And at first she did think it an echo, but when she stopped for a moment to assess the quality of the echo, it went on for at least three steps into the silence;

Step-pause-step-pause-step.

Not an echo then; but someone, or some thing, following her. In the world of the Twin Suns, where encountering magic was rather more likely than not, magic was more often than not of the evil kind. In a lifetime spanning at least three ordinary lifetimes, Lythande had encountered a great deal of magic; she was by necessity a mercenary-magician, and Adept of the Blue Star, and by choice a minstrel; and she had discovered early in her extended life that good magic was the rarest of all encounters and seldom came her way. She had lived this long by developing good instincts; and her best instincts told her that this footfall following her was not benevolent.

She had no notion of what it might be. The simplest solution was that someone in the last tow she had passed through had developed a purely material grudge against her, and was following her on mischief bent, for some reason or no reason at all; perhaps a mere moral distrust of magicians, or of magic (a condition not at all rare in Old Gandrin), and had chosen to take the law into his or her own hands and dispose of the unwelcome procurer of said magic. This was not at all rare, and Lythande had dealt with plenty of would-be assassins who wished to stop magic by putting and effective stop to the magician; however powerful and Adept's magic, it could seldom survive and knife in the back. On the other hand, that could be handled with equal simplicity; after three ordinary lifetimes, Lythande's back had not yet become a sheath for knives.

So Lythande stepped off the road, loosening the first of her two knives in its scabbard; the simple white-handled knife, who purposed was to handle purely material dangers of the road: footpads, assassins, thieves. She enveloped herself in the grey cloudy folds of the hooded mage-robe, which made her look like a piece of the night itself, or a shadow, and stood waiting for the owner of the footsteps to come up with her.

But it was not that simple. Step-pause-step, and the footfalls died; the mysterious follower was pacing her and it was not that simple. Lythande had hardly thought it would be so simple. She sheathed the white-handled knife again, and stood motionless, reaching out with all her specially trained senses to focus on the follower.

What she felt first was a faint electric tingle in the blue star which was between her brows; and a small, not quite painful crackle in her head. The smell of magic, she translated to herself; whatever was following her, it was neither as simple, nor as easily disposed of, as an assassin with a knife.

She loosened the black-handled knife in the left-hand scabbard, and, stepping herself like a ghost or a shadow, retraced her steps at the side of the road. This knife was especially fashioned for supernatural menaces, to kill ghosts and anything else from spectres to werewolves; no knife but this one could have taken her own life had she wearied of it.

A shadow with an irregular step glided toward her, and Lythande raised the black-handled knife. It came plunging down, and the glimmer of the enchanted blade was lost in the shadow. There was a far-off, eerie cry which seemed to come, not from the shadow facing her on the dark road, but from some incredibly distant ghostly realm, to curdle the very blood in her veins, to wrench pain and lightnings from the Blue Star between her brows. Then, as that cry trembled into silence, Lythande felt the black handle of the knife come back into her hand, but a faint glimmer of moonlight showed her the handle alone; the blade had vanished, except for some stray drops of molten metal which fell slowly to the earth and vanished.

So the blade was gone; the black-handled knife which had slain unnumbered ghosts and other supernatural beings. Judging by the terrifying cry, Lythande had wounded her follower; but had she killed the thing which had eaten her magical blade? Anything that powerful would certainly be tenacious of life.

And if her black-handled knife would not kill it, it was unlikely it could be killed by any spell, protection or magic she could command at the moment. It had been driven away, perhaps, but she could not be certain she had freed herself from it. No doubt, if she went on, it would continue to follow her, and one day it would catch up with her on some other lonesome road.

But for the moment she had exhausted her protection. And... Lythande glowered angrily at the black knife-handle and the ruined blade ... she had deprived herself needlessly of a protection which had never failed her before. Somehow she must manage to replace her enchanted knife before she again dared the roads of Old Gandrin by night.

For the moment -- although she had traveled too far and for too long to fear anything she was likely to encounter on any ordinary night -- she would be wiser to remove herself from the road. Such encounters as a mercenary-magician, particularly one such as Lythande, could expect, were seldom of the likely kind.

So she went on in the darkness, listening for the hesitating step of the follower behind. There was only the vaguest and most distant of sounds; that blow, and that screech, indicated that while she had probably not destroyed her follower, she had driven it at least for a while into some other place. Whether it was dead, or had chosen to go and follow someone safer, for the moment Lythande neither knew or cared.

The important thing at the moment was shelter. Lythande had been travelling these roads for many years, and remembered that many years ago there had been an inn somewhere hereabout. She had never chosen, before this, to shelter there -- unpleasant rumors circulated about travelers who spent a night at that inn and were never seen again, or seen in dreadfully altered form. Lythande had chosen to stay away; the rumors were none of her business, and Lythande had not survived this long in Old Gandrin without knowing the first rule of survival, which was to ignore everything but your own survival. On the rare occasions when curiosity or compassion had prompted her to involve herself in anyone else's fate, she had had all kinds of reason to regret it.

Perhaps her obscure destiny had guided her on this occasion to investigate these rumors. She looked down the black expanse of the road -- without even moonlight -- and saw a distant glimmer of light. Whether it was the inn of uncanny rumor, or whether it was the light of a hunter's campfire, or the lair of a were-dragon, there, Lythande resolved, she would seek shelter for the night. The last client to avail himself of her services as a mercenary magician -- a man who had paid her well to dehaunt his ancestral mansion -- had left her with more than enough coin for a night at even the most luxurious inns; and if she could not pick up a commission to offset the cost of a night's shelter, she was no worse off. Besides, with the lute at her back, she could usually earn a supper and a bed as a minstrel; they were not common in these parts.

A few minutes of brisk walking strengthened the vague light into a brilliantly shining lantern hung over a painted sign which portrayed the figure of an old woman driving a pig; the inn sign read the Hag and Swine. Lythande chuckled under her breath ... the sign was comical enough, but it startled her that for such a cheerful sign there was no sound of music or jollity from inside; all was quiet as the very demon-haunted road itself. It made her remember again the very unsavory rumors about this very inn.

There was a very old story about a hag who had indeed attempted to transform random travelers into swine, and other forms, but Lythande could not remember where she had heard that story. Well, if she, an Adept of the Blue Star, was no match for any roadside hag, whatever her propensity for increasing her herd of swine -- or perhaps furnishing her table with pork -- at the expense of travelers, she deserved whatever happened to her. Shouldering her lute and concealing the handle of the ruined knife in one of the copious pockets of the mage-robe, Lythande strode through the half-open door.