Uneasy Alliances Part 18

Trapped in darkness! thought Lalo. Like me! Like me! For a moment a terror that was not his own washed through him. But he could hear voices, feel the sun on his face and breathe in the wind. It occurred to him for the first time since he had been blinded that there were worse fates than his own.

"He is not dead yet," Rhian continued. "But he is dying. He has been buried alive, and if I can't find him, he will starve to death in the dark. He has lost hope, but still he thinks of me. . . ."

Again, the sense of panic washed through Lalo's awareness, as if what the girl was feeling had somehow been transmitted directly from her to him.

"But where?" exclaimed Wedemir, humoring her. "Most of the wreckage from the riots has been cleared away."

"Not all of it-" said Rhian slowly. "No one has dared to touch the parts of the Mageguild that fell down. That's where Darios was living. What if he sought shelter in the cellars and was trapped there? The possibility comes between me and sleep!"

"Well that's easily checked out!" Wedemir laughed. "I'll get a permit from the Palace to excavate, go down there with a fe^ of the lads and some picks and shovels and dig the nibble out. We'll lay your ghost for you, Rhian."

Lalo could feel the sudden hostility between them. He understood Wedemir's reaction-he was fighting for his love. But beneath her Rankan elegance this woman was the true steel. The boy would ruin his chances with her if he went on this way, no matter what the diggers found. Why couldn't Wedemir see that? Lalo felt himself straining, as if a look could silence his son. But he knew that he was seeing through both of them, seeking, like Darios, to pierce the dark.

Darios knows when he is dreaming, because in his dreams, he can see. But when he opens his eyes into darkness, he is afraid. He is going to die. . . . Why does he keep trying to keep his body going when there can only be one end? He will go through the only door that will open for him now, and hope the G.o.ds will forgive him all the petty deceptions and angers of a student mage.

I have done nothing really bad, he tells himself. Nor anything particularly good, either, his thought goes on. But he has done one thing for which the Judge might indeed condemn him, though he supposes that hardly a man in the Mageguild or out of it would care. He has deceived a woman in order to compel her love.

Was that evil? He asks himself. What would that deception do to meto us-if I were to live? He thinks of Rhian's bright beauty, and knows that his own falsehood would stain it for him, in time. As outer vision is denied, his inner awareness becomes clearer, showing him a future in which one deception leads to another, until he hates Rhian's truth for showing him his own deficiency-until he hates, and at last destroys, the clear gaze that would prevent him from seeing himself as he has made her see him.

Is this knowledge why he is suffering? But now Darios knows his sin. Surely he has been punished enough. Once more. he tried to remember the SigH on the door, the pattern which he must trace in order to be free. . . . But he cannot see it!

And there is no use in praying for rescue. Darios remembers only too well how the Spell that seals the vault is set to respond if anyone tries to open it by physical means. . . .

Lalo knew that he must be dreaming, because he could see. He dreamed with a clarity of vision that had never been his in waking life, or even in sleep, before his sight was taken away. In his dreams, he ranged through Sanctuary at will, invisible, invulnerable, as if all the energy that had no outlet by day was fueling his nocturnal wanderings-nocturnal in their beginnings, though once he had begun his dreaming, Lalo might find himself moving through night or day, through scenes from the past, or sometimes among people and events whom his waking mind would not have recognized. But he had never tried to bring these visions into waking memory. The contrast would have been too cruel.

It was morning now. The clear light glowed in the faces of the young, who woke wondering what the new day would bring, and revealed without pity every line and shadow in those of their elders, who knew only too well. Still, there was a welcome freshness in the air, and the sunlight gleamed cheerfully from the temple domes. For a moment Lalo thought that he had gone back to his own youth, when the great caravans used to bring the town a rough prosperity. But as he looked more closely he saw the mended cracks the new gilding tried to hide, and turning a corner, recognized the jagged outlines of the Mageguild. This was the present then, or perhaps the future, for the City walls beyond it were perceptibly higher than he remembered them.

For such an early hour, the place seemed very active. . . . Lalo moved closer, and saw a familiar curly head-his own son Wedemir, with a crowd of his friends from the garrison, big, bronzed men, who laughed and traded good-natured obscenities. But they were carrying picks, not pikes, and instead of swords they swung shovels. Wedemir was trying, with indifferent success, to get them organized. A short distance away Lalo saw his daughter Vanda, and with her another girl whose auburn hair glinted beneath her veil. R h ian- suddenly Lalo was certain who this must be. But how had he known?

He moved toward them, calling a greeting, but they looked through him, no more able to see his spirit than he had seen their bodies when they visited him.

Sight and vision are not necessarily the same. . . . The awareness came to Lalo like the answer to some long-debated question ... He was on the edge of understanding when a shout distracted him. The soldiers were attacking the rubble at the edge of the Mageguild's great hall. Dust puffed up as the first of the great stones was moved. Wind lent the moving particles form and substance. Figures for which ordinary humans have no names seemed to hover for a moment above the workers, then the wind swirled them away. Was that a trick of the light, or was Lalo perceiving the elementals that had been bound to those stones?

Sight ... or vision?

That first success had encouraged the diggers. Picks shattered stones into fragments small enough to be carried away. Now they had bared the ground level. Someone shouted, and the men crowded around a rubblechoked depression next to the wait.

"What have they found?" Vanda asked her friend.

"It should be the stairs to the vaults beneath the Mage hall," answered Rhian. "Darios boasted that he knew the way-he should not have told me, I suppose, but he would never believe he did not need to impress me. . . ."

"His indiscretion may save his life," said Vanda. "If they do find him alive, what will you do about Wedemir?"

Rhian shrugged a little and colored. "I don't know. I love them bothcan you understand that? I love them in different ways."

Vanda shook her head. "I have never been in love with one man, much less with two. Perhaps I am the lucky one . . . Oh, look-" she added suddenly, "the men have found a door!"

The digging had continued while the girls were talking. As the last stones were removed, Lalo saw what seemed to be an unbroken slab of stone. A symbol was cut deeply into the smooth surface; Lalo drifted closer to see. It was nothing he knew, but its loops and angles teased at the memory. Had he seen something tike it at Enas Yorl's?

But he had no time to study it. Wedemir heaved up his pick and brought it down with all his strength upon the stone.

Violet light blazed from the sigil, then burst outward in a flare that burned sight away. But Lalo heard the sharp crack, the clatter of falling rock and then screaming and the ominous, agonized rumbling of settling stone. His cry mingled with the others', but the rush of displaced air was whirling him away. Vision was still darkened, but upon his inner eyelids he saw the Sigil imprinted in lines of fire.

"Wedemir! WedemirF Anguish tore Lalo's throat. He fought the darkness; his flailing hands found something soft and solid, he was held, and presently his breathing steadied. An awareness deeper than sight told him who held him. With a shuddering sigh Lalo rested his head on Gilla's ample breast and breathed in the sweet scent of her hair.

"It's all right-I'm here . . . hush, my love-it was only a dream. . . ." Gilla was patting his back as if he had been her child. A coolness in the air told him that it was still nighttime. He could hear the distant barking of a guard dog, and a scream, cut short abruptly, from the direction of the Maze.

"A dream-" he muttered. "Dear G.o.ds, I hope so!" He waited for his heartbeat to steady. Images replayed themselves in his awareness-the Sigil, Wedemir's face as the stones crashed down. . . .

"Wedemir said he would excavate the rubble of the Mageguild," he said finally. "When, Gilla-did he say when?"

"I don't really know," she began, and winced as his fingers tightened on her arm. "Tomorrow, perhaps. Does it matter?"

"We've got to stop him, Gilla. If Wedemir tries to break those wardings, he'll be destroyed!"

"What wardings?" He felt her pull away a little to look at him. "The Guildhall is a ruin, Lalo. I've seen it!"

"So have I!"

"Lalo, what are you talking about?" Gilla said sharply.

"In my dream I saw Wedemir digging among those ruins, and I saw him crushed beneath falling stones."

"You are worried about him-well, so am I-" she said carefully. "Ifs part of parenthood. I've had any number of nightmares in which the children were endangered. It was a nightmare, nothing more." Her voice was so reasonable, so soothing. . . .

Lalo shook his head. "Gilla. don't talk to me as if I were one of the children! You're acting as if I'd lost my mind along with my sight! Listen to me, Gilla!"

"What do you mean? I've been treating you the way I always do. I've had to take care of you, of course, but-"

"Have you always secretly despised me, then?" he shouted. "Even in our worst times, you never slept in the other room."

"You were hurt," she began. "You needed to sleep alone-"

"Gilla, my head healed weeks ago! I'm still your husband-I'm still a man, even if I can't see!"

There was a silence. He heard her shaken breathing and fought to control his own. Her flesh was so familiar . . . Lalo knew the luxuriant hills and valleys of her body better than he did his own. But now he felt as if a stranger were lying there.

"Is that the way it seemed to you?" she whispered finally. "I didn't intend it. But you may be right. I was afraid-all I could think about was protecting the children. Oh Lalo, what can I do?"

Lalo was glad that the darkness hid his involuntary grin. Her question had sounded too much like a verse from a bawdy song that he doubted Gilla knew.

"Let me inside your defenses, love," he whispered, touching her cheek with fingers that had grown more sensitive, moving his hand gently downward until it curved around her breast, teasing her nipple until he felt it harden, and she gasped. For this, he did not need to see.

"Please, Gilla, let me come in. . . ."

The air had freshened and the hush of early dawn lay on the town by the time they were quiet again.

"After so long, you would think there could be no surprises," Gilla murmured drowsily, rolling away from him. "But each time we make the world anew. . . ."

Lalo emerged from the deep well of pure sensation reluctantly. He could view the images of his nightmare with some detachment now, but they retained their clarity.

"Gilla . . . there's been so much strangeness in my life. Do we dare a.s.sume there was no truth in what I saw in my dream? Listen-" he went on as she mumbled sleepily. "We never met that girl, Rhian, until after I was blinded, but I can describe her-someone might have told me the color of her hair and eyes, but would they have said that Rhian wears a blue gauze veil with golden scallop sh.e.l.ls embroidered on the hem, or that she has a dark brown mole on the back of her right hand?"

"That's true," said Gilla, fully awake at last. "You have described the girt." Her voice sharpened. "But if what you saw was a true vision, then Wedemir is going to die!"

"It may be a possibility only!" Lalo answered more confidently than he felt, holding her until he felt her tension begin to ease. "You must take me to the Mageguild, Gilla, as soon as it's light. We can save our son if I stop Wedemir from breaking down that door!"

Once. when he was first apprenticed, Darios had broken a flagon in his master's workshop, and screamed and ran as its contents exploded in fire.

A prompt spell from the senior mage had sent the flames running back upon themselves until all the stuff was consumed, but the master had afflicted Darios for several days with a demon who tormented him with little p.r.i.c.king flames. Now he dreams that the fire is spreading, licking up the heavy draperies, even consuming the stone. The Mageguild is an inferno; the heat blisters his skin. the light blinds him. He writhes and shrieks and wakes to the cold silence of his tomb.

Shuddering, Darios composes himself to trance again. And again the dreams torment him. This time it is a book which he has been forbidden to read. But if he once opens it, he can escape the tyranny of his masters, for their knowledge will be his own. He makes his way into the chamber and sets his hand to the cover. Light spills from within as he lifts it, brilliance explodes as it flies open. Darios strives to force the cover down again, but he does not know the spell. He screams as the world whirls away.

To wake twice from such a nightmare is an evil portent. Darios would try to stay awake, but awake he is aware that he is cold, and hungry, and alone. Guarding himself with all the spells he knows, he seeks stillness once more. But yet again he dreams, though he struggles against it. This time he is with companions, fellow-students, perhaps, who are on the track of some treasure. They begin to pull down a pile of rocks, laughing and tossing away the stones. He tries to stop them, but soon they come to a slab set into the ground. Something is written there-Darios tries to see it, but the others are in the way. He sees them pulling at it, and then light explodes from the earth, flinging him away. In despair he cries out Rhian's name and wakens, hearing the regular clank of metal striking stone. - . .

Lalo and Gilla reached the Mageguild as the sun was topping the newly gilded dome of the Temple of Us. Wedemir and his friends were already working. Over protest Latilla had been left behind to watch Alfi, but Vanda and Rhian were here, as Lalo had known they would be. From his tone, Wedemir seemed mildly annoyed to see his parents, and more than annoyed when Lalo asked him to stop. Lalo sighed. It had been hard enough to get Gilla to believe him, why should his son listen to a blind old man?

"For s.h.i.+pri's sweet sake, hear me out!" he exploded finally. "Wedemir, do you remember the Black Unicorn?" There was an uncomfortable silence. Behind him, Lalo could hear two of the soldiers whispering. He supposed that by now even new recruits must have heard the tale of the creature that Lalo had unwittingly created and unleashed upon the town.

"What does that have-" Wedemir began, but Gilla interrupted him.

"You're a grown man now, and so you think you have nothing left to leam?" she said scornfully. "Especially from your parents? You were not so proud when your father destroyed that black beast-don't you yet understand that he is not like other men?"

"Father-" Wedemir sounded subdued when he finally replied. "You know why I am doing this. I must have some reason beyond a dream to give up now . . ."

"Rhian is here, isn't she-" said Lalo.

"You might have heard her voice; you might have guessed she would be here."

"You don't believe me? Keep on digging then. When you have cleared away the rubble, you will find a staircase leading down to a stone slab. There is a symbol carved on it, Wedemir. You must believe me then, for if you touch that doorway, you will die!"

"I'll admit there's no normal way you can know what's under there," said his son. "If we find the door we'll stop. Does that content you, Papa? We will stop, but you will have to choose what we do then!" Emotion trembled in his voice.

That girl, thought Lalo. He won't give her up any more than I would have given up Gilla at his age.

They sat with Rhian and Vanda as they waited. Lalo could hear the sound of the digging, and memory supplied a picture of the scene. He knew it when they reached ground level and uncovered the beginning of the staircase. He knew when they finished digging it out, and found the stone slab.

The men were very quiet as Rhian led him to the doorway. Delicate fingering confirmed that the sigil was the one that he had seen. Lalo's fingertips tingled as he touched it, and he knew that the magic that warded it was still alive.

And in the silence after he took his hand away there was a sound-too faint to be heard above the noise of pick and shovel, or even over normal conversational tone-a distant voice that called, "Stop! For your life's sake, you must not touch the stone!"

"He's alive!" whispered Rhian. From Wedemir came something like a m.u.f.fled groan. Lalo winced, recognizing that at this moment his son might well have preferred to have been crushed by falling stone. But he had no choice. He bent until his lips were nearly touching the rock and took a deep breath.

"What must we do to free you?"

"You cannot," came the faint reply. "The vault can only be opened by drawing the sigil, with the proper words, from inside . . ."

"Do you know the words?" Gilla's voice sounded very loud in Lalo's ear, "I know the spell, but not the Sign," came the answer. 'Tray for the spirit of Darios, son of Wint, and may the G.o.ds bless you for attempting to help me."

Rhian had begun to sob. Lalo bit his lip, thinking. The contours of the sigil were still vivid in his memory. He could have drawn it, but he could not describe it. The peculiar curves and angles of which it was composed followed no normal human logic, could not be explained in human words. Could the puzzle have been unlocked by the Rankan wizard, Randal, or even by Enas Yorl? Lalo wondered. The foundations of the Mageguild had been here before either. They felt old-Ilsigi magic, or perhaps something that had been here even before. . . .

"He knows the words, and you know the Symbol," muttered Gilla. "Surely there must be some way-" Lalo sighed. He was glad to know that Gilla really believed him. But even if he had been able to see, he and young Darios were still on opposite sides of the door.

"A doorway-it is only a doorway-" she murmured. "But you can go through such things, Lalo. Remember how you took me with you through the image on the card? Can't you do the same thing for the boy with words?"

Frowning, Lalo reached out and felt her clasp his hand. "I suppose . . -" he said slowly. "Wedemir, my son-do you understand why I must try?"

"Yes, Papa," Wedemir said harshly. Better to have it over with now, whatever the outcome might be. If he had not won the girl when Darios's fate was still in doubt, he would never get her while her first love was slowly starving to death beyond this stone! "Darios, can you hear me?" he said more loudly. "Listen-I know you've been trained to this-listen, and see what I say-"

"I don't understand . . ."

"Just listen!" From habit, Lalo closed his eyes. He had had the S'danzo card in front of him before, but he remembered each brushstroke vividly. "Calm down, steady your breathing-you know how. . . . Imagine you are looking at an archway-the arch of a gate big enough to drive a chariot through. Look at the stones. They are pale granite with dark flecks that glint in the sun ... six great stones on each side, and a larger cap, three on each side of the arch, and a trapezoidal keystone. Do you see it, boy?" Lalo saw it clearly in his mind's eye, not a thing of paint and pasteboard now, but a real gateway, solid stone. There was a faint murmur of a.s.sent from within.

"Look through the archway now-you see a garden. . . ." Lalo began to describe the sweep of green gra.s.s, the roses, the trees. And as he spoke, he himself saw them. He moved forward. "Go through the gateway, Darios-go into the garden . . - into the garden, , . ."

Lalo hardly felt Gilla's arms go around him as he left his body behind him and his own words carried him through. It was no shock to find that he could see, for this was only a continuation of his inner vision. He turned, and saw someone coming toward him. It was a tall young man, well formed, though his skin had the pallor of one who spends his days indoors. His curling black hair and beard were as glossy as the coat of one of the Prince's pampered horses, and his dark eyes glowed.

A handsome man, thought Lalo. No wonder Rhian loved him. A mental adjustment to his own dress clothed him in a clean s.h.i.+rt and one of his better coats- He lifted his hand in greeting.

The young man's eyes widened. "Who are you?"

"Lalo the Limner." It seemed such an inadequate answer to offer this young man who stood in the rich robes of his Order, watching him in wonder.

"I've heard of you. But you're not a mage!"

"I'm not sure what I am anymore . . ," Lalo looked around him. If only he could stay here, where it was so beautiful-where he could see. But at least he knew the way here now.

"But unless we do something, you, my son, are going to be dead very soon'"

A moment's concentration brought a tablet and stick of charcoal into his hands. The Sigil still blazed in Lalo's memory. He could not have described it, but his arm moved easily in the contorted swirls of the figure, and he felt a swift rush of delight in the sureness with which he drew, recognizing only now how the frustration of being unable to do so had galled him. Here, he could paint again, even if there was no one to see.

"Can you remember it?" He held the tablet out to the other man. Darios gazed at it, his eyes going gla.s.sy as ingrained disciplines committed the curves and angles to memory.

"I will remember," said Darios grimly. "I never saw it properly. The Sigil was not in the book I found-only the spell. And if I fail," his lips twisted a little. "At least you have shown me the way to an easy pa.s.sage. My thanks to you, Master Limner, for that." For a moment the two men clasped hands.

They both looked toward the archway that led back to the world's darkness. Lalo straightened, realizing that he was almost as unwilling to return to the prison of his body as Darios was to go back to his tomb. But he could feel the need of those he had left behind him tugging at his awareness.

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 t.u.r.d and blessed battered stone ... he saw!