Uneasy Alliances

Together they moved forward.

Then Lalo was shaken in a tumult of darkness through which he heard a great voice crying "Be opened'", and the Sigil blossomed upon his vision in lines of white fire. There was a moment of disorientation. Lalo felt strong arms supporting him. He gazed as the Sigil coruscated through all the colors of the spectrum in a blaze of opalescence, and then both Sigil and stone misted away, and a gaunt figure staggered forward and collapsed into his arms.

"Darios!" shrieked Rhian.

But Lalo had not needed that to identify him. Something in his spirit had recognized the essence of the man he held, that wavered like a guttering candle flame. He stared down at matted tangles of black hair, a patch of blue robe whose cloth was of rather poorer quality than the fabric Darios had worn in the Otherworld, and beyond, to a patch of dusty stone. The bent back heaved; bony fingers clutched at Lalo's arms.

"My son, my son, don't weep!" He stroked the dusty locks as if Darios had been his own child indeed. "It worked, lad-you are free-you are free!"

And then Lalo's hand stilled. When he closed his eyes, he saw the glossy hair and tall strength of the man he had met in the Otherworld. But when he opened them, he knew he held a youth who would be no more than his own height even when full-fed. Instead of a verdant garden, he saw the sordid, soiled reality to which he had been born ... he saw every stinking turd and blessed battered stone ... he saw!

Vanda and Rhian were on either side of Darios now.

"Darios-my poor darling! You look like one of your own spirits!" Rhian drew his arm across her shoulder.

"Starved-" whispered the mageling, "but even before that ... wasn't handsome. A spell, Rhian ... to make you think so. Forgive me!"

"You silly boy!" Rhian shook her head. "Do you think it mattered?"

"We'll take you home and let my mother's cooking put some flesh on your bones!" said Vanda, taking his other arm.

Lalo let go, and the two girls supported him as he stumbled toward the stairs. Gilla set Lalo's hand on her shoulder.

"No-" his voice cracked, and he laid his own hand over hers. "I can see my own way now." She started, and her gaze came back from Darios to meet his own.

"Oh! Oh Lalo!" Her arms closed around him, and he felt her tears wet on his neck. He blinked, and looked past her bent head to the stairs.

Darios and the girls had nearly reached the top now. Wedemir was waiting for them, stiff as a statue, with all his agony blazing in his eyes.

"And what of me?" he asked as they passed him, as tragically as any character in one of Feltheryn's plays. "Rhian, what about me?"

Rhian turned to face him. "I am taking this man to shelter. Wedemir, not marrying him," she said tartly. "At this moment, I don't know if I want to marry anyone-not him, or you!" She and Vanda helped Darios on, leaving Wedemir staring.

Lalo began to laugh, because of the swift toss of Rhian's bright head, and the look on Wedemir's face-and for sheer simple joy because he had been healed.

"I still love you, lambkin-" Lalo put his arm around Latilla, who sniffed and turned her face away.

"You love Mama better ..." she mumbled.

Lalo sighed, aware that there was a part of his daughter that wished he were still blind. But it would do no good to tell her so.

"I love Mama differently-but not more than I love you. That's the way it's supposed to be. Someday you'll find a young man who loves you that way, and you'll have a daughter of your own. You'll see, ..." He sighed, remembering how he had rejected this kind of reasoning when he was her age.

"Nobody will marry me-I'm ugly!" she whispered then.

"Did the other girls tell you so?" He squeezed her hand. "Listen to me, Latilla-you will be beautiful! This isn't just your father's love talking, sweetling-I see what you will be!" Gently he turned her to face him, and let outer and i

It was becoming easier. When his sight first returned, Lalo had sometimes had to shut his eyes because the confusion of shape and color was too painful. While Darios lay in the next room, eating Gilla's good food and growing back into his body, Lalo had learned to see once more.

But it was different now. He saw the shabby streets of Sanctuary as a man long away looks upon his childhood home. Recovering one kind of vision had given him all of them, for to Lalo, the ordinary light of day was now as wonderful as the clear light of the Otherworld. He had begun to use i

"I could paint what I see in you so that you can see it too-would you like me to?"

Latilla looked shyly up at him, then away again.

That's the first time I've ever boasted of it, Lalo realized. No, not boasted, but accepted as one of the things that he could do. / am no longer simply Lalo the Limner, he thought. But what am I?

"I ... don't think so. I believe you-" she added swiftly, "but I don't think I should know."

Lalo nodded, wondering how many girls twice her age would have been so wise.

"You tell me when I get there, will you. Papa? And then, maybe if Darios doesn't marry Rhian he will marry me. Do you think he might?" She broke off suddenly, blushing, and Lalo saw the student mage standing in the door.

"He might-who knows?" he whispered in his daughter's ear. "Run along now and let me find out if he's good enough for you!"

Latilla giggled, jumped to her feet, and still blushing, darted past Darios through the door. She left silence behind her. Lalo wondered how to break it. At times it seemed to him that he and Darios had shared one resurrection, but there was no reason the younger man should feel the same.

"Come in," he said finally. "How are you feeling? Have you decided what you want to do now?" Darios sat down on the other bench.

"My own master died, and there's not much left of the Mageguild," Darios said slowly. "What I would like is to finish my apprenticeship with you... ."

"But I'm not a mage!" exclaimed Lalo.

"Aren't you?" Darios looked up suddenly, and Lalo saw his dark eyes glowing as they had glowed in the Otherworld. "I know the spells, the recipes, the rules. But what use is that these days, when so much of that kind of magic has lost its power? You have more of the spirit of magic in your paintbrush than the whole Mageguild in their wands. Teach me vision, Master Lalo, and I will take care of the spells."

An apprentice! For the first time in years Lalo remembered that the man who had made him a master had not been a painter, but a mage. There was a pattern here, a power that transcended the gods. Again, i

But one day ... one day... .

Lalo looked back at Darios, took a deep breath, and held out his hand.