“It was only a dream.”
“Perhaps I believe because you saw it in a dream.”
“As you say,” I said with a small shrug. Most of the time, I put as little stock in dreams as in fortune-tellers.
Sitting back, I regarded her and her cards. It seemed she shared Dworkin’s strengths as well as his flaws. He had never been one to shy away from bad news, no matter how terrible. It was one lesson I had learned well from him.
I said, “Tell me about Mattus.”
“Like Alanar, he has been missing for about a year. Nobody has been able to contact him. He always had a quick temper, though, and one night he stormed off after a shouting match with Locke… and that was the last anyone heard of him.”
Locke was a disagreeable-looking, puffed-up man on one of the other Trumps I had drawn. She had mentioned him earlier, I recalled, with a disparaging note in her voice. Clearly they were at odds.
She added, “I had hoped Mattus would get over his sulk and simply show up one day, forgiving Locke and taking up where we had all left off, before…” She smiled wistfully and blinked back tears. “But that is not your concern right now, Oberon. Please, go on. Draw again.”
Quickly, I turned the next card.
“Aber,” she said. She added him to the other eight Tarot cards to form a circle around the top of the table.
I leaned forward for a better look at this prankster who painted cards so well. He was ruggedly handsome—at least as portrayed on the card—and he dressed all in deep reds, from his leggings to his tunic, from his gloves to his long, flowing cape. It was hard to tell, but I thought we looked about the same age. He had short brown hair, a close-cropped brown beard, and steady gray-green eyes. In his portrait he struck a valiant pose, but instead of a sword, he held a long paint brush. I gave a mental chuckle. Truly, he had a sense of humor that appealed to me.
I also saw a bit of Dworkin in him, the oddly whimsical side that only came out on rare occasions, usually at high holidays or festivals when he had drunk too much wine. Then he would delight one and all with small tricks of the hand, making coins appear and disappear, or recite epic tales of ancient heroes and their adventures.
It must have been a trick of the light, but as I studied Aber’s card intently, I would have sworn that it took on an almost lifelike appearance. It seemed to me that the tiny image blinked and started to turn its head—but before anything more could happen, Freda reached out and covered it with her palm.
“Do not!” she said in a warning tone.
I raised my eyes to her face, which had suddenly gone cold and hard. Perhaps, I thought, there was more to her than I first suspected. This was no mere fortune-teller, but a strong woman who had suddenly moved to action and taken charge of the situation. I admired her for that; I had never found much to like in weak-willed females. A woman of fire and steel added extra passion to a love affair.
“Why?” I asked blankly.
“It is already cramped in here. We do not need his company right now. And Father would be quite annoyed with me if I let him drag you away.”
“Very well,” I said, confused. For now, I had to trust her to look out for my best interests. Leaning back, I folded my arms and gave her my most trustworthy look. “I wasn’t trying to cause you trouble.”
She sighed, her manner softening. “No, not… trouble. Aber can be a… a distraction. That’s a good word for it. And a distraction is not what we need right now.”
I tilted my head and studied her cards from what I hoped would prove a safe distance. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that Aber’s picture had moved. But cards couldn’t come to life, could they?
After all the magic and wonders I had witnessed over the last few hours, suddenly I wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 5
I focused my attention on the pattern of cards around the table, trying to see them as Freda did. Was there a pattern? All the subjects were male, five probably dead, four definitely alive.
Somehow I had recognized two of the dead men—recognized them and knew without a doubt that they were dead. And yet I had never met them. Of the four still living, I knew only Dworkin. As I studied their features, I was fairly certain I had never seen Aber, Locke, or Fenn before.
“You’re the fortune-teller,” I said to Freda. “What do you make of this pattern?”
“I’m not sure.” She bit her lip, gazing from one miniature portrait to the next, not letting her gaze linger long. “It’s only people, thus no clues as to past, present, or future destinations. Clearly the whole family is tied up with you in events to come, but with war on the horizon, that may not be much of a surprise. Father and the others, dead or alive, all play a part in it—but what part?”
“You tell me.” Leaning back, I studied her.
She seemed truly puzzled. Her brow furrowed; she drummed her fingertips on the tabletop. Clearly she took her card reading quite seriously. Finally she leaned back with a sigh.
“I see more questions than answers,” she admitted.
“Do you want me to turn another card over?”
“Just one. That is more than I usually use for a personal reading, but in this case…”
I turned over the next Trump. This one showed a place I’d never been before—a gloomy keep half lost in night and storm, half illuminated by dazzling light. I say half because the sky seemed to be split almost in two, with star-pocked darkness to the left and a dazzling orange-yellow-red sky on the right, like a bottle of differently colored sands that had been shaken so that you could still see individual grains, but no one color ruled.
My palms itched. I could not look at it for more than a second or two without glancing away. I had the sensation that this mad picture was no artist’s whim, but an actual place… a place at once dark and light, night and day, cold and hot, without season, shapeless and changing. I did not like it.
“The Grand Plaza of the Courts of Chaos?” she said. “That is odd. It should not be there. I did not even know I had that particular card with me… I had not meant to bring it!”
There it was again—Chaos.
Wherever the Grand Plaza was, it didn’t look welcoming, I decided with a little shudder. The buildings, the lightning-shapes in the air, the very essence of the place—it all made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and gooseflesh rise on my arms.
On impulse, I reached out and turned the card face down. The instant I no longer looked upon it, with its unnatural angles and weird geography, I began to feel better. I realized I’d begun to sweat all over just from having the Trump where I could see it.
“Why did you do that?” Freda asked. Luckily, she made no move to turn the card back over.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “It felt like the right thing to do. Somehow, I didn’t want to look at it.”
I don’t think I could have looked at it any longer. Just thinking about it made my head ache.
“I see.” Again her brow furrowed. “Mattus felt the same way,” she said. “We had to all but drag him there when…”
“When what?”
She hesitated. “When he came of age.”
I gestured toward the face-down card. “Does it mean anything? My finding the Courts of Chaos?”
“Every action has meaning with the Trumps. They reflect the world around them.”
“What is the meaning this time?”
“I… cannot say.”
I swallowed, suddenly uneasy again. Cannot say—or won’t? Her choice of words left me wondering, and her suddenly nervous manner gave me the distinct impression that she hadn’t told me everything she’d seen.