Wings of Omen

A BREATH OF POWER by Diana L. Paxson

"A red one-Papa, I want a red fly now!" - Lalo looked down at his small son, sighed, and picked a crimson chalkstick from the pile. Deftly his hand swept over the paper, sketching a head, a thorax, angled legs, and the outlines of transparent wings. He exchanged red for gold and added a shimmer of color, while Alfi bounced on the bench beside him, a three-year-old's fanatic purpose fixing his gaze on each move.

"Is it done. Papa?" The child squirmed onto the table to see, and Lalo twitched the paper out of the way, wishing Gilla would get back and take the boy off his hands. Where was she, anyway? Anxiety stirred in his belly. These days, violence between the Beysib invaders and a constantly mutating assortment of native factions made even a simple shopping trip hazardous; their oldest son, Wedemir, on leave from his caravan, had volunteered to escort her to the Bazaar. The Beysib honeymoon was over, and every day brought new rumors of resistance and bloody Beysib response. Gilla and Wedemir ought to be back by now....

Alfi jiggled his arm and Lalo forced his attention back to the present. Looking down at the boy's dark head, he thought it odd how alike his firstborn and his youngest had turned out to be-both darkhaired and tenacious.... For a moment, the years between were gone; he was a young father and it was Wedemir who nestled against him, begging him to draw some more.

But of course there was a difference to Lalo's drawing now.

"Papa, is the fly going to be able to see?" Alfi pointed at the sketched head.

"Yes, yes, tadpole, just wait a minute now." Lalo picked up his knife to sharpen the black chalk. Then Alfi wriggled, Lalo's hand slipped, and the knife bit into his thumb. With an oath he dropped it and put his finger to his mouth to stop the bleeding, glaring at his son.

"Papa, do it now-do the trick and make it fly away!" said Alfi obliviously.

Lalo repressed an urge to throw the child across the room, sketched in antennae and a faceted eye. It was not Alfi's fault. He should never have started this game.

Then he grimaced, picked up the paper, and shut his eyes for a moment, focusing his awareness until he could-Lalo opened his eyes and breathed gently upon the bright wings....

Alfi stilled, eyes widening as the bright speck quivered, expanded its shimmering wings, and buzzed away to join the jewel-scatter of flies that were already orbiting the garbage-basket by the door.

For a blessed moment the child stayed silent, but Lalo, looking at the insects he had drawn into life, shuddered suddenly. He remembered-a scarlet Sikkintair that soared above the heads of feasting gods, the transcendent splendor of the Face of Ils, the grace of Eshi pouring wine... and beside him had sat Thilli, or was it Theba-oh gods, could he be forgetting already?

"Papa, now make me one that's green and purple, and-" A small hand tugged his sleeve.

"No!" The table rocked as Lalo surged to his feet. Colored chalks clattered across the floor.

"But Papa-"

"I said No-can't you understand?" Lalo shouted, hating himself as Alfi gasped and was still. He extricated himself from behind the table and started for the door, then stopped short, trembling. He couldn't leave-he had promised Gilla-he couldn't leave the child in the house alone! Damn Gilla, anyway! Lalo brought his hands to his eyes, trying to rub the ache behind them away.

There was a small sniff behind him. He heard the faint clicking as Alfi began, very carefully, to put the chalks into their wooden box again.

"I'm sorry, tadpole-" Lalo said at last. "It's not your fault. I still love you Papa's just very tired."

No-it wasn't Alfi's fault.... Lalo moved stiffly to the window and opened the weathered shutters, gazing out over the scrambled rooftops of the town. You would think that a man who had feasted with the gods would be different, maybe have a kind of shining about him for all to see- especially a man who could not only paint a person's soul, but could breathe life into his imaginings. But nothing had changed for him. Nothing at all.

Lalo looked down at his hands, broad-palmed, rather stubby in the fingers, with paint ingrained in the calluses and under the nails. Those had been the hands of a god, for a little while, but here he was, with Sanctuary going to hell around him at more than its usual speed, and there was nothing he could do.

He flinched as something buzzed past his ear, and saw the colored flies he had created spiral downward toward the richer feeding-grounds of the refuse heap in the alleyway. For a moment he wondered wryly if they would breed true, and if anyone in Sanctuary would notice the winged jewels hatching from their garbage; then a shift in the wind brought him the smell.

He choked, banged closed the shutters, and stood leaning against them, covering his face with his hands. In the country of the gods, every breeze bore a different perfume. The robes of the immortals were dyed with liquid jewels; they shone in a lambent light. And he, Lalo the Limner, had feasted there, and his brush had brought life to a thousand transcendent fantasies.

He stood, shaken by longing for the velvet meadows and aquamarine skies. Tears welled from beneath shut eyelids, and his ears, entranced with the memory of birds whose song surpassed all earthly melodies, did not hear the long silence behind him, the stifled, triumphant giggle of the child, or the heavy tread on the stairs outside.

"Alfi! You get down from there right now!"

Dreams shattering around him, Lalo jerked back to face the room, blinking as dizzied vision tried to sort the image of an angry goddess from the massive figure that glared at him from the doorway. But even as Lalo's sight cleared, Gilla was charging across the room to snatch the child from the shelf over the stove.

Wedemir, a dark head barely visible above piled parcels and bulging baskets, stumbled after her into the room, looking for somewhere to set his burdens down.

"Want to make it pretty!" Alfi's voice came muffled from Gilla's ample bosom. He squirmed in her arms and pointed. "See?"

Three pairs of eyes followed his pointing finger toward the ceiling above the stove, where the soot was now smudged with swirls of blue and green.

"Yes, dear," said Gilla evenly, "but it's all dark up there, and the colors won't show up very well. And you know that you are not to meddle with your father's colors-you certainly know better than to climb on the stove! Well?" Her voice rose. "Answer me!"

A small, smudged face turned to her, lower lip trembling, dark eyes falling before her narrowed gaze. "Yes, Mama...."

"Well, then-perhaps this will help you to remember from now on!" Gilla set the child down and smacked his bottom hard. Alfi whimpered once and then stood silently, rubbing his abused rear while the slow tears welled from his eyes.

"Now, you go lie down on your bed and stay there until Vanda brings your sister Latilla home." She gripped his small shoulder, propelled him into the children's room, and shut the door behind him with a bang that shook the floor.

Wedemir slowly set his last basket on the kitchen table, watching his mother with an apprehension that belied the broad shoulders and sturdily muscled arms he had gotten working the caravans.

Lalo's own gaze went back to his wife, and his stomach knotted as he recognized Sabellia the Sharp-Tongued in full incarnation standing there.

"Perhaps that will keep him earthbound another time," said Gilla, settling her fists on her broad hips and glaring at Lalo. "I wish I could fan your arse as well! What were you thinking of?" Her voice rose as she warmed to her subject. "When you said you'd look after the baby, I thought I could trust you to watch him! You know what they are at that age! There are live coals in that stove would you have noticed when Alfi started screaming? Lalo the Limner- Lalo the Lack-Wit they should call you! Pah!"

Wedemir eased silently backward toward the chair in the comer, but Lalo could not return his commiserating smile. His tight lips quivered with words that twenty-seven years with this woman had taught him not to say; and it was true that... his vivid imagination limned a vision of his small son writhing in flames. But he had only looked out the window for a moment! In another minute he would have seen and pulled the child down!

"The gods know I've been patient," raged Gilla, "scrimping and striving to keep this family together while the Ran-kans or the Bey sin, or hell knows who, came marching through the town. The least you could do-"

"In the name of Ils, woman-let be!" Lalo found his voice at last. "We've a roof above us, and whose earnings paid-"

"Does that give you the right to burn it down again?" she interrupted him. "Not to mention that if we don't pay the taxes we will not have it long, though Shalpa knows to whom we'll be paying them this year. What have you painted lately. Limner?"

"By the gods!" Lalo's fingers twitched impotently. "I have painted-" a_scarlet Sikkintair that soared through azure skies, a bird with eyes of fire and crystal wings-his throat closed on the words. He had not told her-he would show her the rainbow-hued flies he had drawn for Alfi, and then she would know. He had the powers of a god-what right had she to speak to him this way? Lalo looked wildly about him, then remembered that he had opened the shutters and the insects had flown away.

"I saved your life, and this is all the thanks you have for me?" Gilla shouted. "You'd burn the last babe I will ever bear?"

"Saved my life?" Abruptly the end of his vision replayed in memory-he had been painting a goddess who had wrenched him away from heaven, a goddess who had Gilla's face! "Then it was you who brought me back to this dung-heap, and you want me to thank you?" Now he was shrieking as loudly as she. "Wretched woman, do you know what you have done? Look at you, standing there like a tub of lard! Why should I want to return, when Eshi herself was my handmaiden?"

For one astounding moment struck speechless, Gilla stared at him. Then she snatched and threw a wooden spoon from the pot on the stove. "No, don't thank me, for I'm sorry I did it now!" A colander followed the spoon. She reached for the copper kettle and Lalo ducked as Wedemir got to his feet, protesting.

"You've a goddess to sleep with? Worm! Then go to her-we'll do fine without you here!" Gilla exclaimed.

The copper pot hurtled toward Lalo like a sunwheel, struck, and clattered to the floor. He straightened, holding his arm.

"I will go-" He fought his voice steady. "I should have left long ago. I could have been the greatest artist in the Empire if you hadn't tied me here-I still could-by the Thousand Eyes of Ils you do not know what I can do!" he went on. Gilla was gasping, her work-roughened hands clenching and unclenching as she looked for something else to throw. "When you hear of me again you'll know who I really am, and you'll regret what you said this day!"

Lalo drew himself up stiffly. Gilla watched him with a face like stone and something he could not trouble to interpret in her eyes. A whisper of memory told him that if he let go of his anger he would see the truth of her as he had before. He swatted the thought away. The anger burned in his belly, a furnace of power. He had not felt like this since he outwitted the assassin Zanderei.

Silent, he stalked to the door, belted on his pouch, and flung across his shoulder the short cape that hung there.

"Papa-what do you think you're doing?" Wedemir found his voice at last. "It's almost sunset. The curfew will close the streets soon. You can't go out there!"

"Can't I? You'll see what I can do!" Lalo opened the door.

"Turd, slime-dauber, betrayer!" shouted Gilla. "If you leave now, don't think you'll find a welcome home here!"

Lalo did not answer, but as he hurried down the creaking staircase the last thing he heard was the bone-shaking thud as the cast-iron pot hit the closing door.

A rat-patter of feet behind him sent fear sparking along every nerve to clash painfully with the dull anger that had fueled Lalo's swift stride. Fool! the lessons of a lifetime dinned in his memory- Your back is your betrayer. Watch it! Alert is alive!

In the old days, everyone knew Lalo was not worth robbing, but in the current confusion, running footsteps could mean anyone. Frantically Lalo tried to remember if this block belonged to the PFLS or Nisibisi death squads; to the returning Stepsons or the 3rd Commando; or to Jubal's renascent hordes; or maybe it was to someone else he hadn't heard of yet.

His little dagger glinted in his hand-not much use against anyone with training, but enough perhaps to discourage a man looking for easy pickings before the daylight was gone.

"Papa-it's me!" The shadow behind him came to a halt a safe man's length away. Lalo blinked and recognized Wedemir, flushed a little from his run, but breathing easily.

The lad's in good shape, Lalo thought with a fugitive pride, then unclenched tense muscles from his defensive crouch and jammed the knife back into its sheath.

"If your mother sent you, you might as well go home again."

Wedemir shook his head. "I can't. She cursed me too, when I said I was coming after you. Where were you going, anyway?"

Lalo stared at him, taken aback by his unconcern. Didn't the boy understand? He and Gilla had quarreled finally. His future loomed before him like a splendid, lightning-laden cloud.

"Go back, Wedemir-" he repeated. "I'm on my way to the Vulgar Unicorn."

Wedemir laughed, white teeth bright against his bronzed skin. "Papa, I've spent two years with the caravans, remember? Do you think I haven't seen the inside of a tavern before?"

"Not one like the Unicorn...." Lalo said darkly.

"Then it's time you completed my education-" the boy said cheerfully. "If you're tougher than I am, then knock me down. If not, surely two will walk safer than one through this part of town!"

A new kind of anger tickled Lalo's belly as he stared at his son, noting the balanced stance, the measuring eyes. He's grown up, he thought bitterly, remembering the last time he had thrashed the boy-it didn't seem so long ago. Wedemir is a man. But gods! Did I ever have such innocent eyes? Aman, and a strong one... .Even when Lalo had been that age he had not been much of a fighter, and now-the taste of the knowledge that his son could beat him was like bile.

"Very well," Lalo said at last, "but don't blame me if it's more than you bargained for." He turned to move on, then stopped again. "And for Shalpa's sake, take that grin off your face before we go inside!"

Lalo tipped back his tankard, let the last sour wine flow smoothly down his throat, then banged it on the table to call for more. It had been a long time since he had come to get drunk here at the Vulgar Unicorn-a long time since he had gotten drunk anywhere, he realized. Maybe the wine would taste better if he had some more.

Wedemir raised one eyebrow briefly and took another rationed sip of ale, then set his own tankard back down. "Well, I haven't seen anything to shock me so far...."

Lalo swallowed a surge of resentment at the boy's self-discipline. He's probably despising me... .As the oldest, Wedemir must have known what was happening in the days when Lalo was trying to drink his troubles away and Gilla took in washing to keep the family alive. And during the recent years of prosperity the boy had been away with the caravans. Small wonder if he thought his father was a sot!

He doesn't understand- Lalo held out his tankard to the skinny serving girl. He doesn't know what I've been through....

He let the cool, tart liquor ease the ache in his throat and sat back with a sigh. Wedemir was right about the Unicorn, anyway. Lalo had never known such a quiet evening here. The age-polished wooden slats of the booth creaked to his weight as he relaxed against them, looking around the big room, trying to understand the altered atmosphere.

The familiar reek of sweat and sour ale brought back memories; oil lamps set shadows scurrying among the sooty beams overhead and beneath the sturdy tables. Empty tables, mostly, even now, when night had fallen and the place should have been as thick with patrons as a Bazaar cur is with fleas. Not that it was entirely deserted. He recognized the pale, scarred boy they called Zip in one of the booths on the other side of the room, sitting with three others, a little younger and darker than he was, without his protective veil of cynicism to shield their eyes.

As Lalo watched. Zip pounded the table with his fist, then began to draw some kind of diagram in spilled beer. The artist let his gaze unfocus, saw through the masks of flesh a mix of fear and fanaticism that made him recoil. No, he thought, perhaps I had better not use that particular talent here. There were some souls whose truth he did not want to see.

He forced himself to keep scanning the room. In one comer a man and woman were drinking together, the scars of old fights marking their faces, and of old passions clouding their eyes. They looked like some of Jubal's folk, and he wondered if they were serving their old master again. Beyond them he saw three men whose tattered gear could not disguise some remnants of soldierly bearing mutineers from the northern wars or mercenaries too dissolute even for the 3rd Commando? Lalo did not want to know.

He took a deep breath and coughed convulsively. That was it; his new senses were at work despitr his will, and his nostrils flared with the smell of death and the stink of sorcery. He remembered a rumor he had heard-the tavern-master One Thumb was somehow mixed up with the Ni-sibisi witch, Roxane. Perhaps he should gather up Wedemir and get out of here....

But as he started to stand up, his head spun dizzily and he knew that he was in no condition to survive the streets of Sanctuary at this hour. Wedemir would laugh at him, and besides, he had nowhere else to go! Lalo sat back, sighed, and began to drink again.

It was two, or perhaps three tankards later that Lalo's blurring gaze fixed on a familiar dark head and the angular shape of a harpcase humping up the bright cloak its owner wore. He blinked, adjusted his focus, and grinned.

"Cappen Varra!" He gestured broadly toward the bench across from him. "I thought you'd left town!"

"So did I-" the harper answered wryly. "The weather's been too chancy for sailing, so I hooked up with a caravan to Ranke. I was hoping to find someone going from there to Carronne." He shrugged the harpcase from his shoulder and set it carefully on the bench, then squeezed into the booth beside Wedemir.

"To Ranke!" the boy exclaimed. "You're lucky to be alive!"

"My son Wedemir-" Lalo gestured. "He's been working Ran Alleyn's string."

Cappen looked at him with new respect, then went on, "I suppose I am lucky-I got there just after they did the old Emperor in. There's a new man-Theron, they call him-in charge there now, and they say your life's not worth a whore's promise if you're in the Imperial line. So I thought, 'There's Prince Kittycat sitting safe in Sanctuary-things might just be picking up down there!'"

Lalo started to laugh,-choked on his wine, and coughed until Wedemir thumped him on the back and he could breathe again.

"You don't have to tell me-" said Cappen Varra ruefully. "But surely there's something to be made from the situation here. Those Beysin women now-do you suppose there's some way I..."

"Don't even think about it, Cappen." Lalo shook his head. "At least not the way you usually do! They might like your music, but it's worth your life to even look as if you were offering anything more!"

The harper gave him a speculative look. "I've heard that, but really..."

"Really-" Wedemir said seriously. "My sister works for one of their royal ladies, and she says it's all true."

"Oh well!" Cappen saluted them with his tankard. "There's nothing wrong with their gold!" He drank, then glanced at Lalo with a smile. "When I left, you were the toast of the court. I hardly expected to see you here...."

Lalo grimaced, wondering if his vision were going or it was just that the lamps were burning down. "It's the Beysa's court now, and there's no work for me." He saw Cappen's face stiffening into a polite, sympathetic smile, and shook his head. "But it doesn't matter-I can do other things now... things even Enas Yorl would like to know." He reached for his tankard.

Cappen Varra looked at Wedemir. "What's he talking about?"

The boy shook his head. "I don't know. Mother said he'd stopped drinking, but they had a fight and he started talking strange and stormed out. I thought I'd better follow and make sure-" He shrugged in embarrassment.

Lalo raised his eyes from the hypnotically swirling reflections in his tankard and fixed his son with a bitter gaze. "And make sure the old man didn't drown himself? I thought so. But you're wrong, both of you, if you think this is drunken wandering. Even your mother doesn't know-" Lalo stopped. He had come here determined to prove his power, but the wine was sapping his will. Did it really matter? Did anything really matter now?

His wavering gaze fixed on a figure that seemed to have precipitated from the shadows near the door, lean, sullen-browed, with a dark cloak hiding whatever else he wore. Lalo recognized the face he had seen on Shalpa at the table of the gods and thought. That Hanse, he's another one the gods have played with, and look at the sour face he's wearing now. For all the good it's done either of us, to hell with the gods!

"Look here. Papa," said Wedemir, "I'm getting tired of all these dark hints and frowns. Either explain what you're talking about or shut up."

Stung, Lalo straightened and managed to focus his gaze long enough to hold his son's eyes. "That time I was ill-" He tried to stop himself but the words flooded out like an undammed stream. "I was with the gods. I can breathe life into what I draw, now."

Wedemir stared at him, and Cappen Varra shook his head. "The wine," said the harper. "Definitely the wine. It really is too bad...."

Lalo stared back at them. "You don't believe me. I should be relieved. How would you like me to make you a Sik-kintair, Cappen Varra, or a troll such as they have fighting in the northern wars?" He shook his head, trying to get rid of the growing ache behind his eyes.

It was not fair-he should not be feeling like this until tomorrow. He had expected the alcohol to deaden his pain, but as his normal vision blurred, he was seeing the truths behind men's veils more clearly than before. That boy across the room-he had killed his own men, and would again.... Lalo winced and looked away.

"Papa, damn it, stop!" said Wedemir angrily. "You sound crazy-how do you think that makes me feel?"

"Why should I care?" muttered Lalo. "If it hadn't been for the lot of you, I would have been free of this wretched town long ago. I'm telling the truth, and I don't give a turd whether you believe me."

"Then, prove it!" Wedemir's voice rose, and for a moment nearby drinkers stared at them. Cappen Varra was looking uncomfortable, but the boy grabbed his arm. "No, don't go! You're one of his oldest friends. Help me show him what nonsense he's talking before he loses what wits he has!"

"All right-" said the harper slowly. "Lalo, do you have anything to draw with here?"

Lalo looked up at him, reading in his face weakness and an extravagant bravery, venality, and a stubborn integrity that even Sanctuary had not been able to wear away, a cynical assessment of women's susceptibility, and devotion to the ideal beauty he had never yet attained. Like Lalo, Cappen Varra was an artist who sought to make songs that would live in men's hearts. What would he think of this? The temptation to impress his old friend and make his cub of a son eat his words was overwhelming. Lalo reached into his pouch, fished among the few coins left there, and brought out a stick of charcoal and a worn piece of drawing lead.

"No paper-" he said after a moment, and sighed.

"Then why not use the wall?" Cappen Varra's eyes were bright, challenging. He gestured toward the scarred plaster, already disfigured by carved initials and scrawled obscenities. "The place will be no worse for some decoration- I'm sure One-Thumb won't mind!"

Lalo nodded and blinked several times, wishing that the blurring before his eyes would go away. Liquor had never affected him like this before-as if he were staring through the harbor's murky waters to a seabed littered with everything the sewers swept out of town.

He struggled up on his knees next to the wall. Cappen Varra was beginning to look interested, but Wedemir's expression was eloquent with embarrassment. /'// show him, thought Lalo, then turned his gaze to the wall, cudgeling his imagination for a subject. Lamplight flickered on the bumps and hollows of its rough plaster, sketching a long curve here, and there a mass of shadow, almost like...

Yes, that was what he would give them-a unicorn! After all, he had already painted one for the sign outside. He felt the familiar concentration narrow his vision as he lifted his hand; he could almost believe himself at home in his studio, drawing a model for a mural as he had done so many times before.

Lalo let the other part of his brain take over and guide his hand-that hidden part that saw the world in relationships of light and darkness, mass and texture and line, directly recording what it saw. And as his hand moved, his awareness reached out to draw the soul of the subject into the picture, as he also had done so many times before. The unicorn-an imagined unicorn? No, the Vulgar Unicorn, of course-the soul of the Vulgar Unicorn....

Lalo's hand jerked and stopped. He shuddered as unwelcome knowledge flooded in. Here in this booth a man had died not long ago-his lifeblood flowing from the stroke of a deftly-placed blade. He had struggled, and blood had splashed the wall-that smear Lalo had assumed was soot before. Without his volition the charcoal swept around it, incorporating it as a blacker shadow within the whole.

And now other impressions buffeted his awareness, the black, sharp fear of men surprised by the raid of the Beysib, an intricate swirling that resonated with the name of the witch Roxane. But there must be some humor-surely there had also been good times here, enough to give a tilt to the unicorn's head, a sardonic glint to its eye. But there were not many such moments to portray, and no recent ones....

Faster and faster moved the artist's hand, covering the wall with a scrollwork of figures that writhed one into another, contorting the outline that contained them. Here was the face of a woman raped to death in one of the upper rooms, there the desperate clutch of a man robbed of the coppers that would have saved his family. Feverishly the charcoal traced the lineaments of hatred, of hunger, of despair. ...

Lalo was vaguely aware of others around him, not only Cappen and Wedemir, but the men who had been drinking at the next table, and others from elsewhere in the room, even Shadowspawn, looking over his shoulder with startled eyes.

"That's Lalo the Limner, isn't it-you know, the fancy painter who did all that work up at the Palace," said one voice.

"Suppose One-Thumb's commissioned him to do a little daubing here?"

"Not bloody likely," answered the first voice, "and what's that he's drawing? Looks like a beast of some kind."

Lalo hardly heard. He no longer knew who had left the tavern, who had come in. At one point he felt a tug on his arm; peripheral vision showed him Wedemir's pale face. "Papa-it's all right. You don't have to go on."

Lalo pulled free with a gutteral denial. Didn't the boy understand? He could not stop now. Hand and arm moved of themselves to the next line, the next shadow, the next horror, as all the secrets of the Vulgar Unicom flowed through his fingers onto the wall.

And then, suddenly, it was finished. The nubbin of charcoal dropped from Lalo's nerveless fingers to be lost in the filth of the floor. He forced cramped muscles to function, eased off the bench, and stepped slowly back to see what he had done. He shivered, remembering the moment when he had stepped back to see the soul of the assasin Zanderei, closed his eyes briefly, then forced himself to look at the wall.

It was worse than he had expected. How could he have spent so much time in the Vulgar Unicorn and never known? Perhaps the normal barriers of the human senses had protected him. But, like a glory-hunting warrior, he had thrown his shields away, and now all the evil that had ever taken place within the tavern was displayed upon its wall.

"Is this what you were trying to tell us you could do?" whispered Wedemir.

"Can't you wipe some of it off, or something?" asked Cappen Varra in a shaken voice. "Even here, surely you don't mean to leave it that way...."

Lalo looked from him to the uneasy faces of the others who gazed at what the leaping lamplight revealed, and suddenly he was angry. They had watched, condoned, perhaps participated in the acts from which this portrait was made. Why were they so shocked to see their own evil made visible?

But the harper was right. Lalo had destroyed work before, when it was unworthy. Surely, though his portraiture had never been so true, this picture deserved destruction.

He stepped forward, part of his cape bunched in his hand, and lifted it to the distorted, flat-eared head with its evilly twisted hom.

The eye of the unicorn winked evilly.

Lalo stopped short, hand still poised. How had that happened? A bulge in the plaster or some trick of the light? He peered at it and realized that the unicorn's eye was red. Then his hand throbbed. He looked down and saw new blood welling from the old cut on his thumb.

"Sweet Shipri, preserve us!" muttered Lalo, realizing whose blood was coloring that obscenity on the wall. His hand darted forward, again was stopped before it touched the plaster; for if this was his own blood, what would happen to him if the picture was destroyed? What was he doing, meddling with this kind of power? He needed a professional!

And still the eye of the unicorn mocked him, as Gilla had mocked him when he went through the door, or like a more familiar mockery that he had seen in a mirror once in a face whose mixed good and evil frightened him all the way into the land of the gods. But he had embraced the good, and surely the evil was gone! Desperately, Lalo ransacked his memory for visions of the beauty of the gods.

But there was only darkness and the wicked eye that enticed him more surely than the eyes of the sorceress Is-chade, because it was his own.

Closer and closer Lalo came; his right arm hung nerveless at his side. "/ also am your soul," whispered the unicorn. "Give life to me, and you shall have my power. Did not you know?"

Lalo groaned. The breath of his lungs hissed out and stirred the charcoal dust upon the wall. The red eye of the unicom began to glow.

Lalo saw and choked, trying to withdraw his breath again. Wedemir clutched at his arm, but Lalo shook free and swiped wildly at the wall, recoiled as a wave of heat blasted him, and fell back into his son's strong arms.

"No!" he gasped, "I didn't mean it! Go back where you came from-this isn't how it's supposed to be!" Men muttered around him; someone swore as a tremor shook the floor.

"Wizard's work!" exclaimed another. Men began to back away. Shadowspawn spat and slipped quietly out the door.

Coughing, Lalo snatched up his tankard and flung it at the wall. Red as blood in the lamplight, the liquid splashed off a solidifying flank and splattered across the floor.

Wedemir made the sign against evil; Cappen Varra's fist closed around the coiled silver of his amulet. "It's only a picture; a picture can't hurt you-" muttered the harper, but Lalo knew that wasn't true. With every second the Thing on the wall gained substance. The trembling in the floor increased. Lalo took a step backward, then another.

One-Thumb launched himself down the staircase, roaring questions, but nobody paid him any attention. He was calling for Roxane, whose powers, if she had cared to exert them, might perhaps have stopped what was happening now. But this night Roxane had other matters in hand. She did not hear.

And then, with a groan that burst at once from Lalo's lips and the wall, the Black Unicorn shuddered free of the plaster that had imprisoned it and leaped to the tavern floor.

Abruptly Lalo remembered the astonished delight with which he had watched his first creation soar through the azure air. That joy was the measure of his horror now.

Alive, the thing was even worse than it had been on the wall-a desecration of the concept of a unicorn. It paused, stamped with hooves like polished skulls, and the posts upholding the upper floors trembled like trees shaken by a wind. It reared, and staggered forward with Minotaurlike lumberings, then dropped back to all fours, and almost casually plunged its horn into the chest of the nearest man.

The victim screamed once. The Unicorn shook its head, and the body flew free to land with a soft sound like a falling sack of meal on the other side of the room. Blood spiraled down the wicked hom. The Unicorn grew.

Its head came around, red eye fixing on the girl who had been serving the ale. She tried to run, but the monster was too quick for her. Her body was still in the air when Wedemir seized his father's arm.

"Papa, quick-we've got to get out of here!"

Cappen Varra was already slipping toward the door. The Unicorn wheeled, herding two men contemptuously across the room. Fresh blood smeared the old stains on the floor.

"No-" Lalo shook his head uncontrollably. "It's mine, my fault-I have to-" He felt his son's strength suddenly as Wedemir seized him, pinioning his arms, and half-dragged, half-carried him away.

Three men pelted after them into the night; then there were no more, only the screaming from inside the inn that continued as Wedemir dragged Lalo after Cappen Varra, terror lending them its own protection until they reached the harper's dingy room.

The secret hours between midnight and dawn drew on. The Black Unicorn, having finished with the tavern, shouldered out into the street, blotting the night with a deeper darkness, and began to forage through the Maze, emptying the streets more effectively than Imperial order or Beysib curfew had ever done.

On Cappen Varra's dusty floor Lalo dozed fitfully, struggling through dreams of fire and darkness lit by a distant shimmer of crystal wings.

In the luxury of his estate on the east side, Lastel, furious and smarting with pain from a gash across his belly, took a long snort of krrf and waited for Roxane. One death or a dozen in the Vulgar Unicorn did not trouble him unduly, but his alliance with the witch ought to protect him from any other sorcery, and with that Thing that had come off the wall of the Unicorn loose in the city, every mage in Sanctuary would be after his hide. Had the little dauber really done it? Who was using him? Lastel struck at the slave who was trying to bandage him and sniffed at the krrf again. Roxane would know what to do....

The sorceress Ischade lifted herself from silken pillows and the enraptured face of the man beneath her, midnight eyes searching graying shadows. She could feel power eddying in the damp air; the wards she had set between herself and the Nisibisi witch quivered like taut wires in a sudden breeze. Was Roxane moving against her? The disturbance came from the direction of the Vulgar Unicorn, but there seemed no purpose in its meanderings. A word to the black bird perched in the comer sent it heaving into the musky air in a flurry of nightdark wings. "Go," she whispered, "bring back word to me...."

Enas Yorl saw the fragile structure of the spell he was working begin to ripple as the dimensional distortion reached it, and extinguished it with a swift Word. What had happened? The power he sensed was at once alien and shockingly familiar. Automatically he summoned his familiars and sent them scurrying through the twisted streets. Then he began to robe himself, but even as his hand closed on the rich velvet he saw it changing. Swearing in frustrated agony, the sorcerer subsided in a transformation that took from him even the semblance of humanity. By the time Wedemir banged on his brazen door, there was only the blind servant Darous to answer it with the enigmatic assurance that the sorcerer was not at home....

Lythande, lost in timeless contemplation in the Place That Is Not, felt the indefinable tremor and sent her trained awareness winging back to the austere chamber in the Aphrodisia House where she had left her physical form. Yes, there was a new power in Sanctuary, but it was no threat to her, thank the gods. She had already rested here too long, but even as she contemplated her next journey, the Adept of the Blue Star had to suppress a professional curiosity regarding who had created the thing, and why....

And the Black Unicorn, having killed two mercenaries and a beggar at the edge of the Maze, as the sun rose began a destructive foray through the busy streets of the Processional. Terror depopulated them as rapidly as they had filled, and the Unicorn turned, its darkness staining the bright day, and began to slash its way up Slippery Street toward the Bazaar.

"So, you came back...."

Lalo slumped against the doorframe, his cape slipping from strengthless fingers to the floor. "The Unicorn-" he whispered, "they said it was coming here...." Blinking, he looked around him, seeing the kitchen just as he had left it one endless day ago. There were the flaking whitewashed walls, the sloping, well scrubbed floor, and the bright faces of his children; even Vanda's friend Valira was here with her child, staring at him from their seats about the room....

And Gilla, standing in the midst of them like the statue of Shipri All-Mother in the Temple of Ils. Shivering, he forced himself to meet her eyes. The apologies he had rehearsed through all the stumbling rush of his run here trembled on his lips, but he could not find the words.

"Well," said Gilla finally, "you don't seem to have enjoyed your debauchery!"

A croak of laughter forced its way from Lalo's chest. "Debauchery! I only wish it had been!" A sudden horror shook him as he looked around the peaceful room. The Unicorn was his-what if it tracked him here? He choked, put his hand on the doorlatch, gathering his strength to go.

"Papa!" cried Wedemir, and at the same moment Gilla's face changed at last.

"There's a monster loose, you fool-you can't go out there!"

Lalo stared at her, hysterical laughter building beyond his ability to control. "I... know...." He sobbed for breath. "I created it...."

"Oh, you dear wretched man!" she exclaimed. With a swift step she was beside him, and he looked up fearfully. But already her big arms were enfolding him. He glimpsed Wedemir's astonished face beyond her as his head found the haven of her breast.

And then, for a moment, everything was all right again. He was safe at that still point of rest where he and Gilla were one. He sighed explosively. Tension, fear, unchan-neled power flowed from him through her to its grounding in the earth below. Then from the distance came a scream of agony, and Lalo stiffened, remembering the Unicorn.

"I'll go outside-" said Wedemir. "I'm a good runner, and maybe I can lead it off if it comes this way."

"No!" cried Lalo and Gilla as one. Lalo looked at his son, his face shining in the morning light like a young god's, and all his resentment of the night before transformed to agony. In the boy's proud strength there was such awful vulnerability.

He turned to Gilla. "When you looked at that portrait of me, did you see a madman? I have embodied half the evil in Sanctuary and set it free! I tried to get help from Enas Yorl, but he's not there-Gilla, I don't know what to do!"

"Enas Yorl's not the only wizard in Sanctuary, and I never liked him anyway," said Gilla stoutly. But Lalo could feel her fear, and that, more than anything else that had happened, frightened him.

A soft voice stirred the silence. "What about Lythande?"

The reknowned Madam of the Aphrodisia House was no more imbued with civic responsibility than anyone else in Sanctuary, but this Thing that was rampaging through their streets might succeed where curfews and death squads had failed-it might even affect trade. And she knew Valira ro be an honest girl-had even offered her a place in the House, though the girl insisted on staying in lodgings with her child. It was enough to gain Valira's friends a hearing, once the little prostitute had poured out her garbled tale. And once Myrtis had heard, to make her their advocate to Lythande.

But Lalo recognized exasperation in the cool voice behind the crimson curtains at the end of the waiting room, and as the Adept pushed through them he saw resistance in every line of the dark robe that concealed Lythande's tall frame. There was silver in the long hair; lamplight limned lean cheeks and a high, narrow brow where the identifying blue star glowed. Lalo looked away, ashamed to meet the wizard's gaze.

How the Adept must despise him, as he would have sneered at a beggar who stole his paints and tried to paint the Prince. But a beggar would only have made himself ridiculous. Lalo's ignorant misuse of power might doom them all.

There was an uneasy silence as the Adept settled into the carven chair. Lalo's nostrils twitched as Lythande lit a pipe and aromatic smoke began to eddy about the room. He twitched nervously, and Gilla, solid as stone on the couch beside him, patted his hand.

"Well?" The Adept's smooth tenor broke the silence. "Myrtis said you had need of me-"

Gilla cleared her throat. "That demon in the shape of a unicorn is my man's doing. We need your help to get rid of it again."

"You're telling me this man is a magician?" Lalo flinched at the scorn he heard. "Myrtis!" Lythande called, "why did you ask me to waste my time with a hysteric and a fool?"

Gilla bristled. "No magician, master, but a man gifted with one power by Enas Yorl and with another by the gods themselves!"

Lalo forced his gaze upward, saw the blue star on Lythande's brow begin to shine as Gilla spoke the other magician's name, casting an eerie illumination on the face below it, a face that was worn by wizardry, with ageless eyes.

His vision blurred. For a moment Lalo saw beneath those austere features a face that was softer, though no less resolute. He blinked, shook his head, and looked again, saw the face of the Adept veiling the other, then both melding together until there was only one face before him, a woman's face whose truth he read as once he had read that of Enas Yorl-

-An implacable and enduring beauty like the blade of a sword, honed and tempered through more years and lands than Lalo could imagine, and the equally endless pain of fulfillment denied and forever voiceless love. The rumor of the Bazaar had only hinted at Lythande's power and had not even suggested the price the Adept paid for it-that she paid-for Lalo knew Lythande's secret now.

"But you-" Wonder startled words from his lips and the star on Lythande's forehead blazed suddenly. Lalo's sensitized nerves felt the throb of power, and abruptly he recognized his danger. He squeezed shut his eyes. Powers he might have, but chance memory told him that only another wizard could survive open revelation of the secret of a wearer of the Blue Star.

"I see," came the Adept's voice, soft, terrible.

"Master, please!" cried Lalo desperately, trying to let her know, without saying so, that he understood. "I know the danger of secrets-I have told you mine and I am in your power. But if there are any in this city that you love, please show me how to undo the evil I have done!"

There was a long sigh. The sense of danger began to ease. Gilla moved uncomfortably, and Lalo realized that she had been holding her breath too.

"Very well-" There was a certain bitter humor in Ly-thande's measured tone. "One condition. Promise that you will never paint me!"

Dizzy with relief, Lalo opened his eyes, careful not to meet the Adept's gaze.

"But I warn you, help is all that I can give," Lythande went on. "If the creature is your creation, then you must control it."

"But it will kill him!" Gilla cried.

"Perhaps," said the Adept, "but when one plays with power one must be ready to pay."

"What-" Lalo swallowed. "What do I have to do?"

"First we have to get its attention...."

Lalo sat on the edge of one of the Vulgar Unicorn's rickety benches, nervously fingering the edges of the roll of canvas in his arms. Wedemir-where are you now? His heart sent out the anguished cry as he visualized his son slipping through dark streets, searching for the Unicorn. The end of Lythande's planning had been this knowledge that the price must be paid by all of them-by Wedemir, walking into danger, and by the rest of them, waiting for him to lead it to them here.

He took a ragged breath, then another, striving for calm. Lythande had told him he must prepare himself, but his stripped nerves kept him nervously aware of the blue pulse of the Adept's presence, as he was aware of Cappen Varra, who sat with hand clasped around his amulet, and of Gilla-of her more than any, projecting a mixing of strength and fear and love.

Perhaps she simply disliked being in the Vulgar Unicorn. It was the measure of her trust of Lythande that she had accepted the Adept's pronouncement that the Unicorn must leave this dimension by the same Gate through which it had come.

But was this really the Vulgar Unicorn, or only some drunken nightmare? It was so very still. After a brief, explosive interchange between One-Thumb and Lythande, the Adept had expelled the few customers who had braved the birthplace of the Black Unicorn, and cleared away the tables from the booth and the center of the room. Lalo stared at the irregular white space on the wall where his drawing had been, shivered and looked away, found his eyes focusing on the new dark stains that marred the floor, and shut them.

Breathe! he told himself. For Wedemir's sake-you have to find the strength somewhere!

"I should never have allowed it-" Gilla's whisper voiced Lalo's fears. "My poor son! How could you let him sacrifice himself? You'd let your baby bum and send your firstborn to be eaten by a demon from Hell-a fine sort of father you are!"

Lalo could feel her gathering steam for another diatribe and found himself almost welcoming the distraction, but Lythande's voice knifed through the pause as Gilla gathered breath to go on.

"Woman, be still! There is more than one life at stake here, and the time for discussion is long gone. Lend some of your anger to your man-he'll need it soon!" The Adept's snapped comment was followed by a half-heard muttering something about "working with amateurs" that made Gilla's ears bum.

Lalo sighed and tried to formulate a prayer to Ils of the Thousand Eyes, but all that would come to him was a vision of Wedemir's bright gaze.

The door opened.

Lalo jerked around, peering at the shadow that had precipitated itself from the darker oblong of the open door. Wedemir? But it was too soon, and there had been no sound. The figure stepped forward; Lalo recognized the dark cloak and narrow, sullen face of Shadowspawn.

"I got a message-" Hanse surveyed the odd group with disbelief. "I'm supposed to help you?"

His face was eloquent with resentment, and Lalo, realizing abruptly from whom that message must have come, felt a slim stirring of hope. He got to his feet.

"Yes, you can help us," Lythande said quietly beside him. "You saw something get loose here last night. Help us send it home again."

"No." Hanse shook his head. "Oh, no. Once was a time too many to see that thing."

"Shalpa's Son..." Lalo said hoarsely, and saw Shadowspawn flinch.

"Not even for-" he began, then whirled, hands going for his knives. From outside came the sound of feet running, and a deep roaring as if all the sewers in Sanctuary had overflowed.

"Quick, for your life-" snapped the Adept, pointing across the room. "Take your place in the circle, and don't stir!"

For a moment Shadowspawn stared, then he moved.

But Lalo had forgotten him. Bench clattering over behind him, he darted past Cappen Varra to reach his place by the wall, glimpsed Gilla's bulk moving surprisingly quickly to the spot the Adept had assigned to her. As if she had tel-eported, Lythande was already standing, wand at the ready, at the point between the door and the wall.

Then it crashed open and Wedemir hurtled through, hesitated for a moment as he saw the place he had expected to fill already occupied by Shadowspawn, then stumbled into the middle of the circle, blood from his arm spattering across the floor. Lalo's stomach churned; he reached for the boy and pulled him to his side.

"The blood-" he gasped. "Did the Unicorn get you?"

Wedemir shook his head and touched the knife at his side. Lythande darted them a quick glance.

"I told him to wound himself," the Adept said. "Innocent blood-and your blood, Lalo-the smell of it would be irresistible-"

Then a darkness filled the doorway, deeper than the shadows, in which flamed two glowing eyes. It had grown. Lalo swallowed sickly as the Unicorn forced its expanding bulk through the doorway. The black muzzle bent, snuffling for the blood-trail. Wedemir swayed, and Lalo saw that blood was still welling from between the fingers clenched around his arm to fall smoking to the stained floor. Lalo's altered vision perceived the life-force radiating from each drop. That, then, was what the Unicom desired.

Us of the Thousand Eyes, look down and help me! his spirit cried. Gilla's invocation ofShipri vibrated in the heavy air, and beyond her Lalo sensed the blur of Shalpa's power, Lythande's blue glow, and the murmur of Cappen Varra's plea to his northern gods.

The Unicom reared back: Lalo could not tell whether it went on two legs or four. Did those red eyes see puny human victims, or did it sense the inflowing power of the gods? The monster must not be frightened away, though his every nerve quivered with hope that it would go. Lythande's stem gaze commanded him. Now was the time-the Adept had done her part and he was on his own.

Great Ils! He could not do it; but somehow his feet were carrying him between Wedemir and the Unicom.

"Unicom!" Lalo's voice was a crow's croak. He tried again. "Unicom, come to me! Blood of my blood, here is what you desire!"

The dark form shuddered with thunder and deep laughter. It took a step toward him and then another, contemptuous of the others who stood there. Its gaze was like a horribly intimate touch upon his soul, and Lalo remembered suddenly that it was his-his own evil had been joined to that of the rest of Sanctuary in the Unicorn's conception. Lalo's part in the creature yearned for reunion; an answering yearning resonated in the secret depths of his soul. How easy it would be to... simply give in.

Lythande poised like a beast of prey, absolutely still. As Lalo wavered, the Unicorn stepped past her; her wand flashed out like a sword of fire, and blue light snapped across the circle to Gilla, back to Cappen Varra, over to Wedemir, occupying Lalo's old place by the wall, up to Shadowspawn and back to Lythande again before the Thing could move.

It roared and whirled, but it was imprisoned by the glowing lines of the pentagram. Lalo realized with horror that he was imprisoned too. Then the Unicorn grew still, senses questing outward to test the barriers. Its darkness pulsed softly; Lalo recognized faces contorted in voiceless torment, blinked away a vision of his own features swirling among the throng, and fumbled to unroll the canvas still clutched in his arms.

The Unicorn heard the rustle of canvas and began to turn.

The results of half a night's labor unrolled stiffly, and Lalo wondered desperately whether it would serve. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, seeking the Face of Ils in memory. Awareness faltered, fixed, and for one timeless moment he was There, but this time he did not look away. The brightness of the Divine Face blinded and burned him, searing that part of him that had responded to the Unicorn. And still the light grew, until Lalo realized that even the Shining Face of Ils had been only a mask for that radiance whose least part burned in the sun and the other stars.

And then he was falling, spiraling dizzily back into the prison of his human body. Still dazzled, Lalo released his pent breath across the canvas in his clenched hands.

The Unicorn shrieked as if it sensed the birth of its enemy. Lalo felt the canvas quiver in his hands. Light shattered and scattered across the floor as crystal wings beat upward into three-dimensionality. He had set out to draw a white bird like something he had once painted for the gods, and Lythande's cool voice and fluttering fingers had tranced him as an aid in recovering the memory.

But he did not recognize the wonder that was emerging now-it was an eagle, it was a phoenix, it was a swan- it was all of these and none. The great bird opened its bright beak in a piercing cry, talons clutched and unclenched, wings swept wind across the room, and it was free.

Lalo sank back upon his heels, gasping as the Unicorn's darkness gave way before a storm of white wings. The war of fire and ice and darkness sent fierce coruscations of opal light around the room. Roaring, the Unicorn charged against its foe, and Lalo huddled, a still speck at the eye of the storm.

Between one flurry and another he heard someone call his name. Blue light stabbed his eyes. "Lalo-open the Gate!"

Lalo forced his limbs to pull him toward Lythande. The pentagram burned him; then the Adept's wand broke it and he was through. And just in time, for the Bird of Light was driving the Unicorn after him in a tempest Vashanka would have been proud to claim. Lalo struggled upright. Light followed his finger as he traced a line around the pale area on the plaster where he had drawn the Unicom.

He finished, his hand fell, and the space he had outlined began to shimmer. The plaster thinned, cleared, disappeared to reveal a black gulf that pulsed with sparkling lights. Lalo's ears sang with subliminal vibration, his vision blurred, a strong hand closed on his arm and jerked him out of the path of the bolt of blackness that hurtled past him toward the void, followed by a beam of light.

Lalo thrust out one arm in self-protection as he fell, and screamed as it took the final buffet of the Bird of Light's crystal wing. Then an explosion of radiance dispersed the darkness. The tavern shook as the Gate between the dimensions slammed shut, and both the Unicom and its opposite were gone.

Two bodies lay in the lee of a wall where Dyer's Alley turned off from Slippery Street. Lythande took a swift step aside to peer at the pallid faces and eyes that stared unseeing at the rising sun, then returned.

"Knifed-" the Adept said. "Nothing unusual. I'll be going now." She nodded abruptly, and began to walk away from them toward the Bazaar.

Lalo stopped rubbing his numbed arm for a moment and stared after her, wanting to call her back. But what could he say? The Adept had favored him with more good advice than he could understand all the way back from the Vulgar Unicorn.

By the time Lalo had recovered consciousness, Shadowspawn was long gone, and Cappen Varra, with voice unsteady and hands that still reached for his amulet at any unexpected sound, had taken his leave as soon as he could thereafter. By the time they got Wedemir's wound stanched and Lalo was able to walk again, the sun was striking gold from the dome of the Temple, and Hakiem was peering through the tavern door. With the tables and benches back in place, only the bare spot on the wall and an unnaturally wholesome atmosphere would have enabled anyone to guess what had happened there; but Lalo supposed that the storyteller would find out. He always did, somehow.

But as Lythande had pointed out, it hardly mattered what the rest of Sanctuary thought of him-it was the wizards he must watch out for now. As the style of a painting proclaimed its creator, so it was with magic, and the Black Unicorn had been signed "Lalo the Limner" for any with eyes to see.

"One way or another they will be after you, and you must learn to use your power..." Lythande's words still rang in Lalo's ears.

He sighed, and Gilla eased more of her arm under his, supporting him. Wedemir, leaning on her other arm, lifted his head, and father and son exchanged apprehensive grins. They knew Gilla's frown, and the twist of lips clamped shut over hard words.

At the foot of their stairs Lalo halted, gathering his strength for the climb.

"All right, 0 Mighty Magician, do you want my help or can you make it under your own power?" asked Gilla. In the full light of morning he saw clearly for the first time the new lines of anguish by her mouth and the bruise marks beneath her eyes. And yet her body was as steady as the earth below him. It was her strength that had got him this far.

"You are my power, all of you-" His eyes moved from Gilla to Wedemir, meeting his son's steady gaze, accepting him at last as an equal and a man. "Don't let me forget it again."

Gilla's eyes were suspiciously bright. She squeezed his hand. Lalo nodded and began to climb the staircase, and in his labored breathing they heard the whisper of white wings.