Raccciman’s World

“Save me, Lady!” Werin cried.

“That's no Lady of Light,” I gasped.

“Well you know,” the lady said in a conversational tone, “It wasn't very nice of you to have called me here when I was busy doing something else. Now what did you think was so important that you should interrupt a goddess about it?”

“The police!” Werin gasped. “Save me!”

“Oh, I'll save you all right,” she answered smiling. Her magic reached out its writhing black tendrils towards him, and I heard him scream.

I was lifted by the scruff of my neck, and the world swung dizzily about. My view of the bright moon, and the lady and her magical tendrils, was replaced with a flapping cloak, and a dizzying glimpse of a ground far below, and then we landed with a thud on the next roof over, and he hustled us into another tiny snippet of shadow, and pushed me back against the wall. Werin's screams had no trouble finding us nohow, and I cursed the glowing moon.

“How did you know she wasn't...?”

I gagged and gasped, and tried to whisper an explanation. “Magic... black... all around her.”

“You can see magic?”

“Like a real sorcerer,” I hissed back proudly. If you've only got the one thing you can do, you might as well be proud of it, even if you're on a roof and you're going to die soon nohow.

“Sorcerers can't see magic,” he responded flatly. “Magic is invisible.”

Even with him whispering he sounded very sure, and I felt all shook up again, even though I had got sort of settled after being hauled here in the first place. “I saw her magic.” I repeated uselessly, and shuddered.

There was more light here than was good for us, and I could see the outline of his head as he tilted it toward Werin's screams, and the shape of his long nose. “I believe you,” he stopped pushing me against the wall, and patted my shoulder like he was trying to make me feel better. I curled up in a ball and put my hands over my ears, but I could still hear the screams, echoing and hoarse, like when Beggar Rafes fell and put his hand in the brazier last winter, only over and over again.

My long nosed friend rose to his feet, and horrified I pawed at his trouser leg, tugging him downward, but he looked his fill before crouching again, and never mind that we were together and if he was caught I was caught too.