'You need a drink.' Pewter clinked against the tabletop.
Lalo reached for the refilled tankard and drank deeply, not caring anymore whether he would be able to earn it. He felt it bum all the way down to his belly, run tingling along his veins to barrier him from the world.
'Now, try again,' commanded the stranger. 'Turn your paper over, look well at me, then draw what you see as quickly as you can.' •
For a long moment Lalo stared at the oddly attenuated features of the man before him, then bent over his work. For several minutes only the scratching of swift penstrokes competed with the clamour of the room. He must capture the glow of those strange eyes, for he suspected that when he looked at his companion again, nothing but the eyes would be the same.
But what matter? He had his payment now. With his free hand he reached for the mug and drank again, shaded a final line, then pushed the drawing across the table and sat back.
'Well - you wanted it...'
'Yes.' The stranger's lips twitched. 'Everything considered, it's quite good. I understand that you do portraits,' he went on. 'Are you free to take a commission now? Here's an earnest of your fee -' He reached into the folds of his garment, laid a gold piece shining on the table, quickly hid his misshapen fingers once more.
Lalo stared, reached out gingerly as if expecting the coin to vanish at his touch. Fortified by the wine, he could admit to himself how very odd this episode had been. But the gold was hard and cool and weighed heavily in his palm. His fingers closed.
The stranger's smile stiffened. He drew back suddenly, away from the light. 'Now I must go.'
'But the commission!' cried Lalo. 'Who is it for, and when?'
'The commission ...' the man seemed to be having trouble enunciating the words. 'If you have the courage, come now... Do you think that you can find the house of Enas Yorl?'
Lalo cringed from his snarl of laughter, but the sorcerer did not wait for him to reply. He had cast his cloak around him and was lurching towards the door, and this time the shape the cloak covered was hardly human at all.
Lalo the limner stood in Prytanis Street before the house of Enas Yorl, shivering. With the setting of the sun, the wind off the desert had turned cold, although there was still a greenish light in the western sky. Once he had spent two months trying to capture on canvas the translucent quality of that glow.
The rooftops of the city made a deceptively elegant silhouette against the sky, topped by the lacy scaffolding of the tower of the Temple of Savankala and Sabellia nearby. Insulting to local prejudices though the new temple might be, at least it promised to be magnificent. Lalo sighed, wondering who would paint the murals within - probably some eminent artist from the capital. He sighed again. If he had gone to Ranke it might have been himself, returning in triumph to his birthplace.
But that consideration forced his attention back to the edifice that loomed before him, its shadows somehow darker than those of the other buildings, and the job that he had come here to do.
Terrors coiled like basilisks in the corners of his mind. His legs trembled. A dozen times during his journey across the town they had threatened to buckle or turn in the opposite direction, and the wine had been sweated out of him long ago.
Enas Yorl was one of the darker legends of Sanctuary, although, for reasons which the episode in the Vulgar Unicorn had amply illustrated, he was rarely seen. Rumour had it that the curse of some rival had condemned him to the existence of a chameleon. But that was said to be the only limit on his power.
Had the sorcerer's offer been some perverted joke, or part of some magical intrigue? I should take the gold to Cilia, he thought, it might be enough to buy us places in an outward-bound caravan ...
But the coin was only a retainer for a service he had not yet performed, and there was no place he could flee that would be beyond the reach of the sorcerer. He could not return the money without facing Enas Yorl, and he could not run away. Shaking so that he could hardly grasp the intricately wrought knocker, he let it fall upon the brazen surface of the door.
The interior of the building seemed larger than its outside, though the colourless mists that swirled around him made it hard to be certain of anything except the glowing red eyes of Enas Yorl. As the mists curdled and cleared, Lalo saw that the sorcerer was enthroned in a carven chair which the artist would have itched to examine had anyone else been sitting there. He was considering a slim figure in an embroidered Ilsig cloak who stood twirling a mounted globe.
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.