House of Chains
The air within the tent was close, soured by human sweat. Heboric wanted nothing more than to leave, to escape all this, yet he sensed Sha’ik clinging to him, a spiritual grip as desperate as anything he’d felt from her before.
‘Show once more the new Unaligned.’
Yes. For the thousandth time.
Scowling, Bidithal searched through the Deck, then drew out the card, which he laid down in the centre of the goat-hair mat. ‘If any of the new arrivals is dubious,’ the old man sneered, ‘it is this one. Master of the Deck? Absurd. How can one control the uncontrollable?’
There was silence.
The uncontrollable? Such as the Whirlwind itself?
Sha’ik had clearly not caught the insinuation. ‘Ghost Hands, I would you take this card, feel it, seek to sense what you can from it.’
‘You make this request again and again, Chosen One,’ Heboric sighed. ‘But I tell you, there is no link between the power of my hands and the Deck of Dragons. I am of no help to you-’
‘Then listen closely and I shall describe it. Never mind your hands-I ask you now as a once-priest, as a scholar. Listen. The face is obscured, yet hints-’
‘It is obscured,’ Bidithal interrupted in a derisive tone, ‘because the card is no more than the projection of someone’s wishful thinking.’
‘Cut me off again and you will regret it, Bidithal,’ Sha’ik said. ‘I have heard you enough on this subject. If your mouth opens again I will tear out your tongue. Ghost Hands, I will continue. The figure is slightly above average in height. There is the crimson streak of a scar-or blood perhaps-down one side of the face-a wounding, yes? He-yes, I am certain it’s a man, not a woman-he stands on a bridge. Of stone, shot through with cracks. The horizon is filled with flames. It seems he and the bridge are surrounded, as if by followers, or servants-’
‘Or guardians,’ L’oric added. ‘Your pardon, Chosen One.’
‘Guardians. Yes, a good possibility. They have the look of soldiers, do they not?’
‘On what,’ Heboric asked, ‘do these guardians stand? Can you see the ground they stand upon?’
‘Bones-there is much fine detail there, Ghost Hands. How did you know?’
‘Describe those bones, please.’
‘Not human. Very large. Part of a skull is visible, long-snouted, terribly fanged. It bears the remnants of a helmet of some sort-’
‘A helmet? On the skull?’
‘Yes.’
Heboric fell silent. He began rocking yet was only remotely aware of the motion. There was a sourceless keening growing in his head, a cry of grief, of anguish.
‘The Master,’ Sha’ik said, her voice trembling, ‘he stands strangely. Arms held out, bent at the elbows so that the hands depend, away from the body-it is the strangest posture-’
‘Are his feet together?’
‘Almost impossibly so.’
As if forming a point . Dull and remote to his own ears, Heboric asked, ‘And what does he wear?’
‘Tight silks, from the way they shimmer. Black.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There is a chain. It cuts across his torso, left shoulder down to right hip. It is a robust chain, black wrought iron. There are wooden discs on his shoulders-like epaulets, but large, a hand’s span each-’
‘How many in all?’
‘Four. You know something now, Ghost Hands. Tell me!’
‘Yes,’ L’oric murmured, ‘you have thoughts on this-’
‘He lies,’ Bidithal growled. ‘He has been forgotten by everyone-even his god-and he now seeks to invent a new importance.’
Febryl spoke in a mocking rasp. ‘Bidithal, you foolish man. He is a man who touches what we cannot feel, and sees what we are blind to. Speak on, Ghost Hands. Why does this Master stand so?’
‘Because,’ Heboric said, ‘he is a sword.’
But not any sword. He is one sword, above all, and it cuts cold. That sword is as this man’s own nature. He will cleave his own path. None shall lead him. He stands now in my mind. I see him. I see his face. Oh, Sha’ik…
‘A Master of the Deck,’ L’oric said, then sighed. ‘A lodestone to order… in opposition to the House of Chains-yet he stands alone, guardians or no, while the servants of the House are many.’
Heboric smiled. ‘Alone? He has always been thus.’
‘Then why is your smile that of a broken man, Ghost Hands?’
I grieve for humanity. This family, so at war with itself . ‘To that, L’oric, I shall not answer.’