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. / 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?'
Lalo nodded once more.
'Well, that is a little thing, particularly when you are already... when there is such a strong desire. I will throw in a few extras -' he said kindly, 'some souls for you to paint, perhaps a commission or two ...'
Lalo jerked as the sorcerer's hands closed on his head, and for a moment all the colours in the rainbow exploded in his brain. Then he found himself on his feet by the door with a leather satchel in his hand.
'And the painter's gear ...' continued Enas Yorl. 'I have to thank you not only for a great service, but for giving me something to look forward to in life. Master Limner, may your gift reward you as you deserve!'
And then the great brazen door had shut behind him, and Lalo found himself in the empty street, blinking at the dawn.
The desert shimmered glassily with heat, appearing as insubstantial as the mists in the house of Enas Yorl, but the moist breath of a fountain cooled Lalo's cheeks. Dazed by the contrasts, the limner found himself wondering whether this moment, or indeed any of the past three days, were real or only the continuation of some sorcerous dream. But if that were so, he thought as he turned back to the echoing expanse ofMolin Torchholder's veranda, he did not want to wake.
Before the first day after his adventure had passed, Lalo had received requests for portraits from the Portmaster's wife and from Jordis the stonemason, newly enriched by his work on the temple for the Rankan gods. In fact the first sitting was to have been this morning. But yesterday's summons had taken precedence; and so it was that Lalo, uncomfortable in worn velveteen breeches that were loose in the shanks and pinched his waist, his embroidered wedding vest, and a shirt which Gilla had starched so that it scraped his neck every time he turned his head, waited to be interviewed for the honour of decorating Molin Torch-holder's feasting hall.