"It is possible." Sario assumed an air of deep gravity. "I must go alone. The agents I spoke with fear for their lives if it is discovered they had anything to do with saving the life of a member of the royal family."

"Why has it taken so long?" demanded the younger brother. "They have no devotion to our king." He spit into the straw. "They only waited for a good ransom offer."

"We shall see. In the meantime, wait for me here. In ten days you will know by the ringing of the bells that the Feast of Imago, the Vision of Life, has come. I shall return after that time. Give these coins to your cousin. Let her purchase good cloth and sew a few gowns. I doubt not that if the lady does live, she has nothing left her. After such an ordeal you must not be surprised to find her much changed in spirit."

The two soldiers knelt a moment, hands over their hearts, then rose and took the money.

In the morning Sario was content as he rode north. After a few miles he veered south in a loop that took him safely around Arguena and back by midday to the village coach house, where he returned the horse and took the wagon back to Meya Suerta. He arrived in his atelierro above the wine shop at twilight.

Too restless to sleep, he lit lanterns and set them on the table, hung them from the rafters, and worked long into the night, grinding and mixing paints, making brushes. As he grew tired, his pulse began to pound in his head like the beat of a distant drum. He grew too warm and, taking off his jacket and waistcoat, worked only in his shirtsleeves; after a time he removed his boots as well, and through the soles of his feet his pulse and the slow creak and settling of the old house merged and became one. Under his breath he murmured words untangled from the illuminations that decorated his Folio, the pages taken so very long ago from Il-Adib.

His pigments he mixed with poppy oil, blending in a bit of beeswax and amber that had been dissolved in hot oil. To his white paints he added the dust of bones and the powder gleaned from dried skin, to his yellows the gleam of golden hair. Finger- and toenails he ground to powder and blended with his ultramarine and cerulean blue. With the vestiges of a linen shift, worn down until it was as fine as sand, he gave texture to his viridian and green earth. The other parts of body hair he added to his siennas and umbers, the yellow earth and browns. To vermillion, blood; and blood diluted by lavender oil he used to mix his rose madder. Into his lamp black he blended all of the remains, just enough to flavor it.

He prepared the board, a panel of oak as tall as he was, and covered it with a gray ground blended with essence of myrtle, for the Dead, and iris, for Magical Energy.

Perhaps the sun rose outside. Perhaps it set. His shutters remained closed and he could not tell. That time passed at all he noted only because the man who ran the wine shop brought food and ale twice a day to the door of the attic and took away anything that was left there.

By now he was too flushed even for a shirt. He stripped. The warm air of the atelierro woke his skin, like the touch of a lover, although he had not had a lover since he had taken this Sario's body. To do so would somehow profane his love for Saavedra.

His fingers sought out a lancet. He held it in a candleflame until the metal gained a faint nimbus. Holding it up, away from the candle, he watched lines of heat evaporate from the edged metal. He lowered it to his arm.

The blade lay sharp and hot against his skin. The sensation aroused him. He cut.

As the blood flowed down his skin his whole body tingled. Long ago he had felt this way, touching a woman, caressing her, penetrating her. Now only the art, only the painting, the exaltation of a spell, the knowledge of what was to follow as he prepared his body, his paints, the very air of the room laden with incense ... his breathing tightened, and he only just caught his seed in a glass vial. Losing some of his blood onto the floor, but there was more blood; he took what he needed and clamped a hand down over the cut. The stinging faded, as it always did. The pain was nothing against the promise of power.

He laughed, and laughing brought tears. The fragrance of herbs brought with it memory of taste, and so he prepared himself with blood and seed, tears and saliva. With these essences he blended his own self into the paint.

It was time to begin the spell. On the table he set out candles and an incense burner, a shrine for the Matra ei Filho. On either side he laid the many sketches he had done of his subject. He now took the Folio out of the locked chest and positioned it carefully in the center of the table. He opened it to the correct spell slowly, letting each page slide through his fingers, feeling the grain of the vellum and the fine curves of the letters, each one a spark against his skin.

As Arriano he had become lazy, drifting from one foreign court to the next, letting the chatter of rich merchants and the blandishments of pale northern beauties caress him into a soporific lull that had lasted years. Perhaps he had needed a rest after the disaster with Rafeyo. Perhaps he was just getting tired.

No! Never that. It was time to wake up. It had been too long since he had painted a masterpiece. And this was truly to be a masterpiece, a spell he had pondered for years but had not attempted.

Thou shalt not, for it is abomination.

So was it written into the folio, blazing letters on a white ground. What did he care about the commandments of a god to whom he did not belong? He was a Master. The Master. There was no one else like him, nor would there ever be, ever. For was he not the Chosen One?

He lit candles and incense. In a low voice, he spoke the words taught him so many many years, centuries, ago. "Chieva do'Orro. Open my eyes to your secrets. Blood and hands possess the power of change." He pitched his voice up a key, sharp, piercing the quiet air swamped in the scent of oil and herbs. "Matra ei Filho, grant this power against death and for life."

He opened his case of oils and dabbed a finger in his oil of sorcerer's violet, touching the oil to his tongue, savoring it, touching it to his naked chest, to his belly, to his penis, to his thighs. With a graphite pencil he sketched the figure onto the ground, putting the most detail into palms, lips, and eyes. With his fingers he rubbed a thin priming into place over the drawing.

He began to chant the words written in the Folio. The syllables came readily to his lips. As he spoke them, his awareness stretched and altered so that he slipped away from himself, deeper into his limner's mind yet out toward the painting beyond, as if he could pour himself out through his hands, through the brush.

He began to paint.

The figure took shape before him, first shaded on over the drawing, then coming to life in layers of color, light tones at first, followed by richer, deeper glazes and coloring. It was to be all one continuous piece. He must not stop for longer than it took to drink a few swallows of ale, to eat a few bites of bread, to sip at coffee or touch one or another oil to his lips to give himself strength, to light new candles. To stop was to condemn the painting to dry into the stillness of death. Yet he must paint with the perfection of a finished piece which would normally have had time to dry after the underpainting was complete.

None of that now. He painted with the words of foreign sorcerers, the Al-Fansihirro, on his lips. He saw her standing before him in his mind's eye, imagined her youthful body beneath the light, fashionable gowns she wore. This vision passed from his eye to his hands, and she flowered and took form.

Into the shadows and lines of her skin he began the skein of symbols that would bind the painting over into truth. Her hands rested gently against her hips, palms out; her feet stood firmly on oaken floorboards. Her skin took on a rose hue, and her lips shone with caught breath. Her eyes were as fine a blue as he had ever seen-more perfect, perhaps, than her eyes had truly been, but was it not the duty of an artist to recover the heart of his subject, not just the outer seeming?

Far away he heard bells ringing. A crack of light shone through the shutters, sunset or sunrise.

Once he had known which direction the window faced, but it was no longer important.

He bound her shadowed places with the tiny script and symbols of the oscurra. With a brush made of a single coarse hair he painted the oscurra into the lines on her palms, wove them into the delicate puckering of her lips, and with their substance patterned the fine blue flecking of the irises of her eyes.

Echoes of bells rang in his ears. He stepped back, almost staggering. A wave of exhaustion swept through him, as it always did; so much blood he used, so much of his potency, to create. He dabbed a finger in oil of myrtle and traced the sign for heart on her chest, invisible to the eye. His brush dropped from fingers suddenly nerveless. The chamber whirled once around him, but he caught himself. Groping at the table, he found the bowl of cloves. He chewed on one, steadied himself with deep breaths, touched the Folio though he did not need to read its final words.

He moved to stand in front of the painting. Though his sight clouded as his trance lifted from him, he could see that she was perfect, a perfect likeness, the fresh, young, innocent girl standing naked in his atelierro, waiting. . . .

He stepped close, closer still, and breathed the breath of life onto her, his creation.

The painting trembled. It was as if the wet paint stirred of its own accord, pushing out from the panel, expanding, like a flower unfolding at dawn. Startled, he took a step back. She followed him.

Shadows became solid curves, lines became flesh. Princess Alazais of Ghillas stepped out of the painting onto the cold oak floor. She stood, watching him with a kind of vacant curiosity. She was breathing. Her skin shone, as if sheened with sweat. The light gray ground, outlining her form, and the plain room were all that remained in the portrait.

"You are Princess Alazais," he said in a soft voice, gentled by astonishment, smoothed by the knowledge of his own genius.

"I am Princess Alazais," she said. Her tone mimicked his tone, although her voice was a delicate soprano. Her expression did not change.

"Sit," he said, pointing to the chair.

She sat.

He saw his cot. With what remained of his strength, he staggered over to it. There was much to do. He needed to instruct her. What about food? Did she know to eat? Would she walk blindly out the door? How much did she understand? Of what was she truly made? Poppy and myrtle and iris, his blood and hers, the dust of her other body? There was so much to do.

But he had no strength. The magic had taken it all. He collapsed on the cot and fell into sleep the instant his head touched the pillow.

SIXTY-SIX.

The Feast of Imago dawned with clouds hanging heavy over the fields and the vine-swagged hunting lodge. Early in the morning, before anyone except the servants was up, Rohario sat on one of the old trestle tables in the banqueting hall and idly turned the dusty pages of an old book.

Outside it rained, a propitious beginning to the day celebrating the Visitation of the Holy Mother and Her Son, who had appeared before a lowly camponesso and his wife while they pruned the vines at dawn in a misting rain. Rohario watched the steady drizzle through the thick windowpanes, the glass throwing waves of distortion onto the steady fall of light rain.

The last eight days had been a misery. Edoard was edgy and short with him, overbearingly polite to the women. Mara walked everywhere with a barely hidden frown. Eleyna rarely appeared except in front of her easel, painting the hounds, sketching intricate studies of the various rooms of Chasseriallo. Only Beatriz Grijalva maintained an air of gentle good humor, and Rohario was beginning to find her endlessly sunny nature annoying, if only because it set off his own sulks.

For, as his dear Mama had been wont to say, sulking was not only unattractive but useless.

"You are too old to sulk, Rohario. It tires me, infuriates your father, and does you no good at all."

Mama was always right.

Still, this wretched situation brought out the worst in him, even while he watched himself act like a sullen adolescent boy as if he were the observer in the Galerria scrutinizing a detailed painting. The Matra had blessed Edoard in that regard: he was oblivious to the effect his behavior had on the people around him.

Rohario sighed and studied the crabbed writing on the page, reading the words out loud: Thus did Duchess Jesminia stand, supported by her handmaidens who did not fear to take the plague from her but would by their devotion risk dying with her. Though her body was frail, her voice was strong. Thus did she speak to the assembled multitudes as was recorded by Sancta Silvestra.

"By my faith in Mother and Son, I will not allow these my faithful servants the Grijalvas to suffer under such unwarranted suspicion. They are innocent of all they have been accused of. So come they with my blessing to be reconfirmed by the Ecclesia-"

He broke off and lifted his head.

She stood in a shadowed corner near the door, as still as a statue, listening. The sight of her shivered through him like a lightning bolt. It was not fair that she affect him this way!

"What are you doing here?" he snapped.

She started, almost bolting like a rabbit, then stepped out into the central hall. "That looks like an old book."

"I found it in the library here."

Over the last few days she had lost her fierce demeanor. She seemed, indeed, quite unlike herself. "I beg your pardon. I did not mean to disturb you." She edged along one wall toward the far corner. "My brother Agustin sent me a letter. I left it here last night. ..."

Why should she have left a letter in the banqueting hall? No one ever came here; that was why it was his favorite retreat, even if the servants sometimes forgot to dust the tables and benches and thereby allowed his clothes to get dirty.

Following the line of Eleyna Grijalva's sight, Rohario suddenly saw a scrap of white parchment lying neatly on one corner of a distant table. It had not been there an hour ago.

"Here it is." She grabbed the parchment. "I beg your pardon. I'll go now."

"No! I mean-don't feel you must leave."

"I'm working on Edoard's portrait."

She is unhappy. The thought flashed through him with the audacity of a five-year-old child scampering into apartments where he has no right to be. She was unhappy. This notion left him speechless for a moment, while she retreated to the door.

"I can read to you," he blurted out, then was aghast. He had grabbed this book at random, intrigued by the faded and cracked leather binding, but this long-dead scholar's history of the feud between the Ecclesia and the Grijalva family had instead caught his interest. But surely Eleyna would not want to have her family's chi'patro origins thrown at her head.

She fingered the parchment nervously. "You read well."

She was humoring him. So had people done all his life. "Yes," he said bitterly. "A pleasant reading voice. A passable talent for art."

"Eiha," she said abruptly, revelation dawning. "Grandzio Cabral tutored you in art-" That stung.

"Nazho irrado," she said swiftly.

He pushed off the table and brushed dust from the tails of his morning coat. "Cabral Grijalva did his best but failed to find more than that 'passable' talent in me." He attempted a smile but could not manage one. "I do not know who was more disappointed, he or I."

"I'm sorry."

"Do'nado. You wish to go-" He gestured.

"No, I-grazzo- Read to me as I paint. What I heard sounded interesting."

She felt pity for him and his passable talent, she who had such a true gift. But even knowing that, he could not resist her. "As you wish."

As he followed her down the broad staircase that led to the hall adjoining the ducal suite, he could not help but wish himself in another body, in another life. He was mightily tired of being a "useless fop," but young noblemen did not have professions or callings, as his mother had been fond of pointing out. "It is our Matra-given duty to rule, Rohario, and theirs to work and to serve."

He ran into Eleyna just as she gasped, stopping short. His heart pounded when she backed up against him. . . .

He knew the feel of a woman against him. Mama had made sure that even this part of his education was not neglected. "You will not chase the pretty servant girls who work in the Palasso.

That is not fitting behavior for a do'Verrada, and I have gone to great trouble to find girls from Meya Suerta who look presentable in livery and who can also perform their duties efficiently. I will not have them interfered with. There are respectable establishments where boys are initiated into these mysteries, and that is where you will indulge your curiosity. "

He had indulged his curiosity quite freely.

Now he noticed that the ornate door leading into the ducal suite stood partly open. Here, in the corner where the stairs gave out onto the corridor, he and Eleyna watched unnoticed as Beatriz Grijalva slipped out through the half-open door, wearing a brocaded morning robe over an elaborate nightdress. She turned back to the man standing in the doorway.

Her face was radiant. She leaned forward- To kiss! And not a sisterly kiss, either.

"Eiha!" murmured Rohario.

Eleyna pressed him farther back. He stumbled backward up two steps, stood there for a long while, breathing hard, not sure which was the more shocking discovery: that Eleyna Grijalva was leaning against him without the slightest evidence of self-consciousness or that Edoard had, as he intended, taken a Grijalva Mistress.

"What have I done?" murmured Eleyna under her breath. She covered her face with a hand and wilted into his arms. He barely managed to set down the book in time to catch her. It was a glorious sensation, holding her. He had held women before, but he had never felt like this.

"I have forced her into this." Eleyna was talking into her hand. "Mennina moronna! How could I have expected otherwise?" She pulled away from him. "I beg your pardon," she said stiffly. Tears ran down her face. He reached to brush them away, but she walked forward, leaving him behind as if she had already forgotten him.

He grabbed the book and hurried after her. The corridor was empty now, the door into the ducal suite shut tight. Had that vision been a dream?

Eleyna walked as if in a trance to the salon Edoard had set aside for her use as an atelierro.

She sank down onto the stool set in front of her easel and stared at the half-finished painting. The letter from her brother hung, forgotten, in her right hand. Rohario stood under the lintel, not sure whether to enter or leave. He could not bear to leave her alone, not after she had received such a shock. Yet they were hardly on terms of such intimacy that he might dare to offer comfort. Only the rain sounded, heard through the veil of the great paned windows that looked out onto the parklands.

She slipped the unread letter in with her sketches, then studied her painting: Edoard, still in half tones, standing with a musket draped in the crook of his elbow, his four favorite hounds placed round him and the ruined wall with its view into the garden as backdrop. It was so quiet that Rohario heard, from the breakfast room, the muted sounds of servants setting out the silver.

He smelled freshly baked bread.

Eleyna shook herself, coming to some resolution.

Examining her paletto of colors, she chose a pale blue as a base and into the faintly sketched- in landscape beyond the wall inserted a tiny female figure, dressed in a white morning dress and a plain bonnet. She was, quite deliberately, drawing her sister into the portrait of Edoard.

It was the kind of thing Grijalva limners did: every peintraddo contained a message. Now, forever, the young Edoard would be memorialized with his Mistress-and, of course, that she stood in the garden was entirely appropriate, for Beatriz was not only a lover of flowers but in her own way a fine flower herself.

A dull sadness settled on Rohario. He could not identify its source, only that it grieved him to see Eleyna pragmatically erase her grief by recording the truth for all to see.

Through a door set in the wall opposite Eleyna and her easel, Rohario could look into the dining room, empty at this hour. Eleyna still had not noticed him. He sidled along behind furniture, careful not to touch anything, and escaped into the dining room, leaving the door open behind him. He placed the book on the table and sat down heavily, resting his chin on intertwined fingers.

How could Edoard so humiliate the woman he himself had chosen? How could she possibly return to her family now? One followed certain rules: a Mistress must be barren and preferably a widow. One did not choose a young rose-Beatriz could scarcely be more than eighteen-in the first flush of youth and of obvious value to her parents as a marriageable daughter who would likely bear many children.

Patro was going to be very, very angry. But since when had Edoard cared about Patro's anger?

"Eiha! There you are, Eleynita. What are you-?"

Eleyna cut Beatriz off. "How could you? Mother will be furious!"

From this angle he could not see into the room, but he could hear clearly enough.