Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

Presently he turned back to the mural he had been working on. On the wall of the Presence Chamber, Mother Bey stretched out Her hand to the Storm God against a background of the blue sea. It was no accident that the god looked something like Kadakithis, and the goddess had the bearing and wore the robes of Shupansea, but Lalo had worked from imagination and memory this time, knowing better than to paint the souls of these particular models for all to see.

Technically the work was competent, but the figures seemed lifeless. For a moment Lalo wondered what a little of his breath would do. Then he remembered the wars of Va-shanka and Us, shuddered, and pulled the mask over his nose and mouth again. With Dyareela stalking the streets of Sanctuary, the last thing they needed was two new deities with all the prejudices and failings of the originals fluttering about the town.

He was still struggling with the painting when his daughter Vanda came to him with the news that her sister Latilla had taken the fever, and the Rankans wanted her out of the palace before darkness fell.

There were crowds in the streets outside the Aphrodisia House, but little business inside, men fearing lest the fires of love would ignite a different kind of flame. Their drunken voices sounded like the growling of some great animal. Broken phrases trembled in the still air. "Death to the fish-folk, death and the fire!" At least, thought Gilla, Lalo and the children were safe at the palace, while Dubro was adding his strength to Myrtis's guards downstairs.

Gilla pulled the curtain back across the window despite the airless heat of the evening and sat down again. Illyra lay on her couch, clutching'the coverlet to her breast at every cry, as if she were cold, despite the sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Gilla looked down at her own clasped hands, red and workwom, the flesh puffing around the circle of her wedding band, and tried to tell herself that the plague came nearly every year. But she knew it did not come this way. She and Illyra had done this, somehow, with their spell.

A new outbreak of shouting below startled her to awareness again. The building shook as the great door of the Aphrodisia House slammed, and she heard a mutter of voices and footsteps on the stairs. It was their door they were coming to! Gilla got heavily to her feet as it was flung open, and she saw Lalo framed in the doorway with Myrtis behind him and Latilla in his arms.

Illyra cried out, but Gilla was already in motion, reaching out to touch the hot forehead. Latilla opened her eyes then, focusing with difficulty, and tried to smile.

"Mama, I missed you. Mama, I'm so hot, can't you make me cool again?"

Throat tight, Gilla took the burning body into her own arms, whispering words that made no sense even to her. Latilla was so light, her flesh half consumed already by that inner fire!

"Lay her down on the couch," said Illyra in a strained voice. "We'll need cold water and cloths."

"I've already ordered them," said Myrtis calmly, "and perhaps these will help as well." She gestured, and one of her girls brought in two of the plumed fans which they used to fan away the sweat of amorous exercise from the bodies of their more important customers, then scurried out of the room.

Illyra had already smoothed the coverlet. Gilla laid Latilla down and reached out for the first compress without looking away. But she was aware of Lalo close beside her, and she drew on his energy as Illyra had drawn upon hers when they made their spell. After a little, the fanning and the cold cloths seemed to have some effect, and Latilla fell into an uneasy doze.

The first crisis over, Lalo had gone to his worktable and was fussing with his paints, laying them out instinctively as if work could help him control the chaos of his world.

"Oh Gilla," said Illyra pitifully, "she looks so like my little girl!" Gilla met her eyes, and the S'danzo flushed painfully. At her words, Lalo looked up at her.

"Where are the finished cards?" he asked then. "There were only a few to be done-if I complete the deck, perhaps you can read some hope for us now!"

Illyra stared at him, and her face went stark white against the dark masses of her hair. Then her gaze slid unwillingly to the table in the comer, where the cards were still as she had laid them a week ago. Still unsuspecting, Lalo went to it and stood, looking down.

Gilla's flesh had turned to stone. Lalo was no S'danzo, but he was a master of symbol, and he had painted those cards. She tried to read his reaction in the slump of his shoulders, the bent head with its thinning, ginger hair. Surely he must know!

"I don't understand," Lalo said in a still voice. "Did you try to read from an incomplete deck? Is this your Seeing for what is happening now?" Suddenly his hand shot out and he swept the fatal pattern of cards to the floor. He turned and read in their faces the answer to a question he had not even thought to ask.

"You did this?"

"I don't know," said Illyra in a dead voice. "We wanted revenge for our children ..."

"Blessed Goddess!" breathed Lalo in disbelief.

"No-there are no gods, only Power-" Illyra's laugh scraped the edge of hysteria.

"And you let her-you helped her?" His shocked gaze turned to Gilla. "You still have other children! Didn't you think-"

"Did you think when you gave life to the Black Unicorn?" she spat back, but her voice broke. She gestured toward Latilla. "Oh, Lalo-Lalo-here is my punishment!"

"No!" he said furiously. "Wasn't losing one child enough for you? She hasn't sinned! Why should she suffer for our sake?"

"Strike me then!" Gilla said with a half-sob. Perhaps if he did it would take some of this dreadful pain away.

Lalo stared, and something in his face seemed to crumple. "Woman, if I could hit you I would have done it years ago." As Gilla buried her face in her hands he turned back to Illyra.

"You did this-you make it right again. I have the paints here, and the blanks for the rest of the cards. None of us will sleep tonight in any case. You will describe for me the missing cards, S'danzo, and I will paint them, and then you will read them anew!"

Illyra pushed back her heavy hair with a thin hand. "Limner, I know what I have done," she said dully. "Take up your paints and I will give you the designs, for all the help that will be. I think the gift I abused has gone from me now."

Lalo shuddered, but his face remained implacable as he went to his worktable and began to unstopper the little jars of pigment. Gilla stared at him, for it was a face she had never seen her husband wear before.

"The Seven of Ores is called Red Clay, the card of the potter, the craftsman," Illyra began as Lalo picked up his brush. Then Latilla began to whimper, and Gilla forgot to listen to the S'danzo as she bent to comfort her child.

In the night the mobs began to drag the dead and their possessions into the streets to burn them, but the sight of scorching brocades or melting gilt was too much for many of the more lawless, so the devout took to firing houses without checking too closely to see whether anyone were left alive inside. Both the Stepsons and the Third Commando had their hands full trying to keep the flames from spreading into the mercantile section of town, while Walegrin and the garrison guarded the palace from shouting mobs who bayed for the deaths of Prince Kadakithis and the Beysib whore. By the time the sun rose like a red eye upon the horizon, the sky bore a pall reminiscent of wizard weather, but this evil came wholly from mortals, or perhaps from mortality.

When Lalo finally woke, it took a few disoriented moments for him to realize that his head was throbbing and his neck stiff not from fever, but from having slept slumped over his worktable, and that the gray light that filtered through the curtain was not the cool dimness of dawn, but a dreadful noon. With a groan he straightened, blinked, and looked around him.