wondered which part of it the sorcerer feared most to see.
‘Enas Yorl, I know you, but I don’t know what I am, or why I am here!’
The sorcerer certainly saw him now, and he was laughing. ‘You’re not dead, if
that’s what was worrying you, and there’s no stink of magic about you. Were you
fevered, or did that mountain you are married to knock you senseless at last?’
Lalo sputtered, denying it, while he tried to remember. There was nothing – I
was painting; I was alone, and -‘
Abruptly the sorcerer grew grave. ‘You were painting? Yourself, perhaps? Now I
understand. Poor little pond-fish – you have opened the forbidden weir and been
swept through it into the great sea. Those whose portraits you have painted
could reject the truth they saw, but you could not reject what you painted on
the canvas without denying all you are!’
Lalo was silent, testing his memories. He had been painting a picture, and he
had stepped back from the canvas when he was done, and he had seen … Awareness
lurched beneath him, dizzying – he glimpsed depths and distances, upwelling
springs of light and darkness that could drown him equally, a universe of power
that had been trapped beneath the facade that was the self he knew.
‘And so you have run away from both the truth and its image, and your body lies
abandoned somewhere. I can return you to it, if you truly desire – but don’t you
understand? Now you are free! Do you know what I would give to achieve what you
have inadvert-ently -‘ the sorcerer stopped himself, ‘but I forgot. Your body is