Robert Asprin - The Dead of Winter

As the floodtide passed the bridge it spread over the lower lands below. Spray and fragments of wood were still being tossed up by the billows, but through the confusion Lalo thought he saw something like an oily black bubble lift from beyond the warehouses and wobble through the air toward the hills. But that was only a momentary distraction. It was Gilla he was grasping, Gilla whose warmth he felt through her wet garments, as if she were fueled by a tiny, unquenchable sun. Through the mud he felt earth solid beneath him. She rooted him against the buffets of water and wind.

They paid no attention to the babble of questions around them as they clung together, bedraggled and ridiculous, grinning into the wind.

Then Gilla's face changed. She tightened her grip and shouted into Lalo's ear. "Where are the children?"

"At the Palace with Vanda," he shouted back. "They're safe-"

"In this?" Gilla frowned at the sky. "I should be with them. Come on!"

Lalo nodded. He had done his part here, and he could see that the fury of the river was already abating. But there was still chaos in the heavens, and abruptly he caught Gilla's urgency. With Wedemir close behind them, they picked their way around the lake that had been Caravan Square and slogged past the deserted stalls of the Bazaar.

By the time Lalo and Gilla reached the Palace Gate the terrified tantrums of two two-year-old incipient Storm Gods were bidding to do more damage to the heart of Sanctuary than all Roxane's water demons. The flashes of lightning were almost constant now, and a strong scent of ozone hung in the air. Puddles dotted the great courtyard; doors on the ground floor were open as Beysib servants tried to sweep water outside.

Lalo stopped short, gazing around in consternation, and Gilla gave him a look that said "I told you so!"

"The nursery was in the basement. I don't know where they've moved the children now."

"At least the Palace is still here," said Wedemir.

Gilla snorted, grabbed a fish-eyed female who was hurrying past with a mop and pail and began to question her. Her limited command of the language was no problem-as soon as Gilla mentioned children the maid paled and pointed upward, then slid from Gilla's grasp.

Upstairs, they found there was no need to ask directions. As they toiled up a staircase that had been well-known to Lalo in the days when he used the roof garden as a portrait studio, they could hear shrieks, punctuated by rolling thunder and the despairing murmur of female voices.

Gilla threw open the door to the sitting room and stood a moment, surveying the scene. Then she waded into the room and began smacking bottoms. Lalo stared, but he supposed that even these children would hold no terrors for someone who had managed to escape from Roxane.

There was a short, stunned silence. Then Gilla sat down between the two storm children and pulled them into her capacious lap. Gyskouras took a deep breath and began to hiccup fiercely, but Arton was still crying great, storm-colored tears. Illyra and Seylalha started toward Gilla just as Alfi detached himself from his sister.

Gilla motioned to the two other mothers to sit close beside her and carefully slid the children onto their laps just as her own children reached her. She was still making soothing noises, but the heavens continued their explosions outside.

"Quiet-quiet now, my little ones-see, your mamas are here! We'll keep you safe now, you don't need to make all this noise ..."

"Can't stop!" Gyskouras said between hiccups. His fair hair was plastered to his head and his cheeks were streaked with tears.

"'Fraid ..." echoed the dark child in Illyra's arms.

Both children were still trembling, as if only Gilla's steady voice kept them from giving way to their terror once more. Relative peace had returned to the room, making the noise outside seem louder. Lalo looked around desperately, wondering if it would help to distract or amuse them somehow.

Toys were scattered on the floor and building blocks, art materials, and games were stacked on shelves to one side. Lalo's eyes widened. He remembered abruptly how his colored flies had amused Alfi.

Painfully, for now he felt all the aches from his battle with the storm, Lalo went to the shelves and picked up a slate and a basket of colored chalks. Holding them as if they might bite, he came back to the little group in the center of the room and squatted down.

"Do you like pretty pictures? What do you like- butterflies?" A swift stroke of the chalk laid the sweep of a red wing; another suggested the long body and bright eyes.

Lightning flared in the window, blinding him. When Lalo could see again Arton's chubby hand was rubbing the picture away.

'Wot flutter' by! Bad bright things outside-" His dark gaze held the limner's, and in his eyes Lalo saw the angular, aetherial forms of the demons that lived on the energy of the storm. "Make them go 'way!"

I won't draw them, Lalo thought fearfully, they've too much life already! He took the child's hand gently, remembering how he had comforted his own children when they had spilled their milk or broken some favorite toy, not understanding their own power.

Now he felt Gyskouras's gaze upon him as well, filling him with knowledge of all the powers surging in the storm. Other images came to him too-emotions, desires as yet formless, characteristics that sought to coalesce into a Personality that would encompass the potential, for good or evil, inherent in the two children before him. He recognized the feeling-he had known it himself at the beginning of a project, when colors and shapes and images jostled in his consciousness and he strove for the form and balance that would organize them into a harmonious unity.

But the only loss had been a ruined canvas when he failed. If these children failed, they could destroy Sanctuary.

Thunder clapped great hands above the Palace; the room shuddered and a window blew open on a sudden gust of rain. Gyskouras whimpered, and Lalo reached for his hand. They need a mage to train them, just like me-but there must be something that we can do! Lalo closed his eyes, driven not by fear or the pressure of a stronger mind, but by pity, to seek that part of himself that had been a god.

When he opened them again the window was still banging against the wall. Outside, clouds pulsed with a hundred shades of gray-always gray! Gods, he was so tired of this colorless world! Lalo looked down, and saw that the chalk pressed between his hand and Gyskouras's plump fingers had left a smear of yellow on the slate. For a moment he stared at it, then he reached for an orange chalk and put it into Arton's slimmer hand.

"Here," he whispered, "draw me a line beside the other-yes, just so...." One by one he gave colors to the children and guided their awkward hands. Yellow, orange, red and purple, blue and turquoise and green-the chalk glowed against the dark stone. And when all the colors had been used, Lalo got to his feet, holding the slate carefully.

"Now, let's make something pretty-I can't do it alone. You both come here with me ..." Lalo held out his hand and drew first Arton, then Gyskouras, from his mother's arms. "Come to the window, don't be afraid ..."

Lalo was dimly aware that the room had gone very still behind him, but all his attention was on the two children beside him and the storm outside. They reached the window; Lalo knelt, his greying ginger head touching the dark child's head and the fair.

"Now blow," he said softly. "Blow on the picture and we'll make the nasty clouds all go away."

He felt the children's milky breath warm on his fingers. He bowed his head and expelled his own pent breath outward, saw chalk dust haze the damp air. His eyes blurred with the intensity of his staring, or was the blur in his eyes? Surely now there was more color in the air than they had ever blown into it, and the colors were shimmering. His ears rang with silence.