by Lynn Abbey
The S’danzo was roughly Cauvin’s age, dark-haired, thin, and sun-starved as though she rarely left her curtained chamber. Her clothes were drab, nothing like the legendary layers of color that came to Cauvin’s mind whenever he heard the word “S’danzo” spoken—but, then, the legendary S’danzo had vanished from Sanctuary long before he’d been born, vanished on their own or massacred by the Hand.
Not to contradict Soldt, at least not to his froggin’ face, but to Cauvin’s understanding, the reason there weren’t any S’danzo in Sanctuary had nothing to do with any curses laid on the S‘danzo or the city. Shite for sure, the fortune-tellers simply weren’t welcome. Thirty-odd years earlier, long before the Mother of Chaos stuck Her bloody Hand in Sanctuary, why hadn’t any of them warned their neighbors what was coming? Maybe they couldn’t have saved everyone or stopped anything, but a few families might have gotten away. Instead, the S’danzo had taken the cowards’ way, saving their own necks—most of them, anyway—leaving everyone else to suffer.
As men and women, most of Sanctuary would have lit out, same as the S’danzo, but as a community, the city had a long, unforgiving memory.
Elemi said, “I’ve been expecting a stranger since yesterday—you, I suppose.” She spoke Wrigglie, but not like someone born in Sanctuary.
Cauvin waited until she’d closed the door and bolted it before saying—“I’m not a stranger, Elemi. My name is—”
“I don’t want to know your name. It is enough that you know mine.”
The room was stifling, but it might have been a windy winter day on the wharf for all the warmth in Elemi’s voice. Cauvin removed the carved box from a sack he’d tied to his belt.
“I’ve brought you a gift.”
Elemi refused to take the box from Cauvin’s hands. Awkwardly, he put it down on a cloth-covered table. The S’danzo’s home got its light from a pair of oil lamps. Their flickering transformed the carved vines into writhing serpents. No wonder Elemi didn’t want to touch it; Cauvin didn’t either, once he’d set it down.
“It’s from the Torch—Lord Molin Torchholder. He asked me to give it to you.”
Beyond froggin’ doubt, Elemi recognized that name. With her arms behind her back, she retreated from her own table, watching the box as though it might burst into flames.
“I’m sorry,” Cauvin muttered, renewing his silent curses. “The old pud didn’t tell me anything, except where to find it—I dug it out of the froggin’ ground in the bazaar. And that I should give it to you. Sheep-shite fool that I am, I thought it would be something you’d want. I’ll take it back and shove it down his froggin’ throat, if that will please you more. Just what is it, anyway?”
Her eyes widened. The S’danzo didn’t approve of his language, or his intentions, or maybe the box had moved.
“I can guess,” she said.
“Guess? Do you people guess?” Cauvin asked, and wished that he’d bitten off his tongue instead.
“Many times,” Elemi admitted. “The Sight is dimmest at arm’s length. It’s easier to see what might happen next year in the Imperial cities than what awaits me this afternoon.”
Cauvin guessed that Elemi had told him something significant, but he couldn’t froggin’ unravel the clue. “I could open the box for you,” he offered. “If you don’t want to touch it. If it’s cursed or something—I don’t care. I wouldn’t notice another froggin’ curse.”
Elemi smiled a sad, weary smile. “Open it, if you wish. You’re here now; the damage is done.”
When Cauvin pressed his thumbs on the carved leaves and pried them apart, the lock opened with a metallic ping. He lifted the lid—a tighter fit than the lid of Sinjon’s box. The Torch had long ago sealed this treasure in wax-soaked silk. Cauvin sought Elemi’s eyes. She nodded, and he unsheathed his boot knife.
Within the waxed silk Cauvin found a layer of rust-colored flakes that powdered and released a scent of summer and roses into the room as he touched them. Elemi’s hands flew to her mouth, not quite stifling a sob, but she nodded again, and Cauvin unwound silk so sheer beneath the outer waxed layer that he could see the S’danzo’s tear-streaked face through several thicknesses of it. She lowered herself into a high-backed wooden chair.
When he’d finished with the silk, Cauvin fanned a deck of painted cards between his hands. “I’ve seen these before.”
“Do you always open another man’s gifts before you give them away?”
“No. I saw these in a dream—something like a dream. They were laid out on a table—”
The S’danzo sighed. “Illyra. She Saw the world, but not her own fate …”
“I didn’t dream of a woman. I dreamt of a man—the artist who painted these. He told me to leave Sanctuary, that no one would blame me.”
Cauvin’s statement didn’t get a reaction from the distracted S’danzo. Idly, he arrayed the cards around the empty box. The pictures were unmistakable, though their colors were not so bright as they’d been in Mother Shipri’s garden.
Elemi stretched a trembling finger toward one of the simpler designs—a bush bearing five flowers, each a different kind and color—but stopped a handspan short of touching it. “Between life and fate, there can be no blame.” She folded her fingers into fists and held them against her breast. froggin’ sure, Cauvin didn’t know if the S’danzo was talking to herself or to him. “We thought these were lost; those who believed they existed at all. Illyra’s cards. So powerful … so useless.”
Elemi’s eyes shone with reflected candlelight. She didn’t blink, and whatever she watched, it wasn’t in the room. Cauvin had heard how the Hand led a mob against the last of Sanctuary’s S’danzo. Compared to what came later, the seeresses had died quickly, painlessly.
“You need to watch out for one another, since you can’t see what lies ahead for yourselves.” Cauvin thought that was a reasonable conclusion, but as with so many things he thought were reasonable, all it earned him was a you’ve-stepped-in-shite stare.
“Illyra didn’t need the Sight to see the fate awaiting her. She knew what she was and what she did. Half-breed that she was, Illyra treated with priests and gods. It takes no Sight to scry what happens to a S’danzo who does that.”
“Half-breed S’danzo,” Cauvin corrected.
Effortlessly and passionately, Elemi nailed Cauvin to the floor with a stare. He’d thought she was frail and timid, and couldn’t have been more wrong.
“When Illyra’s S‘danzo half met its fate, it took her other half with it, and everyone around her for good measure. If she thought it be otherwise, then she was the sheep-shite fool. S’danzo don’t treat with priests or gods.”
“The world needs fools and sheep-shite,” Cauvin replied, wondering how he’d stumbled into a game of wits with a seeress—with an attractive woman who set his blood afire. He hadn’t come to Dippin Lane looking for another woman. He had Leorin—the only woman he’d ever wanted … if he could trust her. The Torch had said Elemi could answer his questions. “How did Molin Torchholder know where you live, if you don’t treat with priests?”
Elemi looked away. “I don’t. Lord Torchholder was the last man I expected. I should have turned around and walked through the gates when I learned he was still alive. There’s precious little in Sanctuary that old man doesn’t uncover sooner or later, and there’s no use probing his secrets. If he weren’t a man, we’d say he had the Sight. I’ve known he’d send someone after me. I’ve waited for three years—every day dreading a knock on my door. Now you’re here … with Illyra’s cards. My sisters would kill for the chance to spread those cards across their tables.”
“Better not let them know you’ve got them. The Torch said you answer questions. I’ve got one—”
Before Cauvin could say another word, Elemi swept up the painted cards, showing none of her previous reluctance. Without shuffling them, she snapped them down one after another, making a serpentine pattern until there were more cards faceup on the table than remained in her hand. She c
ame to one card—he couldn’t see the image—that gave her pause. Wrinkling her lips, she drummed the stiffened parchment against her teeth.
“I could ask my question, that might help,” Cauvin suggested.
“Suvesh! You think it’s questions and answers!” She grinned and said—“Cauvin. Your name is Cauvin. Cauvin, I was born with the True Sight. I see the truth as stars shining on the sea of time. Tomorrow’s truth, yesterday’s, and today’s, they’re all the same and all revealed to the True Sight. No questions or answers, tricks or slights. You’re here—” The S’danzo snapped her troublesome card down atop another card in the middle of the serpent pattern. “That tells me all I need to know.”
Cauvin shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that. There’s a madwoman on my street who says the same thing and tells fortunes by blowing ashes onto bowl of rainwater—” He imitated Batty Dol’s singsong: “You’ll meet a stranger. Your life is changing. A challenge awaits—”
“You have,” Elemi said, looking at the cards. “It already has. The challenge lies ahead, very soon. You came here with a woman on your mind. Her name is Leorin. She loves you as she loves no other man—that will not change. The Mother of Chaos has wound a web of darkness around her—”
Cauvin clenched his teeth a moment then confessed, “Around us both. We were orphans together in the palace. People don’t talk about it much, but you’ve probably heard—”
The S’danzo silenced him with a glower. She studied the cards on the table. “I See that you have known each other since early childhood and that you have suffered much together—suffering is the bond of your love, isn’t it? But I See no darkness or shadows where you stand. It is all around the woman, Leorin. You are the only light that falls upon her.”
Cauvin felt a sickening twinge of guilt. He should never have suspected Leorin, he should have helped her. “The Torch—”
“Is a man,” Elemi interrupted. “Worse, he’s a priest, blinded by gods and power. The S’danzo have no gods, no power. No divine intervention stands between us and the truth. We watch. We wait. Do you think we have no better use for our Sight than to answer your suvesh questions?”
Cauvin didn’t know what suvesh meant but, shite for sure, it wasn’t a compliment.
“We had a home, once, a blessed land of tall grass and flowers. Then She came. Our land withered. Worship me, She commanded, and all that was yours will be returned. Some bent their knees and became Her servants but the rest, the S’danzo, vowed that we would live without a land and without a goddess until we could undo what She had done. At the end of time, we will take back what was given to us at the dawn.”
The S‘danzo leaned toward Cauvin, teeth bared, the froggin’ image of ferocity and vengeance.
“You told the Torch that?” Cauvin asked incredulously.
The S’danzo answered with a laugh. “I told him nothing he did not already know. I told him what he wanted to hear.”
“Would you …? Can you tell me if I can free Leorin from the Hand?”
Elemi gave the cards to Cauvin. “Shuffle them.”
Poor men gamed with dice. Only sparkers played with painted cards. Cauvin had seen card-shuffling sparkers in the Unicorn shadows, but when he tried to imitate them, the parchment rectangles flew from his fingers. Grimly, he collected them from the carpeted floor and neatened them against the table.
Elemi placed her hands over his. “Never mind,” she whispered. “I’ll help you. It’s not your fault.”
Somehow, that sounded like a curse.
The S’danzo’s fingers were no bigger than Bec’s and cool despite the room’s heat. She caressed Cauvin’s hand as a lover might and, as he held his breath, half the deck dropped to the table. She took the remaining cards from his hand and set them aside before turning the topmost card of the dropped stack faceup.
The painting was simple: a muscular forearm brandishing a flaming spear. “Lance of Flames, reversed,” Elemi said and, from Cauvin’s view, the card was indeed upside down.
“Is that bad?” he asked, unable to restrain himself.
Elemi scowled. She retrieved the bottom card from among those that hadn’t dropped—the card that had rested atop the Lance of Flames—and said, “That which is farthest away, denied, ignored, or forgotten,” as she placed it faceup upon the burning spear. From Cauvin’s view, the blond woman and dark-haired man were standing right-side up.
“No,” he protested. “Pick another card. That’s Leorin and me. You weren’t listening. There’s nothing denied or forgotten about Leorin and me. When the time’s right, we’re jumping the broom—”
“When the time’s right,” Elemi repeated, a hint of mockery in her voice. “I See a hard choice before you, hard because no matter how righteous your choice, the outcome will not change.” She raised her head. There was surprise and sadness in her eyes. “You can choose where you will bear your scars, Cauvin, the rest is fate. You think you have no innocence left to lose—that you had none—” The S’danzo folded both of her hands over his and squeezed them tight. “It’s too late, Cauvin. I’m sorry, so sorry.”
Cauvin pulled free. “No, I won’t accept it. We’ll leave Sanctuary … tonight.” He paced the length of the room. “The two of us—we’ll find a place where no one’s ever heard of Molin Torchholder, or Sanctuary, or the froggin’ damned Bloody Mother of Chaos!”
“You can try.” Elemi traced the flaming lance with a forefinger. “You could go alone. That dream was true. The path from Sanctuary is open. No shame will follow you, if you take it … alone.”
“No froggin’ shame in giving up—froggin’ sure, that’s what my dream told me. Leave froggin’ Sanctuary behind, and no one will blame me. But what about Leorin? Leave her behind, too? You tell me she’s caught in the Hand’s web. How can there be no shame, if I leave the woman I love behind. I’d sooner cut off my arm.”
“Then cut it off,” Elemi agreed coldly. “You can choose your scars.”
In two strides Cauvin returned to the table. He loomed over Elemi. “What about Leorin? What do you see for her? Find me a path that gets us both safely out of this gods-forsaken city!”
Elemi swept up all the cards. “You will not thank me for this,” she warned, and began tossing them onto the table. “Imagine yourself alone in the midst of a vast, empty field. There are no paths; each step you take is a new choice. Now imagine another field, equally vast, but there is one difference: a single path, clearly marked. You could choose not to follow it, but do you have that strength, suvesh? Without True Sight’s vision, the future is like the first field.” The S’danzo squared the cards and set them aside. She’d laid out less than half the number she’d laid out before. “Last chance, suvesh, do you want to See the path?”
“Yes,” Cauvin replied without hesitation.
“Your beloved has made her choices—the Archway stands behind her.” Elemi tapped the card portraying a stone arch between sunlight and darkness.
“Reversed,” Cauvin observed.
She smiled with her teeth. “The path beneath the Archway can no longer be walked. Your beloved has done more than make a choice. She has chosen to make it irrevocable.”
“No,” Cauvin said softly, retreating to the farthest, darkest corner. “No. No, I don’t believe that. You don’t understand—What Leorin did, she did years ago. She did it to survive. There’s a world of difference between surviving and … and what you’re saying.”
“There is darkness woven around your beloved, Dyareela’s darkness. Sight cannot penetrate that darkness. I See because I See you. Your love for her reaches into that darkness. She loves you—”
“Then there’s a chance. I can set Leorin free. If I can get her away from Sanctuary. I know Leorin. I love her. I—” Cauvin hesitated, then finished his statement: “I trust her.”
Elemi collected the cards, swirled the sheer silk about them, and stuffed them into the wooden box. “Of course you trust her,” she said as she squeezed the lid into pl
ace. “She doesn’t change, Cauvin; she’s constant. You can always trust someone who’s constant; they’re predictable. You know what Leorin will do.”
“She’ll leave Sanctuary with me. She is trapped here. I’ve heard her say so. I’m the one who hasn’t wanted to leave …” Cauvin thought of Bec. Saying farewell to Bee—never seeing the boy again—that would leave deep and lasting scars. “I can do it. I will.”
“Choose carefully, suvesh. Yes, for you, many choices are possible—You may choose to pull your beloved from the darkness, but she may choose to pull you in. The one clear path does not always lead to safety.”
“I have to try.”
The S’danzo took a deep breath, as if to lecture him, then made her own choice against it. She held out the wooden box instead. “Take these with you.”
“The Torch told me to give them to you.”
“And I don’t want them. They shine too brightly. I would rather not See what they reveal. Take them with you.”
“They’re no use to me.”
“All the more reason for you to keep them.”
Cauvin was in a hurry now, bursting with plans and eager to visit the Maze and the Unicorn. The door beckoned. He put his hand on the latch—“No.”
“I’ll burn them if you leave them here!”
“No, you won’t,” Cauvin decided. “You’re right … about the path. Once you know it’s there, you’ve got to take it. You’ve shown me a path, but you’ve seen one for yourself, too. You want Illyra’s cards.”
The box crashed against the door as Cauvin closed it behind him.
Chapter Fourteen
Cauvin’s thoughts were behind him on the Paddling Duck’s rickety stairs, expecting the S’danzo to burst out her door and hurl the box at his back. He’d forgotten about the watchdog until it lunged up the stairway, teeth bared and snarling.
“Down,” he commanded it, and, “Go away!”
The second was a sheep-shite stupid mistake. He’d been the one to teach the stoneyard dog to attack when it heard those words. Cauvin found himself trapped on the stairs long enough to conjure up another handful of questions for the S’danzo. But she’d been right about answers: The more answers he had, the less freedom, too. He made his choices based on the answers he had and, as the dog went back to its shaded den beneath the stairs, Cauvin resolved to get Leorin out of Sanctuary, even if it meant confronting the Hand, or the Bloody Mother of Chaos Herself.
