Darkness was falling in Old Gandrin, in an unfamiliar quarter of the city. Lythande, the Pilgrim Adept of the Blue Star, alone, isolated and abandoned, far from her usual haunts -- insofar as she had usual haunts, or could count on anything to recur and be ordinary in her far from ordinary life. To add to the general dismalness of the night, a light rain was falling, not heavily but with drizzling persistence, not enough to soak anything, but enough to banish dryness, warmth or comfort and imbue everything with a miserable and pervasive dampness throughout.
Although the streets of Old Gandrin were perhaps safer for an Adept of the Blue Star than for an average citizen, they could hardly be said to be altogether safe for anyone after dark, and Lythande had no desire to be attacked or robbed in the deserted fields of the graveyard district. She had come there considerably earlier in the day, in search of certain herbs and ingredients for the making of spells; it was said to add to the efficacy of such ingredients that they grew or had been gathered in the shadow of the gallows.
Lythande was not altogether certain that she believed this;
but if her clients believed it, she could hardly afford the luxury of flouting this belief; after all, belief was a major ingredient which must be liberally stirred into every spell before it could work at all.
Around her stretched a series of barren open fields which had perhaps been last cultivated before the city walls were built; here and there she could see the dim lights of occasional scattered dwellings. Even if the night had been clear there would have been little moon; it was her business to know such things. The aforesaid gallows cast a long and wavering shadow almost to Lythande's very feet, but there was no sign anywhere of light such as might have marked out an inn or any such place where one might find lodging. Beyond the gallows a broken field stretched, lumpy and barren with the uneven shapes of old and fallen gravestones. A deserted place, good perhaps for ghosts but less salubrious for mortals; and Lythande, in spite of a life prolonged by magic to the span of three ordinary lifetimes, still counted herself among the living and mortal.
At this moment a shadow crossed her path and a not unfamiliar voice spoke: "Who goes there? Speak!"
"I am a minstrel and magician by the name of Lythande," she said, and in answer came the most unexpected of words;
"Greetings, fellow Pilgrim; what do you on this lonely road at this godforgotten hour?"
"If indeed there are gods, a question about which I entertain certain doubts," Lythande observed calmly, "I would think it unlucky to call any place godforgotten in the fear that they might in fact forget it."
"Even if there be no gods," replied the newcomer, a dark shadow on the path, "I should consider it unlucky to say so, for fear that if they do in fact exist and I show bad manners by refusing to believe in them, they might retaliate by refusing to believe in me.
Lythande found the sound of that paradox sufficiently familiar to say "Do I speak then to a fellow Pilgrim?"
"You do," replied the voice, "I am your fellow minstrel Rajene; we have debated these questions before this time in the courts of the Blue Star to the sound of the lute. Do I guess rightly that we should together seek shelter, if only against damp and ghosts, for the exchange of songs?"
"I am unfamiliar with these quarters," Lythande said. "And while I have not yet encountered a ghost here or elsewhere, I observe somewhat similar precautions about ghosts as you against gods touching their existence or nonexistence; in case I should have good reason for abandoning my disbelief."
Now in the darkness Lythande could make out the lines of a voluminous mage-robe cut like her own, deeply hooded; and in the folds of the mage-robe's hood, the pale blue burning outline of a star like the one that glowed between her own brows. She said "If you know of any shelter against this possibly god-infested and ghost-haboring quarter, I will follow you to it."
Rajene's voice was a strong and resonant baritone; far deeper than the mellow and sexless contralto of Lythande's own, though perhaps equally musical. Across the back where Lythande's lute was strung, Lythande could make out the outline of a chitarrone, an archaic but tuneful instrument almost as tall as the man who bore it. In fact, of all her fellow Adepts of the Blue Star, there were few Lythande would have rather met on a dark night; for as far as she knew, she had no quarrel with Rajene, and when they were fellow apprentices in the Temple of the Star, they had been friends -- or as near to friends as any magician could come to friendship. Which is to say that at the least they were not enemies.
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