Swallowing, I let the curtain fall. Thus hidden, I continued to study him. These might be Dworkin’s guards, I thought, but they weren’t human. Nor did they have the unpleasant features of hell-creatures. So who—or what—were they?
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to turn away. I’d seen enough. No sense brooding on questions I couldn’t yet answer.
My attention now focused on Freda, who had begun to shuffle her Tarot cards and lay them out again. Every few minutes she rearranged them into a different pattern, sometimes circular, sometimes diagonal, once square with a cascading pattern in the center.
“Solitaire?” I asked, trying to get her attention. Perhaps I could learn more from her.
“No.”
“I prefer games for two players, myself.”
“Games are for children and old men.”
I leaned forward, tilting my head and looking at her deck more carefully now. Rather than the standard Tarot cards such as any wisewoman or soothsayer might employ, filled with religious and astrological figures, these showed men and women I didn’t recognize and places I had never been—a strange castle, a dark forest glade, even a romantic beach bathed in the warm glow of moonlight… or moonslight, rather, for two moons hung in the sky—the artist’s idea of a joke, or a real place? I could no longer be sure.
Freda gathered the cards, shuffled seven times, and dealt out fifteen, three lines of five cards each. Only portraits of men and women came up. Most had features similar enough to Dworkin’s to be related to him.
“What do you see?” I finally asked after the waiting became impossible to bear.
“Our family.” She pointed to the cards before her. “Nine princes of Chaos, all torn asunder. Six princesses of Chaos, where do they wander.”
“I know fortune-tellers are always vague,” I said, taking a stab at humor. “But at least it rhymes, almost.”
“It is part of an old nursery verse:
I had never heard it before. And yet it did fit.
“A bit grim,” I said.
She shrugged. “I did not write it.”
With a start, I realized we were no longer speaking Tantari, but some other language, a richer one with a lilting rhythm. It spilled from her tongue like water from a glass, and I understood every word as though I had been speaking it all my life. How did I know it? More magic? Had I come under some spell without even realizing it?
Stammering a bit, unable to help myself, I asked her, “W-what language is this?”
“It’s Thari, of course,” she said, giving me the sort of odd, puzzled look you’d give the village idiot when he asked why water was wet.
Thari… It sounded right, somehow, and I knew on some inner level she spoke the truth. But how did I know it? When had I learned it?
My every thought and memory told me I never had.
And yet… and yet, now I spoke it like I’d known it my entire life. And I found it increasingly difficult to recall Tantari, my native tongue, as though it belonged to some distant, hazy dream.
“You have been in Shadow a long time, haven’t you?” she said with a sigh. “Sometimes it is easy to forget what that can do to you…”
In Shadow? What did that mean?
Remembering the look she’d given me when I asked what language we spoke, I bit back my questions. I wouldn’t appear foolish or ignorant again, if I could help it.
Instead, I said, “Yes, I suppose I have been gone too long.” I didn’t know what else to say, and I didn’t want to volunteer too much and reveal my ignorance. “I hadn’t seen Dworkin in many years.”
“You still look confused,” she said, and then she gave a kinder laugh and reached out to pat my hand. Her skin, soft as silk, smelled of lavender and honey. “It does not matter.”
I smiled. Now we were getting somewhere.
“Wouldn’t you be confused, too?” I asked. “Pulled from my bed in the middle of the night to fight hell-creatures, trundled off in this ludicrous carriage, then thrown in here for a frantic midnight ride—all with no questions answered?”
“Probably.” She cleared her throat. “Thari is the primal tongue,” she said matter-of-factly, as though lecturing a small child who hadn’t learned his lessons properly. “It is the source of all languages in all the Shadow worlds. It is a part of you, just as everything around us is part of Chaos. You do remember the Courts of Chaos, don’t you?”
I shook my head, once again feeling foolish and ignorant. “Never been there, I’m afraid.”
“A pity. They are lovely, in their way.” Her eyes grew distant, remembering. I could tell she liked that place… the Courts of Chaos, she’d called it.
Hoping for more answers, I said, “It’s been quite a night. Or day now, I suppose. What do you think of all this?” I made a vague, sweeping gesture that covered the carriage, the riders, her cards. “What does it portend?”
“War is coming. All the signs are there. Everyone says so, especially Locke. He has been playing general long enough, he is bound to be good at it. But we will be safe enough in Juniper, I think. At least for now.”
“And this Juniper?”
“You have never been there, either?”
I shook my head. So much for my plan to keep my ignorance to myself.
“It is nothing like the Courts of Chaos, but for a Shadow, it is really quite lovely. Or used to be.”
That didn’t really help. So many new questions… Juniper… Shadows… the Courts of Chaos—what were they?
I glanced at the window again, thinking about Chaos. At least that name sounded familiar. Reading from the Great Book was part of every religious holiday in Ilerium, and I had heard some of the most famous passages hundreds of times over the years. Our most sacred scriptures told how the Gods of Chaos wrought the Earth from nothingness, then fought over their creation. They were supposed to be great, magical beings who would someday return to smite the wicked and reward the pious.
As a soldier, I had never put much faith in anything I couldn’t see or touch. Deep down, I had always believed the stories set forth in the Great Book were nothing more than parables designed to teach moral lessons to children. But now, after all I had seen and done this night, it began to make a certain amount of sense. If the stories were literally true…
I swallowed. The Gods of Chaos were supposed to return with fire and steel to punish those who didn’t believe. Perhaps the hell-creatures marked the beginning of their return. Perhaps we had been working against the Gods of Chaos all along and hadn’t realized it.
For they shall smite the wicked…
No, I decided, I had to have misunderstood. The scriptures didn’t fit. The hell-creatures killed everyone, from priests to tradesmen, from doddering crones to the youngest of children. No gods could have sent such an army.
What were the Courts of Chaos, and where did Dworkin fit into all of this?
Freda seemed to sense my confusion. Smiling, she reached out and patted my hand again.
“I know it’s a lot for you,” she said. “Father did you no favors in letting you grow up in a distant Shadow. But on the other hand, that may be why you are still alive when so many others are not. I think he means you for something greater.”
I frowned. “You think so? What?”
“We can try to find out.”