Blood Ties

LADY OF FIRE by Diana L. Paxson

A peach tree grew in the courtyard below Lalo's stairs. It was only a little tree, but Gilla had covered its roots with straw to protect it from cold and dribbled precious water around it when the sun burned in the sky, caring for it as she cared for her children, and through war and wizard weather it had survived. But in the bitter spring of the Emperor's visit to Sanctuary the tree stood barren, with scarcely a leaflet on its twisted branches, and no blooms.

Lalo paused beside it on his way to the palace, wishing that he could breathe life into the tree as he had once breathed life into the work of his hands. But with the destruction of the Nisibisi Globes of Power everyone's magic seemed to have become as strengthless as Master Ahdio's cheap ale; Lalo dared not test his own. And even at his most powerful, he had only transformed symbols, not already living things.

He did not know if he could create anything anymore.

The building behind him was as silent as it had been in the dreadful days when Gilla was Roxane's captive. Latilla and Alfi were with Vanda at the palace. Wedemir was enviously watching the Stepsons maneuver themselves back into shape for campaign, and Gilla herself was at the Aphrodisia House, watching over Illyra's slow recovery from the wound she had taken in the riots when her daughter died.

If Illyra's body had been all that needed healing it would not have been so bad, Lalo thought. But it seemed to him that both women were nursing grief like a child. A pang twisted in his own belly at the memory-his middle son, Ganner, had been struck down, outside the goldsmith's shop where he was apprenticed, in that same climax of disorder that had killed Illyra's girl.

The town was quiet now, but it was the peace of exhaustion-more like a coma than the sleep of healing, and who could tell whether Sanctuary, or any of its people, would awaken to life again?

Lalo shivered and squinted at the sky. Even if it was useless, he ought to get up to the palace before the morning light was gone. As part of a sequence of political and religious negotiations which Lalo did not even try to understand, Molin Torchholder had commissioned him to paint an allegorical mural of the Wedding of the Storm God and Mother Bey. The work was as lifeless as everything else he did these days, but he was getting paid for it. And he did not know what else he could do.

"She was going to be pretty..." said Illyra in an oddly conversational tone. "My Lillis had golden hair like her father's, do you remember? I used to comb it and wonder how anything that pretty could have been born from me...."

"Yes," answered Gilla quietly. "I know." She had only seen Illyra's daughter a few times, but that did not matter now. "Ganner was the fairest of my children..." Her throat closed.

"How can you understand?" exclaimed the half-S'danzo suddenly. "You still have children! But my daughter is dead and they have taken my little boy away! There is nothing left for me."

"Your child was young," said Gilla heavily. "You do not know what she would have been. But all the labor of raising my boy to manhood is wasted. He will never give me grandchildren now. I have buried one infant and lost one from the womb; the boy that was born after Ganner died of a fever when he was six years old. I know the pain of losing them at all ages, Illyra, and I tell you truly that whatever age your child is taken from you is the worst. But I will bear no more. You are still young-you can have other children."

"What for?" Illyra said harshly. "So that this town can kill them, too?" She sank back upon the silken pillows with which the Aphrodisia House furnished even a sickroom and closed her eyes.

From somewhere on the floor below them came a mocking echo of music. The faded silk of the cushions glowed softly in the afternoon light, but to Gilla they seemed as colorless as everything else had been since that terrible day when so many died. Illyra was right-why give more hostages to malicious fate?

Someone scratched hesitantly at the door. When neither Gilla nor Illyra answered, it opened softly and Myrtis, a little thinner, but as impeccably painted and jeweled as ever, came in.

"How is she today?" She gestured toward the half-S'danzo, who lay with her eyes tightly closed.

Gilla got to her feet and moved heavily to meet the older woman-at least one assumed that Myrtis was older, and today she looked it, as if the spells by which Lythande had preserved her famous beauty were fading too. Molin Torch holder's gold had paid for Illyra's convalescence here, but the famous madam of the Aphrodisia House had given them more than a landlady's care.

"The scar is healing, but Illyra grows weaker," Gilla said in a low voice. "I think she does not want to live. And why should she?" she added bitterly.

For a moment Myrtis's eyes glittered. "Do you need a reason? Life is the only thing there is! After all she's survived, and you, too, are you going to give up and let them win?" Her gesture seemed to encompass everything outside the room. Then she drew back her hand as if surprised by her own intensity.

"In any case, there are others who need her," she continued more calmly. She moved aside and Gilla saw another figure in the doorway behind her, tall, black haired, with a lithe poise that the rich gown she wore so awkwardly could not disguise and an energy that made even Gilla give way as she swept into the room past Myrtis.

"What are you doing? She's not well enough-" Gilla began as the newcomer strode to the bed where Illyra lay, and stood looking down at her.

"They say the S'danzo have no gods, and no mages," the woman said gruffly. "Well, the gods the rest of us had aren't talking these days, and the mages are useless. I need information. My old comrades said you're honest. What will you take to See for me?"

"Nothing." Illyra pulled herself up against the pillows, stony-eyed.

"Oh, no-enough of my comrades came to you in the old days that I know you keep to the traditional rule. If you take my coin you are bound to answer me...." She pulled gold from her pouch and held it out. Furiously, Illyra dashed it from her hand.

"Do you know who I am?" the woman said dangerously.

"I know you. Lady Kama, and there is nothing in Sanctuary that will make me See for you!" She caught her breath on a half-sob. "I could not even if I would. When my-in the riots-my cards were destroyed. I am as blind as any of the rest of you now!" She finished with bitter triumph.

"But I have to know!" Kama said angrily. "I have promised to wed Molin Torchholder, but when I ask him about the ceremony he puts me off with theological caveats. And the Stepsons are taking the Third Commando with them on some mysterious campaign-all my old comrades! I could go with them-I'd rather go with them, but I have to know what I should do!"

Illyra shrugged. "Do what you please."

Considering that Molin Torchholder had taken Illyra's other child away, Gilla thought the S'danzo's reaction to this request from his woman mild.

Kama bent suddenly and gripped Illyra's shoulders. "What does that have to do with it? I've sworn oaths-they still bind me even if the gods aren't listening anymore, and I've lost too much blood in this town to just walk away without knowing why. Do you think I've stopped being a warrior because I'm wearing these?" She twitched angrily at the rich folds of her skirts. "I will have answers, woman, if I have to wring them out of you!"

Illyra shook her head. "Can you wring blood from a stone? Do whatever you like to me-I have no answers anymore."

"There may be no blood left in your veins," Kama said dangerously, "but what about your husband's? I've learned a lot in this cesspool you call home-will you sing the same song when you see me applying some of that knowledge to Dubro?"

"No..." said Illyra faintly. "He has nothing to do with this. You can't make him suffer for me . .."

"Were you somehow under the impression that life is fair?" Kama straightened and stood looking down at her. "I will do whatever I have to do."

Gilla looked from her to Myrtis, who was watching with a faint half-smile. Had the madam of the Aphrodisia House put Kama up to this in an attempt to shake Illyra out of her depression? She could believe it of Myrtis, but she found it hard to imagine Kama cooperating in anyone else's schemes.

"But I cannot..." said Illyra pitifully. "I told you. I have no cards. And I cannot borrow a set-each deck is attuned to the S'danzo who owns it. Mine came to me from my grandmother, and there is no S'danzo craftsman in this town who could paint a new deck for me."

Kama stared at her. Then her gray gaze moved thoughtfully from the S'danzo to Gilla and back again.

"But you know the patterns of the cards-"

Now it was Illyra's turn to stare.

"And her husband is a painter who is said to have certain powers ..." As Kama continued, Gilla read in Illyra's face her own anguished awareness that they both still had hostages to fate.

"Molin Torchholder is the limner's patron. He will order Lalo to come to you, and together you will make a new deck of cards. And then-" Kama's lips twisted in what was intended to be a sweet smile. "Then we will see if there is any magic left in this world."

Lalo pinned another rectangle of stiff vellum to his drawing board. He could feel the tension in his neck and shoulders, and Illyra looked pale, with a sheen of perspiration on her brow. The two cards they had already finished were drying in the sunshine that came through the window.

"Are you ready?" he asked softly through the mask over his mouth he always wore now while working, to keep his breath from accidentally giving life to what he made. "We don't have to do any more today. ..." Even if he had had the energy to continue, he did not think that the S'danzo woman could go on much longer.

"One more..." Illyra winced as she pulled herself upright against the pillows. She was pushing herself. Lalo wondered if she was beginning to feel incomplete without a set of cards, as he always did without drawing materials somewhere at hand, or if she simply wanted to get rid of Kama.

"The next card is the Three of Flames," said Illyra. Her voice altered, developed a peculiarly flat timbre, as if even visualizing the cards was enough to push her into the seer's trance. "There is a tunnel, dark at one end and at the other bright. In the tunnel I see three figures bearing torches. Are they moving toward light or darkness? I cannot tell...."

As if the S'danzo's words had entranced him, Lalo found his hand moving, dipping up dark pigment for the shadows and red-orange for the three bright flowers of flame. As Illyra spoke of the meaning of the card, shape and color emerged from the slip of vellum before him as if his brush were a wand that made visible what had always been implicit there.

The torchbearers were in silhouette, their faces hidden, but he could see that one was small, one broad, one wiry and active. Could the big shape be Molin Torchholder? Lalo finished painting in the number of the card, and in the moment between the last brush stroke and his return to normal consciousness he thought he saw something of Gilla in the larger figure. Perhaps the other two were Illyra and himself, then, but were they moving into deeper shadow or toward the light?

Lalo straightened and looked at Illyra, who lay back against her pillows with the stillness of sleep, or trance. There were dark smudges beneath her closed eyes, as if he had touched her with his paint-stained finger there. He had felt the power moving through him as he painted, but this time the meaning of his work was hidden from him even when he came out of his own trance of creation and looked at the cards.

The three flame-cards that were finished glowed in the sunlight that came through the window, the colors seeming to vibrate with their own energy. / should be grateful, thought the limner. At least now I know that my hands still have power. But he did not understand what he had painted, and something ached in his belly at the anguish he saw in Illyra's shut face. Carefully, quietly, fearing to disturb her, Lalo began to put his paints away.

"The cards are beautiful," said Gilla. "So many of Lalo's recent commissions have been murals, I'd forgotten how lovely his detail work can be." She laid the root card of Wood carefully back atop the pile. The rich greens and browns of the "Forest Primeval" seemed to glow with their own light, like sunshine slanting through innumerable leaves. Molin Torchholder's demand had for the moment given the marriage mural precedence over Kama's commission for the cards, even though the deck was nearly finished now. Illyra was nearly well now too, in body. But she and Gilla had grown accustomed to each other's company.

"I hate them," said Illyra in a low voice.

Gilla looked back at the couch, an angry defense of Lalo's work trembling on her tongue. The S'danzo's eyes were closed, but the slow tears were welling from beneath her shut lids. Gilla stifled her anger and went to the other woman, took a damp cloth, and began to sponge her cheeks and brow.

"My dear, my dear, it's all right now...." It was the instinctive murmur of a mother to a sick child.

"It is not all right!" said Illyra in a hard voice. "To See, I must open myself to the Great Pattern-become one with it and channel the part that relates to the question the querent has asked. But I do not believe in the Pattern anymore."

Gilla nodded. Men killing each other was one thing, whether in battle or in the back streets of Sanctuary, but how could there be any purpose in the senseless death of a child? Memory brought her a sudden image of Ganner's eighth birthday, when Lalo had brought him clay and a set of modeler's tools. The light in the boy's face had stamped him and Lalo with a single identity as they explored the new medium. Gan-ner was the only one of the children to have inherited any of Lalo's skill. But he would never bring beauty into the world now. She swallowed over the ache in her throat and turned to Illyra again.

"More than half the deck is painted now. Kama will force me to read for her when the rest are done and I cannot," said Illyra bitterly. "I will fail her, and then she will take her revenge on Dubro. By all of Sanctuary's useless gods, I hate her! Her, and the rest of those blade-thirsty, swaggering bullies who have destroyed my world!"

"Will you find a sword of your own and go after her?" asked Gilla, trying to channel into scorn the hatred that was making her own belly bum. "Illyra, be sensible. Try to get well, and be thankful that's not your kind of power!"

"My kind of power..." said the S'danzo reflectively. "No -when men bum my people for sorcery it's not because they fear the simple power of steel...." Illyra fell silent. Her dark hair swung down across her breast, and Gilla could not see her eyes, but there was something in the other woman's stillness that sent a chill down her back despite the heat of the day.

"It's forbidden..." said the S'danzo very softly, "even the little teaching they allowed me said that. But what do I care for anyone else's rules now?"

"Illyra, what are you going to do?" Gilla asked apprehensively as the other woman levered herself painfully off the couch and went to the worktable where the cards that Lalo had finished were piled.

"Everything goes two ways," Illyra said conversationally. "See this card, for instance, the Three of Flames. If it were to come up in a reading, it could mean things getting darker or brighter for the querent, depending on the context. And this one. Steel-" She held up the Two of Ores. "In the usual position, with the swords pointing toward the querent, it's a death card, but reversed it means doom for his enemy."

"So does a real sword," answered Gilla.

Illyra nodded. "So does magic. Power is power. Good or evil lies not in the tool, but in the user's intent and will."

Gilla stared at her. "You can use the cards as a weapon?" Her heart began to pound heavily, and she realized suddenly how she had envied the gifts that Lalo had acquired so inad-vertently and used with such trepidation.

Illyra was sorting through the cards that Lalo had completed. "Perhaps-if the right cards are here..." She selected one, another, then three more. "When I read, the querent and the cards and I are all linked in the Pattern and the cards that come up reflect his relationship to it. The Pattern is the Cause; the cards are the effect. My Seeing only translates to the querent what is already there."

Gilla nodded, and the S'danzo went on, "But if I were to set the cards into a pattern, and lock it with my will-"

"You could reverse the process?" whispered Gilla. "Make the cards the Cause?"

"I could... I would... I will!"

Suddenly Illyra gathered up the cards and carried them to a parquetry table in the comer of the room. She held up a card and showed it to Gilla. "Here, this shall stand for the querent and its surrounding atmosphere...." She laid it down.

Gilla squinted, seeing only the sun shining brightly over a painted city. "Which one is that?"

"We call it Zenith-the noonday sun-but your husband has painted a city as well as the sun." Illyra held her hands above it and stood for a moment with brow wrinkled in concentration and eyes closed. "As thou wert Zenith, so thou shall become this city!" she murmured. She dipped her finger into the paint water and nicked a drop upon the card, then bent and breathed upon it. "By wind and water do I name thee Sanctuary, the querent of this reading, and the subject of this casting!"

She shouldn't be doing this, thought Gilla, watching Illyra search through the cards she had selected. There was a focus to her movements that held the attention. Gilla remembered how Roxane had compelled the eye, and shuddered. But she had never understood what needs drove the Nisibisi sorceress, who for all her great knowledge had no part in ordinary women's joys and pains. Illyra, she understood only too well. We shouldn't be doing this! she thought then.

Gilla felt the pulse pounding in her temples, tasted the fury of the wolf-bitch whose cubs have been killed. All her life she had known fear, fear of starvation in times of want, fear of theft in moments of affluence. She had grown up listening for the stealthy step behind her as automatically as she watched for movement in the shadows whenever she went out of her door. And then she had borne children, and the fear she felt for them was as much greater than her own personal terrors as the White Foal River was deeper and more dreadful than the sewers of Sanctuary. And there had never been anything that she could do about it! Never, until now....

Ominous as a mountain moving, Gilla's heavy steps shook the floor as she took her place across the worktable from the S'danzo.

"What crosses it. Seer?" she asked.

"The Lance of Ships," said Illyra, "the Narwhale, which may be a card of good fortune, but always means changeability. In this position, it is the good fortune that will disappear!"

"What do we hope for?" asked Gilla, continuing the litany.

Illyra took another card and placed it above the first two. Gilla recognized it the Two of Ores reversed, with the Steel pointed downward threateningly.

"And this is what we already have," added the S'danzo. "Quicksilver, what some call the Card of Shalpa-the Root of Ores and the Foundation of Sanctuary." The next card was placed below the first two.

"What has gone before is the Face of Chaos-" Illyra held up a card with the images of a man and a woman twisted and distorted as if in some fever dream. She smiled grimly and laid the card down.

"And what is to come. Seer-show me what is to come!" demanded Gilla. She could feel energy flowing from her to the woman on the other side of the table, and knew that more than S'danzo power was going into this casting.

Illyra took another card. "The Zigurrat," she smiled dangerously. "For we shall bring the pride of the destroyers tumbling down."

Gilla looked at the image of the disintegrating tower and thought of the patched up peace that had held the town quiet since the visit of the Emperor. Surely it would take only a finger's push to destroy so uneasy a balance.

"How?" whispered Gilla then. "Seeress, show me how it will be!"

Illyra held the remaining cards fanned out in her thin hand. "First the Lance of Winds-"

The card she set down bore the images of storm and tornado. "This represents our determination to see this done. And this one is for our fear..."

She set another card above it, on which a triumvirate of robed and hooded figures stood pointing at a kneeling man. "Justice," came the whisper, and Gilla licked suddenly dry lips, understanding even without explanation that this represented the dead children for whom they sought revenge.

"Our hope is for justice, and therefore I set Sanctuary's tribunal here-" Illyra's voice had a rhythmic resonance, and her eyes seemed to look through the card to some other reality. Gilla realized that the S'danzo was Seeing them as truly as ever she had in a querent's reading, and she wondered suddenly if in choosing just these cards for Lalo to paint first, Illyra had been guided by something more than chance, and if her selection of them now was the result of her will to vengeance, or some subtle working of that Pattern Illyra had denied.

Gilla shivered, for now the S'danzo was wholly entranced, and she felt a heaviness in the air around them as if unseen forces waited around her to see what the final card would be. The magic of the mages had been broken, but, clearly, she and Illyra were drawing now upon deeper powers.

Without looking at the cards still in the pile, Illyra took one and set it above all the rest. Gilla stared at it, her gaze burned by swirling patterns of red and gold, and the beauty of a woman's face staring out of the flames. Even seen upside down that face seared the sight. She forced her gaze away and saw the appalled wonder in Illyra's eyes.

"What is she?" Gilla asked hoarsely.

"The Eight of Flames-the Lady of Fire whose touch can warm or destroy!"

"What will She do to Sanctuary?"

Illyra was shaking her head. "I do not know. I have never drawn Her reversed in a reading before. Oh, Gilla-" The S'danzo's face twisted in a terrible smile. "I did not choose this card!"

In the days that followed, the Lady of Fire came to Sanctuary, not in bolts of flame from heaven as Gilla and Illyra had expected, but silently, insidiously, as a flame that kindled in men's flesh and consumed them slowly from within.

For weeks the weather had been close and still-plague weather, though usually it came to Sanctuary later in the year. In a city whose sanitation system had been designed to move men secretly rather than sewage efficiently, epidemics were an inevitable sign of summer, like the insects that swarmed across the river from the Swamp of Night Secrets. But a dry spring had lowered the water table early, and without enough flow to flush them, the disease bred in the filthy channels and spread swiftly through the town.

It began in the streets around Shambles Cross and moved like a slow fire into the Maze and the Bazaar, where a few corpses more in the morning caused little comment, until the kisses of the drabs who plied their trade in the cul-de-sacs and doorways burned with more than passion's fire, and men began to fall from the benches in the Vulgar Unicorn with their mugs untasted. Soldiers drinking in the taverns carried the plague back to the barracks, and servants going to their work in the great houses of the merchants carried it to the better quarters of the town. Only the Beysib seemed to be immune.

Molin Torchholder realized the danger when his workmen began to drop beside his unfinished city wall and, returning to the palace, found the Prince in a panic and a full-scale crisis on his hands. That morning, the decapitated body of a dog had been discovered in the ruined Temple of Dyareela, with "Death to the Beysib" scrawled in its blood on the altar stone.

Lalo turned, spattering blue paint from the plastered wall past the pillar as the High Priest stormed through the Presence Hall with the Prince and the Beysa hurrying along behind.

"They are saying that Dyareela is punishing Sanctuary because of our betrothal." Shupansea tightened her grip on Ka-dakithis's hand. "They say that your Demon Goddess is angry because the town has accepted Mother Bey!"

"My goddess!" Both Prince and Beysa fell back as Molin turned on them, looking rather like a Storm God himself with his mantle flaring around him and dust flying from his uncombed hair and beard. Lalo found it hard to believe that this was the same sleek priest who had given him his first great commission so long ago. But then his own changes in the past few years had been even more remarkable, if less obvious. And Sanctuary itself had changed.

"Dyareela's no deity of Ranke, or of the Ilsig either!" Molin's gaze fixed on Lalo and a quick grab hauled the limner out from behind the pillar. "You tell them-you're a Wrig-glie! Is Dyareela any goddess of yours?"

Lalo stared at him, more startled than offended by the priest's use of the Rankan epithet. Torchholder's unguarded tongue was the best evidence of the priest's own frustration and fear.

"The Good Goddess was here before the Ilsigi came." He pulled off his mask and answered softly. "She rules the wastelands, and the lost spirits who dwell there. But mostly, men do not pray to Her..."

"Mostly?" asked Kadakithis. "When do they pray to Her, limner?" .

Lalo kept his gaze on the patterned tiles, his skin prickling as if even talking about it could bring the fever on. "I was a boy when the last great plague came here," he said in a low voice. "We worshiped Her then. She brings the fever. She is the fever, and She is its cure...."

"Wrigglie superstition," began the Prince, but his voice lacked conviction.

Molin Torchholder sighed. "I don't like to give recognition to these native cults, but it may be necessary. I don't suppose you remember any details of the ceremonies?" His grip tightened on Lalo's shoulder again.

"Ask the priests of Us!" Lalo shrugged free. "1 was a child, and my mother kept me inside for fear of the crowds. They said there was a great sacrifice. They dragged the carcass outside the city to attract the demons away and burned the bodies of the dead and their possessions in a great pyre. What I remember was men and women lying with each other in the streets, with drops of blood from the sacrifice still red on their brows."

Kadakithis shuddered, but Shupansea said that she had heard of similar customs in the villages of her own land.

"That may be so," said the High Priest repressively, "but the theological implications are unfortunate, particularly now. My Prince, I am afraid that your formal betrothal will have to be delayed until this dies down."

"It is the dying I am afraid of," said the Beysa. "They will be sacrificing my people, not stallions or bulls, if you do not do something soon!"

Molin Torchholder's face worked as if he saw the careful edifice of cooperation he had constructed collapsing before him. Without answering, he strode off, and Shupansea and Kadakithis followed him, leaving Lalo staring after them.

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.

On the worktable before him were the last of the S'danzo cards. Illyra lay still in her chair. For one shocked moment Lalo thought she was dead, and realized that the horror and hatred he had felt the night before had drained away, leaving only a hollow despair. Gilla sat by the couch like a monument, but at his movement her eyes opened, red-rimmed in her ravaged face.

"How-" The word came out as a croak, and Lalo swallowed, trying to make his voice obey him.

"She's still alive," said Gilla, "but she still bums." She looked at him apprehensively.

Lalo made it to his feet, remembering how he had felt when the Black Unicorn leaped off the wall, and went to her. The Unicorn had been the child of his pride, and it was only one, though the worst, of his sins over the years. But Gilla's only sin had been born of her despair. Perhaps it made them fit mates for each other, but he could hardly say that to her now.

Instead he rested his arm across Gilla's massive shoulders and began to softly stroke her hair. Latilla moved restlessly in her feverish sleep, then stilled again. She was flushed, and it seemed to him that her cheekbones had grown more prominent, so that he saw the skull beneath the skin. His arm tightened convulsively, and Gilla turned her face against his chest.

"You were right about the Unicorn," he said softly then. "But we got rid of it. We'll find some way to deal with this, too."

Gilla straightened and looked up at him, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. "Oh, you ridiculous man! You make me ashamed for all those years when I thought I was the only one with anything to forgive...." She took a deep breath and heaved herself to her feet.

"Yes, we'll do-something! But first we need to wash up and get some food!" The floor shook slightly as she strode to the door and called for the girl who had been waiting on them.

By the time they had finished eating, Lalo felt marginally more effective. In the distance the deep beat of temple drumming mingled with the confused roaring of the mob. Myrtis's servants said that the high priest of Us had agreed to perform a sacrifice for Dyareela when sunset came. It was hoped that the scent of bull's blood would appease the goddess and the mob. If it did not, the combined might of the garrison, the Stepsons, and the 3rd Commando might be insufficient to prevent royal blood from running where the bull's blood had flowed, and with such provocation, the Emperor was unlikely to wait until the New Year to "pacify" what was left of the town.

Lalo sat before his worktable, eyeing the bright array of cards. It was remarkable, considering his physical and mental state the night before, that they looked like anything at all. But the vision of the seeress had flowed through his hands, and he knew that these cards were artistically far superior to the ones the S'danzo had possessed before. He suppressed the flicker of pride that the thought gave him. He had no memory of painting them-any praise belonged to the power that had impelled his hand. And prettiness would not matter if they could not use the cards to undo the damage they had done.

"I tried to do a reading while you were both asleep," Illyra said when the girl had taken the dishes away. "It's no use, Gilla. The cards kept returning to the pattern we made with them before."

"Then we'll have to try something else," Gilla nodded de-terminedly.

"Lay them out in another pattern," said Lalo, "a pattern of healing this time."

"I did that too," said the S'danzo helplessly. "But there was no power in it. I could tell."

They did it again, and then another time, but Illyra had told them truly. The cards were no more than pretty pictures making a pattern on the tablecloth. The bright colors glowed mockingly in the lurid afternoon sun.

Illyra was sponging Latilla's face and chest. Lalo sighed, and cut the pack again. The card on top of the deck now was the Archway, a massive gate whose keystone was carved with an arcane symbol whose meaning even Illyra did not know. Beyond it was a mass of greenery, perhaps a garden. Lalo let his gaze unfocus, trying desperately to think of something else to do. Green vibrated in his vision, and he was abruptly aware of a tantalizing sense of familiarity.

He blinked, looked at the card again, and rubbed his eyes. With normal vision he could see nothing, but there had been something.... Gilla leaned forward to pour more water into his glass, and the movement of her arm triggered a sudden memory of a white arm pouring wine of Carronne from a crystal flagon into a goblet of gold-it had been the arm of Eshi, in the country of the gods.

"Lalo, what are you looking at?" Gilla asked.

"I'm not sure," he said slowly. "But I think I know where I might find out...."

"You can't go outside," said Illyra in alarm. "Listen!" Even from the Street of the Red Lanterns they could hear the tumult in the city, and Lalo shuddered.

"I don't mean to," he said simply. "I'm going to go inward, through there-" He pointed at the archway in the card. Illyra stared at him, bewildered, but in Gilla's face understanding began to dawn, and with it fear.

"If you mean to go into trance then I'm going with you to make sure you remember to come back again!" she said tartly. "I don't have the means to compel you the way I did before."

Lalo had no idea what she meant by that, but there was no time to question her now. "If you can, surely you have the right to," he told her, "if either of us can get there that way," he went on, doubting his own intuition suddenly. He propped the card up against the flagon so that they could, both see it, and pointed at the other chair.

It creaked as Gilla eased into it. She settled herself, her hands clasped firmly in her lap, then looked at Illyra. "If this works, don't let anyone disturb us, and in the name of your own Lillis, watch over my child!"

The S'danzo's throat worked, then she nodded, her fingers tightening on the damp cloth she held in her hand. "May your goddess bless you," she whispered brokenly, then turned quickly to Latilla again.

"Well?" Gilla's gaze held his. Lalo took a deep breath.

"Randal taught me a little about this," he said slowly. "Make your breathing regular, and try to relax. Look at the card until you have it memorized, then change the focus of your eyes and try to look through the gateway into the place beyond. When you can see it, push your awareness toward it and through..." He looked at her dubiously. The procedure had seemed reasonable enough when the wizard described it, but he had the awful feeling that he was about to look like a fool.

Then Latilla whimpered again, and Gilla reached out to grip his hand. Lalo took another breath and fixed his gaze on the archway.

Once more the riot of greenery swirled through Lalo's vision. He fought the compulsion to blink, to refocus, and tried to imagine he held a paintbrush in his hand. See, he told himself, controlling his breathing. Now all he could feel was the warm pressure of Gilla's hand. Would she keep him earth-bound? But even as he thought it, the confusion before him began to resolve into something-green leaves fluttering in the sunlight.... He launched himself toward them, and then the garden was all around him, and he was through.

For a moment all Lalo knew was the feel of that springy turf beneath his feet, and the scent of air that was like no breeze that had ever blown through Sanctuary. Then he became aware that someone was beside him. He turned and jerked away, seeing the goddess he had painted on Molin Torchholder's wall. She smiled, and the face of the goddess was suddenly that of the golden-haired girl he had courted in the spring of the world, and then both of them were the face of Gilla, always and only Gilla, who was looking at him as she had after the first time they had ever made love.

But the garden, when he looked again, was by no means so perfect as he had remembered it. Parts of the lawn were withered, while other sections showed the sickly yellow of flooding. The same was true of the oak trees, and some of the leaves were blotched with a blight like leprosy.

"It's here, too," said Gilla, "the same thing that's been happening to Sanctuary!" Lalo nodded, wondering which level had started the trouble. But that didn't matter-what he needed was to leam the cure. He took her hand and they began to pick their way across the mottled grass beneath the trees.

After a time Lalo found the pool and the waterfall. But the clearing where he had feasted with the Ilsig gods was empty now. Lalo's heart sank within him. If even the Otherworld was empty, then the magic of Sanctuary had been destroyed indeed! Perhaps the S'danzo were right, and the gods were only delusions of men. But even as that thought passed through his mind, his lips were moving in prayer.

"Father Us, hear me, Shipri All-Mother have mercy! Not for my sake, but for your people-"

"And for the sake of my child!" came Gilla's voice in his ear.

A little wind gusted around them and plucked a leaf from one of the oak trees. Lalo watched, fascinated, as it spiraled downward and settled at last in the breast of Gilla's gown. Then a new voice spoke from behind them.

"Why do you call on Us and Shipri? This is the Face the people of Sanctuary pray to now!"

Lalo jerked around, flinched as he saw what had answered them and then stumbled over his own feet, trying to get between it and Gilla. But she had always been broadly built and big-boned, and she gripped his arm and stayed beside him.

The Thing that had spoken looked on his confusion and laughed. Lalo stared, realizing in horror that it was female, wrapped in scorched robes from which pale smoke rose in ghostly trails, with singed hair that lifted as the wind caught it and sent up little spurts of flame. It-Her-face glowed like a lantern, as if the fire that burned Her lay within, and the features of that face were contorted in a demon's mask. "Dyareela," he breathed in appalled recognition. The goddess responded with a terrible smile. "That is one of the names by which men pray to Me, it is true. But it was you who first called Me, daughter." She beckoned to Gilla. "How shall I reward you?"

"Demon, go away!" hissed Gilla in revulsion. Dyareela laughed. "Still you do not understand! I neither come nor go-I am! Only my Faces change ..."

"Then change your Face again," groaned Lalo. "Three weddings were promised, and one of them royal, to redeem the land! I would have come to them as Lady of love's fire! But Sanctuary has chosen to see Me otherwise!" Wind whirled around them, and when the falling leaves touched the hair of the goddess they burst into flame.

"Be beautiful, blessed Lady, please be beautiful for us now!" There were tears in Gilla's voice and in her eyes.

"Daughter, in this place I am only a reflection, as you are only a dream. Your words have no power over Me here! If I am to bless you I must be invoked in the world of men!"

The sky seemed to be darkening, and the only thing Lalo could see was the goddess, who glowed like a demon-lantem at the Feast of the Dead.

"We tried," wailed Gilla, "but the cards had no power!"

"The cards never had power; they only focused yours. Make the Great Marriage in Sanctuary as has been promised Me! Then I will show you my fair Face again!"

Wind and darkness howled around them. Flaming leaves whirled away and seeded the barren night with stars. Suddenly the goddess was gone, and the oak grove, and even the solid ground on which they had been standing. Buffeted and blown, Lalo lost all sense of who he was and whence he had come, and as awareness left him, the last thing he knew was the firm grip of Gilla's hand

Gilla fell down a long tunnel of darkness into her body again. An eternity later, she tried to move. She was stiff, and so heavy, when she had been moving as lightly as... She groaned and opened her eyes.

"Thank the gods!" said Illyra. In the flickering light of the lamps she looked worn and hollow-eyed.

"I thought you didn't believe in them," muttered Gilla. She was still holding onto Lalo's hand. Carefully she opened her fingers, and set it on his lap with the other. He was still unconscious, but his breathing had quickened. In a moment, she thought, he will waken, and what then? |

The S'danzo rubbed at her forehead. "Right now I'll be- f lieve in anything that might help us. I've been listening to the procession-it's gone all around the city and must be nearly back to the ruins of the temple by now. We don't have much time." She lifted her head and stared at Gilla. "Will it help us? You both went out like doused candles, but were you asleep, or did you actually get somewhere?"

Lalo shuddered, and opened his eyes. "We got there. We saw the goddess-a goddess ..." He shuddered again. "She's angry. She doesn't want a sacrifice. She wants Shu-sea and Prince Kittycat to get married!" He began to laugh with a soft edge of hysteria that had Gilla instantly on her feet and holding him until the tremors that shook him faded again. At last he pressed his face into her broad breast and groaned. "We've failed," he whispered. "We've failed."

Gilla held him against her and stared over his head, seeing in her mind's eye the glorious young man with whom she had walked in the Otherworld. He had been as handsome as a king. She remembered how lightly she had moved beside him t and wondered suddenly. How did he see me? (

After a moment she focused on the still figure on the ' couch, and then on Illyra again. "How has Latilla been?" she asked.

The S'danzo's eyes were bright with tears. "She has passed the restless stage of the fever. The sleep she's in now is deeper than yours was. I've tried to cool her, but the cloths dry from the heat of her body as soon as I put them on her. I've tried, Gilla, I've tried!" She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.

"I know you have, Illyra," said Gilla gently. "And now I must ask you to try just a little longer while I do something harder. I must try to make the goddess beautiful."

Lalo pulled away and sat looking at her in wonder as Gilla went over to the bed and kissed her daughter gently on the brow. Then she moved majestically to the door and called for Myrtis.

The madam's eyes widened as she listened to Gilla's requests, but after a moment she nodded, and her eyes began to glow. "Yes, it is true, though there's hardly a respectable woman in Sanctuary who would understand what you mean. Certainly I never expected that you..." Myrtis left that comment unfinished as Gilla glared at her, smiled, and turned away to give orders to her girls.

I never expected to do anything like this either, thought Gilla, smoothing her hands over the massive swell of her bosom and along the mighty curve of her thigh. But by the breasts of the goddess I am going to try!

Sitting in the bath with giggling slave-girls fussing over her, Gilla knew the idea had been ridiculous. She had grown-up children, her blood had ceased to answer the call of the moon two years ago, and Lalo was rarely more than a companionable body in her bed anymore. When she had gotten into the marble bathing pool, her bulk had sent scented water slopping over the side in a tidal wave.

She tried to imagine Lalo's balding head and skinny legs being scrubbed by the girls in the other pool, and thought that he must look even stranger in the midst of all this splendor than she did. She wondered why in the name of the gods he had agreed to it. But of course that was why-because of the gods, or one of them, anyway, and because of a picture that he had once sworn she had been his model for.

And then she had a marvelous billowing garment of diaphanous sea-green silk on her back and a garland of sweet-smelling garden herbs on her damp hair, and singing girls were lighting her way to a chamber where the scent of burning sandalwood covered the reek of smoke from distant fires.

The room was paneled in cedar, and behind gauze curtains the windows were screened by marble filigree. What part of it was not taken up by the bed was covered by thick carpet and silken cushions, and there was a rosewood table with a flagon and two goblets of gold. But of course the bed was the point of it all, and Lalo was already waiting beside it, carrying off with more presence than she would have believed possible, a long caftan of jade green brocaded in gold.

He seemed to be memorizing the pattern of the carpet. Gilla thought. If he laughs at me I will murder him!

And then he lifted his head, and in his worn face, his eyes were glowing as they had when he looked on her in the Other-world. Behind her, Gilla could hear the rustle of silk and a giggle cut short as the slave girls backed out of the room. The door clicked shut.

"Health to you, my lord and husband." Gilla's voice shook only a little as she said the words.

Lalo licked dry lips, then stepped carefully to the table and poured wine. He offered her one of the goblets. "Health to you," he said, lifting the other, "my wife and my queen."

The goblets rang as they touched. Gilla felt the sweet fire of the wine burning down her throat to her belly, and another kind of fire kindling in her flesh as she met his eyes.

"Health to all the land," she whispered, "and the healing fire of love...."

Torches painted the rubble of Dyareela's temple with their lurid glare, dyeing with an even deeper crimson the blood-splattered robes of the priests and the severed head of the sacrifice. The sweet stink of blood hung heavy in the air, and the line of soldiers watched with wary eyes the chanting, murmuring masses of humanity who had crowded into the ruins to see it. The priests were praying now, straining grotesquely toward a darkness of cloud or smoke that blotted out the stars.

"Whatever they're expecting, they'd better get on with it," said a man of the Third Commando. "That kind of babbling won't hold this lot long. They've seen blood, and they'll want more of it soon!"

The man on his right nodded. "Stupid of Kittycat to allow it-anyone could see what would hap-" His words faded to a mumble as Sync's stony eye passed along the line, but his companion heard him add, with a faith that in the circumstances was touching, "This wouldn't of happened if Tempus was here."

"Dyareela, Dyareela, hear, oh, hear!" chanted the crowd. Hear, hear, or maybe it was fear, fear, echoed from shattered pillars and walls. "Have mercy-" came the drawn out cry. A shiver of eagerness ran through the crowd and the soldiers stiffened, knowing what was coming now.

Torches flickered wildly in a great gust of wind, a damp wind that came from the sea. The wind gusted again, and the scene grew perceptibly less lurid as several of the torches were blown out. A priest grabbed helplessly as his headdress went sailing away, and the crowd was abruptly distracted from its bloodlust by the struggle for gold thread and jewels. Then somewhere out to sea, thunder rumbled, and the remaining torches were doused by the first splatterings of rain.

Rain hissed in the embers of burned buildings and rinsed the ashes from the roofs of those houses which had survived. It scoured the streets and ran clear in the gutters, filled the sewers and flushed their festering contents down the river out to sea. It washed the reek of blood from the air, and left behind it the clean scent of rain. Men who moments before had growled like beasts stood with faces upturned to the suddenly beneficent heavens, and found the water that ran down their faces mingled inexplicably with tears.

Grumbling, the priests scrambled to get their finery under cover, while the crowd dispersed like drops from a fountain, and presently the bemused soldiery were allowed to break ranks and seek the shelter of their barracks at last.

All that night the clean rain pattered on the roofs of the town. Illyra opened her window to let the cool air in and, returning to Latilla, felt the moisture of sudden perspiration on the child's tight skin. Her own eyes blurring, she heaped blankets around her, then went fearfully to Lalo's worktable. The cards fluttered like live things in the damp wind. With beating heart, the S'danzo began to lay out the Pattern again.

In the morning, the sun rose on a town washed clean.

And there was a new bud on Gilla's peach tree.