Stealers' Sky tw-12

by Robert Asprin

  "He came to me-last night. It was terrible ..." Joia took a very small sip from the porcelain teacup that Valira pressed into her hand, then set it down again. Valira sighed. She was only twenty-two; even at the Aphrodisia House that was not yet old. The careful bleaching that lightened her Ilsigi-dark hair into something nearer gold hid no grey. Perhaps it was having a little daughter of her own that had made the other girls think of her as motherly.

  "You were with Ricio?"

  "He paid for the whole night," explained Joia. "In my nightmare I thought he was Aglon and I woke up fighting. And then he got jealous when I told him what was wrong."

  "Puppy-" said Valira, resting her elbows on the inlaid wood of the table- It was new, like most of the furnishings, like most of the facade of Sanctuary-a glossy surface to hide the fact that underneath, not that much had changed. "You'd think he would sympathize. Aglon was his comrade."

  Joia shook her head. "Ricio is very young." Her hennaed curls hung limp, and the violet shadows around her eyes owed nothing to the paint pot. "I told Ricio that I never loved Aglon, but it wasn't true. Oh, Valira, I fought him, but I wanted him. He was like ice inside me, and ne just kept on. And now I can't seem to get warm."

  Joia was wrapped in a fluffy shawl of silk and wool which had probably been looted from some northern valley, and Valira felt the smooth skin of her own forearms pebble with chill despite the sultry heat of the day. One of the new girls came into the breakfast room, heavy-eyed and abstracted, nursing her own cup of tea.

  "I wanted him," said Joia, "and now I'm afraid." "Did you have a nightmare?" asked the other girl. Flaine was new, and pretty in a kittenish sort of way, another escapee from the streets of Sanctuary.

  "I hope that's all it was!" muttered Joia,

  "I had bad dreams too-" said Flaine. "They must have been dreams ... he promised me-" Her pouting lips closed tightly.

  "Something pinched me all night!" said another girl. "Couldn't sleep a wink, an' when I woke I felt all black-an'-blue!"

  Valira raised one eyebrow. The child looked hagged, but she could see no marks on the dark skin.

  "We seem to have an epidemic-"

  "If Lythande were still in town I'd ask Myrtis to talk to him," Joia said suddenly. "Do you know anyone in the Mageguild who'd take out the price of his help in trade?"

  Valira laughed. "When a wizard gets homy all he has to do is summon up a few succubi! Anyway, I've never seen any of that crowd here."

  "But you grew up in Sanctuary!" said Joia. "You must know someone!"

  Valira frowned, remembering a little man with ginger hair whose painting had shown her her soul. He had recommended her to Myrtis, had taught her that even a half-penny whore from Sanctuary's waterfront could have a future. And when his wife, Gilla, stayed here during the False Plague Riots a few seasons back, she had been kind.

  "You do know a mage!" exclaimed Joia, watching her. "Please help me, Valira-I'm afraid!"

  "Lalo is not exactly a wizard - . . and his wife is more than enough woman for him," Valira said slowly. "I don't know if he can help. But I'll take you to see."

  "Go back to the Mageguild if you want formulae'" Lalo exclaimed. "I've told you-I don't work that way!" He pushed the diagram back across the worktable to Darios. His easel was waiting beside the window with the finest imported paints beside it. Why was he wasting the moming light talking?

  "All arts have rules. Can it hurt you to try and think systematically?" the young man asked patiently, "Why do you think the gateway you visualized to reach my spirit when my body was walled up in that vault worked so well?"

  "Because I'd painted the thing in the first place-" Lalo began.

  "You didn't make up the design!" Darios shook his head. "The details you remembered so clearly came from S'danzo tradition. Without those symbols the Otherworld would be impossible for the human mind to comprehend. The images let us focus our perception of reality, just as we control our emotions through words." The young mage paused for breath. "Look-here is the first plane-that's the world around us, the world you know-" He tapped the crudely drawn diagram.

  Lalo glared at him. The boy was unnatural. Lalo was the one who should have been making the careful explanations, complaining about hotheaded youth when his apprentice protested as his own master used to do. But it was only a fluke of fate that had made the mageling his student at all.

  "You're wasting your time, Darios. Why don't you go back to the Mageguild? Now that things have settled down, they're trying to rebuild the school," Lalo exclaimed. It was not yet noon, but the day was hot already. He could feel perspiration adhering his thin tunic to his skin like one of Cholly's glues. "What in the name of Us do you think you can leam from me?"

  "The things that no one at the Mageguild knows." Darios combed his fingers through his curly black beard. Young as he was, it flowed across his chest like a master's. Gilla's feeding had filled him out. He took refuge sometimes in a dignity that gave him the air of a much older man.

  "You can kick me out, but no one can force me to go back there. Even in the old days wizards like Enas Yorl and Ischade could go their own ways, and now Markmor is back, and there are half a dozen other independent operators trying to hide the fact that there's precious little of the old magic left in this town."

  "Well, if my magic has survived because it's different," Lalo said triumphantly, "why are you trying to change me?"

  "Because magic draws magic," Darios replied. "You've got it, and you can't get rid of it-wouldn't if you could-" The dark eyes lifted, and Lalo grimaced, remembering the days when he had thought both mortal and magical sight lost. He knew better now. Even if fate should blind him again, he could see in the Otherworld.

  "Randal tried once to recruit you, and as things calm down, others will be after you-others who fear you and want to get you out of the way. Or who want to use you, as Molin Torchholder is using your paintings of Sanctuary's past to shape the future. Don't you wonder about some of those symbols he's having you put in? Here's the key to them-" He tapped the diagram. "I'm just trying to help, you know. Molin or Randal or anyone else with knowledge can use you as you use your own paints until you learn!"

  Lalo covered his eyes. His head still hurt sometimes since the concussion that had temporarily blinded him. There was a pounding in his temples now-if he was going to have the headaches, he might as well start drinking again!

  "The second plane," said Darios implacably, "is the sphere of the moon. It governs all things fluid, both the ocean and the astral sea. A good source of symbols for operations involving the Beysib, wouldn't you say?"

  This afternoon, thought Lalo, Darios is going to practice drawing until his fingers wear away!

  They had reached the fourth sphere when the sound of feminine laughter from the kitchen broke Darios's concentration.

  "I doubt I'll remember even what we've done so far-" said Lalo, taking pity on him. He could hear Gilla and their oldest son, Wedemir, but neither of the other two voices sounded like the girl with whom both Wedemir and Darios were in love. Darios can't hear the difference, he realized. Maybe I do know a few useful things after all. He opened the door.

  A wave of chypre scent tantalized his nostrils even before he saw the two women who were eating Gilla's Enlibar orange nut cake at the new kitchen table. Gowns of sheerest gauze struck a compromise between Sanctuary's minimal demands for decency and the unseasonable heat. They were a strange sight in Gilla's kitchen, brightened though it was by the burnished copper pots and bunches of peppers that hung from the beams.

  Parasols of painted silk leaned against the whitewashed wall. One of the women had a tumble of garnet curls dressed high through a circlet of pearls. The intricately knotted dark braids of the other seemed dusted with gold. It was only when she turned to face him that the sophisticated veneer vanished and he saw the bright spirit within, as he had seen it once through garish face paint and the pinched face of poverty.

  "Valira! You're looking well!"

 
; Darios, following him through the door, stopped short, staring.

  "Joia and Valira are from the Aphrodisia House," said Gilla, suppressing a smile. "Ladies, this is Darios, my husband's apprentice."

  "He's wearing a mage-robe-" said the second girl. Her voice was strained.

  "He used to study at the Guild," explained Gilla. The girl looked up then and Lalo recoiled, seeing the naked face of fear.

  "Sabellia be praised. Perhaps they can help me!"

  Darios sent Lalo a glance in which panic and professional interest warred. The limner found himself relaxing. Magic might still frighten him, but mere physical beauty had no power over him now. Wedemir leaned back in his chair and grinned at the mageling's discomfort.

  "Have another slice of cake," said Gilla. "You girls worry about your figures too much to eat properly, but troubles are best faced with a full belly. We'll get some real food into you as soon as the sausages are done."

  Valira set down her teacup and laughed. "I remember-you used to feed half the neighborhood when I was a child."

  "It's not food I need, but sleep!" said Joia.

  Lalo cleared his throat. "Neither of which I can help you with. So just what is wrong?" Joia wiped away tears without smudging her eye paint and began to tell her tale.

  "And Joia is not the only one," said Valira when they had finished. "Doree has been having nightmares too, and some of the others. Well, after the past few years there's hardly a one of us who hasn't lost someone she cared for. We're supposed to be professional, but when a man has been kind to you, it's hard."

  "I wanted Aglon alive! Why is his ghost trying to kill me?"

  "His ghost, or is it something else, taking that form?" asked Darios.

  "A demon lover?" Wedemir laughed. "At the Aphrodisia House?" He sobered as Valira glared at him. "Sorry, lass-but you have to admit-"

  "I hope Aglon's ghost comes to the barracks to haunt you!" Joia exclaimed. "You were his friend!"

  "Aglon-" said Gilla into the strained silence. "The name sounds familiar. Did we ever meet him, dear?"

  "He was one of the lads who helped me dig out Darios," Wedemir said bitterly. "Got knifed in a little cleanup action Downwind a few days ago."

  "He was a lovely boy when he was alive-" sniffed Joia. "Always gentle with me; he used to give me things-"

  Lalo sighed. "I understand your sorrow, but what can I do? If you want an exorcism, perhaps Darios-"

  "Oh, I'm just a pleasure-giri, a hysterical bit of fluff! Of course you don't believe me!" Joia began to cry in earnest now and Wedemir gallantly offered her his military scarf when her wisp of a handkerchief failed. She accepted it with an automatic flutter of her lashes, but Lalo did not think she really saw.

  "I have been certificated as an exorcist by the Mageguild," said Darios stiffly. "I would be willing to conduct a purification of your chambers tomorrow if you desire."

  Joia opened her eyes at the polysyllables and Valira's lips twitched.

  "Well, Joia, at least he is taking you seriously," the older girl replied. "Why don't we let him try?"

  "Now on this panel," said Molin Torchholder, "I want you to paint a design of crossed swords and spears on the border of Lady Daphne's gown."

  "Hakiem didn't mention that detail," said Lalo, looking from the design he had already roughed in on the plaster to the drawing again. He pulled his straw hat forward to shade his eyes. It was another in the string of very hot days that had been baking Sanctuary, and sunlight blazed back from the white wall with a painful glare. He supposed that he should be grateful he was not working on the new walls outside the city, as had been at first proposed. It was the newly resurfaced wall around the palace that Torchholder had decided should display Lalo's skill.

  "Hakiem isn't paying you," said the priest. He stepped back from the wall, and the servant who held the broad parasol moved with him. That was a good idea, thought Lalo. They had already put up hoardings to protect the unfinished work from curious eyes. Maybe he could get a portable canvas sunshade as well. Torchholder turned. "I was there too, remember. Are you doubting me?"

  The limner frowned. He had sketched from the storyteller's descriptions without thinking, and as Hakiem spoke he had seen, as if the images were flowing directly from the old man's memory through his fingers onto the page. Those scenes had felt right. What Lord Torchholder was telling him now did not. And this was not the first time.

  The picture of Prince Kadakithis's first entrance into the city showed a rising sun haloing him with gold. But the prince had actually arrived through the north gate. Along with most of the rest of the population, Lalo had been there to see him ride in. He had made the change in the picture, but it had rubbed him the wrong way- Like this. Now he began to wonder about the devices he had been told to paint on the parade shields of the prince's guards. Unimportant details, he had thought them, but what if they were something more? He shivered a little despite the heat of the sun. Danos's warnings were beginning to make more sense to him now.

  "If I'm going to make a change in the design, I want to know what it means-"

  "What it means?19 Torchholder stared at him. "Why should it have to mean something?"

  "In that case, I think it would be more aesthetic to give her gown a pattern of eagles with outstretched wings. In gold, since she comes of noble kin."

  The priest's gaze sharpened. "Limner, you presume! You are only a tool in my hand, and you will do as I say!"

  "No." Lalo held out his paintbrush, then laid it down. "This is a tool. It has no choice but to do my will- But though you can put me down and hire another painter, you cannot force me to work for you. And there is no other artist in Sanctuary who can do what you really hired me for, is there, Torchholder? There is no one else in the Empire, perhaps in the world ..."

  The silence stretched out between them. Beyond the hoardings he could hear a beggar cursing two soldiers with demon-haunted sleep as they ordered him to move on, the whining song of the water seller, a distant scream-all the normal sounds of a Sanctuary summer day. Finally the priest grimaced and looked away.

  "Don't argue with me, limner," he said. "Don't meddle with things you don't understand."

  Lalo started home down the Wideway as dusk began to shade the streets and the sea breeze lent a welcome coolness to the air. In the end he had agreed to paint the gown as Torchholder had ordered it-for now. It had occurred to the limner that Gilla was a crony of Glisselrand, and the prima donna of Feltheryn's company seemed to be on good terms with the people at Land's End. If he wanted to know what Daphne had really worn that day, he could ask. But the priest had a point. Even Darios must agree that there was no use in standing up for a principle he did not understand.

  He felt exhausted. He wondered how Darios's day had gone-Lalo's lips twitched as he visualized his apprentice trying to maintain his dignity in the Aphrodisia House. He would have to keep a straight face tonight when he asked him how the exorcism had gone.

  "Lalo ..." The croak of a call came from close behind him.

  Lalo stopped short in the street, then whirled, hand going to the hilt of his dagger as someone stumbled into him.

  "Cappen Varra!" Lalo stared. "Where in Shalpa's name have you sprung from? It's been years!"

  "You recognized me!" The minstrel straightened, pushing back the hood of the extremely tattered cloak that covered disreputable breeches and a tunic scarcely less worn.

  "Of course-" the limner began, then flushed, realizing which kind of sight he had been using, for such a getup was inconceivable garb for the dapper musician he had known. Only the battered harp case was the same. "But this is no place to stand talking. You look thirsty, man, and here's the Unicorn-let me buy you some beer!"

  "I'm not going to tell you where I've been," said the harper when they were settled in a back booth with two big tankards of brew. It was early yet for the Unicorn; except for two guardsmen they had the place to themselves, and a slatternly girl was still wiping down the bar.

  "Y
ou don't want to know, and I don't want to remember. Not sure it's safe to tell you anyway." For a moment the minstrel's fingers closed over the silver amulet at his neck and his gaze went inward. "All I'll say is that when I walked through the gates this place really did look like a sanctuary."

  Lalo stared. "Well, it's true that things here have finally settled down. Trade's reviving, too."

  "Your trade is prospering, I can see!" Cappen Varra surveyed Lalo's smock-stained now with paint and perspiration, but good linen, and new. "You never used to offer to pay for the beer!"

  Lalo took a long draft and grimaced, wondering whether this batch was a little off or he was losing his taste for the stuff.

  "A lot of things are different now, including me," he agreed. He looked at his old friend, wondering if here was someone who might understand.

  "You haven't-made- anything else, have you?" whispered Cappen Varra. Involuntarily they both looked at the blank wall where once Lalo had drawn the accumulated evil of the Vulgar Unicorn and breathed into it a soul.

  "No. I wear a mask over my mouth when I paint these days so tHat I won't breathe life into anything by chance," said Lalo. "But I've learned to do a few other things. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between imagination, or art, and what's real!"

  "I understand-" The harper held out his tankard to be refilled. "I nearly got lynched once when I sang a story I thought I'd made up and it turned out to be true."

  "How can that happen?" exclaimed Lalo. "When I paint, or you sing, are we spying on reality without knowing it, no more to be blamed than a mirror going down the road that reflects both the sky and the mire- or are we shaping it somehow?"

  "Do the stars or the cards create our futures, or does the person who reads them define what will be?" echoed Cappen Varra. The beer had put the sparkle back into his eyes. "That's a question for the Mageguild, not for me!"

  "Not the Mageguild!" Lalo shuddered. "They'd look for a way to sell it. I only ever met one mage who cared for magic more than money. He was the Imperial Magelord, and he taught me how to seek truth in my painting. But that was years ago. He's probably dead by now."