Strick sighed and looked morose. "Nothing, yet."

In an astonishingly young and vibrant voice for such an oldster, the man called Skarth said succinctly, "Shit."

"Wait." With a smallish smile twitching at his mouth, Strick dropped a small brown and yellow tiger-eye into the brown old hand.

"Glass," Skarth said in instant appraisal, and Strick laughed.

"True. But it's also today's message token. Hand it to Abohorr and ask him what you want to know. By tonight either he or Ahdio will know where Tarkle stays."

On the way out of Strick's, Skarth offered the ridiculously disguised girl his hand. She shrank away. She hustled along beside him, while he walked bent, rolling along like a sailor, clonking the hard-packed earth of the streets and "streets" with his staff.

She had one sentence of him as they made their way through a nice calm windless Sanctuary; Taya asked how it was that he was obviously of considerable age and yet his mustache was so black.

"Dye," Skarth said, from the throat. "The only way a S'danzo could have red hair."

Taya clamped her soft and sensuous lips and wasted no more words on so surly an escort.

When at last they entered the area called the Maze with its noise of yapping dogs and bustling, jostling people amid the odors of cooking and sweat and the ordure of yapping dogs, Taya shrank, bundling into herself and her acres of clothing. Someone jostled her hard and she sought Skarth's hand. He jerked it away.

"Clay might come off," he muttered in manner snarly, and led her on, on to that tavern with the laughably obscene sign featuring an impossible animal performing an impossible act upon itself.

Marype, apprentice to the master mage Markmor until the latter's timely demise, stood gazing down at the smallish pile of white ash in the bottom of a bowl of pure silver. The face of Marype was serene, brows up and eyes large and contemplative.

"You had a short and decent life but not too much fun of late, hmm, Marype?" he murmured.