Lightbreaker

after putting several spoonfuls of loose tea into the pot, he returned to the table. I laid the shuffled deck between us.

'Do you wish the Prince of Swords to stand for you?' When I declined, he nodded toward the stack of cards. 'Usually, I do an arrangement called the Celtic Cross,' he said to Nicols as I cut the deck. 'It's a ten-card layout that speaks of where the significator-' he inclined his head toward me '-has been and where he is going, and what forces are available-as adversaries and as allies-to him or her. The person requesting the reading has the option to pick a card to represent themselves in the reading, a self-designated avatar, before we start. This will help ground the reading, in that it gives the etheric energy a place to gather.'

'So why didn't you use the Prince?' Nicols asked.

'It's not one I would choose for myself,' I said. 'It's someone else's symbol.'

'But it has significance. What did you call it? 'Mind without purpose.' ' When I didn't answer, Nicols turned his question to Piotr. 'What does that mean?'

The teakettle started to whistle, and Piotr went to the stove to turn off the heat. 'The Prince of Swords represents Unfettered Mind,' he said as he filled the teapot with hot water.

A redolence of ginger and mint filled the small room, a fresh scent that reminded me of the crisp Himalayan spring. Using a narrow lacquered tray, he brought the teapot and cups to the table. 'The airy part of Air,' he continued, 'is where the Mind is released from the prison of the body and allowed to act without restriction. The actions of the Mind are based purely on its desires, and it is guided solely by its internal supra-religious logic.'

'That's much clearer,' Nicols said dryly.

Piotr gave him a tight-lipped smile, a slender movement of his face that was both melancholic and tragic. 'These actions are not tempered by Spirit or Body. It isn't Lust; nor is it any of the baser emotions. Mind is simply Intellect. It is Force without Reason.'

Nicols looked at me. 'The whole reading is going to be like this, isn't it?'

'Most of what I've learned has been like this.'

'And here I thought you were being obtuse with me on the ferry just to yank my chain.'

I shook my head. 'I tried to keep it simple.'

'Apparently,' he sighed. 'Okay, let's pretend I understood what you just said.' He pointed at the deck. 'Markham opted to pass. So what happens next?'

'His unconscious mind chooses the first card.' Piotr's fingers brushed the deck and the top card seemed to turn over on its own accord. A man and a woman stood face to face, and their hands touched cheek and chest of the other. 'The Lovers,' Piotr said.

Nicols raised an eyebrow. 'Now why doesn't that surprise me?'

I wasn't surprised either. I had never drawn the Lovers before, not even when I had specifically been charting a path toward Kat. But now, here, close enough to touch, my history with her was overpowering. A burning sensation melted through the lining of my stomach, acid released into my body cavity. I didn't want to face the wrath of Antoine and the Watchers, but the Chorus wanted Kat. They wanted me to want Kat.

Piotr placed the card on the table, and picked up the rest of the deck. With a smooth motion like wiping water off a mirror, he laid out five more cards. The first one went down across the Lovers, forming a stubby cross. Then one to the left, one above, one below, and one to the right. He paused, as this was the first part of the Cross. These six cards represented the current situation, and I needed to reflect upon them before looking to the future.

He set the rest of the deck aside, and poured three cups of tea while I considered the cards. Even with his shortened fingers, his grip was firm on the kettle.

Our hands betray us. You can never really escape your past, can you? Ignore it, certainly, but it still haunts you. Always informing the etheric world around you.

The card to the left of the Lovers was the Nine of Swords, beneath was the Eight of Swords, above was the World-the last Major Arcana card. To the right was the Prince of Swords-still caught in my threads, though now it lay in front of me-and laid across the Lovers like a prudish loincloth was the Queen of Cups.

'That's a lot of swords,' Nicols noted. He blew on his tea to cool it. 'The Eight, the Nine, and the Prince again.'

Eight was interference, chaos strewn across the path. So many directions, so many currents of flow. They divided the magus' focus, kept him from realizing his Will. Distractions, the Chorus whispered. As it lay beneath the Lovers, the Eight was the root of my question. The entanglements of the recent past that had ensnared me. The history from which I sought to extricate myself. These eight swords were the confusion of Malkuth. The black iron prison that prevented us from leveraging Reason to effect our escape from the persistent cupidity of the flesh.

The Nine of Swords, by virtue of being on the left, was my past, that empirical truth that I couldn't escape. This was the realm of the Chorus, that anarchy of cruelty trailing behind me, all the way back to the night in the woods. This card was the world as I remembered it, as I was born into magick on that night of violence and pandemonium. These nine blades, blood-tinged points piercing the earth, were symbolic of my ruptured body.

Kat had broken me and left me in the woods. As my soul bled, leaking light like oil draining from a punctured pan, something had come to me from the shadows. Yes, that was what it was. The Qliphoth. Always hiding in the shadows-of the trees, of my thoughts, of my spirit. He had whispered to me, that voice so like the sibilant echo of the Chorus. There is no hope. You are going to die. Unless. . How cruel the guttering spark of life; how cruel that instinctual craving for light. How tragically human was the desire for a second chance. Any path is better than no path at all. . Let me show you how to live.

'So many swords,' I whispered. I touched the Lovers, my finger drifting across the woman's head and settling on the man's. Why did you do it? The card shivered under my touch, slippery and moist.

The Chorus retreated, folding in on themselves as they realized how transparent they had become. So engorged with the desire to find Kat, they had also allowed me to more fully see that part of the past which they had been obscuring. This proximity to Kat, this opportunity afforded me by the brush with Doug and the psychic touch of her presence, was kicking many things loose.

Too many things.

I had let him in. The Qliphoth entered through the rupture in my soul, and had shown me how to maintain the illusion of life. The way to retain light, the way to fuel the flesh: these were the secrets of the Chorus.

Piotr tapped the edge of the tray, drawing my attention away from the cards. 'The tea,' he said, his finger tap-tapping against the lacquer, 'is good for the spirit. It calms divergent energies.'

The Chorus burned in my throat, bringing tears to my eyes. He didn't flinch from what he saw in my eyes. 'It only has the Will you give it,' he said gently. 'It only has what you feed it.'

I blinked, and all the fierce heat was shuttered as if I had shut a furnace door. Lashing my Will to my arm and hand, I-very carefully-reached for the delicate teacup. As I raised it to my lips, Piotr dealt the remaining four cards.

And, like that, the past was gone. Hidden again, beneath the burr of Chorus noise. Beneath the black water in my soul. Like the Loch Ness Monster, all that remained was a nagging impression that something had shown its face. Some apparition had surfaced, albeit briefly.

The last four cards of the Cross were a vertical line just to the right of the Prince of Swords-the future as a wall to be surmounted in contrast to the cross of the past and present. From top to bottom: the Five of Wands, the Priestess, the Star, and the Prince of Cups.

'These cards are various aspects of the future,' Piotr said to Nicols. 'What Markham brings with him to this reading; what affect others will have; what he fears about this possible future; and, ultimately, what this future will be.'

'This one is upside down,' Nicols said, putting his finger on the Star.

'Please don't turn it,' Piotr said. 'A reversed card has an equally significant meaning. In this case, it indicates that Markham believes he has no hope of attaining the state represented by the Star.'

' 'Every man and woman is a star,' ' Nicols quoted. 'Markham told me that. Yesterday, when I first met him.