The Face of Chaos

'Get me the little crystal vial fronrthe cabinet - the one with the dipper that used to hold perfume.'

Vanda got to her feet to obey as Lady Kurrekai faced Gilla again. 'I have attempted to transform the venom by altering the nature of my blood, but it must be used immediately. Scratch your husband's flesh so that the blood comes and touch a drop of this to the wound.' She took the stopper from the vial Vanda was holding out to her, touched it to the drop of blood, and inserted it back in the vial with a little shake, squeezed her hand to produce a second drop, and a third.

'Go now as I have told you, and quickly.' She thrust the stopper home firmly and handed it to Gilla, then delicately licked the smear of blood from her thumb. 'And remember I warned you - it may fail.'

'The blessing of the All-Mother be on you. Lady, and be you free of any blame.' Gilla was already on her feet. 'At least you were willing to try!'

They hurried down the corridor, Vanda skipping to keep up with her mother's longer strides and trying to keep her voice down.

'Mother, how could you do that? I was terrified! Mother, you could have died!'

Gilla forged ahead silently, while those they encountered scattered from her path. It was not until they had crossed the Square and passed through the Westgate that opened out on to the familiar streets of Sanctuary that she paused for breath and turned to meet her daughter's wide eyes.

'Vanda, you are a woman now, old enough to take care of the younger ones if you must, and old enough, perhaps, to understand. If this works, you must promise never to tell your father what I have done for him.'

'And if it doesn't?' Vanda said in a very small voice.

Gilla gazed at the teeming life around her, sunlight glaring harshly off browned faces, sounds of quarrelling and laughter, the rich mixture of odours from the street, and for a moment felt as if she had lost her skin and had become a part of all of these.

'I have borne seven children and seen two die, and lived with the same contrary man for twenty-six years,' she said slowly, 'and I have just realized that I would sacrifice this whole city for one lock of his hair. If this stuff I am going to give him kills him,' she shook the hand in which the crystal vial lay hidden, 'I'm sorry, Vanda, but I will go after him.'

Lalo the god was creating a woman, a goddess as beautiful as Eshi, as bountiful as Shipri, as wise as Sabellia, as dear to him as someone - he could not remember, but the brush splashed gold like sunlight across Her hair. There, the ripeness of breasts that could feed a dozen babes, and the opulence of haunch and thigh, and skin smoother than the silk of Sihan ... Lalo smiled, and the brush moved as if of itself to suffuse that white flesh with a rosy glow like the inside of a shell.

And then he stepped back from the easel, smiling, and the figure he had been painting turned to him and took him by the hand.

He had expected that, and he reached with his other arm embrace Her, but She continued to turn in his grasp, drawing him after her, faster and faster until the green meadow blurred around him.

'Wait! Where are we going? Beside the river there is a shady bower where we can lie, and -' Damn! If only She would stop and face him for a moment he would know Her name!

Clouds boiled around him with a roar of thunder. The difference between up and down was disappearing and the paintbrush was torn from his hand.

'Who are you?' he shouted. 'Where are you taking me?'

And then he was hurtling through winds that tore away his awareness until he knew nothing but the implacable grip that held his hand. The world had disintegrated into pain and darkness, but through the clouds that whirled around him he glimpsed brief images - the pretentious splendours of a great city where a beleaguered emperor's ba

And then he saw below him a familiar curve of harbour and a tangle of houses and a tarnished golden dome. and pain clapped great hands around him and he fell.

Lalo's mouth tasted like the midden of the Vulgar Unicorn and he felt as if the Stepsons had been practising manoeuvres on the inside of his skull. Except for an a

And Gilla was calling him.

Holy Anen blast me if I ever touch that wine again! he thought muzzily, and perhaps presently he would remember just what wine it had been. But now that he considered, he could not remember anything about what must have been an epic binge, and that worried him. Gilla would be furious if she had had to drag him home, and from the taste in his mouth he must have been sick, too. He groaned, wishing fervently that he could pass out again.

'Lalo! Lalo my darling, you've got to wake up! You wretched man, I heard you open your eyes and look at me!'

Something wet ran down his neck and someone near him stifled a sob. Gilla? Gilla? But she would never weep over him after a drinking bout - a pail of cold water, maybe, but not tears. How long had he been unconscious, anyway?

As if he were trying to work an old lock with a rusty key, Lalo-opened his eyes.

He was lying on the pallet in his studio. Alfi and Latilla crouched at the foot of it, watching him with wide, awed eyes. Vanda was behind them, but her face held the look of one who has been suddenly released from fear. He turned his eyes - he did not yet trust himself to move his head - to the bedside, and saw Gilla. Her face was puffy and her eyes red from weeping, and as his gaze met hers they glistened with another tear.

Without thinking, he reached up and brushed it from her cheek: then he stared at his hand, pallid and veined and thin. And now that awareness of the rest of his body was returning, he realized that he felt curiously light, and his other hand clutched at the bedclothes as if to hold him there.

'Gilla, have I been ill?'

'Ill! You might call it that - and I'd rather not know what else it might be -' exploded Gilla, and Vanda got to her feet.

'Father, you've been lying in some kind of trance for almost three weeks now,' Vanda added.

Three weeks? But just this afternoon he had been ... painting... He had looked in the mirror and then ... Lalo began to tremble as memory came back to him. His eyes filled with tears for the beauty of the other world, but Gilla's hands closed on his shoulders. and she shook him back to her own reality.

Lalo stared at her, and through the veil of her swollen features he saw the face of the goddess who had brought him home. It took a kind of i

So, he thought, perhaps I will not need a paintbrush to do my seeing now. He lay back, trying to assimilate the truth of what had happened to him into his memory of the man he used to be.

'So, how do you feel? Is there anything you want me to get you now?' Gilla finished wiping her eyes and resolutely blew her nose on a corner other apron.

Lalo smiled. 'Well, I haven't eaten for three whole weeks -'

'Vanda, there's soup on the stove,' Gilla said sharply. 'Go heat it up, and you little ones go with her. You've seen him, and Father doesn't need you underfoot here. Everything will be all right now.'

Gilla bustled nervously about the room, smoothing the covers, heaping pillows behind Lalo so that he could sit, pushing a chair back against the wall. Lalo flexed his fingers, feeling them tingle as blood began to circulate freely once more, and wondered how he had gotten the scratch on his arm.