Thieves World1 Read Online Free PDF

could exchange with.
    But Melilot had deduced that if the scroll were so important that Nizharu kept it by him even when undertaking a mundane tour of inspection, it must be very private indeed. He was, apparently, correct. Nizharu listened with close attention, and many nods to the alternative plan of action. For a consideration, Melilot was prepared to furnish a false translation designed to jar Aye-Gophlan into doing something for which Nizharu could safely arrest him, without it ever being known that he had enjoyed temporary possession of a scroll which by ' rights should have remained in the commander's hands. Let him only specify the terms, and it would be as good as done. When she - whom Nizharu still believed a he, for which she was profoundly glad finished talking, the commander pondered a while. At length he started to smile, though it never reached his eyes, and in firm clear terms expressed his conditions for entering into a compact along the lines Melilot proposed. He capped all by handing over two gold coins, of a type she did not recognize, with a promise that he would have her (his) hide if they did not both reach Melilot, and a large silver token of the kind used at Ilsig for himself. Then he instructed a soldier she had not met to escort her to the gate and across Governor's Walk. But she gave the man the slip as soon as they were clear of the palace grounds and rushed towards the back entry, via Silk Corner. Melilot being rich, he could afford locks on his doors; he had given her a heavy bronze key which she had concealed in her writing case. She fumbled it into the lock, but before she could turn it the door swung wide and she stepped forward as though impelled by another person's will.
    This was the street - or rather alley. This was the door with its overhanging porch. Outside everything was right.
    But inside everything was absolutely, utterly, unqualifiedly wrong. 4
    Jarveena wanted to cry out, but found herself unable to draw enough breath. A vast sluggishness took possession other muscles, as though she were descending into glue. Taking one more step, she knew, would tire her to the point of exhaustion; accordingly she concentrated merely on looking about her, and within seconds was wishing that she hadn't.
    A wan, greyish light suffused the place. It showed her high stone walls on either side, a stone-flagged floor underfoot, but nothing above except drifting mist that sometimes took on an eerie pale colour: pinkish, bluish, or the sickly phosphorescent shade of dying fish. Before her was nothing but a long table, immensely and ridiculously long, such that one might seat a full company of soldiers at it.
    A shiver tried to crawl down her spine, but failed thanks to the weird paralysis that gripped her. For what she was seeing matched in every respect the descriptions, uttered in a whisper, which she had heard of the home of Enas Yorl. In all the land there were but three Great Wizards, powerful enough not to care that their true names were noised abroad: one was at Ranke and served the needs of the court; one was at Ilsig and accounted the most skilful; the third, by reason of some scandal, made do with the slim pickings at Sanctuary, and that was Enas Yorl.
    But how could he be here? His palace was on - or, more exactly, below - Prytanis Street, where the city petered out to the south-east of Temple Avenue. Except...
    The thought burgeoned from memory and she fought against it, and failed. Someone had once explained to her: Except when it is somewhere else. Abruptly it was as though the table shrank, and from an immense distance its farther end drew close and along with it a high-backed, throne-like chair in which sat a curious personage. He was arrayed in an enormously full, many layered cloak of some dull brown stuff, and wore a high-crowned hat whose broad brim somehow Contrived to shadow his face against even the directionless grey light that obtained here.
    But within that shadow two red gleams