Robert Asprin - Wings of Omen

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.

"Papa, quick-we've got to get out of here!"

Cappen Varra was already slipping toward the door. The Unicorn wheeled, herding two men contemptuously across the room. Fresh blood smeared the old stains on the floor.

"No-" Lalo shook his head uncontrollably. "It's mine, my fault-I have to-" He felt his son's strength suddenly as Wedemir seized him, pinioning his arms, and half-dragged, half-carried him away.

Three men pelted after them into the night; then there were no more, only the screaming from inside the inn that continued as Wedemir dragged Lalo after Cappen Varra, terror lending them its own protection until they reached the harper's dingy room.

The secret hours between midnight and dawn drew on. The Black Unicorn, having finished with the tavern, shouldered out into the street, blotting the night with a deeper darkness, and began to forage through the Maze, emptying the streets more effectively than Imperial order or Beysib curfew had ever done.

On Cappen Varra's dusty floor Lalo dozed fitfully, struggling through dreams of fire and darkness lit by a distant shimmer of crystal wings.

In the luxury of his estate on the east side, Lastel, furious and smarting with pain from a gash across his belly, took a long snort of krrf and waited for Roxane. One death or a dozen in the Vulgar Unicorn did not trouble him unduly, but his alliance with the witch ought to protect him from any other sorcery, and with that Thing that had come off the wall of the Unicorn loose in the city, every mage in Sanctuary would be after his hide. Had the little dauber really done it? Who was using him? Lastel struck at the slave who was trying to bandage him and sniffed at the krrf again. Roxane would know what to do....

The sorceress Ischade lifted herself from silken pillows and the enraptured face of the man beneath her, midnight eyes searching graying shadows. She could feel power eddying in the damp air; the wards she had set between herself and the Nisibisi witch quivered like taut wires in a sudden breeze. Was Roxane moving against her? The disturbance came from the direction of the Vulgar Unicorn, but there seemed no purpose in its meanderings. A word to the black bird perched in the comer sent it heaving into the musky air in a flurry of nightdark wings. "Go," she whispered, "bring back word to me...."