Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

Lalo stared at him as though he had been struck to the heart but had not yet

begun to feel the pain. He shook his head a little.

‘You read my heart as you see the lady’s soul…’ he said with a curious

dignity. ‘The gods alone know what I would give to be able to do what you ask of

me!’

The sorcerer smiled. His form seemed to shift, to expand, and in the blazing of

his eyes Lalo’s awareness was consumed. / will provide the vision and you will

provide the skill… the words echoed in Lalo’s mind, and then he knew no more.

The stillness of the hour just before dawn hushed the air when Lalo again became

conscious of his own identity. The girl Jarveena lay back in her chair,

apparently asleep. His back and shoulder ached furiously. He stretched out his

arm and flexed his fingers to relieve their cramping, and only then did his eyes

focus on the canvas before him. –

Did I do that? His first reaction was one he had known before, when hand and eye

had cooperated unusually well and he had emerged from an intensive bout of work

amazed at how close he had come to capturing the beauty he saw. But this – the

image of a face whose finely arched nose and perfect brows were framed by waves

of lustrous hair, of a slenderly curved body whose honey-coloured skin had the

sheen of the pearls on the floor and whose delicately up-tilted breasts were

tipped with buds of dusky rose – this was that Beauty, fully realized.

Lalo looked from the picture to the girl in the chair and wept, because he could

see only blurred hints of that beauty in her now, and he knew that the vision