“I'll count myself lucky to have learned anything,” I said. “Dad's still alive. That's more than we knew before.”
“I suppose,” he said.
Actually, it created more questions than in answered. What had he been doing? Why couldn't he talk? And why hadn't he come back here after his audience with King Uthor?
Sighing, I picked up the deck of Trumps and flipped through them quickly, not letting my attention rest on any single card longer than necessary. Freda… Blaise… Davin… Pella… all my half-brothers and half-sisters were there, plus several other people I didn't recognize. For a second I toyed with the idea of contacting Freda to tell her what had happened and get her advice, but then I decided against it. She had orders not to talk to anyone via Trump to protect her location. I didn't want to endanger her. Considering how many relatives we had already lost, and how determined our enemies seemed to be, leaving her alone seemed like the safest plan for now. For all I knew, that serpent-creature might be spying on us again.
“Is this an extra set of Trumps?” I asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“I'd like to keep it for a few days, if that's all right.”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
We stayed in the library for a few hours longer, talking more like two old friends catching up with each other than brothers. It felt good to sit and take a moment to catch my thoughts.
“How did you come to know so much about magic and Shadows?” I asked him at one point. “Dad doesn't seem to be the best teacher…”
Aber gave a derisive snort. “The only thing I learned from him was how to make Trumps—and I mostly taught myself after watching him make one. I used trial-and-error until I got it to work. It was my Aunt Lanara who taught me the most, though. A true Lady of Chaos. Very strong, though she didn't approve of Shadow worlds, or of Dad. Still doesn't, I suppose.”
“I thought only Locke's mother came from Chaos—”
“That sounds like Locke, all right,” he said sarcastically. “He thought that only his mother was good enough. She is a first cousin to King Uthor, you know. It broke her heart when Locke sided with Dad and ran off to have adventures in Shadow.”
“And your mother?” I asked. “What about her?”
“Not nearly so grand or well connected as Locke's. But she loved Dad, though he tossed her aside and vanished into Shadow shortly after I was born. She's dead now, and I don't remember much of her.”
“What happened?”
“She tried to follow Dad into Shadow, and she couldn't handle it…” His voice broke a little. “They found her dead. Strangled. For a while everyone thought Dad did it, but it turned out to be a cult of volcano-worshippers. They made her a sacrifice.”
“I'm sorry,” I said, nodding sympathetically. Her end must not have been a pretty one. I remembered how, on my first trip to Juniper, Dad had laid traps—ranging from tornadoes to giant carnivorous bats—for anyone following us. If Aber's mother had run into one of those, I didn't wonder that she had lost her life.
He sighed philosophically. “It was a long time ago. Shadows were new back then. People weren't as experienced with them as they are now, nor as wary.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Shadows were new? What are you talking about?”
He looked at me oddly. “Just what I said.”
“How can they be new?”
“Well… they just suddenly appeared one day. All these Shadow worlds… Juniper, your Ilerium, all the others… they haven't existed long. One day, they simply sprang into existence. I thought everyone knew that.”
“Not me,” I said. Once more I found myself rearranging my mental view of the universe. “I assumed they always existed. Everyone kept calling them Shadows… I thought they were shadows cast by the Courts of Chaos. At least, that's what Freda told me, I think…”
“It's one theory,” he said with a shrug. “Chaos does cast Shadows. We're in one now—the Beyond. It's the closest shadow to the Courts, and it's always been here, as far as I know. It's so close it's considered part of the Courts of Chaos. But the other Shadows… the nice ones, where Dad and everyone else likes to roam… they didn't exist when my mother was young.”
“When did they appear?”
He thought for a minute. “I don't quite know. Maybe fifty years ago, as Chaos counts time. Maybe a little more.”
“And they just suddenly appeared?”
“Well… it wasn't quite that simple, or so I'm told. I wasn't there, after all. According to my grandmother, a huge storm descended on the Courts of Chaos. No one had ever seen anything like it before. The sky went black and quiet. The stars disappeared. Then the ground began to shake and split apart, and whole cities were destroyed. Thousands died. Only afterward did things begin to return to normal… though—at least according to my grandmother—nothing was ever quite as good as it had been before.”
“How old is our father?” I asked, feeling a strange prickling sense of foreboding.
He shrugged. “I'm not sure anymore. Time runs differently in Shadows. He's been out there a long time. But his oldest child—as Chaos reckons time—must be thirty-five or forty now.”
“Then he's old enough to have lived through that storm—the one that came before these new Shadows appeared?”
“Sure. I know he is. Why?”
“Oh… no reason. Just curious.”
I did not voice my sudden suspicion. He was old enough. He was interested in science and experiments. What if our father not only enjoyed these new Shadows… but had actually done something to create them?
No, that was impossible—how could one man create thousands upon thousands of worlds? No single person could possibly wield so much power. He would be like a god. And if our father did have godlike powers, he certainly hadn't shown them. He had allowed us all to be trapped in Juniper. He had let his children die at the hands of unknown enemies. No, it was a crazy idea, and I pushed it to the back of my mind.
And yet, some distant part of me noted, such power would make him a man to be feared. It would explain why someone was trying to kill him… and the rest of us too… wouldn't it?
Chapter 16
Several hours later, the storm still raged outside, and it seemed to be growing worse. I heard wind constantly now, howling like a wild animal. This time at least I knew it was real, not something imagined or hallucinated. Thunder growled constantly, too, a low, steady rumble.
Twice Aber and I walked back to the courtyard door and looked out, and the last time we saw three distant tornadoes over the wall, their funnels black as night as they twisted and turned. And yet they did not seem to be gliding across the land, the way tornadoes did in Ilerium… these seemed rooted in place, swaying back and forth like the pendulums of some enormous clock.
“Have you ever seen tornadoes here before?” I asked Aber.
“No,” he said, “and I don't think it's a good sign.”
“Can you do anything about them?”
He gave me a funny look. “I think you have an exaggerated idea of my magical abilities.”
At that, I laughed. “It seems I've always underestimated people. About time I started overestimating them!”
He laughed too, but uncertainly.
After a long break, when it seemed they wouldn't be able to go back outside because of the storms, the guards asked for permission to resume their exercises in the front entry hall.
“Go ahead,” I told Captain Neole, looking at Aber for guidance. As I expected, he gave a subtle half nod. “Just don't break anything.”
They made room by moving the lamps, braziers, and odd bits of furniture to one side. I had to admit the chamber was big enough, and as long as they watched out for the rows of tall stone columns running down the center, they seemed in no immediate danger.