'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 opulence, 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?
'I am tired of all this quarrelling,' sighed Shipri. 'I thought that when you had bested the Rankans we would have peace again. I have finally come to an understanding with Sabellia, and I suppose that this new goddess and I will have to do the same. At least She is a goddess, and therefore more likely than a god to be sensible about things.'
Lalo sat back, relieved. He had painted his own wife as Sabellia, and in the past few minutes he had begun to fear Shipri's jealousy. But Gilla resembled the Sharp-Tongued One less and less these days, and he thought he would have portrayed her as the nurturing Mother ofllsig now.
Then the splendour of the face of Ils was turned fully upon him, and, even in this remade body unable to gaze into that light, Lalo cried out and hid his eyes.
'Son of Ils, come here...' Sound was light, slivering painfully through Lalo's shut lids. He shook his head.
'Lord, I have served in the temple of your enemies, and I am afraid.'
'But I have defeated those enemies. Stand on your feet and come to Me!'
I have already died, thought Lalo. What else can He do to me? He opened his eyes. Thufir Far-Seer was waiting to guide him to his Father, who masked his radiance with the face of the great marble statue in the Temple of Ils.
'You have painted many portraits since the Mage touched you, Limner - what did you see?'
Lalo fixed his eyes upon the silver necklace that glittered from beneath the god's dark beard. 'Beasts...' he muttered, 'and demons, sometimes, and sometimes... gods.'
'And when you turned your sorcerer's gift upon yourself?' the implacable voice went on.
Lalo shuddered, but Thufir's grip held him to this reality. He had seen a pleasure in pettiness that shamed him and beyond that a longing for annihilation that terrified him and a capacity for love that terrified him even more. He had seen the depths of his own unguessed, untapped creative power.
'As you served Enas Yorl and the priests of Savankala, so now, my son, you shall serve Me,' said the Voice of Ils.
Before him Lalo saw a white canvas, and brushes that surpassed his own as a Downwinder's donkey is surpassed by a horse of Tros, and a palette with pigments for whose secret the colour-grinders of Sanctuary would have given their souls. Lalo's right hand prickled with power that built, built - it must be grounded somehow - he groped for a paintbrush and dipped it into a colour that was more than scarlet, touched it to the canvas and felt power surge through it in an explosive release like the climax of love.
His hand moved swiftly, splashing the canvas with scarlet, then down to the palette for a lambent gold, and lastly a shading of opalescent blue. Then he stepped back, the brush falling from his fingers, and the thing on the canvas stretched, flexed, and launched itself glittering into the air.
Eshi laughed and clapped her white hands, and Thufir smiled his slow, patient smile. Lalo stared as the miniature sikkintair that had come to life beneath his hands soared off through the trees.
'Before, you were able to paint the truth behind reality,' the whisper of Ils echoed through the deepest chambers ofLalo's soul. 'Now you will give Reality to the Truth you see. Do you not yet understand Who you are?'