"The next card is the Three of Flames," said Illyra. Her voice altered, developed a peculiarly flat timbre, as if even visualizing the cards was enough to push her into the seer's trance. "There is a tunnel, dark at one end and at the other bright. In the tunnel I see three figures bearing torches. Are they moving toward light or darkness? I cannot tell...."
As if the S'danzo's words had entranced him, Lalo found his hand moving, dipping up dark pigment for the shadows and red-orange for the three bright flowers of flame. As Illyra spoke of the meaning of the card, shape and color emerged from the slip of vellum before him as if his brush were a wand that made visible what had always been implicit there.
The torchbearers were in silhouette, their faces hidden, but he could see that one was small, one broad, one wiry and active. Could the big shape be Molin Torchholder? Lalo finished painting in the number of the card, and in the moment between the last brush stroke and his return to normal consciousness he thought he saw something of Gilla in the larger figure. Perhaps the other two were Illyra and himself, then, but were they moving into deeper shadow or toward the light?
Lalo straightened and looked at Illyra, who lay back against her pillows with the stillness of sleep, or trance. There were dark smudges beneath her closed eyes, as if he had touched her with his paint-stained finger there. He had felt the power moving through him as he painted, but this time the meaning of his work was hidden from him even when he came out of his own trance of creation and looked at the cards.
The three flame-cards that were finished glowed in the sunlight that came through the window, the colors seeming to vibrate with their own energy. / should be grateful, thought the limner. At least now I know that my hands still have power. But he did not understand what he had painted, and something ached in his belly at the anguish he saw in Illyra's shut face. Carefully, quietly, fearing to disturb her, Lalo began to put his paints away.
"The cards are beautiful," said Gilla. "So many of Lalo's recent commissions have been murals, I'd forgotten how lovely his detail work can be." She laid the root card of Wood carefully back atop the pile. The rich greens and browns of the "Forest Primeval" seemed to glow with their own light, like sunshine slanting through innumerable leaves. Molin Torchholder's demand had for the moment given the marriage mural precedence over Kama's commission for the cards, even though the deck was nearly finished now. Illyra was nearly well now too, in body. But she and Gilla had grown accustomed to each other's company.
"I hate them," said Illyra in a low voice.
Gilla looked back at the couch, an angry defense of Lalo's work trembling on her tongue. The S'danzo's eyes were closed, but the slow tears were welling from beneath her shut lids. Gilla stifled her anger and went to the other woman, took a damp cloth, and began to sponge her cheeks and brow.
"My dear, my dear, it's all right now...." It was the instinctive murmur of a mother to a sick child.
"It is not all right!" said Illyra in a hard voice. "To See, I must open myself to the Great Pattern-become one with it and channel the part that relates to the question the querent has asked. But I do not believe in the Pattern anymore."
Gilla nodded. Men killing each other was one thing, whether in battle or in the back streets of Sanctuary, but how could there be any purpose in the senseless death of a child? Memory brought her a sudden image of Ganner's eighth birthday, when Lalo had brought him clay and a set of modeler's tools. The light in the boy's face had stamped him and Lalo with a single identity as they explored the new medium. Gan-ner was the only one of the children to have inherited any of Lalo's skill. But he would never bring beauty into the world now. She swallowed over the ache in her throat and turned to Illyra again.
"More than half the deck is painted now. Kama will force me to read for her when the rest are done and I cannot," said Illyra bitterly. "I will fail her, and then she will take her revenge on Dubro. By all of Sanctuary's useless gods, I hate her! Her, and the rest of those blade-thirsty, swaggering bullies who have destroyed my world!"
"Will you find a sword of your own and go after her?" asked Gilla, trying to channel into scorn the hatred that was making her own belly bum. "Illyra, be sensible. Try to get well, and be thankful that's not your kind of power!"
"My kind of power..." said the S'danzo reflectively. "No -when men bum my people for sorcery it's not because they fear the simple power of steel...." Illyra fell silent. Her dark hair swung down across her breast, and Gilla could not see her eyes, but there was something in the other woman's stillness that sent a chill down her back despite the heat of the day.
"It's forbidden..." said the S'danzo very softly, "even the little teaching they allowed me said that. But what do I care for anyone else's rules now?"
"Illyra, what are you going to do?" Gilla asked apprehensively as the other woman levered herself painfully off the couch and went to the worktable where the cards that Lalo had finished were piled.
"Everything goes two ways," Illyra said conversationally. "See this card, for instance, the Three of Flames. If it were to come up in a reading, it could mean things getting darker or brighter for the querent, depending on the context. And this one. Steel-" She held up the Two of Ores. "In the usual position, with the swords pointing toward the querent, it's a death card, but reversed it means doom for his enemy."
"So does a real sword," answered Gilla.
Illyra nodded. "So does magic. Power is power. Good or evil lies not in the tool, but in the user's intent and will."
Gilla stared at her. "You can use the cards as a weapon?" Her heart began to pound heavily, and she realized suddenly how she had envied the gifts that Lalo had acquired so inad-vertently and used with such trepidation.
Illyra was sorting through the cards that Lalo had completed. "Perhaps-if the right cards are here..." She selected one, another, then three more. "When I read, the querent and the cards and I are all linked in the Pattern and the cards that come up reflect his relationship to it. The Pattern is the Cause; the cards are the effect. My Seeing only translates to the querent what is already there."
Gilla nodded, and the S'danzo went on, "But if I were to set the cards into a pattern, and lock it with my will-"
"You could reverse the process?" whispered Gilla. "Make the cards the Cause?"
"I could... I would... I will!"
Suddenly Illyra gathered up the cards and carried them to a parquetry table in the comer of the room. She held up a card and showed it to Gilla. "Here, this shall stand for the querent and its surrounding atmosphere...." She laid it down.
Gilla squinted, seeing only the sun shining brightly over a painted city. "Which one is that?"
"We call it Zenith-the noonday sun-but your husband has painted a city as well as the sun." Illyra held her hands above it and stood for a moment with brow wrinkled in concentration and eyes closed. "As thou wert Zenith, so thou shall become this city!" she murmured. She dipped her finger into the paint water and nicked a drop upon the card, then bent and breathed upon it. "By wind and water do I name thee Sanctuary, the querent of this reading, and the subject of this casting!"
She shouldn't be doing this, thought Gilla, watching Illyra search through the cards she had selected. There was a focus to her movements that held the attention. Gilla remembered how Roxane had compelled the eye, and shuddered. But she had never understood what needs drove the Nisibisi sorceress, who for all her great knowledge had no part in ordinary women's joys and pains. Illyra, she understood only too well. We shouldn't be doing this! she thought then.