The Face of Chaos tw-5

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  '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 o
pulence, 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?