by Doris Egan
"Excellent," he said happily. "That's exactly what I mean. But don't be afraid of it. Look the skull in the face. That's the na' telleth way."
I laughed. "The barbarian way is to avoid."
"That way the skull finds you."
Look the skull in the face. Easier said than done. Coalis was reaching for his sun hat, gathering his robes together as he got to his feet. "I'm afraid I must hurry," he said, apologetically. "I'm expected at home. —Oh! Let's exchange books," he added, holding out his volume of Kesey. I gave him mine and took his. We stood at the front doorway for a moment and he smiled, an innocent smile for a sixteen-year-old nobly born loanshark monk. "I'm glad this business with Kade is over," he said suddenly. He turned to go out into the sunlight. Then he turned back and said, confiding, "I couldn't make head or tail of the Kesey. If you do, you must promise to explain it to me."
"I promise."
He tied his sun hat, took our front steps jauntily, and went off down the street under the row of spindly mir-andis trees.
It was a rather ordinary day, that day, the sixth of Kace. I did some chores that needed to be done, went through some records, thought about organizing the paper files and decided not to. When Ran and Sim came home, I listened to their lengthy descriptions and duly admired the sets of robes they'd ordered.
That night I lay in bed listening to one of the rare summer rainfalls. I'd been interested in what Coalis had had to say during his visit; somehow the story of Kade's dunk in the canal wasn't finished with me, whatever Ran might think. If I did pursue it, it would be on my own time, that much was clear.
Why pursue it? I couldn't presume to any claim to justice; I didn't even know Kade, and what I did know of him did not impress me. Was it just because I hated not knowing how stories come out? I had to admit that the thought that I would never know did offend my scholarly sense of neatness. Or was I just getting desperate for what Stereth called "certainty in my life"?
It would be good to have something to concentrate on, something outside myself. Lately I couldn't even concentrate on that damned book of poetry, even when I was alone and without any distractions. In fact, being alone and without any distractions was the worst of all.
What was my problem, anyway? Why couldn't I just tell Ran the idea of carrying our child scared me? But I was a product of the Athenan University. I had no evidence to offer, just nerves, and that was insufficient reason to avoid something that had to be done. (He'll lose respect for you, Theodora. —Oh, shut up.) I'd known our marriage would be complicated when I agreed to come back, but somehow I thought we could just dance around this issue.
A bad assumption for a scholar.
Ran was lying next to me, propped on one arm, looking through some papers. Minutes of the council meeting. I'd been quite interested in them till I found there was no mention of the "Theodora problem" in there; the issue had been debated "off the record." Out of respect for my privacy, no doubt, but I'd have liked to have gotten hold of a transcript so I could arm myself for the future.
I heard the papers being put down. He stretched. "You're quiet tonight. And you don't even have a book in your hand."
"I'm thinking."
"Oh?"
Perfect opportunity to bring it up— "I was thinking I'd better get my hair cut. It keeps falling in my face, unless I pin it back with ten thousand pins."
Ten Thousand Pins. The Biography of Theodora of Py-rene and Her Basic Lack of Organization. Ran rolled over a little closer. "Don't get it cut. This is the longest it's ever been."
What is this thing men have about long hair? I said, "Desire is a reflex, physical appearance an illusion."
"You've been talking to Coalis again," he said simply, making a connection that impressed me.
"He was here today. Showed me Kade's loan book, which confirmed Loden's story."
"Let's leave Loden in the mail box for tonight. Don't get your hair cut."
"It's more convenient short, I won't need to do anything with it. Have you ever noticed how in plays the hero pulls out a single pin and the heroine's hair tumbles down in a sensuous mass, just before they make passionate love? If that was me we'd be searching and pulling out pins for the next twenty minutes."
"But Theodora. I rather like searching for pins." He'd rolled over and was looking down me with all sincerity. "Let's count backward," he said. "Nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine." He slipped one out. "Nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-eight. You know, if you're going to laugh at me, we'll never get this done."
It was still raining near midnight. I lay awake, wishing for fire, flood, or earthquake; something solid and awful in the outside world that I could concentrate on. Something other than myself.
Look the skull in the face. Easy for you, Coalis.
I got out of bed and wandered into the upstairs study, bringing the leather pouch I keep behind my pillow. I sat on the carpet, opened the pouch, and took out the deck of cards Ran inherited from his grandmother.
Maybe this was a waste of time. I'd run the deck when we took on Jusik's case, and it had given straight business answers to a business question. The pack was tuned to Ran's concerns and safety; when it came to answering my personal doubts, the odds were that it would be less than helpful.
But if Coalis could look things in the face, so could I. I shuffled quickly, before I could change my mind, and started laying out cards.
The Band of Brothers. The card showed a table of six men drinking themselves into quite a happy state of inebriation. I kept my finger on the card and watched it dissolve into a room I'd never seen, a room with a huge thick glass window showing blue sky, a mahogany table, and over a dozen men wearing respectable robes sitting around a curved bench with cushions. Ran was by the window. The Taka Hospitality Building, I thought. Ran was answering something, giving short replies while one man after another made excited comments. Damn, if only the deck gave me sound as well as visual! Finally a short man with a rainbow holiday tunic under his street robe stood up and gestured wildly. Ran strode from the window, eyes blazing, spitting out words, and ended by smashing his fist on the table. The short man drew back, and everyone stopped talking. Heavens—I'd never seen Ran hit his fist on a table in his life.
I took my finger off the card when I shifted position, wondering if there was any way in the world I could get a transcript from the Net. The card turned back into the Band of Brothers, ink and color, vine leaves under the table.
An interesting window, in its way. Still, this wasn't what I was looking for, it was just a slice of an old reality. I needed better data.
A wild and grim impulse came over me. Enough of this shilly-shallying. I shuffled the card back into the pack, placed it on the floor, stood up, and went into the bathroom. There I took the beveled mirror from its hook over the sink and carried it back to the study. I laid it on the carpet, facedown.
I was looking at the plain wooden backing with its twist of wire stretching across. Once or twice in the past I'd experienced a deeper and stranger kind of card-reading; scarier, more symbolic, not just a window into normal reality. I tried to keep away from that kind of thing, generally… could I call it up now? I crossed to Ran's desk and took out an old brush-pen, and brought the inkstone he used as a paperweight to the bathroom sink to grind and wet it. When the ink seemed sufficient, I knelt down by the mirror, dipped the brush, and drew a skull-shape over the back.
It wasn't hard. The old waterstains on the wood seemed to suggest a skull before I even began, though I tried not to think about that too closely. When I completed it, I carried the pen back to the sink to wash so I wouldn't get ink on Ran's desk. I left it there to dry.
All responsibilities taken care of, I sat cross-legged by the mirror. I picked up the cards and shuffled them over it, trying to disengage my mind from the circle of daily tasks that keeps us all nose-to-the-ground until we die. It was death I was looking for… a sighting from a distance, nothing nearer, and with luck even that might be a phantom.
I waited until I didn't care whether I put down one card or another, and so I put one down. It was The Old House, a stone place in the forest, half in sunlight and half in tree-shadow. Why in the world did that turn up? A reference to the House of Cormallon? In an ordinary configuration it might suggest regrets or nostalgia… Before I could ruin the reading by analyzing it, I put my finger on the picture.
And I was standing in an old passageway, in a place half-familiar. I started walking down the passage. My footsteps made no sound. Why did I know this place?
A moldy, tattered hanging was in one doorway. I passed by and went down a staircase, feeling a terrible sense of abandonment about the building with every step I took. There was nobody living here, I was sure of that. At the end of the staircase there was a short hallway and a massive wooden door. Some kind of old moss was growing on the side of the wood. I pulled it open with an effort—and remembered suddenly how Stereth had pulled this door open once, days ago.
I was in the Poraths' house in the old quarter of town. What did this have to do with me and the other side of the mirror? I walked out onto the low wooden porch with its lacquered pillars… rotting now, with great gaps in the floor that I had to inch around. No sound of bird or insect came from the garden, overgrown and abandoned. I stepped off the porch in the unnatural silence.
I took the remains of the path through the garden to the place where we'd spoken with Jusik Porath. The silver arc in memory of Kade was gone, but there was a white marble statue in its place. And somebody was sitting where Jusik had sat, in a tangle of silk robes. He stood up, looking past me. It was Ran.
He turned toward the statue. I called "Ran!" and heard the sound echo in my head as though it only existed internally. It was the kind of sound you hear through ear coverings, though my ears were open. I walked toward him.
The statue was of me! That was somehow the most horrible touch of the night, and I felt shivers run up my arms. It wasn't a classical statue, there was no noble look on my face; it was me in one of my street outfits, looking as though someone had tipped a thin sheathing of white over my head and trapped me in a passing moment. Ran put a hand on the crook of the statue's elbow. A surface of red pooled up beneath it.
The statue was bleeding. I was vaguely aware that I was watching this from some other place, and was sorry that I'd come. More wounds appeared. Ran stripped off his outerrobe and his shirt, and tried to clean the statue off. But the blood was inexhaustible. It pooled at the statue's feet, soaked through the shirt, and left stains on Ran's face and hands and clothing.
I wanted to leave here. I wanted to leave here now. I didn't live here, right? I came from some other place. This was just a picture, I could go back if I wanted to!… If I could remember how.
I started yelling. It echoed in my head without disturbing the air around me. I was completely alone.
Chapfer 14
I woke up in my bed. The room was light. I looked around; Kylla was dozing on a cushion by the wall, the long gold string-earring in her left ear curling on her chest where the robe fell open.
I still felt unreal. I was afraid to take a step out of bed, not knowing if the floor would open beneath me or the walls would start to bleed. Somehow I'd lost control of normalcy.
Kylla's eyes opened. "Theo," she said, not that awful silence of the symbolic world of the cards, but "Theo," like any summer afternoon. The world righted itself, as quickly as waking up from a nightmare and suddenly knowing what was true and what wasn't. "Are you all right?" she asked, getting up and coming over to the bed.
"I guess. What happened?"
"Wait." She walked to the door and called, "She's awake!" Then she came back to the bed. "Theo, darling, I understand you've been messing with magic that you shouldn't."
"I've done it before—" I began to protest, but she put a finger on my lips.
"Save it for Ran. I'm sure he'll have lots to say."
I supposed that he would. Ran is not one of those people who are above second-guessing you. Kylla busied herself putting the cushions back on the cedar chest, then picked up a glass of water she had ready and waiting on the side of the sleeping platform and handed it to me. I drank it to please her, though I wasn't thirsty.
Ran appeared, fully dressed. I wondered what time it was. He came over and sat on the side of the platform. He took my hand. Then he said, "What in the world did you think you were doing?"
By all means, let's not waste time on being sentimental. "Come on, Ran, it was just a normal run of the cards."
"I don't have to carry you, unconscious, out of the study after a normal run of the cards. You don't start screaming during a normal run of the cards."
"All right, I grant you, you might have a point—"
"During a normal run of the cards," he said, "you maintain control."
Oh-oh. The lecture on "the most dangerous thing"—
"The most dangerous thing you can do with magic is to let it have the least bit of random freedom! You have to define and control every variable! Sorcery is not a place to have a na' telleth attitude!"
This is the one topic I never fool with Ran about. I made myself look attentive and embarrassed, and in fact it was not at all difficult.
He said, more quietly, "Theodora, I hesitate to say this, but—were you asking an open-ended question of the cards?"
"I've asked general questions before," I said, trying to recall exactly what my state of mind had been last night— death, children, memories of the assassin in the marketplace, all mixed up together. Perhaps I had been a little too open-ended in my worries.
"You've asked general questions before, but not when you use that na' telleth technique, that wipe-your-mind and see what happens thing that you do. You know I don't like it when you experiment. The cards are a perfectly reasonable source of information when you use them as a simple window. So use them that way, Theodora. Half the time when you use this off-the-wall method we get symbolic answers we can't even interpret!"
"I'm sorry if I worried you."
He sighed. "What where you so curious about, anyway, that you had to get up in the middle of the night and do dangerous experiments to find out?"
I was not up to opening that discussion now. I felt wrung-out, as though I'd just recovered from a long illness. "Can we go into it later?"
He hesitated. His face went expressionless. "Of course," he said stiffly. "We can discuss it some other time. I have to call Mira-Stoden anyway and arrange to postpone my trip."
"What trip?"
"We decided in council that I'd arbitrate Jula's dispute in person. It'll probably take a couple of days, it's not the sort of thing to try over the Net."
"Why are you postponing it? Did something else happen?"
"Yes, Theodora, I picked you up off the floor of the study."
"Oh." He really did not look pleased with me at all. "Look, you don't have to stick around for me, I'm fine."
"I'll stay."
"Honestly, I'd prefer it if you went."
He was silent. I said, "I'm perfectly well."
Finally he said, "You want me to leave."
"Well, why get the council any more annoyed than we have already?" And I didn't want to face all the questions I knew he'd have as soon as he got off the Net.
He stood up. "As you wish." He certainly didn't sound any happier about it or me. "I'll see that it doesn't last beyond noon tomorrow." That last came out almost like a warning. He added, "Sim will be here, and Kylla will look in on you tonight."
Belatedly, it seemed to occur to him that he might ask Kylla how she felt about that. "Ky, you won't have any problem dropping over, will you?"
Before she could answer, I said, "It's not necessary, Ky. Last night was a fluke. I'm all right now, really."
"I'll come by this evening, just the same," she said.
So Ran left, looking dissatisfied.
To give you an idea of my state of mind as we approached High Summer Week, I suppose I should mention
that at least once every few days I found myself sharply reliving those seconds in the sorcerer's tent in Trade Square. I'd heard of people flashing back to traumatic moments, and I don't know if this was what was meant by it or not. I was never in any doubt as to where I really was, or what was really happening, but in the midst of walking down the street or opening up a food container, or—most often—lying in bed waiting to fall asleep—I would suddenly find myself, double-vision-like, inside an amazingly vivid memory of those few seconds. I could feel the grit under my hands when I hit the ground, see that knife looming up, and sense the horrible twisting in my stomach that had taken place at that moment.
I experienced it again, after Kylla and Ran had left and I was sitting in the larder spooning jam onto a piece of bread. Interesting, said a detached part of my mind, as jam dribbled onto my fingers. It didn't do a lot for the appetite, though.
"Are you finished with that jam?" asked Sim's voice.
I turned around. "Oh. Sorry, yes, here you are."
"Thank you, my lady."
"You know, you can call me Theodora. We are cousins."
He took a big bite of bread and jam.
As he chewed away, I said, "So you're taking a holiday. Have you been to the Lavender Palace yet?"
He shook his head.
"The Lantern Gardens? The Imperial Park?"
"No, my lady."
I didn't correct him. "Well, do you want to go out? I'm tired of being a burden on society. Go on, see the sights."
"No, thank you, my lady."
"There's a flyer race in Goldenweed Fields today."
"No, thank you."
It was clear that Ran had gotten in before me. He, on the other hand, felt free to go off to Mira-Stoden by himself, while not bothering to ask my permission before chaining this babysitter to me. I pried the jam pot away from Sim and spooned out another sliceful, thinking vengeful thoughts. It was nice to be angry at somebody else for a while.
The doorbells rattled furiously and I put down my breakfast and went to see who it was. Sim was already checking the spyplate. "Nobody I know," he said to me.
