The Face of Chaos

MIRROR IMAGE by Diana L. Paxson

The big mirror glimmered balefully from the wall, challenging him.

Even from across the room, Lalo could see himself reflected - a short man with thinning, gingery hair, tending to put on weight around the middle though his legs were thin; a man with haunted eyes and stubby, paint-stained hands. But it was not his reflection empty-handed that frightened him. The thing he feared was his own image copied on to a canvas, if he should dare to face the mirror with paintbrush in hand.

A shout from the street startled him and he went softly to the window, but'it was only someone chasing a cutpurse who had mistaken their cul-de-sac for a shortcut between Slippery Street and the Bazaar. The strangeness of life in Sanctuary since the Beysib invasion, or infestation, or whatever it should be called, gave simple theft an almost nostalgic charm.

Lalo gazed out over the jumble of roofs to the blue shimmer of the harbour and an occasional flash where the sun caught the gilding on a Beysib mast. Ils knew the Beysib were colourful enough, with their embroidered velvets and jewels that put a sparkle in even Prince Kitty-Cat's eye, but Lalo had not been asked to paint any of them so far. Or to paint anything else, for that matter - not for some time now. Until the good folk of Sanctuary figured out how to transfer some of their new neighbours' wealth into their own coffers, no one was going to have either the resources or the desire to hire Sanctuary's only notable native artist to paint new decorations in their halls. Lalo wondered if Enas Yorl's gift to him would work on a Beysib. Did the fish-eyes have souls to be revealed?

Without willing it, Lalo found himself turning towards the mirror again.

'Lalo!'

Gilla's voice broke the enchantment. She filled the doorway, frowning at him, and he flushed guiltily. His preoccupation with the mirror bothered her, but she would have been more than bothered if she had known why it fascinated him so.

'I'm going shopping,' she said abruptly. 'Anything you want me to get for you?'

He shook his head. 'Am I supposed to be watching the baby while you're gone?'

Alfi thrust past her flowing skirts and looked up at his father with bright eyes.

'I'm t'ree years old!' said Alfi. 'I a big boy now!'

Lalo laughed suddenly and bent to ruffle the mop of fair curls. 'Of course you are.'

Gilla towered above him like the statue of Shipri All-Mother in the old temple. 'I'll take him with me,' she said. 'The streets have been quiet lately, and he needs the exercise.'

Lalo nodded and, as he straightened, Gilla touched his cheek, and he understood what she could so rarely manage to put into words, and smiled.

'Don't let the fish-eyes gobble you up!' he replied.

Gilla snorted. 'In broad daylight? I'd like to see them try! Besides, our Vanda says they're only people like ourselves, for all their funny looks, and serving that Lady Kurrekai, she should know. Will you trust Bazaar tales or your own daughter's word?' She backed out of the doorway, hoisted the child on to one broad haunch, and scooped up the market basket.

The building shook beneath Gilla's heavy tread as she went down the stairs, and Lalo moved back to the window to see her down the street. The hot sunlight gilded her fading hair until it was as bright as the child's.

Then she was gone, and he was alone with the mirror and his fear.

A man called Zanderei had asked Lalo if he had ever painted a self-portrait whether he had ever dared to find out if the gift the sorcerer Enas Yorl had given him of painting the truth of a man would enable him to make a portrait of his own soul. In return, Lalo had given Zanderei his life, and at first he had been so glad to be alive himself that he did not worry about Zanderei's words. Then the Beysib fleet had appeared on the horizon, with the sun striking flame from their mastheads and their carven prows, and no one had had leisure to worry about anything else for awhile. But now things were quiet and Lalo had no commissions to occupy him, and he could not keep his eyes from the mirror that hung on the wall.

Lalo heard a dog barking furiously in the street and two women squabbling in the courtyard below and, more faintly, the perpetual hubbub of the Bazaar; but here it was very still. A stretched canvas sat ready on his easel - he had been planning to spend this morning blocking out a scene of the marriage of Ils and Shipri. But there was no one else in the house now - no one to peer through his doorway and ask what he thought he was doing - no one to see.

Like a sleepwalker, Lalo lifted the easel to one side of the mirror, positioned himself so that the light from the window fell full on his face, and picked up the paintbrush.

Then, like a lover losing himself for the first time in the body of his beloved, or an outmatched swordsman opening his guard to his enemy's final blow, Lalo began to paint what he saw.

Gilla heaved the basket of groceries on to the table, rescued the sack of flour from the child's exploring fingers, and poured it into the bin, then found a wooden spoon for Alfi and set him down, where he began to bang it merrily against the floor. She stood for a moment, still a little out of breath from the stairs, then began to put her other purchases away.

It did not take long. The influx of Beysib had strained Sanctuary's food supply, and their wealth had sent prices climbing, and though Gilla had hoarded a fair amount of silver, there was no telling how long it would be until Lalo was working regularly again. So it was back to rice and beans for the family, with an occasional fish in the stew. Now that so many new ships had been added to the local fleet, fish were the one item in ample supply.

Gilla sighed. She had enjoyed their affluence - enjoyed putting meat on the table and experimenting with the spices imported from the north. But they had subsisted on coppers for more years than she liked to remember, and few enough of those. She was an expert on feeding a family on peas and promises. They would survive the Beysib as they had survived everything else.

Alfi's short legs were carrying him determinedly towards the door to Lalo's studio. Gilla scooped him up and held him against her, still squirming, and kissed his plump cheek.

'No, love, not in there - Papa's working and we must leave him alone!'

But it was odd that Lalo had not at least called a welcome when he heard her come in. When he was painting a sitter, Vashanka could have blasted the house without his noticing, but there had been no commissions for some time, and when Lalo painted for pleasure he was usually glad for an excuse to break off for a cup of tea. She called to Latilla to take her little brother into the children's room to play, then coaxed a fire to life in the stove and put the kettle on.

Lalo still had not stirred.

'Lalo, love - I've got water heating; d'you want a cup of tea?' She stood for a moment, hands on hips, frowning at the shut, unresponsive door; then she marched across the floor and opened it.

'You could at least answer me!' Gilla stopped. Lalo was not at his easel. For a moment she thought he must have decided to go out, yet the door had not been locked. But there was something different about the room. Lalo was standing by the far wall, for all the world like a piece of furniture. It took another moment for her to realize that he had not moved when she came in. He had not even looked at her.

Swiftly she went to him. He stood as if he had backed across the room step by careful step until he ran into the wall. The paintbrush was still clenched in one hand; she tugged it free and set it down. And still he did not move. His eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the easel across the room. She glanced at it - a man's face, and at this distance she saw nothing remarkable - then turned to him again.

'Lalo, are you all right? Did you hear me? Shipri All-Mother have mercy - Lalo, what's wrong?' She shook his arm and still he did not respond to her, and a sick fear uncoiled itself beneath her heart and began to grow.

Gilla gathered him into her ample embrace and for a moment held him unresisting. His body was warm, and she could feel his heart beating very slowly against her own. but she knew with dreadful certainty that he was no longer there. Biting her lip, she guided him to the pallet and arranged him on it as one of the children might arrange a doll.

Fear's chill tentacles extended all the way to her fingertips now. and she remained kneeling before Lalo, chafing his hands less for his sake than for her own. His eyes were unfocused, the pupils darkly dilated. He was not looking at her. He had not been looking at the painting either, although his face had been turned towards it when she came in. These eyes were focused on something beyond Sanctuary - some inner darkness into which a man might fall forever and find no rest.

Shivering, Gilla tried to close his eyelids, but they slid open again upon that awful, sightless stare. She could feel a scream crouched in her breast, waiting for her to give way to horror and set it free. but she set her teeth painfully and heaved herself to her feet.

Hysterics would do neither of them any good now. Time enough to release the grief that was building in her when - if - there was no hope for him. Perhaps it was some strange seizure that would soon pass, or a new sickness that time and her strict nursing would cure. Or perhaps (her mind probed delicately at a darker thought and flinched away), perhaps it was sorcery.

'Lalo -' she said softly, as if her voice could still reach him somehow, 'Lalo my darling, it's all right. I'll get you a doctor; I'll make you get well!' Already her mind was considering. If he did not wake of himself by tomorrow she would have to find a physician - perhaps Alien Stulwig - she had heard that his potions saved more lives than they took.

The teakettle began to wail, and as she hurried across the room. her hip set the easel teetering. Without stopping, she picked it up and set it in the corner with the picture facing the wall.

Lalo peered uneasily through murky clouds that roiled about him like the mage wind that had devastated Sanctuary the year before. But his life was still in him, though the stink was enough to drive the breath from a man's lungs. For a moment he thought himself back in the sewers of the Maze, but there was too much light. So where in the name of Shalpa Shadow-lord had he gotten to?

He took a step forward, then another, his feet finding their own way over the uneven ground. The colours that streaked the clouds nauseated him - sulphur yellow that shaded into a livid pink like an unhealed scar, and then to something else - an unnameable colour that made his eyes hurt so that he had to look away.

Perhaps I am dead, he thought then. Poor Cilia will grieve for me, hut she has her hoard, and the older children are earning money of their own. She will do better without me than I would if she had left me alone ... The thought was bitter, and he found himself weeping as he stumbled along. But the tears had no substance and after a little they disappeared. He returned to his probing, as a man will tongue the sore space where a tooth has gone.

All of the priests were wrong, both the ones who said that the gods take departed souls to paradise and those who are convinced one is condemned to Hell. Or perhaps I have such a spineless soul that I have deserved neither, and so they have sentenced me to wander here!

Lalo had spent half his life dreaming of escape from Sanctuary. But now he had lost Sanctuary, and he was astonished by the passion of his longing to see it again.

Something scurried by him and he jumped. Was it a rat? Were there rats here? And surely now he could see cobblestones beneath his feet. Trembling, Lalo stared around him as dim forms precipitated from the shadows - walls, perhaps, with arched doorways and the eaves of roofs peaking like broken teeth against a lurid sky. There - surely that was the broad facade ofJubal's place, but that was impossible - the Stepsons had burned it, hadn't they? And then he was certain of the wrongness, for next to it he saw the familiar skewed sign of the Vulgar Unicorn, but the unicorn's eyes glowed evilly, and blood dripped down its spiralled horn.

Abruptly he realized that he was beginning to hear sounds, too - the kind of drunken laughter that comes from men who watch a bully's fist smash a boy's face to raw meat, or who take a woman one after another: the kind of screaming he had heard once when he hurried past Kurd's workshop, and the choked gurgle the hanged men made as they died in the Palace Yard. He had heard all those sounds in Sanctuary, and closed his ears to them, but he could not ignore the sobbing that seemed to come from somewhere just before him, the hushed, incredulous whimpering of an abused child.

I was wrong, he thought, I am in Hell after all!

Lalo began to run forward, and suddenly figures were all around him. Hawkmasks and Stepsons struggled as lopped limbs flew like scythed wheat and drops of blood splattered the cobbles like rain. A man staggered by him and Lalo thought that it was Zanderei; then the figure turned and he reeled back, for the face was gone.

Another came towards him - Sjekso Kinsan, with whom he had shared a drink sometimes in the Vulgar Unicorn, and behind him a woman with long amber hair. Lord Regli's wife. Samlane. whom Lalo had painted long ago before he met Enas Yorl. before the woman had died. There were others whom he thought he recognized, thieves whose contorted features he had seen on the gallows. Hell Hounds or mercenaries whom he had seen in Sanctuary for awhile and then saw no more.

They were looking at him, now. and closing around him. Lalo began to run, burrowing through the dark maze of this shadow Sanctuary like a maggot in an ancient corpse, seeking some unimaginable safety.

'Woman, you were fortunate to get me here at all!' Alten Stulwig said stiffly. 'My patients come to me. and I am certainly not accustomed to visiting this part of town!'

'But you know that my husband has influential friends who might object if you let their pet artist die unseen, don't you!' said Gilla nastily. 'So you stop avoiding my eyes like a whore with her first customer and tell me what's wrong with him!' She lifted an arm as broad as Stulwig's thigh and he swallowed and glanced nervously down at the man on the pallet.

'It's a complex case, and there's no need to confuse you with medical terminology.' He cleared his throat. 'I am afraid '

'Now that I will believe!' Gilla snatched his satchel and held it to her massive breast.

'What - what are you doing? Give me that!'

'I don't need your leech's twaddle, nor your evasions either. Master Alten. You just find something in this bag of yours that will make my man well!' She thrust it back at him and he shrugged, sighed, and opened it.

'This is a stimulant, dograya. You steep it into a tea and spoonfeed him four times a day. It will strengthen his heart, and who knows, it may bring him around.' He tossed the little packet on the coverlet and rummaged around in the bag again, bringing out several yellowish cones wrapped in a twist of cloth. 'And you can try burning these - if the smell doesn't arouse him I don't know what will.' He straightened and held out his hand. 'Two sheboozim -gold.'

'Why Alien, I'm surprised - aren't you going to ask me to share your bed?' Gilla's laughter covered bitterness she had not allowed herself to feel for a long time as he blanched and looked away. She drew from between her breasts the thin chamois bag in which she kept her reserve of gold. There was more, hidden cunningly beneath floorboards or in the wall - even Lalo did not know where it was- but a house could burn. Better to keep something on her person against emergencies.

She slapped the coins into Stulwig's moist palm and watched, glaring, as he packed up his satchel and picked up the staff he had leaned against the door.

'The blessing of Heqt upon the healing -' he mumbled.

'And upon the hands of the healer,' Gilla responded automatically, but she was thinking, I have wasted my money. He doesn't believe his paltry herbs will do any good either. She listened to the hurried clatter of Stulwig's sandals on the stairs as he hastened to reach his own lodging before darkness fell, but her eyes were on Lalo's still face.

And suddenly it seemed to her that his breathing had deepened and there was the suggestion of a crease between his brows. She stiffened, watching, while hope fluttered in her heart like a trapped moth, until his features grew smooth again. She thought of the great waves that sometimes slapped at the wharves though the sky was clear, that fishermen said were the last ripple from some great storm far out to sea.

Oh my beloved, she thought in anguish, what bitter storms are raging in the far reaches where you wander now?

The children were waiting for her when she came out of the studio, all of them except for her oldest, Wedemir, who was ajunio"-master with the caravans. Her daughter Vanda had gotten leave from her Beysib lady when Gilla sent for her, and sat now with Alfi on her lap, looking at her mother with a fair approximation of the flat Beysib stare. Even her second boy, Ganner, had begged time from his apprenticeship with Herewick the Jeweller to come home. Only eight-year-old Latilla, playing with her doll on the floor. seemed oblivious of the tension in the room.

Gilla glared back at them, knowing they must have heard her argument with Alten Stulwig. What did they expect her to say?

'Well?' she snapped. 'Stop looking at me like a batch of gaffed cod! And somebody put the teakettle on!'

Lalo was following the scent, familiar as the stink of a man's own closestool, of sorcery.

He knew this much about the strange existence he was caught in now - even a dauber whose only magic had flowed through his . fingers could smell sorcery here, and though in that other life Lalo had been wary of wizards, he had not been quite wary enough, and that was the start of the road that had led him here.

There, for instance, was the gaudy presence of the Mageguild. a mixture of odours from the faint aromas of the magelings to the full-blown, exotic outpourings of the Hazard-class wizards who were their masters - a potpourri with all the mixed fascination of Prince Kitty-Cat's garbage bin. Here also was the alien tang of Beysib ritual, and the fuggy flavours produced by all the little hedge-wizards and crones, and the wavering scents of those who served in the temples of the gods.

But what he was seeking was not in the temples, though it came from a place that was close by - a house whose very foundations were sorcery. Someone was working a spell there even now, elegant magics that sent spirals of power smoking into the dim air. Lalo had known that flavour before, though he had not then recognized it - the unique atmosphere that surrounded Enas

Yorl. Focusing, he found that he could interpret what he was sensing

as colour, a line of light that snaked outward, another crossing it and another, a net to capture any spirit that might be wandering there. And Lalo could feel the presence of those Others, beings less conscious than the ghosts he fled, but more active and aware.

A Symbol flickered into being in the centre of the knot, pulsing lividly, colour, shape, and flavour all combined to lure its intended prey. Lalo shuddered as something swept by him. The glowing lines distorted and the Symbol in their midst dissolved and then reformed, imprisoning a roil of writhing energy and forcing it into a form that human eyes could, however unwillingly, see. But the Gateway that had opened for the creature was still there, and Lalo, frantic for contact, thrust himself through.

"Ehas, barabarishti, azgeldui m 'hai tsi! Oh thou who dost know the secrets of Life and Death, come to me! Yevoi! YevadF The Voice snapped shut the gap and set the imprisoned entity to whirling in a shower of nitrate and sulphur-smelling sparks.

Lalo contracted like an upset snail, seeking to avoid the touch of that light, the sound of those words. They were the language of the plane from which the spirit had come, and Lalo's present condition gave him the power to directly apprehend them, and to realize that there were worse places than the one in which he found himself now.

'Evgolod sheremin, shinaz, shinaz, tiserra-neh, yevoi!' The Voice rolled on, conjuring the creature to bring to him the knowledge of how to separate the soul from a body to which it had been obscenely and indissolubly fettered by sorcery, of a way, though the price of it might be annihilation, to set such a soul forever free. Lalo cowered from knowledge that was never meant for his ears.

But presently the Voice stilled, the echoes died away, and Lalo allowed himself to focus on tlie insubstantial figure that stood within its own shimmering circle beyond the triangle within which Lalo and the demon shared an unwilling captivity. It was Enas Yorl - it must be - yes, he would always know those glowing eyes.

And at the same moment Enas Yorl appeared to realize that his summoning had been more successful than he intended. A wand rose, and power swirled and eddied in the still air.

'Begone, oh ye intruding spirit, to thine own realm where thou shall wait until I do summon thee!'

Lalo was tumbled by a riptide of power and for a moment knew a desperate hope that the sorcerer's instinctive house-cleaning would send him home. But where was home, now?

Then the power ebbed, and Lalo sat up, still in the triangle. The demon in the sigil beside him spat and reached for him with flaming claws.

'Oh thou spirit who hast come to my summoning, I conjure thee to tell me thy name.' Enas Yorl seemed unmoved by his first failure, and Lalo began to understand the patience and plain nerve required for wizardry.

He got to his feet and approached the edge of the triangle as closely as he dared. 'It's me, Lalo the Limner. Enas Yorl, don't you recognize me?'

And as he waited for the sorcerer to reply, Lalo realized that he himself recognized Enas Yorl, and that was very strange, for the essence of the curse that tormented the sorcerer was that his form should never remain for long the same. With a kind of horrified fascination, Lalo looked into the true face of Enas Yorl.

He read there passions and evils at the limit of his comprehension, barely confined by lines of vision and tormented love. In that face all that was great and terrible were joined in an eternal conflict that only the slow erosion of hopeless years might ever hope to reconcile. And those years had already become so long. It was a face whose planes had been chiselled out by the relentless blade of power, ground down again by a kind of patient, painful despair. At last he understood why Enas Yorl had refused to let Lalo paint his portrait. He wondered which part of it the sorcerer feared most to see.

'Enas Yorl, I know you, but I don't know what I am, or why I am here!'

The sorcerer certainly saw him now, and he was laughing. 'You're not dead, if that's what was worrying you, and there's no stink of magic about you. Were you fevered, or did that mountain you are married to knock you senseless at last?'

Lalo sputtered, denying it, while he tried to remember. There was nothing - I was painting; I was alone, and -'

Abruptly the sorcerer grew grave. 'You were painting? Yourself, perhaps? Now I understand. Poor little pond-fish - you have opened the forbidden weir and been swept through it into the great sea. Those whose portraits you have painted could reject the truth they saw, but you could not reject what you painted on the canvas without denying all you are!'

Lalo was silent, testing his memories. He had been painting a picture, and he had stepped back from the canvas when he was done, and he had seen ... Awareness lurched beneath him, dizzying - he glimpsed depths and distances, upwelling springs of light and darkness that could drown him equally, a universe of power that had been trapped beneath the facade that was the self he knew.

'And so you have run away from both the truth and its image, and your body lies abandoned somewhere. I can return you to it, if you truly desire - but don't you understand? Now you are free! Do you know what I would give to achieve what you have inadvert-ently -' the sorcerer stopped himself, 'but I forgot. Your body is whole, and young ...'

Lalo scarcely heard. His first sight of the vastness within had been sufficient to send him in frantic retreat into the shadow-realm. But whence could he escape from here? The meaning of his vision hovered on the edge of comprehension, terrifying, tantalizing, beating at his awareness like mighty wings.

And then the wings were outside of him as well as within; the captive demon spiralled away in pinwheels of foul sparks like burning wool and the exquisite lattices of power within which Enas Yorl had imprisoned it were shattered by a rift between the worlds through which dark wings sliced like swords.

Pain dismemoried and dismembered him, and Lalo's consciousness was whirled away. trailed by the sorcerer's unavailing cry -

'Sikkintair, sikkintair!'

Gilla pulled her cloak more tightly around her and hurried over the worn cobblestones ofPrytanis Street, hoping that the patter she had heard behind her was only wind-drifted leaves. The Jewellers' Quarter was supposed to be safer for foot travellers than the Bazaar, but everyone on her home ground knew that Gilla was not worth tackling.

But of course she was, today. Nervously she fingered the bag at her neck where the remainder of her little hoard of gold weighed so heavily. The services of wizards came high. Gilla cursed them all; cursed Alten Stulwig for his incompetence and Illyra the half-S'danzo who had been able to tell her only that wizardry was somehow involved, cursed Lalo for having gotten into this mess and most of all, cursed herself for her fear.

And the rustle behind her resolved into the thud of running feel, and Gilla wheeled, fear-fuelled anger strengthening the massive arm that smacked into the first cutpurse as he came on. He buckled with a sound like a sliced bladder, and a knife glittered through the air to rebound with a tinny clatter from the nearest wall. Gilla brought her other fist down on the man's head and waded into his companion before he quite realized why his point man was down; she belaboured his ears with all the obscenities that a lifetime on the edge of the Maze had taught her as she put her full weight into her blows.

The blood was singing in her veins and most of her fear had been washed away by adrenalin by the time Gilla dusted herself off and resumed her progress. Behind her two battered figures stirred, groaned, and subsided again.

That martial energy carried her all the way past the last of the carpetmakers' shops and the stares of their owners, rolling up their wares now as the sun descended and painted the city with its fiery glow. It carried her all the way to the door of Enas Yorl.

But there she halted, her eye mazed by the sinuous swirl of brazen dragons that adorned it, her hand on the chill metal of the knocker, not quite daring to let it go. All the tales she had ever heard of the sorcerer yammered at her in the voices her children had used when she told them what she meant to do.

What am I doing here? Who am I to meddle with wizards? The voices were gentle, reasonable, and then, from some deeper part of her being came the thought: Lalo passed through this door and came home to me. Where he has gone, I can go too.

Gilla fet the knocker fall.

The door opened silently. The blind servant of whom she had heard was standing there, with a silken blindfold in his hand. Licking lips that were suddenly dry, Gilla tied it around her head and let the servant take her hand.

At least she had the advantage of knowledge. Lalo had told her about Darous, and the blindfold, and the peculiar guardians that laired in the sorcerer's entry hall. But the sound of scales on stone and the sense of myriad bodies slithering about her nearly undid her, for snakes were her particular fear. They 're not snakes', she told herself. They're only basilisks'. But her fingers tightened on the cool hand of her guide and she was breathing hard when they emerged into another chamber in which some musky incense mingled sick-eningly with the smell of sulphur.

The blindfold was taken away and Gilla looked around her with a sigh. The stone walls were stained with carbon, and a melted tangle of metal that had once been a brazier lay in the middle of the floor. A daybed was set into an embrasure in the marble walls, and after a moment Gilla realized that the huddle of rich fabrics upon it covered a man. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and stared at him.

'After the bull, the cow,* Enas Yorl said tiredly. 'I might have known.'

'Lalo?' Gilla saw the thin hand that lay upon the velvet quiver, shift, and become a more muscular member whose skin bore a thin dusting of bluish scales. Gilla swallowed and forced herself not to look away. 'Lalo's been in some kind of trance for two weeks now. I want you to get him back into his body again.' She reached for the bag at her neck.

'Keep your gold,' the sorcerer said querulously. 'Your husband already asked me that question and I agreed - it would be amusing to see what Sanctuary would make of a man who has faced his own soul - but Lalo is beyond my reach now.'

'Beyond your reach?' Gilla's voice echoed painfully. 'But they call you the greatest wizard in the Empire!' She met the red glow of the sorcerer's eyes, and after a moment it dimmed and he looked away.

'I am great enough to know the limits of my power,' he answered bitterly. 'I cannot speak for the Beysib, but no mage of Sanctuary will meddle with Sikkintair. The Flying Knives have taken your husband, woman. Go to the Temple of Ils and see if Gordonesh the priest will listen to you. Or better still, go home - Lalo is gods' business now.'

The Sikkintair devoured Lalo's flesh and scoured his bones until the wind harped through his rib cage and drummed out a rhythm with the long bones of his thighs. His clever painter's hands, stripped of the muscle that had made their magic, rattled like winter-bared twigs against the sky.

And when they were done with the skeleton they let it fall, and mother earth laid down new flesh around his bones. He lay thus enwombed for a season or a century, and when his time was' accomplished he found himself naked in a forest glade starred with flowers like jewels, his new body as supple and strong as a honed blade.

He jumped up and began to walk, content for the moment simply to enjoy the colours and the soft air and the singing power of this new body of his. And presently he heard music and turned his steps towards the sound.

Where the oak trees thinned, a grassy lawn sloped down to a pool fed by a gurgling waterfall. A table had been set there, covered with a cloth of crimson damask fringed with gold, and upon that cloth crystal flagons with wine ofCarronne, platters of roasted meats and loaves of white bread and silver dishes heaped with oranges from Enlibar. A feast fit for the gods, thought Lalo. And indeed, the gods were feasting there.

'We have been expecting you,' said a voice at his elbow. A maiden more beautiful than the fairest of Prince Kadakithis's concubines held out a robe of blue silk embroidered with dragons for him to put on, then knelt to ease his feet into sandals of gold. Her black hair curled to her hips, shimmering with blue lights in the sun, and when she looked up he recognized in her features the face ofValira, the little whore whom he had painted as Eshi, Lady of Love, and he trembled, understanding Who was serving him.

She led him to a seat at the end of the table and he began to eat, grateful that for the moment the other gods were continuing to talk among themselves. Next to Eshi sat one whom he could only suppose to be Anen - paunched and red-nosed like the bibbers who had been Lalo's companions in the days when he sought oblivion in the bottom of a mug of cheap wine. But the god's fat was opulence, and his flushed cheeks burned with a glow to lighten the hopeless heart. Remembering favours granted in times past, Lalo solemnly saluted him.

And the god saw, and looked at him, and meeting those deep eyes Lalo recognized a mute sorrow and remembered that this was the god who yearly dies and is reborn. Then Anen smiled, and as joy fountained in Lalo's heart, he saw that his goblet was filling with wine like the blood of a star.

The wine gave him courage to look at the others - gentle Theba the peace bringer, and swift-footed Shalpa like a shadow beside her, whose face, when Lalo glimpsed it, reminded him strangely of someone he had seen often in the Vulgar Unicorn, though he could not for the moment think whom. But he saw the face of every mercenary he had ever known in the harsh features of Him-whom-we-do-not name, armed and weaponed even here, and the sharp good humour of the women who haggled over fabric in the dyers' stalls in the face of bright-haired Thilli, until he began to realize that he recognized all of them - that he had painted all of them, that he had lived among them all in Sanctuary and never known.

'Father, you have disposed ofVashanka, at least for the present, but the priests of Savankala still hold a place of honour in Sanctuary!' Eshi was speaking to the blaze of light at the head of the table, whom Lalo had still not quite dared to look upon.

'Until a new body for Vashanka to use matures, his power is broken,' the voice shimmered in Lalo's ears. 'The Rankan gods do not trouble Me now. It is this new goddess, this Bey, that we must consider here.'

'Her worshippers in Sanctuary are fugitives and the empire they fled from must still be Her first concern. How much power can She have in Sanctuary?' asked Thilli. For a moment her husband Thufir leaned forward to listen and Lalo flinched away from his eagle glance. The priests called Thufir the friend of the Sikkintair as Ils was their master. They had taught him their far-seeing. Had he ordered them to bring Lalo here?

'I am tired of all this quarrelling,' sighed Shipri. 'I thought that when you had bested the Rankans we would have peace again. I have finally come to an understanding with Sabellia, and I suppose that this new goddess and I will have to do the same. At least She is a goddess, and therefore more likely than a god to be sensible about things.'

Lalo sat back, relieved. He had painted his own wife as Sabellia, and in the past few minutes he had begun to fear Shipri's jealousy. But Gilla resembled the Sharp-Tongued One less and less these days, and he thought he would have portrayed her as the nurturing Mother ofllsig now.

Then the splendour of the face of Ils was turned fully upon him, and, even in this remade body unable to gaze into that light, Lalo cried out and hid his eyes.

'Son of Ils, come here...' Sound was light, slivering painfully through Lalo's shut lids. He shook his head.

'Lord, I have served in the temple of your enemies, and I am afraid.'

'But I have defeated those enemies. Stand on your feet and come to Me!'

I have already died, thought Lalo. What else can He do to me? He opened his eyes. Thufir Far-Seer was waiting to guide him to his Father, who masked his radiance with the face of the great marble statue in the Temple of Ils.

'You have painted many portraits since the Mage touched you, Limner - what did you see?'

Lalo fixed his eyes upon the silver necklace that glittered from beneath the god's dark beard. 'Beasts...' he muttered, 'and demons, sometimes, and sometimes... gods.'

'And when you turned your sorcerer's gift upon yourself?' the implacable voice went on.

Lalo shuddered, but Thufir's grip held him to this reality. He had seen a pleasure in pettiness that shamed him and beyond that a longing for annihilation that terrified him and a capacity for love that terrified him even more. He had seen the depths of his own unguessed, untapped creative power.

'As you served Enas Yorl and the priests of Savankala, so now, my son, you shall serve Me,' said the Voice of Ils.

Before him Lalo saw a white canvas, and brushes that surpassed his own as a Downwinder's donkey is surpassed by a horse of Tros, and a palette with pigments for whose secret the colour-grinders of Sanctuary would have given their souls. Lalo's right hand prickled with power that built, built - it must be grounded somehow - he groped for a paintbrush and dipped it into a colour that was more than scarlet, touched it to the canvas and felt power surge through it in an explosive release like the climax of love.

His hand moved swiftly, splashing the canvas with scarlet, then down to the palette for a lambent gold, and lastly a shading of opalescent blue. Then he stepped back, the brush falling from his fingers, and the thing on the canvas stretched, flexed, and launched itself glittering into the air.

Eshi laughed and clapped her white hands, and Thufir smiled his slow, patient smile. Lalo stared as the miniature sikkintair that had come to life beneath his hands soared off through the trees.

'Before, you were able to paint the truth behind reality,' the whisper of Ils echoed through the deepest chambers ofLalo's soul. 'Now you will give Reality to the Truth you see. Do you not yet understand Who you are?'

Oh Thou Blessed Mother of All Living, We wander, children who have lost our way- Guard us from all danger, and forgiving, Guide us homeward at the close of day.

'Holy Shipri, All-Mother, as Thou dost love Thine own lord, hear me now!' Gilla's murmur was lost in the hymn's sweet harmonies. 'Hear me and guide my own man back to me ...'

Here in the chapel of the Mother, flickering candles struck sparks of colour from the mosaics and one scarcely noticed the rough repairs where Vashanka's thunderbolt had cracked the wall. Gilla huddled in the shadows while the blue robed priestesses passed back and forth before the marble image of the Goddess, continuing their song.

Whatever men destroy is for Thy mending, Forever feeding from Thy fruitful breast; Thou art the source of life, and at its ending, Once more within Thy holy womb we rest.

And what if Lalo is already safe within Her arms? Gilla wondered then. Perhaps the gods need a court painter, and what does Sanctuary have to offer that could compare? She bowed her head, rocking back and forth while the chanting continued, sweetly counselling acceptance of life's eternal round of birth and death, and the tears she had so long suppressed fell like rain upon the marble floor.

The priestesses had finished and the chapel was silent when Gilla felt Vanda's touch on her shoulder and let her daughter lead her out into the harsh sunlight of Sanctuary.

'Don't tell me,' said Vanda. 'Goronesh wouldn't even see you, and those hypocrites who served Shipri told you that loss is part of the burden that women must bear.'

Gilla looked back at the golden dome of the Temple, still half-sheathed in scaffolding. 'Am I selfish to want Lalo back? I thought I was the strong one, but I need him!'

'Of course you do!' said Vanda stoutly. 'And so do we!' Her hair in the sunlight was the same bright copper Lalo's had been when he was young, but her grey eyes were troubled. Gilla swallowed the last of her tears and briskly wiped her eyes. 'You're right -I don't know what got into me!'

'And now will you come with me to see the Lady Kurrekai?' For the first time since leaving the Temple, Gilla took note other surroundings, and realized that instead of turning down the Avenue of Temples towards the town they were walking along the outer wall of the Palace Square. She sighed.

'Very well. Let us see what the foreigner can do, for it's certain I'll get no help from mage or god of Sanctuary!'

The Prince had obligingly offered rooms for the Beysa and her court in the Palace, though perhaps he was only making a virtue of necessity. Gilla wondered how they all managed to fit inside. Certainly the place seemed abustle with Beysib functionaries in laced breeks and loose doublets or the flared skirts and high collars they all affected. It seemed to her that they even outnumbered the silk-sashed Palace servants who went about their duties with such ostentatious solemnity.

Gilla looked at her daughter, already aping Beysib fashion in a gown cut down from an old petticoat of her lady's whose borders glittered with threads of gold. Whether this Beysib female was any help or no, certainly Gilla and Lalo had done a good piece of work when they used his Palace connections to get Vanda a position here. The Lady Kurrekai occupied a chamber on the second floor of the Palace, close to the roomier apartments near the roof garden, which had been taken over by the Beysa. If Gilla understood what Vanda had told her of Beysib politics, Kurrekai was a cousin of Shupansea the Queen, not in direct line for the lost Imperial throne, but royal enough to keep one of the sacred serpents and to have been trained as a priestess.

Gilla shuddered, thinking of the beynit. Enas Yorl's basilisks had been bad enough, and now she must face this imported horror. / must love that man, she thought glumly, or I would be running for home.

And then they were at the door, and the choice was gone. She smelled some kind of incense, like bitter sandalwood.

'Ah. the mother of my little friend. You are welcome ...' A voice rather deep and slightly accented greeted them. The figure that rose as they entered was tall and strongly built enough to make Gilla almost feel small. She blinked at the magnificence of the quilted petticoat, whose crimson brocade had been overlaid with gold-work until its original pattern could hardly be discerned, surmounted by panniers of deep blue cut velvet and a corset of the same material with long, tight sleeves. She had not realized before now that beneath the cloaks that Beysib noblewomen wore outside, their breasts were displayed. Kurrekai's breasts were large, firm, and bore nipples that had been intricately painted with a pattern in scarlet and gold.

'Do be seated. I will send for tea.' Lady Kurrekai clapped her hands, subsiding back on to her couch in a rustle of silk. Vanda thrust a hassock behind her mother, and Gilla, who was finding that her knees had an alarming tendency to give way, sat down gratefully.

'Your daughter has been very helpful to me,' the lady continued languidly. 'She is quick, and oh, such pretty hair.'

Vanda blushed and took the tea tray from the Beysib woman who had brought it to the door, set it on a low table of some intricately carven dark red wood, and began to pour. The tea service was made from a porcelain so fine it seemed translucent, and Gilla was abruptly conscious of the fact that she had not changed her gown since Lalo fell ill, and that her hair was coming down.

She wanted to get to the point of this visit and get out of here, but the Beysib noblewoman was inhaling the fragrance of her tea as if nothing else in the universe mattered just now. Vanda remained kneeling before her, until Kurrekai nodded and finally took one ceremonial sip; then she swivelled around to pour tea into her mother's cup and her own. Gilla tasted the brew suspiciously and found it oddly pleasant. She drank it quickly and then held her cup awkwardly in her lap while the lady, with endless deliberation, absorbed her own.

Then, finally, she sighed and set the cup down.

'My Lady,' said Vanda eagerly, 'I told you about my father's strange illness. We have found no one in this city who can bring him back, but your people are wiser than we. Will you help us now?'

'Child, your sorrow is my own, but what do you suppose I could do?' Kurrekai's head turned within the stiff collar and her slow voice held concern.

'I have heard,' Vanda swallowed and her voice went up a note, 'I have heard that the venom of the beynit has many properties ...'

'Ah, my companion,' sighed Kurrekai. She leaned back, and from within one hollow pannier appeared a flicker of crimson, followed by a slim black body as the serpent slid slowly out of hiding and coiled itself lazily in the fold of her petticoat. Gilla stared, fascinated, at the darting scarlet tongue and the jewelled eyes.

'What you say is true. The venom can be a powerful stimulant if it is properly ... changed ... But your father is not of my people. For him, only the venom's fatality would be sure.'

'But there is a chance?' All the anguish of the past three weeks met in this moment and Gilla found her voice at last. This woman must agree to help them!

'I do not wish to, kill a man of Sanctuary.' The turn of Lady Kurrekai's head held finality.

But Gilla rose, and while Vanda still stared and the Beysib woman was just beginning to look around, launched herself across the room. When she stopped, the beynit was barely a foot from her outstretched hand. The crimson head darted upward like a flame and began to sway.

'Mother, don't mover Vanda's shocked whisper hissed in the air.

Gilla remained still, now that she had reached her goal, looking for the first time directly into Lady Kurrekai's round eyes. 'And a woman of Sanctuary?' she said hoarsely. 'Why not? Lalo will die anyway and I will die too. Why not here?'

For an endless moment, Gilla held the other woman's unblinking stare. Then Lady Kurrekai shrugged, and with an almost careless movement interposed her fingers between Gilla and the red blur that was striking at her hand.

Stomach churning, Gilla sagged back on her heels. For perhaps the space of a minute the beynit hung with its fangs still embedded in the fleshy part of Lady Kurrekai's thumb. Then it began to wriggle, and the Beysib woman grasped it by the middle, with a little shake detached it, and encouraged it to slide back into the .shelter of her pannier once more.

'In the name of Bey the Great Mother, the Holy One!' Kurrekai spoke suddenly, strongly, and then became very still, and though her eyes were open, they had become as lightless as Lalo's. Gilla watched, shivering with nightmares of what would happen if a woman of the Beysib died here. Vanda had crept to her side and was holding to her as she used to when she was a little girl.

There was a long sigh as the lady moved at last, and Gilla was not sure from which of the three of them it had come. A great drop of blood like a cabochon garnet was welling from Lady Kurrekai's thumb. She looked around, gesturing to Vanda with a movement of her head.

'Get me the little crystal vial fronrthe cabinet - the one with the dipper that used to hold perfume.'

Vanda got to her feet to obey as Lady Kurrekai faced Gilla again. 'I have attempted to transform the venom by altering the nature of my blood, but it must be used immediately. Scratch your husband's flesh so that the blood comes and touch a drop of this to the wound.' She took the stopper from the vial Vanda was holding out to her, touched it to the drop of blood, and inserted it back in the vial with a little shake, squeezed her hand to produce a second drop, and a third.

'Go now as I have told you, and quickly.' She thrust the stopper home firmly and handed it to Gilla, then delicately licked the smear of blood from her thumb. 'And remember I warned you - it may fail.'

'The blessing of the All-Mother be on you. Lady, and be you free of any blame.' Gilla was already on her feet. 'At least you were willing to try!'

They hurried down the corridor, Vanda skipping to keep up with her mother's longer strides and trying to keep her voice down.

'Mother, how could you do that? I was terrified! Mother, you could have died!'

Gilla forged ahead silently, while those they encountered scattered from her path. It was not until they had crossed the Square and passed through the Westgate that opened out on to the familiar streets of Sanctuary that she paused for breath and turned to meet her daughter's wide eyes.

'Vanda, you are a woman now, old enough to take care of the younger ones if you must, and old enough, perhaps, to understand. If this works, you must promise never to tell your father what I have done for him.'

'And if it doesn't?' Vanda said in a very small voice.

Gilla gazed at the teeming life around her, sunlight glaring harshly off browned faces, sounds of quarrelling and laughter, the rich mixture of odours from the street, and for a moment felt as if she had lost her skin and had become a part of all of these.

'I have borne seven children and seen two die, and lived with the same contrary man for twenty-six years,' she said slowly, 'and I have just realized that I would sacrifice this whole city for one lock of his hair. If this stuff I am going to give him kills him,' she shook the hand in which the crystal vial lay hidden, 'I'm sorry, Vanda, but I will go after him.'

Lalo the god was creating a woman, a goddess as beautiful as Eshi, as bountiful as Shipri, as wise as Sabellia, as dear to him as someone - he could not remember, but the brush splashed gold like sunlight across Her hair. There, the ripeness of breasts that could feed a dozen babes, and the opulence of haunch and thigh, and skin smoother than the silk of Sihan ... Lalo smiled, and the brush moved as if of itself to suffuse that white flesh with a rosy glow like the inside of a shell.

And then he stepped back from the easel, smiling, and the figure he had been painting turned to him and took him by the hand.

He had expected that, and he reached with his other arm embrace Her, but She continued to turn in his grasp, drawing him after her, faster and faster until the green meadow blurred around him.

'Wait! Where are we going? Beside the river there is a shady bower where we can lie, and -' Damn! If only She would stop and face him for a moment he would know Her name!

Clouds boiled around him with a roar of thunder. The difference between up and down was disappearing and the paintbrush was torn from his hand.

'Who are you?' he shouted. 'Where are you taking me?'

And then he was hurtling through winds that tore away his awareness until he knew nothing but the implacable grip that held his hand. The world had disintegrated into pain and darkness, but through the clouds that whirled around him he glimpsed brief images - the pretentious splendours of a great city where a beleaguered emperor's banner flew; armies crawling like lines of ants across the plains; mountains that shuddered with the struggles of men and mages, and here and there a pocket of greater darkness where forces worse than human strove for mastery.

And then he saw below him a familiar curve of harbour and a tangle of houses and a tarnished golden dome. and pain clapped great hands around him and he fell.

Lalo's mouth tasted like the midden of the Vulgar Unicorn and he felt as if the Stepsons had been practising manoeuvres on the inside of his skull. Except for an annoying throbbing in his arm, he could hardly feel his body at all.

And Gilla was calling him.

Holy Anen blast me if I ever touch that wine again! he thought muzzily, and perhaps presently he would remember just what wine it had been. But now that he considered, he could not remember anything about what must have been an epic binge, and that worried him. Gilla would be furious if she had had to drag him home, and from the taste in his mouth he must have been sick, too. He groaned, wishing fervently that he could pass out again.

'Lalo! Lalo my darling, you've got to wake up! You wretched man, I heard you open your eyes and look at me!'

Something wet ran down his neck and someone near him stifled a sob. Gilla? Gilla? But she would never weep over him after a drinking bout - a pail of cold water, maybe, but not tears. How long had he been unconscious, anyway?

As if he were trying to work an old lock with a rusty key, Lalo-opened his eyes.

He was lying on the pallet in his studio. Alfi and Latilla crouched at the foot of it, watching him with wide, awed eyes. Vanda was behind them, but her face held the look of one who has been suddenly released from fear. He turned his eyes - he did not yet trust himself to move his head - to the bedside, and saw Gilla. Her face was puffy and her eyes red from weeping, and as his gaze met hers they glistened with another tear.

Without thinking, he reached up and brushed it from her cheek: then he stared at his hand, pallid and veined and thin. And now that awareness of the rest of his body was returning, he realized that he felt curiously light, and his other hand clutched at the bedclothes as if to hold him there.

'Gilla, have I been ill?'

'Ill! You might call it that - and I'd rather not know what else it might be -' exploded Gilla, and Vanda got to her feet.

'Father, you've been lying in some kind of trance for almost three weeks now,' Vanda added.

Three weeks? But just this afternoon he had been ... painting... He had looked in the mirror and then ... Lalo began to tremble as memory came back to him. His eyes filled with tears for the beauty of the other world, but Gilla's hands closed on his shoulders. and she shook him back to her own reality.

Lalo stared at her, and through the veil of her swollen features he saw the face of the goddess who had brought him home. It took a kind of inner focussing, and he found that now he could see another face beneath his daughter's familiar mask of cheerfulness too. Only the two younger children remained essentially the same.

So, he thought, perhaps I will not need a paintbrush to do my seeing now. He lay back, trying to assimilate the truth of what had happened to him into his memory of the man he used to be.

'So, how do you feel? Is there anything you want me to get you now?' Gilla finished wiping her eyes and resolutely blew her nose on a corner other apron.

Lalo smiled. 'Well, I haven't eaten for three whole weeks -'

'Vanda, there's soup on the stove,' Gilla said sharply. 'Go heat it up, and you little ones go with her. You've seen him, and Father doesn't need you underfoot here. Everything will be all right now.'

Gilla bustled nervously about the room, smoothing the covers, heaping pillows behind Lalo so that he could sit, pushing a chair back against the wall. Lalo flexed his fingers, feeling them tingle as blood began to circulate freely once more, and wondered how he had gotten the scratch on his arm.

Beside the pallet were piled some scraps of paper and a piece of charcoal. Can I still draw? he wondered, and seeing that Gilla was not watching him, he pulled a piece of paper towards him, picked up the charcoal and drew a line, then another, then some shading, and the paper showed him a deftly drawn representation of a common Sanctuary dunghill fly. He stared at it for a moment with a question he dared not even put into words, but it remained unchanged before him - a drawing of a fly.

Lalo smiled a little wryly and set the charcoal down. What did I expect, here?

Gilla came back to him with the bowl of steaming soup in her hands, sat down beside the pallet, and dipped in the spoon. Lalo blew gently on his drawing to get rid of the charcoal dust and laid it aside. When Gilla held the spoon to his lips he opened his mouth obediently. / could do this myself, he thought, but he realized that feeding him fulfilled some need of Gilla's own. The hot liquid soothed his throat, and his body seemed to absorb the moisture like a sponge.

'That's enough for now,' said Gilla, taking it away.

'It was very good.' Lalo looked at her face, wondering how he had ever seen anything but the goddess there. Then he frowned. 'I was painting a picture, Gilla. What happened to it?'

She nodded towards the corner. 'It's over there. Do you want to see?' Before he could stop her she had gone to pick up the painting and brought it to him, leaning it against the wall.

He stared at it, reading it as he had read Gilla's face a moment ago, and knowing that he would never be able to forget the journey from which he had just returned. It would take some getting used to.

'A self-portrait,' said Gilla meditatively. 'Of course. I didn't really want to look at it before.'

After a moment he cleared his throat, knowing that in this knowledge, at least, they were equals now. 'Well?'

'Well,' she said slowly, 'you must know that this is the way you always look to me.'

Her hand moved to enfold his, and feeling suddenly light-headed. Lalo lay back against the pillows again. His ears were buzzing - no - it was only a fly circling in the middle of the room. He thought a moment, then, feeling a little foolish, glanced down at the piece of paper that still lay on the coverlet.

It was blank. Lalo looked up quickly and saw the fly spiral across to the mirror, for a moment hover there, then buzz purposefully through the window and away.