Thieves World 5 – The Face of Chaos by Asprin, Robert

clutched at the bedclothes as if to hold him there.

‘Gilla, have I been ill?’

‘Ill! You might call it that – and I’d rather not know what else it might be -‘

exploded Gilla, and Vanda got to her feet.

‘Father, you’ve been lying in some kind of trance for almost three weeks now,’

Vanda added.

Three weeks? But just this afternoon he had been … painting… He had looked

in the mirror and then … Lalo began to tremble as memory came back to him. His

eyes filled with tears for the beauty of the other world, but Gilla’s hands

closed on his shoulders. and she shook him back to her own reality.

Lalo stared at her, and through the veil of her swollen features he saw the face

of the goddess who had brought him home. It took a kind of inner focussing, and

he found that now he could see another face beneath his daughter’s familiar mask

of cheerfulness too. Only the two younger children remained essentially the

same.

So, he thought, perhaps I will not need a paintbrush to do my seeing now. He lay

back, trying to assimilate the truth of what had happened to him into his memory

of the man he used to be.

‘So, how do you feel? Is there anything you want me to get you now?’ Gilla

finished wiping her eyes and resolutely blew her nose on a corner other apron.

Lalo smiled. ‘Well, I haven’t eaten for three whole weeks -‘

‘Vanda, there’s soup on the stove,’ Gilla said sharply. ‘Go heat it up, and you

little ones go with her. You’ve seen him, and Father doesn’t need you underfoot

here. Everything will be all right now.’