocks that punctuated the harbour.

The old man looked up at his son's approach then tet his attention settle back on the whittling.

'I'm here,' Hort announced unnecessarily, adding, 'sorry I'm late.'

He cursed himself silently when that remark slipped out. He had been determined not to apologize, no matter what the Old Man said, but when the Old Man said nothing...

His father rose to his feet unhurriedly, replacing his knife in its sheath with a gesture made smooth and unconscious by years of repetition.

'Give me a hand with this,' he said, bending to grasp one end of the boat.