Blood Ties

"Now. That foul breath that has cost you friends and alienated your wife is not gone, but will go, steadily. I am only a maker of small white spells. Noble, and sometimes I must have help. Keep that cup. Use it. Clean your teeth twice daily, after you eat. Get in there with cloth and soap. Yes, it will taste terrible; you've been told there is a Price here, beyond those ten silver coins you claim to find dear. After you have cleaned, add a goodly measure of salt to that cup, fill with water-not-wine, and rinse. You heed not drink. Swirl it about in your mouth and spit, until all is gone. Remember all this! It is important. If in two weeks your breath is not improved fivehold, return to me."

After Volmas had left, Strick stood shaking his head. Charlatan, he told himself. Yet he had done good for everyone who had to come in contact with that stupid swine, to whom ten pieces of silver were as naught. That cup was one he had never liked, and he had known he'd find a use for some of the seeds from blind Jakob's melons!

"My dear, you are under a spell. I ca

Smoke of the Flame, he thought in anger and true pain, watching her unhappy departure. Abhorrent black magic again. After two weeks here I have done so little for these poor pitiful people with their misery and their wicked sorcerers!

The lady of wealth was forty-eight and showing about one gray hair for every six black. The dyes she had tried made an ugly mess, deadening her hair. He considered her, her vanity, and her offer of three golden disks bearing a likeness of the new Emperor.

"It is a natural process. Lady Amaya. The problem is that presently it's streaky. If it grayed faster, or went white, you would be both beautiful and striking."

"Oh-oh my."

She went away and he waited an hour before sending her golden coins to her.

She returned next day. "Show me silver," she said, setting a largeish dinky bag of purple cloth on his desk, and he showed her. He also "cheated." She did look magnificent with silver hair, and he added a small spell so that she and her vanity agreed with the fact.

"Oh! Oh my!" she said, staring at the mirror, turning her head this way and that. "Oh, Spellweaver! You are a genius! My husband will love it and all the girls will-oh my. What shall I tell them?"

"That you have been dyeing it for two years or so, and are so happy to be over your vanity!"

Amaya laughed in delight. "A genius! They will be filled with both shame and envy!"

Within the next two weeks he had five requests for silver hair, although none of these others, of varying stations in life, gave him fifty pieces of silver. Not to mention the chain of gold Amaya's husband sent as "token of his pleasure."

"So. It's been a month, and you are staying busy. Tell me about your day," Esaria said, looking so bright and su

He spoke to the pepper pot with which he toyed. "I was asked for a love potion. She said she just knew he was fond of her but when he's up close he loses ardor, unto aloofness. I gave her what she needed. A vial of colored wotter with a bit of wine and camomile for aroma, and soap made green by simple herbal coloring. I bade her bathe daily and well, putting a bit of each into the bath wotter and drying thoroughly."

Esaria looked very skeptical indeed. "That's a love potion?!"

"It is what she needs. She stinks. If he doesn't respond to her better aroma, someone will; she's attractive. For that I earned two coppers. Stop laughing, brat. My business is help for the people. I had to turn away a clubfoot. I can do nothing about that-by the Flame, how I wish I could! A former client returned. Looked good: I had indeed removed his acne, but his Price took the form of diarrhea he could not bear. I removed the spell and returned his two coppers. So-he has acne and a settled stomach." Strick shrugged. "He's seventeen. The acne will go. Mine did."

"So has most of mine," she said. "But at this rate you could

starve!"

He shook his head. "Hardly. A certain friend of your mother's is very sensitive about her scraggly hair. I put a little spell on it and made her promise to wash it at least every other day. For that, she left fourteen silver Imperials-old Imperials. Said it is her magic number."

"Is it?"

He smiled. "No. Must be mine, though," and they chuckled together. "Too, a messenger arrived from Volmas. His message was a nice fat gold piece."

"Is that what happened to his foul breath! Ah, my hero!" Clasping her hands under her chin, she gazed at him. "What else. Hero of the People?"

"I spelled a wart off a finger. Ten coppers! Accepted a sack of decent wine for still another head of silver hair. I think it was more than she could afford, at age thirty. A woman asked me to cast a spell on her neighbor, who is after her husband. Third request for punitive spells this week. I refuse them all. The very next client asked me to make her more attractive to her husband. See the difference in the minds of the two individuals? I told her she would be, as soon as she gets him to come to me. The spell, you see, needs to be on him, so that he perceives her as more attractive!"

"How lovely! You might put one on a certain man for me," she said, tracing a finger idly along his forearm.

"If you were more attractive no one in Sanctuary could stand it," he said, and rushed on before she could say what he did not want to hear. "This is interesting. The man and the woman came together. Their neighbor's dog barks every night and disturbs their sleep and that of their infant. He said he wanted the dog dead and I told him no. He came back with almost a command: 'At least punish my neighbor! The swine sleeps right through that beast's noise!'" Strick sighed. "That was tempting!"

"I should think so! Sounds like justice to me," Esaria said.

"True. But it's beyond what I will do. When he settled down and she begged for any sort of relief, I promised that the dog would not bother their sleep again."

"Oh how wonderful, Strick!" She squeezed his arm. "You put a sleeping spell on them?-or one on their ears?"

"No! Never that; I couldn't make such a spell selective. They could perish in their sleep because they heard nothing. No, but if you'd like to take a little ride with me 'morrow afternoon, we will visit their neighbor's dog. Simple: I merely see to it that he makes no sound between late twilight and

dawn."

She laughed aloud. "How marvelous! And yes, I'd love to go!" She squeezed his arm at the elbow. After a few moments she sobered: "Oh. But suppose someone tried to break in at the home of the dog's owner? Won't you have done bad along with the good?" Now her leg had found his, under the

table.

"A dog that barks at night without real cause is of no value, and better off on a farm someplace. Besides, its owner sleeps right on, remember? Else he'd have got rid of the dog long ago. Or become its master as well as merely owner."

"Ah. I should have known better than to question you. Oh Strick you're so wise and so sensitive! You care so, about

people!"

Strick responded to compliments no better than most, and chose not to respond to that. "Do you know someone called