Painfully, for now he felt all the aches from his battle with the storm, Lalo went to the shelves and picked up a slate and a basket of colored chalks. Holding them as if they might bite, he came back to the little group in the center of the room and squatted down.
"Do you like pretty pictures? What do you like- butterflies?" A swift stroke of the chalk laid the sweep of a red wing; another suggested the long body and bright eyes.
Lightning flared in the window, blinding him. When Lalo could see again Arton's chubby hand was rubbing the picture away.
'Wot flutter' by! Bad bright things outside-" His dark gaze held the limner's, and in his eyes Lalo saw the angular, aetherial forms of the demons that lived on the energy of the storm. "Make them go 'way!"
I won't draw them, Lalo thought fearfully, they've too much life already! He took the child's hand gently, remembering how he had comforted his own children when they had spilled their milk or broken some favorite toy, not understanding their own power.
Now he felt Gyskouras's gaze upon him as well, filling him with knowledge of all the powers surging in the storm. Other images came to him too-emotions, desires as yet formless, characteristics that sought to coalesce into a Personality that would encompass the potential, for good or evil, inherent in the two children before him. He recognized the feeling-he had known it himself at the beginning of a project, when colors and shapes and images jostled in his consciousness and he strove for the form and balance that would organize them into a harmonious unity.
But the only loss had been a ruined canvas when he failed. If these children failed, they could destroy Sanctuary.
Thunder clapped great hands above the Palace; the room shuddered and a window blew open on a sudden gust of rain. Gyskouras whimpered, and Lalo reached for his hand. They need a mage to train them, just like me-but there must be something that we can do! Lalo closed his eyes, driven not by fear or the pressure of a stronger mind, but by pity, to seek that part of himself that had been a god.
When he opened them again the window was still banging against the wall. Outside, clouds pulsed with a hundred shades of gray-always gray! Gods, he was so tired of this colorless world! Lalo looked down, and saw that the chalk pressed between his hand and Gyskouras's plump fingers had left a smear of yellow on the slate. For a moment he stared at it, then he reached for an orange chalk and put it into Arton's slimmer hand.
"Here," he whispered, "draw me a line beside the other-yes, just so...." One by one he gave colors to the children and guided their awkward hands. Yellow, orange, red and purple, blue and turquoise and green-the chalk glowed against the dark stone. And when all the colors had been used, Lalo got to his feet, holding the slate carefully.
"Now, let's make something pretty-I can't do it alone. You both come here with me ..." Lalo held out his hand and drew first Arton, then Gyskouras, from his mother's arms. "Come to the window, don't be afraid ..."
Lalo was dimly aware that the room had gone very still behind him, but all his attention was on the two children beside him and the storm outside. They reached the window; Lalo knelt, his greying ginger head touching the dark child's head and the fair.
"Now blow," he said softly. "Blow on the picture and we'll make the nasty clouds all go away."
He felt the children's milky breath warm on his fingers. He bowed his head and expelled his own pent breath outward, saw chalk dust haze the damp air. His eyes blurred with the intensity of his staring, or was the blur in his eyes? Surely now there was more color in the air than they had ever blown into it, and the colors were shimmering. His ears rang with silence.
Lalo sank back on his heels and drew the two storm-children close against him, and together they watched as the rainbow arched over Sanctuary....
AFTERWORD
"Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Which is the skungiest city of them all?"
You know what the mirror replied,
with a sneer at having to state the obvious.
SOME BLATANTLY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
Andrew Qffutt
Hanse and I have been in Sanctuary since the foundation stones were set, in a February 1978 letter from genius-creator Asprin. We earliest settlers (eight of us writers then, I think) received maps and descriptions, Hakiem's original background tale, copies of each other's character sketches and sort-of-maybe outlines, and letters from HQ: the Asprin mind. Everybody was excited and pretty chattery. The little description I began of a fellow to be called Hanse became three pages, physical and psychological, with footnotes and sidebars. By the time I'd written all that three or four times, I knew what the first story was about and what sort of stories he had to be in, if there were to be more.
As it developed, letter by letter by letter and packet of Xeroxed materials and All-Points-Bulletins to and from us beginners of that project that seemed such fun, I addressed an envelope to
"Robert L. Asprin
COLOSSUS: The Thieves' World Project."
Only a few weeks later, came the next Asprin APB for us first Thieves' World participants ... and derned if he hadn't made just that his letterhead!
Next, John Brunner, with the character sketches of his Enas Yorl and Jarveena, sent over a treatise on magic. It told us how it had to be in Thieves' World; a sort of logical system of rules of magic that has been ignored ever since. Then Boss Asprin was looking for a name for that first book, and I suggested Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn. Thank all gods he decided to call the first one simply Thieves' World! My title went on the second volume.
(Send your proposed title for the next one; Bob and Lynn just adore mail and if your title is chosen, you will receive a genuine certified Thing. Maybe a no prize for you if you're one of my fellow comics fans.... If you're runner-up, your prize is a date-nocturnal only-with either Tarkle or Roxane, Zip or Ouleh the Man-killer; your choice.
(Send to me that detailed list of all the characters in all the books, with however brief ID for each-and whether still alive, KlA-and-dead, or Undead. I like to remember and include all those little people, such as Thumpfoot and Mungo and Shive the Changer and Frax, former Palace night-sentinel who's been out of work since the arrival of the Beysibs, and Weasel, and ... you know. Spear-bearers, many of whom don't even have speaking roles or are only referred to. Seems to me I haven't referred to York or Jubal and various other big-ikes for several stories.)
Oh, here's an Inside tip for you, Insider: go and look again at the cover of the original TW. Asprin long ago came up with a caption for it, and you'll love it. It's "You're In The Wrong Place, Sucker."
The Solid Gold 50th Anniversary Volume
It honestly seems over a decade ago when we all wrote those first stories. We were a team! We sent them in with gusto and love, having fun-for a nickel a word. That was as advance against royalties if the book sold enough copies to generate any royalties. Hey, did it ever! What now? Another S.F. Book Club volume, I hear, and is it three TW games or four? Translations into German and French and British and Swahili and Newjersese! Interplanetary rights up for bidding! Other publishers hot for novels about TW characters! Ace Books making plans for the solid gold 50th anniversary volume! Asprin and Abbey buying the state of Michigan and bidding for the Detroit Tigers!
You and we have made it quite a phenomenon. And I swear: it's still fun! Thanks, my fellow fan.
Without quite knowing why, I think I'm more comfortable in this town than any of my cohorts-the rest of the TW family. (Baghdad, that's the way I see it: Baghdad or the great old caravan city of Palmyra, about a year after someone put in the Interstate five or so miles away.) To hell with the invasions by Rankans and Stepsons (their big horses making an even worse mess of our streets and consuming so much of our valuable grain); to hell with the invading Beys and the Beysa and the lords 'n' ladies in their palatial manses; with vampires and walking dead and walking gods and Lon Chaney Jr.! Offutt's an Ilsig who writes about Sanctuary and its people. True, most often my people are Not What They Seem....