'Lalo, are you all right? Did you hear me? Shipri All-Mother have mercy - Lalo,what's wrong?' She shook his arm and still he did not respond to her, and a sickfear uncoiled itself beneath her heart and began to grow.

Gilla gathered him into her ample embrace and for a moment held him unresisting.His body was warm, and she could feel his heart beating very slowly against herown. but she knew with dreadful certainty that he was no longer there. Bitingher lip, she guided him to the pallet and arranged him on it as one of thechildren might arrange a doll.

Fear's chill tentacles extended all the way to her fingertips now. and sheremained kneeling before Lalo, chafing his hands less for his sake than for herown. His eyes were unfocused, the pupils darkly dilated. He was not looking ather. He had not been looking at the painting either, although his face had beenturned towards it when she came in. These eyes were focused on something beyondSanctuary - some inner darkness into which a man might fall forever and find norest.

Shivering, Gilla tried to close his eyelids, but they slid open again upon thatawful, sightless stare. She could feel a scream crouched in her breast, waitingfor her to give way to horror and set it free. but she set her teeth painfullyand heaved herself to her feet.

Hysterics would do neither of them any good now. Time enough to release thegrief that was building in her when - if - there was no hope for him. Perhaps itwas some strange seizure that would soon pass, or a new sickness that time andher strict nursing would cure. Or perhaps (her mind probed delicately at adarker thought and flinched away), perhaps it was sorcery.

'Lalo -' she said softly, as if her voice could still reach him somehow, 'Lalomy darling, it's all right. I'll get you a doctor; I'll make you get well!'Already her mind was considering. If he did not wake of himself by tomorrow shewould have to find a physician - perhaps Alien Stulwig - she had heard that hispotions saved more lives than they took.

The teakettle began to wail, and as she hurried across the room. her hip set theeasel teetering. Without stopping, she picked it up and set it in the cornerwith the picture facing the wall.

Lalo peered uneasily through murky clouds that roiled about him like the magewind that had devastated Sanctuary the year before. But his life was still inhim, though the stink was enough to drive the breath from a man's lungs. For amoment he thought himself back in the sewers of the Maze, but there was too muchlight. So where in the name of Shalpa Shadow-lord had he gotten to?

He took a step forward, then another, his feet finding their own way over theuneven ground. The colours that streaked the clouds nauseated him - sulphuryellow that shaded into a livid pink like an unhealed scar, and then tosomething else - an unnameable colour that made his eyes hurt so that he had tolook away.

Perhaps I am dead, he thought then. Poor Cilia will grieve for me, hut she hasher hoard, and the older children are earning money of their own. She will dobetter without me than I would if she had left me alone ... The thought wasbitter, and he found himself weeping as he stumbled along. But the tears had nosubstance and after a little they disappeared. He returned to his probing, as aman will tongue the sore space where a tooth has gone.

All of the priests were wrong, both the ones who said that the gods takedeparted souls to paradise and those who are convinced one is condemned to Hell.Or perhaps I have such a spineless soul that I have deserved neither, and sothey have sentenced me to wander here!

Lalo had spent half his life dreaming of escape from Sanctuary. But now he hadlost Sanctuary, and he was astonished by the passion of his longing to see itagain.

Something scurried by him and he jumped. Was it a rat? Were there rats here? Andsurely now he could see cobblestones beneath his feet. Trembling, Lalo staredaround him as dim forms precipitated from the shadows - walls, perhaps, witharched doorways and the eaves of roofs peaking like broken teeth against a luridsky. There - surely that was the broad facade ofJubal's place, but that wasimpossible - the Stepsons had burned it, hadn't they? And then he was certain ofthe wrongness, for next to it he saw the familiar skewed sign of the VulgarUnicorn, but the unicorn's eyes glowed evilly, and blood dripped down itsspiralled horn.

Abruptly he realized that he was beginning to hear sounds, too - the kind ofdrunken laughter that comes from men who watch a bully's fist smash a boy's faceto raw meat, or who take a woman one after another: the kind of screaming he hadheard once when he hurried past Kurd's workshop, and the choked gurgle thehanged men made as they died in the Palace Yard. He had heard all those soundsin Sanctuary, and closed his ears to them, but he could not ignore the sobbingthat seemed to come from somewhere just before him, the hushed, incredulouswhimpering of an abused child.

I was wrong, he thought, I am in Hell after all!

Lalo began to run forward, and suddenly figures were all around him. Hawkmasksand Stepsons struggled as lopped limbs flew like scythed wheat and drops ofblood splattered the cobbles like rain. A man staggered by him and Lalo thoughtthat it was Zanderei; then the figure turned and he reeled back, for the facewas gone.

Another came towards him - Sjekso Kinsan, with whom he had shared a drinksometimes in the Vulgar Unicorn, and behind him a woman with long amber hair.Lord Regli's wife. Samlane. whom Lalo had painted long ago before he met EnasYorl. before the woman had died. There were others whom he thought herecognized, thieves whose contorted features he had seen on the gallows. HellHounds or mercenaries whom he had seen in Sanctuary for awhile and then saw nomore.

They were looking at him, now. and closing around him. Lalo began to run,burrowing through the dark maze of this shadow Sanctuary like a maggot in anancient corpse, seeking some unimaginable safety.

'Woman, you were fortunate to get me here at all!' Alten Stulwig said stiffly.'My patients come to me. and I am certainly not accustomed to visiting this partof town!'

'But you know that my husband has influential friends who might object if youlet their pet artist die unseen, don't you!' said Gilla nastily. 'So you stopavoiding my eyes like a whore with her first customer and tell me what's wrongwith him!' She lifted an arm as broad as Stulwig's thigh and he swallowed andglanced nervously down at the man on the pallet.

'It's a complex case, and there's no need to confuse you with medicalterminology.' He cleared his throat. 'I am afraid '

'Now that I will believe!' Gilla snatched his satchel and held it to her massivebreast.

'What - what are you doing? Give me that!'

'I don't need your leech's twaddle, nor your evasions either. Master Alten. Youjust find something in this bag of yours that will make my man well!' She thrustit back at him and he shrugged, sighed, and opened it.

'This is a stimulant, dograya. You steep it into a tea and spoonfeed him fourtimes a day. It will strengthen his heart, and who knows, it may bring himaround.' He tossed the little packet on the coverlet and rummaged around in thebag again, bringing out several yellowish cones wrapped in a twist of cloth.'And you can try burning these - if the smell doesn't arouse him I don't knowwhat will.' He straightened and held out his hand. 'Two sheboozim -gold.'

'Why Alien, I'm surprised - aren't you going to ask me to share your bed?'Gilla's laughter covered bitterness she had not allowed herself to feel for along time as he blanched and looked away. She drew from between her breasts thethin chamois bag in which she kept her reserve of gold. There was more, hiddencunningly beneath floorboards or in the wall - even Lalo did not know where itwas- but a house could burn. Better to keep something on her person againstemergencies.