The face of chaos - Thieves World 05 (28 page)

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.