“So tell me,” Brand said, breaking the silence. “What is your business in Kurast?”
Cain looked up from his plate. His eyes looked glassy in the firelight. “I’d rather not say,” he said. “But I can offer you payment for your hospitality.” He took out a gold nugget and placed it on the table.
“Fair enough. But I won’t take your gold. We don’t get many visitors here, but those who come tend to stay for longer than they expect.”
“We’ll be gone in the morning.”
“Perhaps.” Brand shook his arms to free them from the cuffs of his robe, and the fabric fluttered. A deck of cards appeared in his hand. “You look like you’re searching for something, my friends. Let me offer you a reading. The cards can suggest a possible future and can help you find the right way forward.”
He let the cards drift through his long fingers like water flowing over a drop, deftly flicking one out to the table, then another, and another. They were oversized and thick, painted with bright red and black figures; the first showed a scroll, the next a sorcerer with a serpent around his waist, the third a man on a wheeled chariot being pulled by two mules, one black, one white. “Taratcha is a misunderstood art,” Brand said. He stopped the soft rain of cards from one hand to another and placed the remaining deck on the table. “The word comes from turaq, which means ‘pathways.’ There are always multiple paths open to you. There is nothing inherently wrong with the cards themselves. But there are those who shy away from the truth, finding it too difficult to bear.” He tapped an upturned card with a shiny fingernail. “The Scroll of Fate. Changes are coming, your destiny awaits you. Forces are gathering on the horizon, something momentous.” He tapped another. “You see here, the Sorcerer. I can tell you are under great stress, and time is a heavy weight upon your necks. There are heavy choices to make, but you are resourceful. This quest consumes you, yet you are uncertain about its outcome. The answers may come from within, or from another who can bring about a transformation.” He tapped a third card. “Here, the Wheeled Chariot. It moves between spiritual planes. This can represent a great battle that can be won, if you have the strength to see it through. But it requires control over forces that may consume you and opposing needs that may pull you apart. You must overcome these opposites and bring them together in order to triumph. The Wheeled Chariot suggests a great conviction to overcome, but also an inner focus that may destroy others around you.”
Brand swept up the cards, then picked up the deck again. This time when he let the cards flow, flicking out one after another, he kept his hypnotic gaze on Cain’s face, and the cards seemed to float in slow motion before settling before them, face up. Leah saw a hooded man with wings of light, a warrior swinging a giant sword, and a tall, dark tower struck by lightning. The last one disturbed her; she could see figures falling from the tower, looks of terror on their faces.
“Justice,” Brand said. “This is paired with the second card, Judgment. There is a great tragedy in your past that must be overcome, balance restored. You are preoccupied with that tragedy, even as you try to ignore it. But it will be resurrected whether you like it or not. You must face a moment of reckoning for what you have done.”
He tapped the last card with the tall building rising up from a jagged, broken plain, its black surface cutting through storm clouds and looming over what appeared to be a city far below. Leah looked more closely at what appeared to be creatures below it, reaching up for the falling men. There was something terrifying about the card, a darkness that spread through the room. The card’s contents seemed to change as she watched, growing more detailed, the creatures writhing upon its surface.
“The Black Tower,” Brand said, his eyes focused upon Cain’s face, a slight smile on his lips. “An ill omen, I’m afraid. Chaos and destruction may come to you. Something long lost will rise again. Along with it, an epiphany and, again, transformation, as with the Sorcerer. This may be brought about by you or another, but it will come, and you will never be the same.”
Leah’s stomach churned. The card’s contents swirled and shifted, and she looked away. For a moment, what she saw did not register to her shocked senses; the food on her plate had changed. Instead of the remnants of a fine meal, the plate held strings of raw, glistening gristle and matted fur, along with a long, hairless tail curled across its edge that twitched once, and was still.
Leah shoved the plate away from her in terror and disgust as Brand appeared to grow in size, looming over the table like some kind of giant. As the room started to spin and it became harder to breathe, Leah began to see him as a monstrous, beady-eyed crow, head to one side, studying them as a bird might study a carcass on the road before pecking at the meat.
A woman came to clear her plate. The woman did not look at her or speak at all, and Leah noticed bruises on her neck, as if she’d been choked. She wanted to scream, but something was wrong with her throat. The room still spun lazily around her, but she could not make herself move. Her body clenched down hard, threatening to throw up all the food she had eaten.
“I don’t feel so well,” she said thickly. “I don’t—I don’t think—”
Lord Brand stood up so quickly the chair nearly tipped over. “You must be exhausted from your long journey,” he said. “Let me show you to your rooms. We can talk more tomorrow.”
Cain tried to stand as well. The old man’s eyes were drooping, his body sagging as if he could barely hold himself upright. Leah couldn’t seem to focus. She could not move her legs.
More of the gray, lifeless townspeople materialized from nowhere and helped them from their seats, holding their arms as they followed Brand like dull sheep through the huge manor.
The rooms seemed to go on forever, with many archways and doors leading off in different directions. Most of the doors were closed, and Leah heard thumps and low moans coming from behind them. The ceiling lowered itself above their heads, until it seemed they were walking through a narrow tunnel, cobwebs hanging in the corners, the walls dripping with moisture and covered in a strange green moss. She thought she might be dreaming, but the hands holding her up felt real; she looked at them and saw curved, yellow talons, and she tried again to scream but managed only a whisper.
Finally they ascended a stone staircase. The manor seemed to go on forever, the upper hallway receding to a pinpoint beyond these chambers, so that Leah got the feeling she was in some kind of magical structure that might house thousands. When she glanced behind them, she did not see the staircase they had ascended, even though it should have been right there.
The others were carrying her entire weight now, and when she looked at the old man, his head was slumped, his feet dragging along the floor. Darker shadows lurked, and flickering candles were set at far intervals in small recesses in the walls, leading to a set of adjoining rooms.
“Here we are,” Brand said, his long arms outstretched, directing them into a sleeping chamber with a four-poster bed in the middle that was large enough for five people. The thought of his touching her made Leah want to scream. “This should suffice. The young lady may sleep here, if she prefers.” He motioned to a second, smaller room, connected by an open door.
Cain stumbled, and Brand was at his side in an instant, saying something in his ear in a voice too low for Leah to hear. He led Cain to the bed and sat him down on it. “Sleep as long as you like. We hope you’ll be comfortable here.”
Leah tried to protest, to say something that would break the silence and make Cain wake up from his trance; but she found herself growing ever sleepier, her limbs being drawn down toward the floor and becoming impossibly heavy, and her eyes closing of their own accord, and she shuffled forward to the other room, nodding. She thought she saw Gillian standing there, waiting with open arms, but it was the Gillian she remembered from years ago, and not the one who had lost her mind and tried to kill them all. This Gillian was kind and gentle, and sang to her at night, and tucked her in as a real mother should.