Free Thieves World1 by Robert Asprin

the cards. In order to understand what the dream-spirit had given her, she would have to meditate upon it.
    'You said something of death and sacrifice,' Dubro said, un-mollified by her suddenly calmed face.
    'It was a dream.'
    'What sort of dream? Are you afraid that I will leave you or the bazaar now that I have no work to do?'
    'No,' she said quickly, masking the fresh anxiety his words produced. 'Besides, I have found an anvil for us.'
    'In your dream with the death and sacrifice?'
    'Death and sacrifice are keys the dream-spirit gave me. Now I must take the time to understand them.'
    Dubro stepped back from her. He was not S'danzo, and though bazaar-folk, he was not comfortable around their traditions or their gifts. When Illyra spoke of
    'seeing' Or 'knowing', he would draw away from her. He sat, quiet and sullen, in a chair pulled into the corner most distant from her S'danzo paraphernalia. She stared at the black-velvet covering other table until well past the dawn and the start of a gentle rain. Dubro placed a shell with a sweetmeat in it before her. She nodded, smiled, and ate it, but did not say anything. The smith had already turned away two patrons when Illyra finished her meditation.
    'Are you finished, now, Lyra?' he asked, his distrust of S'danzo ways not overshadowing his concern for her.
    'I think so.'
    'No more death and sacrifice?'
    She nodded and began to relate the tale of the previous day's events. Dubro listened quietly until she reached the part about Lythande.
    'In my home? Within these walls?' he demanded.
    'I saw him, but I don't know how he got in here. The rope was untouched.'
    'No!' Dubro exclaimed, beginning to pace like a caged animal. 'No, I want none of this. I will not have magicians and sorcerers in my home!'
    'You weren't here, and I did not invite him in.' Illyra's dark eyes flashed at him as she spoke. 'And he'll come back again if I don't do these things, so hear me out.'
    'No, just tell me what we must do to keep him away.'
    Illyra dug her fingernails into the palm of one hand hidden in the folds of her skirts.
    'We will have to - to stop the consecration of the cornerstone of the new temple for the Rankan gods.'
    '"Gods", Lyra, you would not meddle with the gods? Is this the meaning you found in "death and sacrifice"?'
    'It is also the reason Lythande was here last night.'
    'But, Lyra ...'
    She shook her head, and he was quiet.
    'He won't ask me what I plan to do', she thought as he tied the rope across the door and followed her towards the city. 'As long as everything is in my head, I'm certain everything is possible and that I will succeed. But if I spoke of it to anyone - even him - I would hear how little hope I have of stopping Molin Torch-holder or of changing Marilla's fate.'
    In the dream, her already dead body had been offered to Sabellia and Savankala. Her morning's introspection had convinced her that she was to introduce a corpse into Molin Torchholder's ceremonies. They passed the scene of the murder, but Jubal's men had reclaimed their comrade. The only other source of dead men she knew of was the governor's palace where executions were becoming a daily occurrence under the tightening grip of the Hell Hounds. They passed by the huge charnel-house just beyond the bazaar gates. The rain held the death smells close by the half-timbered building. Could Sabellia and Savankala be appeased with the mangled bones and fat of a butchered cow?
    Hesitantly she mounted the raised wooden walk over the red-brown effluvia of the building.
    'What do the Rankan gods want from this place?' Dubro asked before setting foot on the walkway.
    'A substitute for the one already chosen.'
    A man emerged from a side door pushing a sloshing barrel which he dumped into the slow-moving stream. Shapeless red lumps flowed under the walkway between the two bazaar-folk. Illyra swayed on her feet.
    'Even the gods of Ranke would not be fooled by these.' Dubro lowered his-head towards the now-ebbing stream. 'At