by Andre Norton
That there was a purpose—a pattern—the hands before him sought—of that Ramsay was sure. He did not understand the method of the dealing. Some strips were allowed to lie in place for a moment. Then the fingers, expressing impatience in the very abruptness of their movement, would sweep them into discard, to deal again. At last only five cards remained in place between Ramsay and this unknown who played the game, if game it really was. For the first time since Ramsay had come to consciousness of where he was, the hands were quiet, fingertips resting below that line of cards.
Though they were at rest, there was a subtle emanation of impatience about them. In a moment the index finger of the right hand tapped the board beneath the middle card.
“Did I not say it—” The voice was low, a whisper that echoed eerily through the dark. “Always the Knave—the Knave of Dreams! That Knave who comes to destroy all proper patterns and realign the Fates—” Now the finger tapped emphatically under that card farthest to Ramsay’s right, where the cowled figure forming the border wavered, appeared to grow stronger, even threatening, as Ramsay’s eyes followed that pointer of flesh and bone, centered on the card.
“Fate—Fear—” The finger pointed again. Now it passed the center card, indicated the first to the left, which also showed the lightning flash that threatened. “But then the Queen!—The Queen who rules the House of Hope. Dream, Fate, Fear—and at the end of Fear—Hope. Knave are you yourself bound to, and your way is the dark one which dreamers own. You have dreamed, you are dreaming—you shall dream! Fate and Fear linked together are a mighty enemy to face, Dreamer. But this is the truth of foretelling—you must rely upon your dreams before you depend upon the strength of arm, your quickness of wit. Dream—and ask—and then face Fate and Fear—and—” The hand hovered over that last card of Heart and Flower and a glaze of design his eyes saw only as a radiant blur. “No, there is no telling, even for me, of the end of this. For even the Grove must bow to a dreamer. Too often he dreams true!”
The hand swept in a flowing motion across the board. Light vanished. For an instant Ramsay had a sensation of loneliness, as if he had been abandoned in some place of utter darkness.
Then—did he dream to the order of the owner of the hands? Or to his own whim?
He only knew that just as the dreams woven by Osythes to tie him to Kaskar had had this same vivid life to them, what he looked upon as if through a window must have a real existence somewhere.
A man dominated the scene. He had none of the calm and measured authority of the Shaman, none of the unquestioned inherited rulership of the old Empress. No, he radiated a kind of raw power. He was, Ramsay thought, of a little more than middle age, but passing years had not dimmed either the bull physical strength of his barrel-chested body nor the determination and will that were expressed by every curve of his heavy-jawed face, every turn of his eyes and lips.
He was seated in a chair that aped in general the canopied one that had made a throne for the old Empress. But, whereas her mere presence within its shadow had turned it into a seat of state, this usurpation was unnatural, carried a shadow of menace. His left elbow rested upon the arm of that chair, his jowly chin was set firmly in the upraised palm of that hand, as he glared in Ramsay’s direction with such concentration that, for a moment, the Dreamer could believe that he was now visible to the other.
Yet there was no sign of any astonishment on that broad and lowering countenance. In a second Ramsay guessed the stranger’s glare was a cover for the fact that the other was intent upon his own thoughts. That they were disturbing could be readily believed.
In the stranger’s right hand was grasped a ragged bit of cloth, the color of which seemed familiar. That was like the hood Ramsay himself had worn when playing his role of Feudman, that pretended disguise that had nearly been a key to his death—for him—a second time.
Ochall! Ramsay’s mind produced a name for the enemy he had never seen but of whom he had heard so much. So this was the High Chancellor who aspired to rule the empire. Ochall might have lost his main piece in the game, yet there was nothing about this brooding man to suggest that he saw defeat now for all his plans. No, much to the contrary, his expression was one that suggested a search, hunted a new way. And his fierce grip upon that rag of cloth meant that perhaps he believed he had begun to understand the inner meaning of a problem.
The Empress and the Shaman—Ramsay had believed in their offer—and as a result nearly lost his life. As he watched Ochall, now he began to wonder what sort of reception he might expect from the Chancellor were he to provide him with a second and perhaps more durable Kaskar.
What had they said of this man—those who were his enemies? That he had mastered and perhaps even hypnotized a weakling prince into a puppet. However, all that Ramsay had been told about Ochall had come from those who had good reason to be his bitter enemies. And it had not been through Ochall that he himself had been paired with Kaskar—killed—to be reanimated in a world where those representing law and order once again wanted him safely dead.
Ramsay could not say that he was in any way attracted to the man brooding in his dream. Ochall should be a nasty enemy—but perhaps an open one, apart from the uses of intrigue such as had led Ramsay out of Lom Palace to a waiting assassin. Somewhere in his own mind a plan as nebulous as one of the clouds marking dream cards began to take on more weight and substance.
Ramsay’s sight of Ochall vanished as completely as if a window had been clapped shut between them. Just as he had awakened from such ordeals in his own world, Ramsay found himself, sweating and shaking, sitting up on a narrow bed in the cold gray of a predawn. He gasped, then his heart settled into a more regular beat. This reaction appeared merely physical. He experienced no residue of any fear or unease at this time. Perhaps because he had been led to accept in a new twist of logic that what he experienced was normal, at least for the new Ramsay who had been Kaskar.
Kaskar—what if he were to be Kaskar again?
The plan that had been born at the far back of his mind as he watched the brooding Ochall was growing stronger, bringing in more details. The last thing that the Empress and the Shaman would want was Kaskar’s return. They had set him up for death while masked, had warned him over and over against the folly of showing his face in Lom, even in Ulad. One of the company had known him, or thought the resemblance to the dead Heir very close indeed.
If—just suppose—if the people—not the intriguers of the Palace, the nobles who made up either the party of the Empress or that of Ochall, but the common people of the Empire—were presented with a true heir who had escaped both the control of the High Chancellor and the domination of the Empress, what would they do? Suppose a third party could so rise to challenge both? If he only knew more about Kaskar himself!
Though he might wear the Prince’s body, no fraction of the other’s identity remained to give Ramsay a single clue as to what had been done or undone. He only was quite sure that he was now entangled in a game played by others, and he resented that bitterly indeed.
The Enlightened Ones—what had been the reason for that dream of vision of the foreteller? Or had that actually occurred? Fate and Fear—those symbols to flank the Knave of Dreams. And the strange mistress of prevision had made very sure Ramsay understood that he was the Knave, that variable which could overthrow the regular patterns by which they wove their own designs of the future. But beyond had stood Hope—and as a Queen—which meant a sign of greater power.
“You must rely upon your dreams before you depend upon your strength of arm, your quickness of wit—”
Very well. He had dreamed of Ochall, and to him had come a meaning from that dream. He would— Ramsay tensed. There was a curdling of shadow within shadow in the far corner of the small chamber in which he lay. He was not alone. And—such had been his experiences in this world—he was very glad that he now had a wall to his back through which nothing—or no one—could come upon him unawares. Carefully he arose to face that form that had
a misty outline, and he spoke first.
“What do you want?” There was truculence in his demand.
The other did not reply, only moved into the best light the small chamber had to offer, a gray shaft from a single window on Ramsay’s left. A hand—and that hand he thought he knew—appeared to sweep aside a drooping veil. Here stood the woman who had come earlier to meet their broken band. When? Hours—days—earlier?
Her features were regular but lacked expression. Ramsay might be fronting a statue given the power of movement. Even her eyelids were half-closed, as if to conceal any betraying gleam of life within.
Yet her hands stroked her veil, smoothing that length across the shoulder of her dark robe sleekly, as if she absentmindedly caressed some pet animal, not woven fabric. Ramsay was very sure of those hands. Those long fingers had dealt out the strips of Fate, Fear, Dream—
“Yes.” The single word did not trouble the lips between which it issued. “I am Adise, the Foreteller.”
Adise? He had heard that name— Adise! This was that Enlightened One upon whose advice Thecla relied. Ramsay had no reason now to believe that Thecla was any real friend of his—
“You are the Knave—your path is of your own choosing,” she continued. Never did those heavy-lidded eyes open to meet his probing gaze squarely. There was a kind of indifference in the way she stood, stroking her veil, which he would not allow to irk him.
“I have been told that the Enlightened Ones sometimes give advice which the unwary would do well not to follow, that their foretellings can mean either victory or defeat and are not to be depended upon.” He did not know why she had come, what message she was attempting to convey.
The light within the chamber was growing steadily clearer. Somehow the window rays centered upon those ever-moving stroking hands. Ramsay resolutely looked away, centered his attention upon her statue-calm face.
“We only foretell what may be.” She accented that “may” as she spoke. “From any action, no matter how trifling, there spreads a circle of consequences. Each may alter again a variable future. Then there are those without the pattern—for such there can be no measuring of choice. Such as you, who are not seed or root of this World.”
“Why do you come?” He was impatient with her failure to be plain. “Do you instruct—or warn?”
“Neither. If you have dreamed, then you already know what is to be done.” Her tone was as remote as the sense of her words.
“Very well.” Ramsay tried shock tactics. “Can you at least give me direction? Where do I find High Chancellor Ochall?”
If he expected to strike some vital spark from her with that sharp demand, he was disappointed.
“Three days ago,” she replied, her serenity unruffled, “he was reported at Vidin—that Vidin which owes ancient allegiance only to the Heir of Ulad.”
Ramsay digested that information and did not in the least doubt that Adise was speaking the truth. But if Ochall was at this Vidin—what was he trying to do? Did he still believe that Kaskar might live, or only hope that he could lay Kaskar’s death upon his own enemies and so draw to him those who owed the dead Heir traditional allegiance?
“And where lies Vidin?” Even as he asked that, Ramsay knew that he had made up his own mind. He must seek out Ochall, know the man as he really was and not as rumor and his enemies reported him to be.
“A morning’s flight southward. There is a flyer waiting to your order.”
They appeared eager enough to get rid of him, Ramsay thought. He wondered if his being this “variable,” which they so insisted upon, was in some manner an upsetting factor in their own private concerns. Or were they urging him into this action for purposes such as they had been accused of in the past—to bring about some change in the chain of events to favor their own far-reaching plans?
Adise raised her eyelids completely for the first time. Her eyes were odd; they seemed to have, in place of the pupils normal to mankind, small dots of flame. Only for an instant did he perceive that, if he did at all; then she was like any woman again.
“Do not doubt your place in the great game.” For the first time a trace of emotion troubled her level, monotonous voice. “No one controls the Knave of Dreams—Remember that, for your own protection—no one!” The accent she put upon the repetition of those last two words might have been a warning.
It appeared clear that the Enlightened Ones wanted him away. Ramsay smiled. There was a certain satisfaction in being a nuisance to the All-Powerful, which, at the moment, he was inclined to relish. However he was also willing to opt for any aid he could wring out of the aloof Foretellers, Shamans, and Masters of Dreaming Extraordinary.
“Those of the Company,” he asked. “How is it with them?”
He owed his life to Dedan. Even in his preoccupation with his own affairs, he remembered that.
“They mend. The Thantant has been warned.” Was there again a faint irritation in Adise’s answer? She could be urging him to immediate action. And that impression became a certainty as she added, using the prosaic words of any ordinary housewife: “Food, clothing—all you need”—she made a small gesture with one of her ever-moving hands—“shall be brought.”
Without adding anything to that, she turned away, back into a corner which was no longer a cave of shadows, disappearing behind a curtain she swept aside for her passing.
As if her exit had been a signal, a man wearing a shorter version of the black-and-white Shaman’s garb entered, carrying a tray of covered dishes which he put upon the table. He did not speak—perhaps a servitor of the Enlightened Ones, he was under some vow of silence—but his eloquent gestures brought Ramsay to a bath, to fresh clothing, to a meal of fruit, sweet bread formed as small, puffy rolls, and a tart drink which was cool on the tongue and pleasingly warm in the throat.
The belt he had worn as a member of the Company had been laid with the new dress of gray over black underclothing. But that gray was not drab. The tunic bore on the breast that Eagle emblem that had been widely in evidence in Lom Palace. Also, there were scrolls and lacings of silver thread to suggest rank.
After Ramsay had buckled on the belt with its ceremonial sword-knife, plus the other, more potent weapon Dedan had supplied to him, the silent servitor ushered him along several passages and then through a grove of trees. These grew in so maze-like a planting that Ramsay believed that, without the other’s guidance, he would have been completely lost while still not more than perhaps six feet away from the building itself, so ensconsed by growth as to seem a mere lump of greenery.
That this concealment was meant, Ramsay guessed. But against whom or what had it been intended? By all the accounts he had heard, the Enlightened Ones had no active enemies. Yet they chose hideaways of this type.
As they twisted and turned to follow a way which was no vestige of a path as far as Ramsay could recognize, he saw that here and there among the trees were standing stones of the type associated with the half-fabled fallen civilization, which had left such a mixed heritage to the present time. Had this site, in those unnumbered years past, marked some ancient temple or sacred place?
The standing stones became thicker, drew closer together, until they formed a wall on either hand. Now Ramsay’s guide led the way between those barriers, to come out from the shadow of both stone and tree into a cloudy open. Here stood one of the flyers, and his guide waved Ramsay toward it.
For a moment he hesitated. Was he truly making this choice in freedom? And if so—what might he have chosen? Follow the dream—to Ochall—Then what? The future depended mainly on what he found in Ochall himself. At least he would not be betrayed again by trusting in any word or promise.
His hand shifted along the belt until his fingers touched the grip of the hand arm. There was something reassuring in it, though his first taste of soldiering had been short and disastrous. Yet to have it fit now into his grasp gave a last urge forward, and he climbed into the flyer.
There was no sign of the pilot because of
the closed-off cockpit. Ramsay must assume that he had already been given orders as to where to deposit his passenger. As soon as Ramsay was buckled into his seat, the craft arose in one of those unsettling leaps, and they were circling well above the ground.
Or he supposed they were, for there were no windows in this cabin. Thus Ramsay had nothing to occupy his interest except his own thoughts, which, he began to realize ruefully, were not so well sorted as to prove very useful.
He retraced in detail all that had happened to him since he had awakened on the bier of the dead Prince, to be given temporary safety by Thecla. Now, weighing one memory against another, he could not be sure that she had meant to save him, after all. That her allegiance was to the Empress Quendrida he had never doubted, though he gave her credit for joining in Quendrida’s scheming for the sake of Olyroun.
He found he could now give mind-room to one excuse after another as far as the young duchess was concerned. Even her ultimate betrayal of himself could well be because she believed that was necessary for her duty.
In his own world, during these past years, duty, service, self-abnegation for the sake of an ideal, had all been sneered at by many of his peers. Not to “get involved” was the goal of their own twists and turns of action and thought. Now he was involved in as wild a piece of action as any dream could raise. Yet he stood alone with only his own personal desires, no ideals or “duty” to back him.
Ramsay shifted on the padded seat of the flyer. Loneliness. He had always been a loner. Why should he suddenly now feel the burden of it? With the Company—once more Ramsay’s hand sought the weapon at his belt, the symbol of the only really carefree time, or so now it seemed—that he had known since he came here. His choice—why had he decided to go to Vidin—to confront Ochall?