Robert Asprin - Storm Season

"Even there? Surely there must be some honest men and virtuous women at the heart of the Empire!" Lalo said wistfully.

"Will you never grow up? We are doing very well as we are-you have a position, people like what you do, and the children will be well-apprenticed and married when the time comes. And now you want to go chase some other dream? Why can't you make up your mind?"

He put his hands over his aching eyes and shook his head. If only he knew-there was something missing in him, something that he sought in each new thing he tried to do ... What use has it been to have my heart's desire? he thought, if I myself am still the same?

After a little he heard the chair scrape and felt her coming to him, and sighed again, more deeply, as the strength and softness of her arms enclosed him. She had scented her skin with oil of sandalwood, and he could feel the opulence of her body through the thin silk of the night-robe she wore.

It changed nothing, but in her arms he could forget his perplexities for at least a little while. Gilla kissed him on his bald spot and drew away, and with a sense of having made a truce with fate he followed her into the other room.

"Thieves!"

Lalo jerked upright, shocked from sleep by Gilla's scream and the crash that had shaken the room. Was it morning? But everything was still dark! He rubbed his eyes, still half-drugged by dreams of marble terraces and applause.

Shadows moved and feet that no longer troubled to be stealthy thudded on the floor... hard hands grasped Lalo's shoulders and he cried out. Then something hit the side of his head and he sagged against the hard hands that prisoned him.

"Murderers! Assassins!"

His head still ringing, Lalo recognized Gilla in the voice, and in the dark bulk that heaved upward from the bed to fling another assailant against the wall. Water spattered his cheek and he smelt roses as the vase that had stood on the bedside table flew past him and shattered against someone's skull. Men caromed into each other swearing as Gilla groped forward. There was no sound from their neighbors-he had not really expected it-they would ask their questions when morning came.

"In Vashanka's name, somebody silence the sow!" In the half-light a drawn sword gleamed dimly.

"No!" he croaked, gasped in air and cried out, "Gilla, stop fighting-there are too many-Gilla, please!"

There was a final convulsion, then silence. Flint rasped steel and a little light sparked into life. Gilla lay sprawled like a fallen monument. For a moment Lalo felt as if a great hand had closed on his chest. Then there was movement in the tangle of limbs. Gilla rolled over and levered herself to her feet without spending a glance on the man who had cushioned her fall.

"Savankala save me, she's squashed me flat . . . Sir, help me-don't leave me here...."

Sir? But the man on the floor was a Hell-Hound-Lalo recognized him now.

"I don't understand..."he said aloud, and as he turned the light was quenched and he blinked at darkness again.

"Carry him," said a deep voice. "And you, woman, be still if you want to see him whole again."

Sick from the blow and aching from rough handling, Lalo did not resist as they shoved his sandals onto his feet and thrust an old smock over his head and marched him along the empty streets back to the Palace. But instead of rounding the outer wall to the dungeons, as Lalo had dismally expected, they hustled him through the Palace Gate and along the side of the building and down a little staircase to the basement.

Then, still without a word of explanation, he was thrust into a dank hole smelling of dry rot and full of things to stumble over to shiver, and wonder why they had brought him here, and gnaw his paint-stained fingers while he waited for dawn ...

"Wake up, you Wrigglie scum? The Lord wants to talk to you-"

Lalo surfaced, groaning, from a dream in which he had been taken prisoner and dragged through the night until... Something hit him hard in the ribs and he opened his eyes.

It was morning, and it had not been a dream. He saw flaking white-washed walls, and splintered crates and furniture heaped on the bare earth of the floor. It was not a prison then. A little pallid light filtered down to him through one barred window set high in the wall.

He forced himself to sit up and face his tormentors.

"Quag!"

At Lalo's exclamation, the Hell-Hound's pitted-leather face became, if possible, a richer shade of terra cotta, and his eyes slid away from the painter's gaze. Lalo followed the look to the doorway, and suddenly began to understand what power had brought him here, though he was as far as ever from comprehending why.

Coricidius hunched in the doorway like a sick eagle, with his cloak clutched around him against the early morning chill, and a face like curdled milk. He eyed Lalo sourly, hawked and spat, and then stepped stiffly into the room.

"My Lord, am I under arrest? I've done nothing-why have you brought me here?" babbled Lalo.

"I want to commission some portraits ..." The lined face twitched with the faintest of malicious smiles.

"What?"

Coricidius snorted in disgust and motioned to one of the guards to set a folding camp-stool in the middle of the room. Joint by joint, the old man lowered himself until he settled fully upon it with a sigh.

"I have no time to argue with you, dauber. You say you don't do portraits, but you will do them for me."

Lalo shook his head. "My lord, I can't do pictures of real people... they hate them... I'm no good at it."

"You're too good at it." Coricidius corrected him. "I know your secret, you see. I've had your models followed, and talked to them. I could kill you, but if you refuse me, I have only to tell a few of your former patrons and they will save me the toil."

Lalo clutched at the folds of his smock to hide the trembling of his hands. "Then I am doomed-if I do portraits for you, my secret will be known as soon as they are seen."

"Ah, but these pictures are not for public display." Coricidius hunched forward. "I want you to make a likeness of each of the Commissioners who have come fron Ranke. I shall tell them that it is a surprise for the Emperor-that no one must see it until it is done ... and before that happens, some accident to the painting is certain to occur. . . ."The Vizier was shaking with subtle tremors that ran along each limb to end in a grimace which Lalo took minutes to recognize as laughter.

"But not before I have seen it," the old man went on, "and learned the weaknesses these peacocks hide from men ... They have come to power in the Court since my time, but once I know their souls I can constrain them to help me return to favor again!"

Lalo shivered. The proposal had a certain superficial logic, but there were so many things that could go wrong.

"But perhaps I have simply not yet found the right stick to make the donkey go ..." Coricidius went on. "They say you love your wife-" he peered at Lalo disbelievingly. "Shall we blind her and send her to the Street of the Red Lanterns while we keep you prisoner?"

I should have gone away ... thought Lalo. I should have taken Gilla and the children out of here as soon as I had the money to go... Once he had seen a rabbit transfixed by the shadow of a stooping hawk. I am that rabbit, and I am lost ... he thought.

And after all, the internal dialogue went on, what are all these plots and counterplots to me? If 1 can help this Rankan buzzard return to his own foul nest then at least Sanctuary will be free of him!

"All right ... I will do what you say..." Lalo said aloud.

* * *

Lalo, brow furrowed and an extra brush held between his teeth, leaned closer to the canvas, concentrating on the line the soft brush made. When he was painting, his hand and eye became a single organ in which visual impressions were transmitted to the fingers and to the brush which was their extension without mediation by the consciousness. Line, mass, shape and color, all were factors in a pattern which must be replicated on the canvas. The eye checked the work of the hand and automatically corrected it without either interpretation or reaction from the brain.