The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [7]
She fanned the cards out before her. The backs of the cards were faded, their corners worn, but silver symbols still gleamed against midnight-blue ink. Lirith exchanged looks with Aryn and Durge, then reached. Her fingertips seemed to tingle as she brushed one of the cards; she drew it. The others followed suit.
“You,” the old woman said with a nod to Durge. “Show me what you have drawn.”
Durge turned over his card, revealing a drawing that was at once dusky and radiant. It depicted a man with dark hair and eyes, standing by a pool of water that reflected the moon hanging in the slate-blue sky.
No, not just a man, Lirith. Look at the sword in his hand, and his armor. He’s a knight—a knight with a moon emblazoned on his shield.
The old woman took the card, running a yellowed fingernail over its surface. “The Knight of Moons. A man of war you are—trustworthy and strong. Yet you are ruled by the heart. And so full of sorrow! You believe you fight alone, but that is not so. For see? She smiles upon you always, although you know it not.”
The crone pointed to the drawing of the moon. Painted in the circle was the face of a woman, her lips curved in a soft smile.
“But who is she?” the old woman muttered. “Someone gone, or someone yet to come? My magic cannot say.”
Durge grunted. “I do not believe in magic, madam.”
The crone looked up. “And yet magic shall be the death of you,” she said flatly, burying the card back in the deck.
“Al-Mama!” Sareth said in a chiding voice.
The old woman shrugged. “I do not make their fates, Sareth. I but speak them. Now you.” She pointed to Aryn.
Trembling slightly, Aryn held out her card.
“Hah!” the old woman said, as if something she guessed had now been confirmed. “The Eight of Blades.”
On the card, a beautiful but solemn woman in a blue dress rode on a white horse across sun-dappled fields, a sword in her left hand. In the distance behind her rose a castle with seven towers, each crowned by a sword.
Aryn gasped. “But I’ve seen this before!”
Lirith glanced at the baroness. What did she mean?
The old woman nodded as she took the card. “As I said before, you have great power. See how the woman rides so proudly? All love her beauty even as they fear her sword. Yet there is always a price to wielding power. For see? She does not notice the poor man in the grass who is trampled beneath the hooves of her horse.”
Lirith stiffened. There—she could just make out the face in the long grass beneath the horse, eyes shut as if sleeping.
Aryn shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“You have forgotten about one who bore pain for you.”
“But who is it?”
The old woman slipped the card back into the deck. “That is for you to remember, child.”
Even before the crone gazed at her, Lirith knew it was her turn. After Durge’s and Aryn’s tellings, she was not so certain she wanted to see the card she had drawn, but she didn’t have a choice. She turned it over.
Lightning slashed across a black sky behind a barren landscape as gray as ash. White shapes stained red scattered the ground. Perched on a twisted tree was a dark form, its eyes like hard beads.
A hiss escaped the old woman. “The Raven …”
“What does it foretell?” Lirith said, surprised at the calmness in her voice.
“The raven scavenges on the fields of the dead.” The old woman’s hand shook as she took the card. “Fields poisoned with spilled blood, where nothing will ever grow again.”
The dimness closed around Lirith, and the stifling air pressed against her so that she could not breathe. She blinked, and it seemed the images on the T’hot card moved. Sinuous lightning slithered across the black-ink sky. The bird opened the cruel hook of its mouth as if laughing.
Lirith swayed on her stool, but a strong hand gripped her shoulder. She blinked, and the images on the card were motionless again. She looked up to thank Durge for steadying her—
—and froze. It wasn’t Durge who stood above her, but Sareth.
“Are