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'Lalo, are you all right? Did you hear me? Shipri All-Mother have mercy - Lalo, what's wrong?' She shook his arm and still he did not respond to her, and a sick fear uncoiled itself beneath her heart and began to grow.
Gilla gathered him into her ample embrace and for a moment held him unresisting. His body was warm, and she could feel his heart beating very slowly against her own. but she knew with dreadful certainty that he was no longer there. Biting her lip, she guided him to the pallet and arranged him on it as one of the children might arrange a doll.
Fear's chill tentacles extended all the way to her fingertips now. and she remained kneeling before Lalo, chafing his hands less for his sake than for her own. His eyes were unfocused, the pupils darkly dilated. He was not looking at her. He had not been looking at the painting either, although his face had been turned towards it when she came in. These eyes were focused on something beyond Sanctuary - some i
Shivering, Gilla tried to close his eyelids, but they slid open again upon that awful, sightless stare. She could feel a scream crouched in her breast, waiting for her to give way to horror and set it free. but she set her teeth painfully and heaved herself to her feet.
Hysterics would do neither of them any good now. Time enough to release the grief that was building in her when - if - there was no hope for him. Perhaps it was some strange seizure that would soon pass, or a new sickness that time and her strict nursing would cure. Or perhaps (her mind probed delicately at a darker thought and flinched away), perhaps it was sorcery.
'Lalo -' she said softly, as if her voice could still reach him somehow, 'Lalo my darling, it's all right. I'll get you a doctor; I'll make you get well!' Already her mind was considering. If he did not wake of himself by tomorrow she would have to find a physician - perhaps Alien Stulwig - she had heard that his potions saved more lives than they took.
The teakettle began to wail, and as she hurried across the room. her hip set the easel teetering. Without stopping, she picked it up and set it in the corner with the picture facing the wall.
Lalo peered uneasily through murky clouds that roiled about him like the mage wind that had devastated Sanctuary the year before. But his life was still in him, though the stink was enough to drive the breath from a man's lungs. For a moment he thought himself back in the sewers of the Maze, but there was too much light. So where in the name of Shalpa Shadow-lord had he gotten to?
He took a step forward, then another, his feet finding their own way over the uneven ground. The colours that streaked the clouds nauseated him - sulphur yellow that shaded into a livid pink like an unhealed scar, and then to something else - an u
Perhaps I am dead, he thought then. Poor Cilia will grieve for me, hut she has her hoard, and the older children are earning money of their own. She will do better without me than I would if she had left me alone ... The thought was bitter, and he found himself weeping as he stumbled along. But the tears had no substance and after a little they disappeared. He returned to his probing, as a man will tongue the sore space where a tooth has gone.
All of the priests were wrong, both the ones who said that the gods take departed souls to paradise and those who are convinced one is condemned to Hell. Or perhaps I have such a spineless soul that I have deserved neither, and so they have sentenced me to wander here!
Lalo had spent half his life dreaming of escape from Sanctuary. But now he had lost Sanctuary, and he was astonished by the passion of his longing to see it again.
Something scurried by him and he jumped. Was it a rat? Were there rats here? And surely now he could see cobblestones beneath his feet. Trembling, Lalo stared around him as dim forms precipitated from the shadows - walls, perhaps, with arched doorways and the eaves of roofs peaking like broken teeth against a lurid sky. There - surely that was the broad facade ofJubal's place, but that was impossible - the Stepsons had burned it, hadn't they? And then he was certain of the wrongness, for next to it he saw the familiar skewed sign of the Vulgar Unicorn, but the unicorn's eyes glowed evilly, and blood dripped down its spiralled horn.
Abruptly he realized that he was begi
I was wrong, he thought, I am in Hell after all!
Lalo began to run forward, and suddenly figures were all around him. Hawkmasks and Stepsons struggled as lopped limbs flew like scythed wheat and drops of blood splattered the cobbles like rain. A man staggered by him and Lalo thought that it was Zanderei; then the figure turned and he reeled back, for the face was gone.
Another came towards him - Sjekso Kinsan, with whom he had shared a drink sometimes in the Vulgar Unicorn, and behind him a woman with long amber hair. Lord Regli's wife. Samlane. whom Lalo had painted long ago before he met Enas Yorl. before the woman had died. There were others whom he thought he recognized, thieves whose contorted features he had seen on the gallows. Hell Hounds or mercenaries whom he had seen in Sanctuary for awhile and then saw no more.
They were looking at him, now. and closing around him. Lalo began to run, burrowing through the dark maze of this shadow Sanctuary like a maggot in an ancient corpse, seeking some unimaginable safety.
'Woman, you were fortunate to get me here at all!' Alten Stulwig said stiffly. 'My patients come to me. and I am certainly not accustomed to visiting this part of town!'
'But you know that my husband has influential friends who might object if you let their pet artist die unseen, don't you!' said Gilla nastily. 'So you stop avoiding my eyes like a whore with her first customer and tell me what's wrong with him!' She lifted an arm as broad as Stulwig's thigh and he swallowed and glanced nervously down at the man on the pallet.
'It's a complex case, and there's no need to confuse you with medical terminology.' He cleared his throat. 'I am afraid '
'Now that I will believe!' Gilla snatched his satchel and held it to her massive breast.
'What - what are you doing? Give me that!'
'I don't need your leech's twaddle, nor your evasions either. Master Alten. You just find something in this bag of yours that will make my man well!' She thrust it back at him and he shrugged, sighed, and opened it.
'This is a stimulant, dograya. You steep it into a tea and spoonfeed him four times a day. It will strengthen his heart, and who knows, it may bring him around.' He tossed the little packet on the coverlet and rummaged around in the bag again, bringing out several yellowish cones wrapped in a twist of cloth. 'And you can try burning these - if the smell doesn't arouse him I don't know what will.' He straightened and held out his hand. 'Two sheboozim -gold.'
'Why Alien, I'm surprised - aren't you going to ask me to share your bed?' Gilla's laughter covered bitterness she had not allowed herself to feel for a long time as he blanched and looked away. She drew from between her breasts the thin chamois bag in which she kept her reserve of gold. There was more, hidden cu