Uneasy alliances - Thieves World 11 (30 page)

"Please, Gilla, let me come in. . . ."

The air had freshened and the hush of early dawn lay on the town by the time they were quiet again.

"After so long, you would think there could be no surprises," Gilla murmured drowsily, rolling away from him. "But each time we make the world anew. . . ."

Lalo emerged from the deep well of pure sensation reluctantly. He could view the images of his nightmare with some detachment now, but they retained their clarity.

"Gilla . . . there's been so much strangeness in my life. Do we dare assume there was no truth in what I saw in my dream? Listen—" he went on as she mumbled sleepily. "We never met that girl, Rhian, until after I

was blinded, but I can describe her—someone might have told me the color of her hair and eyes, but would they have said that Rhian wears a blue gauze veil with golden scallop shells embroidered on the hem, or that she has a dark brown mole on the back of her right hand?"

"That's true," said Gilla, fully awake at last. "You have described the girt." Her voice sharpened. "But if what you saw was a true vision, then Wedemir is going to die!"

"It may be a possibility only!" Lalo answered more confidently than he felt, holding her until he felt her tension begin to ease. "You must take

me to the Mageguild, Gilla, as soon as it's light. We can save our son if I

stop Wedemir from breaking down that door!"

Once. when he was first apprenticed, Darios had broken a flagon in his master's workshop, and screamed and ran as its contents exploded in fire.

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A prompt spell from the senior mage had sent the flames running back upon themselves until all the stuff was consumed, but the master had afflicted Darios for several days with a demon who tormented him with little pricking flames. Now he dreams that the fire is spreading, licking up

the heavy draperies, even consuming the stone. The Mageguild is an inferno; the heat blisters his skin. the light blinds him. He writhes and shrieks and wakes to the cold silence of his tomb.

Shuddering, Darios composes himself to trance again. And again the dreams torment him. This time it is a book which he has been forbidden to

read. But if he once opens it, he can escape the tyranny of his masters, for

their knowledge will be his own. He makes his way into the chamber and sets his hand to the cover. Light spills from within as he lifts it, brilliance

explodes as it flies open. Darios strives to force the cover down again, but he

does not know the spell. He screams as the world whirls away. To wake twice from such a nightmare is an evil portent. Darios would try to stay awake, but awake he is aware that he is cold, and hungry, and alone. Guarding himself with all the spells he knows, he seeks stillness once

more. But yet again he dreams, though he struggles against it. This time he

is with companions, fellow-students, perhaps, who are on the track of some

treasure. They begin to pull down a pile of rocks, laughing and tossing away the stones. He tries to stop them, but soon they come to a slab set into

the ground. Something is written there—Darios tries to see it, but the others are in the way. He sees them pulling at it, and then light explodes

from the earth, flinging him away. In despair he cries out Rhian's name and wakens, hearing the regular clank of metal striking stone. - . . Lalo and Gilla reached the Mageguild as the sun was topping the newly gilded dome of the Temple of Us. Wedemir and his friends were already working. Over protest Latilla had been left behind to watch Alfi,

but Vanda and Rhian were here, as Lalo had known they would be. From his tone, Wedemir seemed mildly annoyed to see his parents, and more than annoyed when Lalo asked him to stop. Lalo sighed. It had been hard enough to get Gilla to believe him, why should his son listen to a blind old man?

"For Shipri's sweet sake, hear me out!" he exploded finally. "Wedemir, do you remember the Black Unicorn?" There was an uncomfortable silence. Behind him, Lalo could hear two of the soldiers whispering. He supposed that by now even new recruits must have heard the tale of the creature that Lalo had unwittingly created and unleashed upon the town.

"What does that have—" Wedemir began, but Gilla interrupted him.

"You're a grown man now, and so you think you have nothing left to leam?" she said scornfully. "Especially from your parents? You were not

so proud when your father destroyed that black beast—don't you yet understand that he is not like other men?"

"Father—" Wedemir sounded subdued when he finally replied. "You know why I am doing this. I must have some reason beyond a dream to give up now . . ."

"Rhian is here, isn't she—" said Lalo.

"You might have heard her voice; you might have guessed she would be here."

"You don't believe me? Keep on digging then. When you have cleared away the rubble, you will find a staircase leading down to a stone slab. There is a symbol carved on it, Wedemir. You must believe me then, for if

you touch that doorway, you will die!"

"I'll admit there's no normal way you can know what's under there," said his son. "If we find the door we'll stop. Does that content you, Papa?

We will stop, but you will have to choose what we do then!" Emotion trembled in his voice.

That girl, thought Lalo. He won't give her up any more than I would have given up Gilla at his age.

They sat with Rhian and Vanda as they waited. Lalo could hear the sound of the digging, and memory supplied a picture of the scene. He knew it when they reached ground level and uncovered the beginning of the staircase. He knew when they finished digging it out, and found the stone slab.

The men were very quiet as Rhian led him to the doorway. Delicate fingering confirmed that the sigil was the one that he had seen. Lalo's fingertips tingled as he touched it, and he knew that the magic that warded it was still alive.

And in the silence after he took his hand away there was a sound—too faint to be heard above the noise of pick and shovel, or even over normal

conversational tone—a distant voice that called, "Stop! For your life's sake, you must not touch the stone!"

"He's alive!" whispered Rhian. From Wedemir came something like a muffled groan. Lalo winced, recognizing that at this moment his son might well have preferred to have been crushed by falling stone. But he had no choice. He bent until his lips were nearly touching the rock and took a deep breath.

"What must we do to free you?"

"You cannot," came the faint reply. "The vault can only be opened by drawing the sigil, with the proper words, from inside . . ."

"Do you know the words?" Gilla's voice sounded very loud in Lalo's ear,

"I know the spell, but not the Sign," came the answer. 'Tray for the 380 UNEASY ALLIANCES

spirit of Darios, son of Wint, and may the gods bless you for attempting to help me."

Rhian had begun to sob. Lalo bit his lip, thinking. The contours of the sigil were still vivid in his memory. He could have drawn it, but he could

not describe it. The peculiar curves and angles of which it was composed followed no normal human logic, could not be explained in human words. Could the puzzle have been unlocked by the Rankan wizard, Randal, or even by Enas Yorl? Lalo wondered. The foundations of the Mageguild had been here before either. They felt old—Ilsigi magic, or perhaps something that had been here even before. . . .

"He knows the words, and you know the Symbol," muttered Gilla.

"Surely there must be some way—" Lalo sighed. He was glad to know that Gilla really believed him. But even if he had been able to see, he and

young Darios were still on opposite sides of the door.

"A doorway—it is only a doorway—" she murmured. "But you can go through such things, Lalo. Remember how you took me with you through the image on the card? Can't you do the same thing for the boy with words?"

Frowning, Lalo reached out and felt her clasp his hand. "I suppose . . -" he said slowly. "Wedemir, my son—do you understand why I must try?"

"Yes, Papa," Wedemir said harshly. Better to have it over with now, whatever the outcome might be. If he had not won the girl when Darios's fate was still in doubt, he would never get her while her first love was slowly starving to death beyond this stone!

"Darios, can you hear me?" he said more loudly. "Listen—I know you've been trained to this—listen, and see what I say—"

"I don't understand . . ."

"Just listen!" From habit, Lalo closed his eyes. He had had the S'danzo card in front of him before, but he remembered each brushstroke vividly.

"Calm down, steady your breathing—you know how. . . . Imagine you are looking at an archway—the arch of a gate big enough to drive a chariot through. Look at the stones. They are pale granite with dark flecks that glint in the sun ... six great stones on each side, and a larger cap, three on each side of the arch, and a trapezoidal keystone. Do

you see it, boy?" Lalo saw it clearly in his mind's eye, not a thing of paint

and pasteboard now, but a real gateway, solid stone. There was a faint murmur of assent from within.

"Look through the archway now—you see a garden. . . ." Lalo began to describe the sweep of green grass, the roses, the trees. And as he spoke,

he himself saw them. He moved forward. "Go through the gateway, Darios—go into the garden . . - into the garden, , . ."

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Lalo hardly felt Gilla's arms go around him as he left his body behind him and his own words carried him through. It was no shock to find that he could see, for this was only a continuation of his inner vision. He turned, and saw someone coming toward him. It was a tall young man, well formed, though his skin had the pallor of one who spends his days indoors. His curling black hair and beard were as glossy as the coat of one of the Prince's pampered horses, and his dark eyes glowed. A handsome man, thought Lalo. No wonder Rhian loved him. A mental adjustment to his own dress clothed him in a clean shirt and one of his better coats-He lifted his hand in greeting.

The young man's eyes widened. "Who are you?"

"Lalo the Limner." It seemed such an inadequate answer to offer this young man who stood in the rich robes of his Order, watching him in wonder.

"I've heard of you. But you're not a mage!"

"I'm not sure what I am anymore . . ," Lalo looked around him. If only he could stay here, where it was so beautiful—where he could see. But at least he knew the way here now.

"But unless we do something, you, my son, are going to be dead very soon'"

A moment's concentration brought a tablet and stick of charcoal into his hands. The Sigil still blazed in Lalo's memory. He could not have described it, but his arm moved easily in the contorted swirls of the figure, and he felt a swift rush of delight in the sureness with which he

drew, recognizing only now how the frustration of being unable to do so had galled him. Here, he could paint again, even if there was no one to see.

"Can you remember it?" He held the tablet out to the other man. Darios gazed at it, his eyes going glassy as ingrained disciplines committed the curves and angles to memory.

"I will remember," said Darios grimly. "I never saw it properly. The Sigil was not in the book I found—only the spell. And if I fail," his lips

twisted a little. "At least you have shown me the way to an easy passage.

My thanks to you, Master Limner, for that." For a moment the two men clasped hands.

They both looked toward the archway that led back to the world's darkness. Lalo straightened, realizing that he was almost as unwilling to

return to the prison of his body as Darios was to go back to his tomb. But

he could feel the need of those he had left behind him tugging at his awareness.

Together they moved forward.

Then Lalo was shaken in a tumult of darkness through which he heard 382 UNEASY ALLIANCES

a great voice crying "Be opened'", and the Sigil blossomed upon his vision in lines of white fire. There was a moment of disorientation. Lalo

felt strong arms supporting him. He gazed as the Sigil coruscated through all the colors of the spectrum in a blaze of opalescence, and then

both Sigil and stone misted away, and a gaunt figure staggered forward and collapsed into his arms.

"Darios!" shrieked Rhian.

But Lalo had not needed that to identify him. Something in his spirit had recognized the essence of the man he held, that wavered like a guttering candle flame. He stared down at matted tangles of black hair, a patch of blue robe whose cloth was of rather poorer quality than the fabric Darios had worn in the Otherworld, and beyond, to a patch of dusty stone. The bent back heaved; bony fingers clutched at Lalo's arms.

"My son, my son, don't weep!" He stroked the dusty locks as if Darios had been his own child indeed. "It worked, lad—you are free—you are free!"

And then Lalo's hand stilled. When he closed his eyes, he saw the glossy hair and tall strength of the man he had met in the Otherworld. But when he opened them, he knew he held a youth who would be no more than his own height even when full-fed. Instead of a verdant garden, he saw the sordid, soiled reality to which he had been born ... he saw every stinking turd and blessed battered stone ... he saw!

Vanda and Rhian were on either side of Darios now.

"Darios—my poor darling! You look like one of your own spirits!" Rhian drew his arm across her shoulder.

"Starved—" whispered the mageling, "but even before that . . . wasn't handsome. A spell, Rhian ... to make you think so. Forgive me!"

"You silly boy!" Rhian shook her head. "Do you think it mattered?"

"We'll take you home and let my mother's cooking put some flesh on your bones!" said Vanda, taking his other arm.

Lalo let go, and the two girls supported him as he stumbled toward the stairs. Gilla set Lalo's hand on her shoulder.

"No—" his voice cracked, and he laid his own hand over hers. "I can see my own way now." She started, and her gaze came back from Darios to meet his own.