Shadows of Sanctuary

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  At least I have that much honour left! Lalo bit back the words, remembering times, when one of his merchant patrons had refused to pay, that the limner had let fall the location of rich pickings while drinking in the Vulgar Unicorn. And if, thereafter, one of his less reputable acquaintances chose to share with him a few anonymous coins, surely honour did not require him to ask whence they came.

  No, it had not been honour that kept him honest, thought Lalo bitterly, but fear of bringing shame to Gilla and the children, and a rapidly deteriorating belief in his own artistic destiny.

  He struggled up on one elbow, for the moment too dispirited to stand. Gilla sniffed in exasperation, laid down the child and stalked to the other end of the single room in the tenement which served as kitchen and chamber for the family, and, too rarely, as the painter’s studio.

  The three-legged stool groaned as Gilla sat down, set a small sack on the table, and began with ostentatious precision to shell peas into a bowl. Late afternoon sunlight shafted through the shutters, lending an illusory splendour to the tarnished brocade against which his models used to pose, and leaving in obscurity the baskets of soiled clothing which the wives of the rich and respectable (terms which were, in Sanctuary, roughly synonymous) had graciously given to Gilla to wash.

  Once, Lalo would have rejoiced in the play of light and shadow, or at least reflected ironically on the relationship between illusion and reality. But he was too familiar with the poverty the shadows hid—the sordid truth behind all his fantasies. The only place he now saw visions was at the bottom of a jug of wine.

  He got up stiffly, brushing ineffectually at the blue paint smeared across the old stains on his tunic. He knew that he should clean up the pigments spilling across the floor, but why try to save paint when no one wanted his pictures?

  By now the regulars would be drifting into the Vulgar Unicom. No one would care about his clothing there.

  Gilla looked up as he started towards the door, and the light restored her greying hair to its former gold, but she did not speak. Once, she would have run to kiss her husband good-bye, or railed at him to keep him home. Only, as Lalo stumbled down the stairs, he heard behind him the vicious splatter of peas hitting the cracked glaze of the bowl.

  ****

  LALO SHOOK HIS head and took another sip of wine, carefully, because the tankard was almost empty now. “She used to be beautiful…” he said sadly. “Would you believe that she was like Eshi, bringing spring back into the world?” He peered muzzily through the shadows of the Vulgar Unicorn at Cappen Varra, trying to superimpose on the minstrel’s saturnine features the dimly remembered image of the golden-haired maiden he had courted almost twenty years ago.

  But he could only remember the scorn in Gilla’s grey eyes as she had glared down at him that afternoon. She was right. He was despicable—wine had bloated his belly as his ginger hair had thinned, and the promises he had once made her were as empty as his purse.

  Cappen Varra tipped back his dark head and laughed. Lalo caught the gleam of his white teeth in the guttering lamplight, a flicker of silver from the amulet at his throat, the elegant shape of his head against the chiaroscuro of the Inn. Dim figures beyond him turned at the sound, then returned to the even murkier business that had brought them there.

  “Far be it from me to argue with a fellow-artist—” said Cappen Varra, “but your wife reminds me of a rhinoceros! Remember when you got paid for decorating Master Regli’s foyer, and we went to the Green Grape to celebrate? I saw her when she came after you… Now I know why you do your serious drinking here!”

  The minstrel was still laughing. Suddenly angry, Lalo glared at him.

  “Can you afford to mock me? You are still young. You think it doesn’t matter if you tailor your songs to the taste of these fleas in the armpit of the Empire, because you still carry the real poetry in your heart, along with the faces of the beautiful women you wrote it for! Once already you have pawned your harp for bread. When you are my age, will you sell it for the price of a drink, and sit weeping because the dreams still live in your heart but you have no words to describe them anymore?”

  Lalo reached blindly for his tankard, drained it, set it down on the scarred table. Cappen Varra was drinking too, the laughter for a moment gone from his blue eyes.

  “Lalo—you are no fit companion for a drinking man!” said the minstrel at last. “I will end up as sodden as you are if I stay here!” He rose, slinging his harp case over his shoulder, adjusting the drape of his cloak to a jauntier flare. “The Esmeralda’s back in port from Ilsig and points north—I’m off to hear what news she brings. Good evening. Master Limner—I wish you joy of your philosophy …”

  Lalo remained where he was. He supposed he should go too, but where? If he went home he would only have to face Gilla again. Idly he began to draw on the table, his paint-stained forefinger daubing from a little pool of spilt wine. But his memory had sought the past, when he and Gilla were painfully saving the gold pieces that would deliver them from Sanctuary. He remembered how they had planned what they would do with the wealth sure to come once the lords of Ranke recognized his talent, the images of transcendent beauty he had dreamed of creating when he no longer had to worry about tomorrow’s bread. But instead, they had had their first child.

  He looked down, and realized that his finger had been clumsily outlining the pure profile of the girl Gilla had been so long ago. His fist smashed down on the table, obscuring the lines in a splatter of wine, and he groaned and hid his face in his hands.

  “Your cup is empty …” The deep voice made a silence around them.

  Lalo sighed and looked up. “So is my purse.”

  Broad shoulders blocked the light of the hanging lamp, but as the newcomer turned to shrug off his cloak his eyes glowed red, like those of a wolf surprised by a peasant’s torch at night. Beyond him, Lalo saw the tapster’s boy slithering among the crowded tables towards the new customer.

  “You’re the fellow who did the sign outside, aren’t you?” said the man. “I’m getting transferred, and a picture for my girl to remember me by would be worth the price of a drink to me…”

  “Yes. Of course,” answered Lalo. The tapster’s boy stopped by their table, and his companion ordered a jug of cheap red wine. The limner reached into his pouch for his roll of drawing paper, weighted it with the tankard to keep it from curling up again. The stopper of his ink bottle had dried stuck, and Lalo swore as he struggled to open it. He picked up his pen.

  Swiftly he sketched his first impression of the man’s hulking shoulders and tightly curled hair. Then he looked up again. The features blurred and Lalo blinked, wondering if he had already had too much wine. But the hollow in his belly cried out for more, and the tapster’s boy was already returning, ducking beneath a thrown knife and detouring around the resulting struggle without spilling a drop.

  “Turn towards the lamp—if I’m to draw you I must have some light!” muttered Lalo. The man’s eyes burned at him from beneath arched brows. The limner shivered, forced himself to focus on the shape of the head and noted how the lank hair receded across the prominent bones of the skull.

  Lalo looked down at his drawing. What trick of the light had made him think the fellow’s hair curled? He cross-hatched over the first outline to merge it into a shadowy background and began to sketch the profile again. He felt those glowing eyes burning him. His hand jerked and he looked up quickly.

  The nose was misshapen now, as if some drunken potter had pressed too hard into the clay. Lalo stared at his model and threw down his pen. The face before him bore no resemblance to the one he had drawn!

  “Go away!” he said hoarsely. “I can’t do what you ask of me—I can’t do anything anymore …” He began to shake his head and could not stop.

  “You need a drink.” Pewter clinked against the tabletop.

  Lalo reached for the refilled tankard and drank deeply, not caring anymore whether he would be able to earn it. He felt it bum all the way down t
o his belly, run tingling along his veins to barrier him from the world.

  “Now, try again,” commanded the stranger. “Turn your paper over, look well at me, then draw what you see as quickly as you can.”

  For a long moment Lalo stared at the oddly attenuated features of the man before him, then bent over his work. For several minutes only the scratching of swift penstrokes competed with the clamour of the room. He must capture the glow of those strange eyes, for he suspected that when he looked at his companion again, nothing but the eyes would be the same.

  But what matter? He had his payment now. With his free hand he reached for the mug and drank again, shaded a final line, then pushed the drawing across the table and sat back.

  “Well—you wanted it…”

  “Yes.” The stranger’s lips twitched. “Everything considered, it’s quite good. I understand that you do portraits,” he went on. “Are you free to take a commission now? Here’s an earnest of your fee—” He reached into the folds of his garment, laid a gold piece shining on the table, quickly hid his misshapen fingers once more.

  Lalo stared, reached out gingerly as if expecting the coin to vanish at his touch. Fortified by the wine, he could admit to himself how very odd this episode had been. But the gold was hard and cool and weighed heavily in his palm. His fingers closed.

  The stranger’s smile stiffened. He drew back suddenly, away from the light. “Now I must go.”

  “But the commission!” cried Lalo. “Who is it for, and when?”

  “The commission …” the man seemed to be having trouble enunciating the words. “If you have the courage, come now… Do you think that you can find the house of Enas Yorl?”

  Lalo cringed from his snarl of laughter, but the sorcerer did not wait for him to reply. He had cast his cloak around him and was lurching towards the door, and this time the shape the cloak covered was hardly human at all.

  ****

  LALO THE LIMNER stood in Prytanis Street

  before the house of Enas Yorl, shivering. With the setting of the sun, the wind off the desert had turned cold, although there was still a greenish light in the western sky. Once he had spent two months trying to capture on canvas the translucent quality of that glow.

  The rooftops of the city made a deceptively elegant silhouette against the sky, topped by the lacy scaffolding of the tower of the Temple of Savankala and Sabellia nearby. Insulting to local prejudices though the new temple might be, at least it promised to be magnificent. Lalo sighed, wondering who would paint the murals within—probably some eminent artist from the capital. He sighed again. If he had gone to Ranke it might have been himself, returning in triumph to his birthplace.

  But that consideration forced his attention back to the edifice that loomed before him, its shadows somehow darker than those of the other buildings, and the job that he had come here to do.

  Terrors coiled like basilisks in the corners of his mind. His legs trembled. A dozen times during his journey across the town they had threatened to buckle or turn in the opposite direction, and the wine had been sweated out of him long ago.

  Enas Yorl was one of the darker legends of Sanctuary, although, for reasons which the episode in the Vulgar Unicorn had amply illustrated, he was rarely seen. Rumour had it that the curse of some rival had condemned him to the existence of a chameleon. But that was said to be the only limit on his power.

  Had the sorcerer’s offer been some perverted joke, or part of some magical intrigue? I should take the gold to Gilla, he thought, it might be enough to buy us places in an outward-bound caravan …

  But the coin was only a retainer for a service he had not yet performed, and there was no place he could flee that would be beyond the reach of the sorcerer. He could not return the money without facing Enas Yorl, and he could not run away. Shaking so that he could hardly grasp the intricately wrought knocker, he let it fall upon the brazen surface of the door.

  The interior of the building seemed larger than its outside, though the colourless mists that swirled around him made it hard to be certain of anything except the glowing red eyes of Enas Yorl. As the mists curdled and cleared, Lalo saw that the sorcerer was enthroned in a carven chair which the artist would have itched to examine had anyone else been sitting there. He was considering a slim figure in an embroidered Ilsig cloak who stood twirling a mounted globe.

  Seas and continents spun as the stranger turned, stared at Lalo, then back at Enas Yorl.

  “Do you mean to tell me that sot is necessary to your spell?”

  It was a woman’s voice, but Lalo had already noted the fine bones structuring the face beneath the scarred tanned skin and cropped hair, the wiry grace of the body in its male attire. So might a kitten from the Prince’s harem have looked if it had been left to fight its way to adulthood in the alleys of the town.

  Abruptly perceiving himself through the woman’s eyes, Lalo straightened, acutely aware of his stained tunic and frayed breeches, and the stubble on his chin.

  “Why do you need a painting?” she asked scornfully. “Isn’t this enough to purchase the use of your own powers?” From a bag suspended around her neck she poured out a river of moonlight which resolved itself into a string of pearls which she cast rattling upon the stone-flagged floor.

  “I could …” said the sorcerer wearily. He was smaller than he had been, an oddly shaped mound in the great chair. “If you had been anyone else, I would have given you a spell worth as much as that necklace, and laughed when your ship outran the land winds that carry the energies I use, and your beauty became ugliness again. The natural tendency of things is towards disorder, my dear. Destruction is easy, as you know. Restoration takes more energy.”

  “And your power is not great enough?” Her voice was anxious now.

  Lalo averted his eyes as the sorcerer’s appearance altered again. He was feeling alternately hot with embarrassment and chill with fear. Risky as involvement in the public affairs of wizards might be, to be privy to their personal affairs could only bring disaster. And whatever the relationship between the figureless sorcerer and the disfigured girl might be, it was obviously both extremely personal, and an affair.

  “There is a price for everything,” replied Enas Yorl once he had stabilized. “I can transform you without aids, but not while continuing to protect myself. Jarveena, would you ask that of me?” His voice was a whisper now.

  The girl shook her head. Suddenly subdued, she let her cloak slip to the floor and seated herself. Lalo saw an easel beside him—had it been there before? He took an involuntary step towards it, seeing there a set of brushes of perfectly matched camel’s hair, pots of pigment finely ground, a smoothly stretched canvas—tools of a quality of which he had only been able to dream.

  “I want you to paint her,” said Enas Yorl to Lalo. “Not as you see her now, but as I see her always. I want you to paint Jarveena’s soul.”

  Lalo stared at him as though he had been struck to the heart but had not yet begun to feel the pain. He shook his head a little.

  “You read my heart as you see the lady’s soul…” he said with a curious dignity. “The gods alone know what I would give to be able to do what you ask of me!”

  The sorcerer smiled. His form seemed to shift, to expand, and in the blazing of his eyes Lalo’s awareness was consumed. I will provide the vision and you will provide the skill… the words echoed in Lalo’s mind, and then he knew no more.

  ****

  THE STILLNESS OF the hour just before dawn hushed the air when Lalo again became conscious of his own identity. The girl Jarveena lay back in her chair, apparently asleep. His back and shoulder ached furiously. He stretched out his arm and flexed his fingers to relieve their cramping, and only then did his eyes focus on the canvas before him.

  Did I do that? His first reaction was one he had known before, when hand and eye had cooperated unusually well and he had emerged from an intensive bout of work amazed at how close he had come to capturing the beauty he saw. But this—the
image of a face whose finely arched nose and perfect brows were framed by waves of lustrous hair, of a slenderly curved body whose honey-coloured skin had the sheen of the pearls on the floor and whose delicately up-tilted breasts were tipped with buds of dusky rose—this was that Beauty, fully realized.

  Lalo looked from the picture to the girl in the chair and wept, because he could see only blurred hints of that beauty in her now, and he knew that the vision had passed through him like light through a windowpane, leaving him in the darkness once more.

  Jarveena stirred and yawned, then opened one eye. “Is he done? I’ve got to go—the Esmeralda sails on the early tide.”

  “Yes,” answered Enas Yorl, his eyes glowing more brightly than ever as he turned the easel for her to see. The painting holds my magic now. Take it with you and look at it as you would look into a mirror, and after a time it will become a mirror, and all will see your beauty as I see it now …”

  Shaking with fatigue and loss, Lalo sat down on the floor. He heard the rustle of the sorcerer’s robes as he moved to embrace his lady, and after a little while the sound of the painting being removed and her footsteps going to the door. Then Lalo and Enas Yorl were alone.

  “Well … it is done … ”The sorcerer’s voice was fleshless, like wind whispering through dry leaves. “Will you take your payment now?”

  Lalo nodded without looking at him, afraid to see the body to which that voice belonged.

  “What shall it be? Gold? Those baubles on the floor?” The pearls rattled as if they had been nudged by the sorcerer’s current equivalent of a toe.

  Yes, I will take the gold, and Gilla and I will go and never set eyes on this place again… The words were on his lips, but every dream he had ever known was clamouring in his soul.

  “Give me the power you forced on me last night!” Lalo’s voice strengthened. “Give me the power to paint the soul!”

  The laughter of Enas Yorl began as the whisper in the sand that precedes the simoom, but it grew until Lalo was physically buffeted by the waves of pressure in the room. And then, after a little, there was silence again, and the sorcerer asked, “Are you quite sure?”