The Very Best of Kate Elliott (22 page)

He stepped around the sleeping Arasit as Mai mounted the steps and slung the courier bag at his feet.

“The hells! Where did you get that?” Then he saw the bundle in her arms and gave a confounded second look as he shook himself into full alertness.“What are you holding?”

“A baby,” she said. “The Night Riders brought me a perilous and beautiful gift. Just like in the tales.”

T
HE
G
ATES OF
J
ORIUN

THE MAGICIANS SAY THE sun rises every morning, and so far I have found that to be true. I depend on the sun; it is how I mark time, by that and by the food the woman brings me twice daily and by the unending cycle of the moon. I have discovered also that the stars move in the sky each night—when they are not obscured by clouds—and that I can trace pictures in them and see those pictures again and again if only I am patient enough at night and through the seasons. I try to sleep during the day, except for the food. During the day it is worst, for then there are people about and all of them eager to abuse me.

The magicians taught about the stars also, but I did not listen to them about those matters. I was a younger woman—how much younger I no longer know—and newly married. My nights did not involve gazing at stars. Now some of what they said has come back to me and I hoard it. I must hoard what scraps I can because as the days run one into the next, I lose more and more of my past; like the moon my memory waxes and wanes.

But I must remember. If I do not remember, then I become nothing, a mindless animal in a cage hung before the gates of Joriun, and then the king wins and my brother loses.

I remember the magicians.

Duncan was gone, ridden out to raise the Alarn clan behind the standard of war. Anyone would have noticed their entrance, but that day, distracted and feeling sorry for myself because my husband of but one month had been sent away on my brother’s errand, I was overwhelmed by it.

They entered like moonlight and sunlight and the twilight between.

The first wore a robe of silver fabric so pale that at first I thought I could see through it. Only later did I realize I could see into it, like staring into the heavens at night. Small of stature, no bigger than a woman, he had neat hands, eyes the bleached color of the noonday sky washed in clouds, and a nose too big for his face. But he had power. It rode on him like a second garment.

The woman towered above the others. As big as a warrior and thicker through the middle, she had skin the color of charcoal, burned black, and robes so voluminous and of such a startlingly piercing gold that she seemed like the billowing sun fallen down to Earth, scorching and bright. I almost could not look at her straight on.

But the third entered in their shadow, like a shadow, and this one’s gaze sought and found me in my own shadowed corner where I spun wool to thread and waited for my husband to return. Is that not the lot of women: to wait?

The third waited until I stared, and then beckoned to me while my brother and his advisers were busy with the first two magicians, swarming round them as moths swarm round any bright light—and these lights brighter than most. King in name only, half his countrymen in league with the usurper and the other half too poor to do more than scrabble at the dirt of their farms to save themselves and their kin from starvation, my brother needed help wheresoever he could find it. Even from magicians.

I set down my spindle to rise and cross the long hall. Closer now, I shook off my distraction and studied the visitors: the small moon man, the big sun woman, and the other, the third, the twilight between.

Not tall, not short, this one wore robes that were neither striped yet not of a solid color either, a dusky gray that held night in it and also the coming of morning. Long-fingered hands cupped a deck of cards as another might cup a fistful of gold rings or a child’s hand. But it was her face I returned to again and again. Or perhaps I should say his face. Beardless, I might have guessed at once that this was a woman, but upon a second look, despite the lack of beard, I would have said it was a man. His—her—complexion was like to that of a lover seen in half-light as day fades or night lightens.

“You are the sister,” he said, her voice so soft I could barely hear it above the ring of voices in the hall, my brother and his captains, lords and fighting men whose loyalty to the rightful heir was greater than their prudence, for certainly our uncle the king had usurped my brother’s throne because he had the strength and the riches of the southern lords to back him up. Our uncle the king was not a foolish man, nor did he let ambition rule over common sense. But I was only a girl and my brother an infant in swaddling clothes when first our father died and our mother soon after, poisoned by our uncle so the rumor ran. Made regent, he found it easy enough to take over the duties and privileges of the crown outright and send the poor children—myself and my brother—away to the benighted northcountry; easy enough to put them in the care of a certain ambitious duke who would not be above seeing the two children die of a winter chill or an untimely accident.

But we were stronger than that.

“It is said,” remarked the twilight mage,“that you raised your brother. That you led him through dark night and cruel winds to this castle, your safe haven protected through the years by your father’s most loyal retainers. Is that true?”

“When he was old enough to walk, we escaped our keepers together,” I said, and then added tartly, “though it wasn’t in a winter’s storm, as some say. Even as a girl I wasn’t so foolish as to try such a thing. There was an old woman in the house who pitied us and it was through her offices that we survived as long as we did in the hall of the Duke of Joriun. I waited until a clear warm summer’s night, and she gave us bread and cheese and water. She had arranged for a cousin to meet us at a fishing village at the coast, not more than an hour’s walk away. The cousin took us north and eventually by one means and another got us to Islamay Castle. I needed only to lead us out of Joriun and out to the village. It was no great journey.”

“Nevertheless,” said the mage.“Your brother would never have grown to manhood without you.”

“Perhaps,” I said evasively. I did not like this kind of praise, though I had heard it more than once. My brother was a strong, clean, good man, if rather too fond of pretty young women, and he had to be respected for
his
strength, not for mine. That was the only way he could regain the throne stolen from him.

The mage opened his hands to display the cards. With a deft movement he flipped one over and laid it on the table between two burning candles. The card had a picture on it whose like I had never seen before: a woman, crowned and robed in a simple manner, holding a strong wooden staff in one hand.

“Queen of Staves,” the mage said. “She is strong and independent and will gladly fight for that which is rightfully hers.”

I snorted, having heard this kind of thing also—before Duncan laid claim to my heart, and my brother, with my approval, granted him my hand in marriage. However desperate my brother’s plight, however unlikely his prospects might seem with only a handful of dirt-poor lords as his allies and for his soldiers only common-bred captains and farmers who had but one season in which to march on campaign before they had to return to their farms, there were always a few men who thought to gain my brother’s ear through my—well, how shall we say it?—through my favors. I gave them short shrift and had shouted more than one out of Islamay Castle.

“And she is known sometimes to be short-tempered,” the mage added with a quicksilver smile that charmed me utterly.

“It’s a pretty picture,” I said, reaching out to touch the card. But I hesitated before laying my finger on the thin painted card. I felt as strongly as if a voice had shouted in my ear that this was not mine to touch, not without permission.

“You may,” the mage said softly.“It is you, after all.”

So I did touch her. I felt the film of paint under my finger, touched her stern face and her stout stave that had a single leafing green branch growing from the upraised end.

“We call this card the Significator,” the mage continued. “It signifies the person whose fortune we tell with these cards.”

I laughed.“Are you going to tell my fortune?”

“Do you have a question you want answered?”

I smiled, thinking of Duncan and of long summer nights. Thinking of our greatest wish, when we whispered together and held each other tight. Was it shameful that, this time, my first thought was not for my brother and our struggle? I don’t know. But I was newly wed, and Duncan was, for this summer at least, my world.

“Where will I be next year?” I asked, dreaming of Duncan holding a baby—our baby—while I sat sewing beside him, sewing, perhaps, the child’s naming gown or my brother’s coronation robes.

The mage’s expression turned dour, like a lowering storm.“Very well.” I thought the tone disapproving.

I was suddenly apprehensive.“I can ask something else.”

“You have already asked,” the mage said. And it is true enough, as with my brother, that some enterprises, once begun, must be played out to the bitter end.“If you will, shuffle the deck.” He placed the cards in my hands and showed me how to divide them and combine them again, like lords in a dance of evasion and persuasion: Whose side will I come down on this year? When I had finished shuffling them to her satisfaction, he took them from me again and began to lay out the cards into a strange pattern on the table.

I could not help but watch. There was a hall behind us and people milling there, but they might as well have vanished for all the attention I paid them. All
my
attention was on the cards placed so carefully, so precisely, between the two burning candles.

The first card he laid directly on top of the Queen of Staves.“Placed atop the Significator, it represents the current situation. The Four of Staves,” he smiled slightly as he spoke the words,“represents marriage. It is crossed by—”

“Crossed by?”

“Crossed by,” he repeated placing a card athwart it, “the King of Swords.”

“My uncle,” I breathed, for although the card did not portray my uncle’s actual face it did indeed represent his aspect: a robed and crowned king, stern of face, armed with a sword.

The king’s position was unassailable. Many people said so. Those people had no doubt predicted my brother and I would be dead within the year eighteen years ago when our father and mother died. We had proved them wrong.

The mage continued. “At the base of matters, the Ace of Swords, the beginnings of conflict. What is passing away, the Two of Cups, happiness in romance.”

I caught in a laugh, not wanting to show him open disrespect—as if what Duncan and I shared could ever pass away.

“What crowns the matter, how the situation appears now, the Nine of Staves . . . a pause in the midst of battle. What is coming into being, the Three of Swords. Heartbreak.”

Now, and only now, the mage paused. He hesitated, and I was suddenly afraid. I felt the crawl of the evil eye on my back even as I heard laughter in the hall behind me. The candles burned evenly. The mage turned a gentle eye to me and smiled sadly.“I must go on,” she said, “for once begun, a reading must be ended. That is the way of life itself.”

“Of course,” I said, refusing to surrender to this sudden crawling fear. “Go on.” I would not give in to my weakness. Everyone knew that fortunetelling is for the superstitious and gullible, even in such a guise as this, for he asked no coin of me nor nothing in trade, and they say that is the sign of a true magician.

He laid a card to the right of the cross he had made of the others. “This card represents you,” she said, “your inner being. Strength.” The card depicted a woman, unafraid, holding a lion. “This next card represents what influences you: the Knight of Swords.” A fierce and determined knight rode forward into the fray.“Is this your husband?”

“No,” I said wonderingly, not knowing how I knew. “That is my brother.”

“Ah,” said the mage, and turned another card.“Your wishes and fears. The Hanged Man.” I shuddered when he spoke those three words, for our uncle had promised us hanging, an outlaw’s death, should he ever catch us. He hated us that much for living and surviving and daring to contest what he had gained through treachery. But this hanged man was not a gruesome sight. He hung upside down with the rope around his ankle, and he seemed utterly calm, a light of wisdom shining behind his head.“The Hanged Man represents waiting,” said the mage. “Suspension. And the last card lies here, above and to the right of all else. It signifies the outcome.”