'No.' She released his hand. 'For you there is a better way. Here!'
Dumarest looked at the stack of cards she set before him. Old, the backs a mass of complex lines, cracked but bearing the gleam of applied polish. The size was wrong for a normal deck.
'Shuffle them,' said Krystyna. 'Run them through your hands. Impregnate them with your personal magnetism. Their order will illustrate your fate.'
'Do it,' urged Reiza. 'Please, Earl.'
Dumarest picked up the cards, riffled them, shuffled with a gambler's skill.
The old woman said, 'You handle them well. You know what they are?'
'Yes.'
'Then cut them into two piles. Rest a hand on each and concentrate on your present situation. Then shuffle again and hand them to me.'
She waited until it was done then sat with the deck poised in her hands.
'Once, so legend has it, these were the only cards known. Men depicted gods and natural hazards thinking that the symbol gave dominance over the thing and that, by controlling a part of the universe, they could govern the whole. They were wrong but later, perhaps because men grew afraid of alien places and needed something to guide them, the original pack was enlarged to what it is today. Every hazard and circumstance which could affect a person was isolated, compacted and illustrated to form the Arcana Universalis. Fire, flood, storm, war, space, bursting suns. Of course each symbol has extended meanings. For example space does not just mean the void between the stars but a gap, a distance, a setting apart. The art lies in the interpretation. I could set out these cards and you would see things of personal import but because you have intimate knowledge of your life your vision would be narrowed against the wider implications. And you, child-' She glanced at Reiza. 'You know even less and so would look for what you wanted to see. Love, fecundity, happiness. I?' The eyes closed, opened again. 'I read the truth.'
Her twisted fingers slid a card from the top of the deck and laid it face-down on the table before Dumarest.
'Your card,' she told him. 'Your significator.'
She spread others around in a ritual pattern, face-up, bright symbols glowing in the guttering light of the candle. Reiza drew in her breath as the skeleton appeared.
'Earl-'
'Death,' said Krystyna. 'The fate which waits us all. But also it is a transformation. Here it signifies an end; the cards before it carry your fate.'
She gloomed over them, a finger touching, passing on, her withered lips pursing, moving as if she mumbled esoteric incantations. Dumarest watched with inward amusement. Beside him Reiza was a coiled spring.
'Earl,' she whispered. 'I'm frightened. I shouldn't have brought you here. If the reading is bad-God! How can I bear to lose you?'
He said, 'There's nothing to be afraid of. It's just a game.'
'A game?' Krystyna lifted her head with a sudden motion and sat poised like a snake about to strike. 'Aye,' she said after a moment. 'A game as all life is a game. One I can read-or would you prefer not to know the things which wait?'
'Let's go, Earl.' Reiza tugged at his arm. 'It was a mistake to come. Please, Earl.'
'No.' He freed his arm, his eyes holding those of the old woman. 'When you're ready, Mother.'
Again she brooded over the cards.
'First the beginning for the child is father to the man and as the twig is bent so the tree will grow.' Her finger touched a card next to the significator. 'The Egg, symbol of life and fertility but also of change for from the egg springs a different form. And this is touched by conflict, desolation, catastrophe.' The finger moved from card to card, pausing at the depiction of a man dressed in tattered garments, smiling, a staff bearing a bundle resting on one shoulder. 'The Rover. Restless, always moving, ever seeking the unknown beyond the horizon. A fool, some would say, leaving reality in pursuit of a dream. A man without faith and faith is not for him.' The finger moved to the symbol of a priest, the card reversed. 'The comfort of spiritual assurance is absent and he lacks the support of the church. But it does not work against him for it lies on the dexter side. A neutrality. This is not.' The finger moved, came to rest. 'The Cradle. Also reversed and therefore empty. There will be no fruitful issues or successful outcomes.'
'No.' Reiza dug her fingers into Dumarest's arm as she whispered the denial. 'She's wrong, Earl. She has to be.'
He rested his hand on hers, giving her the comfort of his touch as the old woman droned on. Looking at the cards she touched, the Wheel, the Ship, the Pylon. Reiza drew in her breath as the gnarled finger came to rest on the Skull.
'Deceit,' said Krystyna. 'Poison of the mind and even of the body. Threats of a secret nature. Associated with knowledge.' Her finger tapped the Book, moved to a card meshed with a web and an eight-legged creature. 'The Spider. Already you are deep in the snare of its spinning and the danger of the skull warns of its intention. But the Book?'
She fell silent, brooding over the cards, checking their association. Reiza was too impatient to wait.
'Tell us,' she blurted. 'Krystyna-what do you see?'
'Death.' The old woman leaned back, her eyes winking points of brilliance in the guttering light as she looked at Dumarest. 'You are enmeshed in danger and deception which can have only one end. How it will come and from what source has yet to be revealed.' Her hand reached for the face-down card which represented Dumarest then, abruptly, she drew it back. 'No. You do it. A man should find his own destiny.'
Dumarest reached out, took the card, turned it. In the dim lighting the figure it depicted seemed made of blood. Tall, thin, the scarlet robe it wore emblazoned with the Cyclan Seal.
'Logic.' Krystyna added, 'The fifteenth card. Fifteen-the number of your fate.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Master Marie, Cyber Prime, woke to stare into darkness broken only by a single point of light which relieved the Stygian gloom of the chamber. A matter of efficiency; total darkness would prove hampering in case of emergency; time wasted as eyes grew accustomed to the light, movement disorganized. Now he lay supine as his body geared itself to a higher degree of function. Minutes which grew longer as the years progressed for no matter how efficient the basic mechanism the aging process took its toll.
'Master.' The voice followed a bell. 'Time to wake, Master.'
A summons repeated, dying as his finger touched a control. Another and the light strengthened to reveal the bleak outlines of the room. One devoid of all but functional units, lacking decoration, cell-like in its Spartan simplicity.
Marie rose, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting and waiting as his body accepted the higher demand. The clock showed it to be night on the surface but here, in the caverns sunken deep, the divisions of light and darkness held no meaning. Time was governed by the segments of hours. He had slept four of them, waking minutes before the alarm. Once, not long ago now, he would have woken seconds before the bell.
A thought he took with him as he showered, feeling no pleasure from the lash of water against his flesh. To bathe was a matter of hygiene, a necessity as were other functional demands. As was the food he ate when, cleansed and dressed, he sat to a frugal meal.
Prolo bowed as he entered his office. 'Master, I have placed-'
'A moment.' The aide was new, replacing Wyeth who had gone to his reward. A good man and a dedicated servant of the Cyclan, but as yet a little unaccustomed to his new position. 'Any news from the laboratories?'
'As regards the affinity twin? None, Master, all negative as before.'
'Matters of prime importance should always be given precedence,' said Marie. 'And to repeat the obvious is to be inefficient. Any news of Avro?'
'None.' The rebuke had stung even though deserved yet the aide's face remained passive. 'His condition is as before.'
A statement of the obvious and another demonstration of inefficiency-if there was no news the condition could not have changed and so to have mentioned it was a waste of both words and time. Prolo would learn, and soon,
