familiar odors of mildew and backed-up drains.
Lalo shrugged out of his cloak and shook it. The dog’s ears flapped and its
collar jingled as it did the same. Then it sneezed and followed him inside.
Lalo sat down next to the stove and draped his already steaming cloak across a
chair. A skinny serving boy brought him mulled wine and he clasped his paint
stained fingers around the mug to warm them before he let the hot, sweet liquor
slide down his throat. He set the mug down, glimpsed his own unprepossessing
reflection in a tarnished mirror on the wall, and looked quickly away.
He had looked into a mirror once and seen a god look back at him. Had that been
a dream? And he had seen all his own evil come alive on the wall of the Vulgar
Unicorn. That had been a nightmare, and too many others had shared it.
The gift of painting the truth of a man had come originally from Enas Yori. Now,
he almost wished he had accepted the sorcerer’s offer to take it back again.
These days, Enas Yorl seemed to be chronically incapacitated by his periodic
transformations-it was almost as if the sorcerer’s mutations paralleled the
degenerating situation in Sanctuary.
But with Enas Yorl handicapped and Lythande out of town, who was there to teach
him how to use his power? The Temples were useless, and the stench of the Mage
guild made him feel ill.
Quite close to him, someone sneezed. Lalo jumped, set his mug teetering, and
grabbed for it.
“Do you mind if I borrow your cloak?”
Lalo blinked, then focused on a thin young man clad only in a metal dog collar