bright eyes.
Lightning flared in the window, blinding him. When Lalo could see again Arton’s
chubby hand was rubbing the picture away.
‘Wot flutter’ by! Bad bright things outside-” His dark gaze held the limner’s,
and in his eyes Lalo saw the angular, aetherial forms of the demons that lived
on the energy of the storm. “Make them go ‘way!”
I won’t draw them, Lalo thought fearfully, they’ve too much life already! He
took the child’s hand gently, remembering how he had comforted his own children
when they had spilled their milk or broken some favorite toy, not understanding
their own power.
Now he felt Gyskouras’s gaze upon him as well, filling him with knowledge of all
the powers surging in the storm. Other images came to him too-emotions, desires
as yet formless, characteristics that sought to coalesce into a Personality that
would encompass the potential, for good or evil, inherent in the two children
before him. He recognized the feeling-he had known it himself at the beginning
of a project, when colors and shapes and images jostled in his consciousness and
he strove for the form and balance that would organize them into a harmonious
unity.
But the only loss had been a ruined canvas when he failed. If these children
failed, they could destroy Sanctuary.
Thunder clapped great hands above the Palace; the room shuddered and a window
blew open on a sudden gust of rain. Gyskouras whimpered, and Lalo reached for
his hand. They need a mage to train them, just like me-but there must be
something that we can do! Lalo closed his eyes, driven not by fear or the