"Don't scoff, darling. She's clever. You'll see."
She pressed on, through the rollers of an air-lock, down a gallery, into the outer section dominated by booths and sideshows. The place was empty now; the circus had yet to come to life. Beyond a flap painted with garish symbols a candle flickered in a crested bowl. In its light the cowled figure sitting hunched in a chair behind a table looked shrunken and dead.
"Krystyna?" Reiza stepped closer to the table. "Are you asleep? I know it's a bad time but-"
"Step aside, child. I know why you are here."
An elementary trick of the trade; why else should people come to a fortune teller but to have their fortunes told? One augmented by others; the candle with its flickering, disguising flame, the tang of incense with its misting fumes, arcane symbols and mysterious objects. The woman herself.
She was old, gnarled with passing years, her face seamed and scored deep with a mesh of lines. The cowl framed it with kindly shadows and provided a setting for her eyes. Small, deep-set, palely blue and as penetrating as a tempered blade.
"Sit!" The hand matched the face, twisted, a blunted claw marred with lumps. Her voice was the thin rustle of dried leaves in a winter's gale. "Sit!" Again the hand stabbed at the chair facing her across the table. "You hesitate, young man. Do you doubt my powers?"
"No, Mother." Dumarest sat in the proffered chair. "I know you are expert at what you do."
"A sly tongue. Do you mock me?"
"No." Dumarest was genuine in his denial. "I would never do that."
A woman, old, twisted with crippling infirmities, fighting the hampering effect of her afflictions. One alone or with a youngster to whom she would teach her trade. Paying her way and giving her clients what they expected. For that, if nothing else, she deserved respect.
"There is truth in you," she said. "And kindness. And, I think, some mercy."
"And love," said Reiza. "That too."
"Love," said the old woman. "Always they want to be loved. To find love and be given it. Well, I tell them what they want to hear and more often than not things they would be better not knowing. A fault, but I grow old and impatient. Why peer into the future if you are afraid of what you might see? Death, despair, pain, betrayal-such things are inevitable. But I try to be kind. Always I try to be that."
Conning the punters with slick words and facile phrases. Quizzing them by indirection, milking them of details to be fed back later in different words and subtle suggestions. Using misdirection, hesitation, ambiguity and guile to weave the client into a mesh of self-betrayal. An art at which Dumarest guessed she was an expert.
"You know too much," she said. "And, at the same time, not enough. For those I choose I give genuine service. But, you understand, I cannot be precise as to moments of time. Nor as to exact means of action. Events take their own time and operate in their own manner. For example, that you will die is inevitable. But just how and when-"
"You warned of Hayter's death," said Reiza. "You said how he would end."
"A man plays with fire-what are the chances of his getting burned?" A shrug moved the fabric of the cowled robe. "Some things are obvious and cast their shadow before them. Others-" Again the shrug. "Give me your palm."
Dumarest felt the twisted fingers grasp his own as he obeyed. A nail traced a path, paused, traced another.
"No." She released his hand. "For you there is a better way. Here!"
Dumarest looked at the stack of cards she set before him. Old, the backs a mass of complex lines, cracked but bearing the gleam of applied polish. The size was wrong for a normal deck.
"Shuffle them," said Krystyna. "Run them through your hands. Impregnate them with your personal magnetism. Their order will illustrate your fate."
"Do it," urged Reiza. "Please, Earl."
Dumarest picked up the cards, riffled them, shuffled with a gambler's skill.
The old woman said, "You handle them well. You know what they are?"
"Yes."
"Then cut them into two piles. Rest a hand on each and concentrate on your present situation. Then shuffle again and hand them to me."
She waited until it was done then sat with the deck poised in her hands.
"Once, so legend has it, these were the only cards known. Men depicted gods and natural hazards thinking that the symbol gave dominance over the thing and that, by controlling a part of the universe, they could govern the whole. They were wrong but later, perhaps because men grew afraid of alien places and needed something to guide them, the original pack was enlarged to what it is today. Every hazard and circumstance which could affect a person was isolated, compacted and illustrated to form the Arcana Universalis. Fire, flood, storm, war, space, bursting suns. Of course each symbol has extended meanings. For example space does not just mean the void between the stars but a gap, a distance, a setting apart. The art lies in the interpretation. I could set out these cards and you would see things of personal import but because you have intimate knowledge of your life your vision would be narrowed against the wider implications. And you, child-" She glanced at Reiza. "You know even less and so would look for what you wanted to see. Love, fecundity, happiness. I?" The eyes closed, opened again. "I read the truth."
Her twisted fingers slid a card from the top of the deck and laid it face-down on the table before Dumarest.
"Your card," she told him. "Your significator."
She spread others around in a ritual pattern, face-up, bright symbols glowing in the guttering light of the candle. Reiza drew in her breath as the skeleton appeared.
"Earl-"
"Death," said Krystyna. "The fate which waits us all. But also it is a transformation. Here it signifies an end; the cards before it carry your fate."
She gloomed over them, a finger touching, passing on, her withered lips pursing, moving as if she mumbled esoteric incantations. Dumarest watched with inward amusement. Beside him Reiza was a coiled spring.
"Earl," she whispered. "I'm frightened. I shouldn't have brought you here. If the reading is bad-God! How can I bear to lose you?"
He said, "There's nothing to be afraid of. It's just a game."
"A game?" Krystyna lifted her head with a sudden motion and sat poised like a snake about to strike. "Aye," she said after a moment. "A game as all life is a game. One I can read-or would you prefer not to know the things which wait?"
"Let's go, Earl." Reiza tugged at his arm. "It was a mistake to come. Please, Earl."
"No." He freed his arm, his eyes holding those of the old woman. "When you're ready, Mother."
Again she brooded over the cards.
"First the beginning for the child is father to the man and as the twig is bent so the tree will grow." Her finger touched a card next to the significator. "The Egg, symbol of life and fertility but also of change for from the egg springs a different form. And this is touched by conflict, desolation, catastrophe." The finger moved from card to card, pausing at the depiction of a man dressed in tattered garments, smiling, a staff bearing a bundle resting on one shoulder. "The Rover. Restless, always moving, ever seeking the unknown beyond the horizon. A fool, some would say, leaving reality in pursuit of a dream. A man without faith and faith is not for him." The finger moved to the symbol of a priest, the card reversed. "The comfort of spiritual assurance is absent and he lacks the support of the church. But it does not work against him for it lies on the dexter side. A neutrality. This is not." The finger moved, came to rest. "The Cradle. Also reversed and therefore empty. There will be no fruitful issues or successful outcomes."
"No." Reiza dug her fingers into Dumarest's arm as she whispered the denial. "She's wrong, Earl. She has to be."
He rested his hand on hers, giving her the comfort of his touch as the old woman droned on. Looking at the cards she touched, the Wheel, the Ship, the Pylon. Reiza drew in her breath as the gnarled finger came to rest on the Skull.