Robert Asprin - Wings of Omen

Lalo grimaced, wondering if his vision were going or it was just that the lamps were burning down. "It's the Beysa's court now, and there's no work for me." He saw Cappen's face stiffening into a polite, sympathetic smile, and shook his head. "But it doesn't matter-I can do other things now... things even Enas Yorl would like to know." He reached for his tankard.

Cappen Varra looked at Wedemir. "What's he talking about?"

The boy shook his head. "I don't know. Mother said he'd stopped drinking, but they had a fight and he started talking strange and stormed out. I thought I'd better follow and make sure-" He shrugged in embarrassment.

Lalo raised his eyes from the hypnotically swirling reflections in his tankard and fixed his son with a bitter gaze. "And make sure the old man didn't drown himself? I thought so. But you're wrong, both of you, if you think this is drunken wandering. Even your mother doesn't know-" Lalo stopped. He had come here determined to prove his power, but the wine was sapping his will. Did it really matter? Did anything really matter now?

His wavering gaze fixed on a figure that seemed to have precipitated from the shadows near the door, lean, sullen-browed, with a dark cloak hiding whatever else he wore. Lalo recognized the face he had seen on Shalpa at the table of the gods and thought. That Hanse, he's another one the gods have played with, and look at the sour face he's wearing now. For all the good it's done either of us, to hell with the gods!

"Look here. Papa," said Wedemir, "I'm getting tired of all these dark hints and frowns. Either explain what you're talking about or shut up."

Stung, Lalo straightened and managed to focus his gaze long enough to hold his son's eyes. "That time I was ill-" He tried to stop himself but the words flooded out like an undammed stream. "I was with the gods. I can breathe life into what I draw, now."

Wedemir stared at him, and Cappen Varra shook his head. "The wine," said the harper. "Definitely the wine. It really is too bad...."

Lalo stared back at them. "You don't believe me. I should be relieved. How would you like me to make you a Sik-kintair, Cappen Varra, or a troll such as they have fighting in the northern wars?" He shook his head, trying to get rid of the growing ache behind his eyes.

It was not fair-he should not be feeling like this until tomorrow. He had expected the alcohol to deaden his pain, but as his normal vision blurred, he was seeing the truths behind men's veils more clearly than before. That boy across the room-he had killed his own men, and would again.... Lalo winced and looked away.

"Papa, damn it, stop!" said Wedemir angrily. "You sound crazy-how do you think that makes me feel?"

"Why should I care?" muttered Lalo. "If it hadn't been for the lot of you, I would have been free of this wretched town long ago. I'm telling the truth, and I don't give a turd whether you believe me."

"Then, prove it!" Wedemir's voice rose, and for a moment nearby drinkers stared at them. Cappen Varra was looking uncomfortable, but the boy grabbed his arm. "No, don't go! You're one of his oldest friends. Help me show him what nonsense he's talking before he loses what wits he has!"

"All right-" said the harper slowly. "Lalo, do you have anything to draw with here?"

Lalo looked up at him, reading in his face weakness and an extravagant bravery, venality, and a stubborn integrity that even Sanctuary had not been able to wear away, a cynical assessment of women's susceptibility, and devotion to the ideal beauty he had never yet attained. Like Lalo, Cappen Varra was an artist who sought to make songs that would live in men's hearts. What would he think of this? The temptation to impress his old friend and make his cub of a son eat his words was overwhelming. Lalo reached into his pouch, fished among the few coins left there, and brought out a stick of charcoal and a worn piece of drawing lead.

"No paper-" he said after a moment, and sighed.

"Then why not use the wall?" Cappen Varra's eyes were bright, challenging. He gestured toward the scarred plaster, already disfigured by carved initials and scrawled obscenities. "The place will be no worse for some decoration- I'm sure One-Thumb won't mind!"

Lalo nodded and blinked several times, wishing that the blurring before his eyes would go away. Liquor had never affected him like this before-as if he were staring through the harbor's murky waters to a seabed littered with everything the sewers swept out of town.

He struggled up on his knees next to the wall. Cappen Varra was beginning to look interested, but Wedemir's expression was eloquent with embarrassment. /'// show him, thought Lalo, then turned his gaze to the wall, cudgeling his imagination for a subject. Lamplight flickered on the bumps and hollows of its rough plaster, sketching a long curve here, and there a mass of shadow, almost like...

Yes, that was what he would give them-a unicorn! After all, he had already painted one for the sign outside. He felt the familiar concentration narrow his vision as he lifted his hand; he could almost believe himself at home in his studio, drawing a model for a mural as he had done so many times before.

Lalo let the other part of his brain take over and guide his hand-that hidden part that saw the world in relationships of light and darkness, mass and texture and line, directly recording what it saw. And as his hand moved, his awareness reached out to draw the soul of the subject into the picture, as he also had done so many times before. The unicorn-an imagined unicorn? No, the Vulgar Unicorn, of course-the soul of the Vulgar Unicorn....

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.