Lalo's hand jerked and stopped. He shuddered as unwelcome knowledge flooded in. Here in this booth a man had died not long ago-his lifeblood flowing from the stroke of a deftly-placed blade. He had struggled, and blood had splashed the wall-that smear Lalo had assumed was soot before. Without his volition the charcoal swept around it, incorporating it as a blacker shadow within the whole.
And now other impressions buffeted his awareness, the black, sharp fear of men surprised by the raid of the Beysib, an intricate swirling that resonated with the name of the witch Roxane. But there must be some humor-surely there had also been good times here, enough to give a tilt to the unicorn's head, a sardonic glint to its eye. But there were not many such moments to portray, and no recent ones....
Faster and faster moved the artist's hand, covering the wall with a scrollwork of figures that writhed one into another, contorting the outline that contained them. Here was the face of a woman raped to death in one of the upper rooms, there the desperate clutch of a man robbed of the coppers that would have saved his family. Feverishly the charcoal traced the lineaments of hatred, of hunger, of despair. ...
Lalo was vaguely aware of others around him, not only Cappen and Wedemir, but the men who had been drinking at the next table, and others from elsewhere in the room, even Shadowspawn, looking over his shoulder with startled eyes.
"That's Lalo the Limner, isn't it-you know, the fancy painter who did all that work up at the Palace," said one voice.
"Suppose One-Thumb's commissioned him to do a little daubing here?"
"Not bloody likely," answered the first voice, "and what's that he's drawing? Looks like a beast of some kind."
Lalo hardly heard. He no longer knew who had left the tavern, who had come in. At one point he felt a tug on his arm; peripheral vision showed him Wedemir's pale face. "Papa-it's all right. You don't have to go on."
Lalo pulled free with a gutteral denial. Didn't the boy understand? He could not stop now. Hand and arm moved of themselves to the next line, the next shadow, the next horror, as all the secrets of the Vulgar Unicom flowed through his fingers onto the wall.
And then, suddenly, it was finished. The nubbin of charcoal dropped from Lalo's nerveless fingers to be lost in the filth of the floor. He forced cramped muscles to function, eased off the bench, and stepped slowly back to see what he had done. He shivered, remembering the moment when he had stepped back to see the soul of the assasin Zanderei, closed his eyes briefly, then forced himself to look at the wall.
It was worse than he had expected. How could he have spent so much time in the Vulgar Unicorn and never known? Perhaps the normal barriers of the human senses had protected him. But, like a glory-hunting warrior, he had thrown his shields away, and now all the evil that had ever taken place within the tavern was displayed upon its wall.
"Is this what you were trying to tell us you could do?" whispered Wedemir.
"Can't you wipe some of it off, or something?" asked Cappen Varra in a shaken voice. "Even here, surely you don't mean to leave it that way...."
Lalo looked from him to the uneasy faces of the others who gazed at what the leaping lamplight revealed, and suddenly he was angry. They had watched, condoned, perhaps participated in the acts from which this portrait was made. Why were they so shocked to see their own evil made visible?
But the harper was right. Lalo had destroyed work before, when it was unworthy. Surely, though his portraiture had never been so true, this picture deserved destruction.
He stepped forward, part of his cape bunched in his hand, and lifted it to the distorted, flat-eared head with its evilly twisted hom.
The eye of the unicorn winked evilly.
Lalo stopped short, hand still poised. How had that happened? A bulge in the plaster or some trick of the light? He peered at it and realized that the unicorn's eye was red. Then his hand throbbed. He looked down and saw new blood welling from the old cut on his thumb.
"Sweet Shipri, preserve us!" muttered Lalo, realizing whose blood was coloring that obscenity on the wall. His hand darted forward, again was stopped before it touched the plaster; for if this was his own blood, what would happen to him if the picture was destroyed? What was he doing, meddling with this kind of power? He needed a professional!
And still the eye of the unicorn mocked him, as Gilla had mocked him when he went through the door, or like a more familiar mockery that he had seen in a mirror once in a face whose mixed good and evil frightened him all the way into the land of the gods. But he had embraced the good, and surely the evil was gone! Desperately, Lalo ransacked his memory for visions of the beauty of the gods.
But there was only darkness and the wicked eye that enticed him more surely than the eyes of the sorceress Is-chade, because it was his own.
Closer and closer Lalo came; his right arm hung nerveless at his side. "/ also am your soul," whispered the unicorn. "Give life to me, and you shall have my power. Did not you know?"
Lalo groaned. The breath of his lungs hissed out and stirred the charcoal dust upon the wall. The red eye of the unicom began to glow.
Lalo saw and choked, trying to withdraw his breath again. Wedemir clutched at his arm, but Lalo shook free and swiped wildly at the wall, recoiled as a wave of heat blasted him, and fell back into his son's strong arms.
"No!" he gasped, "I didn't mean it! Go back where you came from-this isn't how it's supposed to be!" Men muttered around him; someone swore as a tremor shook the floor.
"Wizard's work!" exclaimed another. Men began to back away. Shadowspawn spat and slipped quietly out the door.
Coughing, Lalo snatched up his tankard and flung it at the wall. Red as blood in the lamplight, the liquid splashed off a solidifying flank and splattered across the floor.
Wedemir made the sign against evil; Cappen Varra's fist closed around the coiled silver of his amulet. "It's only a picture; a picture can't hurt you-" muttered the harper, but Lalo knew that wasn't true. With every second the Thing on the wall gained substance. The trembling in the floor increased. Lalo took a step backward, then another.
One-Thumb launched himself down the staircase, roaring questions, but nobody paid him any attention. He was calling for Roxane, whose powers, if she had cared to exert them, might perhaps have stopped what was happening now. But this night Roxane had other matters in hand. She did not hear.
And then, with a groan that burst at once from Lalo's lips and the wall, the Black Unicorn shuddered free of the plaster that had imprisoned it and leaped to the tavern floor.
Abruptly Lalo remembered the astonished delight with which he had watched his first creation soar through the azure air. That joy was the measure of his horror now.
Alive, the thing was even worse than it had been on the wall-a desecration of the concept of a unicorn. It paused, stamped with hooves like polished skulls, and the posts upholding the upper floors trembled like trees shaken by a wind. It reared, and staggered forward with Minotaurlike lumberings, then dropped back to all fours, and almost casually plunged its horn into the chest of the nearest man.
The victim screamed once. The Unicorn shook its head, and the body flew free to land with a soft sound like a falling sack of meal on the other side of the room. Blood spiraled down the wicked hom. The Unicorn grew.
Its head came around, red eye fixing on the girl who had been serving the ale. She tried to run, but the monster was too quick for her. Her body was still in the air when Wedemir seized his father's arm.