The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (94 page)

Why? wondered Lalo, unless . . . Before he could follow that thought to its conclusion the gilded doors at the end of the hall were pushed open and they were thrust into the presence of the prince and the Beysa and their attendants. Lord Torchholder was brooding like a thundercloud by the window. As they entered he turned. A gesture sent the soldiers away
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"You told me that you cured the bad dreams of the girls at the Aphrodisia House with your drawings," the priest said abruptly. "I want you to do it again!"

"'For you?" He stared around him. Molin Torchholder simply looked angry, but the Beysa appeared haggard, and even the prince was pale.

"For everybody—" said Prince Kadakithis. "It started with the Beysa's nightmares, but everybody's seeing things now. Damn place is haunted! Can't go on like this, you know."

Lalo nodded. Zanderei was his own personal nightmare, but the poten tial number of specters who might haunt a prince boggled the imagina tion, especially in Sanctuary. But it was one thing to see, and to alter, the

simple secrets of girls in a house of joy. The hidden fears of princes might recall deeds that for the safety of the city must not be changed! And even if that could be accomplished, how could they allow the man who had seen all their sins to live?

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And it might not work anyway. He had not painted living nightmares, but memories.

"Are the dreams all that is wrong?" he asked carefully, playing for time.

"No!" exclaimed the Beysa. She toyed nervously with the silver ball on the table. "There's a feeling of pervading dread! Even waking, I see shad ows . . ."

Lalo shivered. Even as she spoke he could feel it, and knew that this was something worse than his own fear. He felt Darios trembling beside him. He had to do something to distract them—he remembered what Cappen Varra had said about the power of people's minds.

"Darios—" As he spoke, the boy's gaze came back to him gratefully.

"It's time to use some of that training you're always talking about. I want you to think of something simple—think of a color,'I don't care which one-Think of those hangings changing, that's right—" He paused as Darios's face creased in concentration. "Even the lamplight is that color, everything is—"

Then his breath caught, because everything was turning blue. The Beysa's nictitating membrane came down, her piscine heritage unmistak able in the undersea light.

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"You can look now . . ." he said softly, enjoying the way Darios's eyes widened as he saw the change. He trembled on the brink of under standing. If he was right . . . Tensing with excitement, Lalo summoned up the memory of crimson, and visualized the blue shifting into purple that continued to warm until swirls of ruby lapped across the carpet towards Darios.

The young man's eyes danced. A deeper blue flared suddenly between them. Lalo refined his focus and the glow disappeared in a burst of flame.

"Master Limner—" Molin Torchholder's voice broke their concentra tion. Blue light and red pulsed for a moment, and then they were gazing at the peach and gold hangings of the Beysa's suite once more. "Just what was that demonstration intended to prove?"

"That the palace is not haunted . . ." Lalo answered him. "Don't you see—it is not only your fears and nightmares; any thought, projected strongly enough, will be amplified—"

"That's it! A psychic amplifier—" exclaimed Darios. "I was so sure that everything of that kind had been destroyed—but I ought to have thought of it before! They were made by the Guild in imitation of the

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Nisibisi globes, but of course they possessed nothing like the same degree

of power."

"But we had a Hazard," began Prince Kadakithis. "Why didn't he find

this thing, if it exists?"

"It could look like anything—a toy, a jewel," answered Darios. "A mage shielded against hauntings might not be able to tell."

"Can you tell?" asked Lalo, blessing the thought that had prompted him to bring his apprentice along.

Darios frowned, and half closed his eyes. They all fell silent as a sphere of pale light appeared before him. "Lalo, watch and tell me if it gets brighter when I move around." Slowly Darios began to circumambulate the room.

"What's that?"

The sphere was blazing. Lalo pointed to the point of light that reflected it from the silver ball in the Beysa's hand.

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"I ... got it from my maid," said the Beysa, dropping it. Lalo picked it up as it pooled silver light across the floor, and felt his fingers tingle. It was so innocent a thing to have caused such suffering ... He could breathe life into the things he drew, but the silver ball could take anyone's thought and make it a reality. And all those symbols Darios was trying to teach him—with this they could be as real here as in the Other world. It occurred to Lalo that such a thing might be more convenient than a pad and pencil, and he thrust the thought away.

"I suppose we will have to call the Hazard back to destroy it," Molin Torchholder said into the silence.

"They'll want it, but not to destroy," said Darios. "And I think it must be done away with—the violence it has seen has soured it. I think that only a mage of great strength and purity of spirit could use it for good now!"

"I don't like the thought of those fellows getting their hands on any thing like this again," said the prince. "Just when we've got them under control . . ." All eyes moved back to the quicksilver glitter of the thing the limner held in his hands.

"Perhaps there's another way," Lalo said then.

"It was all your fault, you know," said Molin Torchholder. Lalo lifted
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the brush with which he was filling in the ground color for Prince Kadakithis's robe from the plaster and turned to stare at him.

"We've traced that wretched mage-toy back from the Beysa's maid to a soldier in the garrison, who won it from another lad, who got it from his girl at the Aphrodisia House. And she got the thing as a gift from one Aglon, who picked it up when he was helping your son dig your appren

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tice out of the ruins of the Mageguild not so long ago." His expression was hard to read in the dappled shade.

"Then it's just as well I showed you how to get rid of it, isn't it?" Lalo answered calmly.

"How did you know that if we all closed our eyes and visualized the amplifier vanishing it would disappear?" asked the priest curiously.

"It had no power of itself. Amplifying images and emotions was all it could do—it seemed worth a try."

With an effort Lalo kept his features impassive. Better not reveal how terrified he had been that his plan would not work, or backfire. But that
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was over. Now his thoughts were quiet, like the city as it forgot its nightmares and returned to life's waking dream.

"You've changed. You would never have dared to suggest such a thing nine years ago."

"Changed?" Lalo began to laugh. "Who hasn't changed? Including you. And what's the use of it all if we don't learn anything?"

"What have you learned, limner?" Molin Torchholder watched him curiously.

"That I am not a silver ball, to be used or misused at will," Lalo replied. "I'll paint the truth you show me, Torchholder, but don't try to make my magic tell lies."

For a moment the priest looked at him, then he shook his head with a short laugh and turned to go.

Lalo watched as Molin Torchholder made his way around the curve of the wall to return to the palace again. Then his gaze came back to the rough outlines of the mural before him. That lower left-hand comer needed something—some detail to balance the rolling storm clouds on the right. His lips twitched suddenly, and he mixed a little white and black together to produce a silvery grey.

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Kneeling, he drew in the outline of a ball between two stones. It must be done now, while he remembered the weight and size, the slick feel of it in his hand. A touch with some other colors reproduced the rainbow glimmer it had mirrored in the Beysa's room. As Darios had said, it was a shame to waste it, but where could they have safely kept such a thing?

It would be safe here. Perhaps no one would notice it. Even if they did, no one could use it—no one but him. / hope I never need to breathe it into life again—but if I have to, I will, thought Lalo as he added the last sparkle of silver and sat back on his heels. Molin Torchholder asked me what I'd learned.

I'm beginning to discover the answer now . . .

C J. Cherryh

Clouds of steam. The horse stood still while Strat washed it down with rags and slopped water onto the stableyard dirt—a completely ordinary horse except the thumb-sized patch on its rump where there was simply

—nothing. It angered Crit that Strat spent excessive time on the creature, but, unlike Critias, acting commandant of the Stepsons, Companion to the God—his partner Straton had no fear of the undead.

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The horse had died under him—once. It had come back from Hell for him. It had rescued him from enemies. Straton returned that loyalty.

That small patch was the necessary Flaw—in a creature Hell had given up. But it in no wise flawed courage, or faith.

Better than men, Strat thought. Better than the love of women, who had proven, overall, faithless.

Critias had saved his life multiple times, too; and Strat had returned that favor, such as he could—but Crit was Crit—the ultimate pragmatist. There was only one creature in all the world that a man could believe in to such an extent, and trust absolutely; it stood with eyes shut—enjoying the warmth of life—

After the cold of Hell.

It came to Strat that he had known too much of that cold himself—

that if he had any hope for himself he had to shake free of such influ ences.

There had been, above all, a woman—a sorceress who haunted his dreams.

Be rid of her' Crit said.

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But one's dreams did not forget . . .

A quiet tread scuffed the dirt of the yard, stopped, at Strat's back. He looked behind him, saw his partner standing there fists on hips, saw Crit frowning at him.

"You're on duty," Crit said. "Dammit, Ace—"

Strat thought back to the morning, recollected a promise—to spell Gayle at a problem uptown, night duty, when they were so damned short-handed. He dropped the sponge into the bucket and faced Crit with a shake of his head. "Sorry," he said. "I'll get up there right now."

Crit walked closer and blocked his path to anywhere. "Strat—"

"I forgot, all right?"

Crit hit him on the shoulder, held that same shoulder, compelled an attention he did not want to give. "Forgot?"

"I said I forgot. I'm sorry." He moved to break away, but Crit tight ened his grip, jerked him around again for a look straight in the face.

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He dropped his eyes. He had no idea why, only that Crit's stare was unbearable—no matter that Crit had pulled him out of situations a sane man would not contemplate, no matter that he owed this man who was closer than a brother-That look on Crit's face wanted more from him than he had left in him to give, more of his soul than he was going to have again in his life, and though he knew it—Crit had yet to accept that fact.

"That's the bad shoulder," Strat said, deliberately pitiful; and tried with a shake of his head simply to go his way, and not to fight with Crit.

But Crit slammed him around against the corner of the stable. "Where in hell is your head?"

Another man he would have taken into bare-handed combat. But he owed Crit too much, and there was too much he'd fouled up on, like this, too much Crit cared about he didn't care about at all.

"Are you seeing her?" Crit shouted into his face.

"You know I'm not," Strat said. "I'm in barracks every night!"

Crit grabbed him by the throat. If Crit strangled him that was all right. He hardly cared. That was the trouble-That was what maddened Crit.

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Crit shook him, Crit slammed him back against the post. Strat only stared, short of wind, and said, "Better if you hadn't pulled me out of that cellar . . . Better you'd left me there."

In some part he hoped Crit would give up finally, let him alone, simply let him coast into oblivion.

Or hit him and give him cause—some cause, any cause to fight for—

But Crit, who had killed more men than anyone could remember, some of them piece by piece and slowly, looked at him as if he was feeling that kind of pain himself—as if someone hurt him and made him crazy,

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and he loved that someone too much to do what he would do to anyone else in the wide world who crossed him as far as Strat had.