Wings of Omen

The Unicorn shrieked as if it sensed the birth of its enemy. Lalo felt the canvas quiver in his hands. Light shattered and scattered across the floor as crystal wings beat upward into three-dimensionality. He had set out to draw a white bird like something he had once painted for the gods, and Lythande's cool voice and fluttering fingers had tranced him as an aid in recovering the memory.

But he did not recognize the wonder that was emerging now-it was an eagle, it was a phoenix, it was a swan- it was all of these and none. The great bird opened its bright beak in a piercing cry, talons clutched and unclenched, wings swept wind across the room, and it was free.

Lalo sank back upon his heels, gasping as the Unicorn's darkness gave way before a storm of white wings. The war of fire and ice and darkness sent fierce coruscations of opal light around the room. Roaring, the Unicorn charged against its foe, and Lalo huddled, a still speck at the eye of the storm.

Between one flurry and another he heard someone call his name. Blue light stabbed his eyes. "Lalo-open the Gate!"

Lalo forced his limbs to pull him toward Lythande. The pentagram burned him; then the Adept's wand broke it and he was through. And just in time, for the Bird of Light was driving the Unicorn after him in a tempest Vashanka would have been proud to claim. Lalo struggled upright. Light followed his finger as he traced a line around the pale area on the plaster where he had drawn the Unicom.

He finished, his hand fell, and the space he had outlined began to shimmer. The plaster thi

Lalo thrust out one arm in self-protection as he fell, and screamed as it took the final buffet of the Bird of Light's crystal wing. Then an explosion of radiance dispersed the darkness. The tavern shook as the Gate between the dimensions slammed shut, and both the Unicom and its opposite were gone.

Two bodies lay in the lee of a wall where Dyer's Alley turned off from Slippery Street. Lythande took a swift step aside to peer at the pallid faces and eyes that stared unseeing at the rising sun, then returned.

"Knifed-" the Adept said. "Nothing unusual. I'll be going now." She nodded abruptly, and began to walk away from them toward the Bazaar.

Lalo stopped rubbing his numbed arm for a moment and stared after her, wanting to call her back. But what could he say? The Adept had favored him with more good advice than he could understand all the way back from the Vulgar Unicorn.

By the time Lalo had recovered consciousness, Shadowspawn was long gone, and Cappen Varra, with voice unsteady and hands that still reached for his amulet at any unexpected sound, had taken his leave as soon as he could thereafter. By the time they got Wedemir's wound stanched and Lalo was able to walk again, the sun was striking gold from the dome of the Temple, and Hakiem was peering through the tavern door. With the tables and benches back in place, only the bare spot on the wall and an u

But as Lythande had pointed out, it hardly mattered what the rest of Sanctuary thought of him-it was the wizards he must watch out for now. As the style of a painting proclaimed its creator, so it was with magic, and the Black Unicorn had been signed "Lalo the Limner" for any with eyes to see.

"One way or another they will be after you, and you must learn to use your power..." Lythande's words still rang in Lalo's ears.

He sighed, and Gilla eased more of her arm under his, supporting him. Wedemir, leaning on her other arm, lifted his head, and father and son exchanged apprehensive grins. They knew Gilla's frown, and the twist of lips clamped shut over hard words.

At the foot of their stairs Lalo halted, gathering his strength for the climb.

"All right, 0 Mighty Magician, do you want my help or can you make it under your own power?" asked Gilla. In the full light of morning he saw clearly for the first time the new lines of anguish by her mouth and the bruise marks beneath her eyes. And yet her body was as steady as the earth below him. It was her strength that had got him this far.

"You are my power, all of you-" His eyes moved from Gilla to Wedemir, meeting his son's steady gaze, accepting him at last as an equal and a man. "Don't let me forget it again."

Gilla's eyes were suspiciously bright. She squeezed his hand. Lalo nodded and began to climb the staircase, and in his labored breathing they heard the whisper of white wings.

THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU by Diane Duane

The ephemerals have no help to give.

Look at them!

They are deedless and cripple,

strengthless as dreams. All mortalkind

is bound with a chain;

all their eyes are darkened....

The sound of screaming slowly aroused Harran from the mechanical business of pounding out the Stepson Raik's hangover remedy in the old stone mortar. Raik scrambled to his feet, his face ashen, staring toward the gates of the Stepsons' barracks compound. "Just a little more business for the barber," Harran said, not looking up. "More serious than your head, from the sound of it."

"Shal," Raik said, sounding wounded himself. "Harran, that's Shal-"

"Knew the damned careless fool would get himself chopped up one day," Harran said. He measured the last ounce or so of grain spirits into his mortar and picked up the pestle again.

"Harran, you son of a-"

"A moment ago you didn't care about anything, including where your partner was," Harran said. "Now you know... Mriga!"

Over in the comer of the rough stone hut someone sat in the shadows on the packed dirt floor, hitting two rocks together-grinding a third rock to powder between them in a steady, relentless rhythm. The hut's small windows let in only a couple of dust-dancing arrows of sun; neither came near the bundle of ski

"Mriga!" Harran said again.

Pound, pound, pound.

Another scream strung itself on the air, closer. From under Harran's worktable, by his feet, came a different sound: an eager whimper, and then the thumping of a dog's wagging tail.

Harran huffed in a

This time there was a grunt from the pile of rags, though certainly not in response to anything Harran was saying- just a kind of bark or groan of animal pleasure in the rhythm. Harran reached down and grabbed Mriga's hands. They jerked and spasmed in his grasp, as they always did when someone tried to stop anything she was doing. "No more, Mriga. Knives now. Knives."

The hands kept jerking. "Knives," Harran said, louder, shaking her a bit. "Come on! Knives...."

"Nhrm," she said. It was as close as Mriga ever got to the word. From under the tangle of matted, curly hair, from out of the bland, barren face, eyes flashed briefly up at Harran-empty, but very much alive. There was no intelligence there, but there was passion. Mriga loved knives better than anything.