Blood ties-- Thieves World 09 Read Free Page B

finished painting in the number of the card, and in the moment between the last brush stroke and his return to normal consciousness he thought he saw something of Gilla in the larger figure. Perhaps the other two were Illyra and himself, then, but were they moving into deeper shadow or toward the light?
    Lalo straightened and looked at Illyra, who lay back against her pillows with the stillness of sleep, or trance. There were dark smudges beneath her closed eyes, as if he had touched her with his paint-stained finger there. He had felt the power moving through him as he painted, but this time the meaning of his work was hidden from him even when he came out of his own trance of creation and looked at the cards.
    The three flame-cards that were finished glowed in the sunlight that came through the window, the colors seeming to vibrate with their own energy. /
    should be grateful, thought the limner. At least now I know that my hands still have power. But he did not understand what he had painted, and something ached in his belly at the anguish he saw in Illyra's shut face. Carefully, quietly, fearing to disturb her, Lalo began to put his paints away.
    "The cards are beautiful," said Gilla. "So many of Lalo's recent commissions have been murals, I'd forgotten how lovely his detail work can be." She laid the root card of Wood carefully back atop the pile. The rich greens and browns of the "Forest Primeval" seemed to glow with their own light, like sunshine slanting through innumerable leaves. Molin Torchholder's demand had for the moment given the marriage mural precedence over Kama's commission for the cards, even though the deck was nearly finished now. Illyra was nearly well now too, in body. But she and Gilla had grown accustomed to each other's company.
    "I hate them," said Illyra in a low voice.
    Gilla looked back at the couch, an angry defense of Lalo's work trembling on her tongue. The S'danzo's eyes were closed, but the slow tears were welling from beneath her shut lids. Gilla stifled her anger and went to the other woman, took a damp cloth, and began to sponge her cheeks and brow.
    "My dear, my dear, it's all right now...." It was the instinctive murmur of a mother to a sick child.
    "It is not all right!" said Illyra in a hard voice. "To See, I must open myself to the Great Pattern-become one with it and channel the part that relates to the question the querent has asked. But I do not believe in the Pattern anymore." Gilla nodded. Men killing each other was one thing, whether in battle or in the back streets of Sanctuary, but how could there be any purpose in the senseless death of a child? Memory brought her a sudden image of Ganner's eighth birthday, when Lalo had brought him clay and a set of modeler's tools. The light in the boy's face had stamped him and Lalo with a single identity as they explored the new medium. Gan-ner was the only one of the children to have inherited any of Lalo's skill. But he would never bring beauty into the world now. She swallowed over the ache in her throat and turned to Illyra again.
    "More than half the deck is painted now. Kama will force me to read for her when the rest are done and I cannot," said Illyra bitterly. "I will fail her, and then she will take her revenge on Dubro. By all of Sanctuary's useless gods, I hate her! Her, and the rest of those blade-thirsty, swaggering bullies who have destroyed my world!"
    "Will you find a sword of your own and go after her?" asked Gilla, trying to channel into scorn the hatred that was making her own belly bum. "Illyra, be sensible. Try to get well, and be thankful that's not your kind of power!"
    "My kind of power..." said the S'danzo reflectively. "No -when men bum my people for sorcery it's not because they fear the simple power of steel...." Illyra fell silent. Her dark hair swung down across her breast, and Gilla could not see her eyes, but there was something in the other woman's stillness that sent a chill down her back despite the