“Who are you?” Farideh asked. The ghost pointed down at the scattered cards. Three were faceup: a woman holding a child in her arms, an elf standing over a pool that reflected a battle, a woman in dark robes. The Ancestor; The Seer; Tethyla, the Dark Lady.
Farideh considered them. A seer. . who came before her. A seer and a dark lady. . “You. . Did you help Rhand before me?”
The ghost smiled, but said nothing. The light shifted so that half her body wore away, down to the bone.
“You can’t talk,” Farideh said.
The ghost wagged a finger at her. She swept her arm over the cards and a breath later a gust of cold wind blew through the curtains and stirred up the cards again. Again three landed faceup: a monstrous man with a bloodied sword, a whirling creature with a tail of flames, a pile of gems and flowers. The Reaver, The Firetail, The Offering. The ghost touched her mouth. She pointed to Farideh, to the combs lying in their case, to the brazier on the other side of the room.
Blood, jewels, fire.
The ghost pointed at the scattered cards and one trembled, then flipped over. A green-skinned angel pursuing a devil that chased after her in a whirlwind. The Adversary.
Farideh picked it up. Was the ghost her predecessor, the angel chasing the devil? Or was she instead the devil, and some new enemy to consider and plan around? There was little telling.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The cards stirred. Tethyla, the Dark Lady again; a grim-faced specter called Loskor, the Gatherer; a robed man named Iolaum, the Arcanist. Dark lady, death, wizard. Farideh raised her eyebrows. “You want to stop Rhand.”
The ghost nodded gently.
“And the first set,” she said, “that’s. . how to do it?”
The ghost shook her head, regretful, then touched her mouth again. How to help her to speak. Farideh looked down at the card in her hand. It had the sort of buzzing, itchy feeling she’d noticed magically touched things had, a sense they were reacting to her pact. It hadn’t done that before, she was certain. Farideh held it up to the ghost. “And this?”
The ghost drew her hands together, interlocking fingers that were nothing but bone and sinew. Farideh took one of the combs and wove the card in between the teeth of it. The ghost held up one hand and drew a line across her palm. The blood-Farideh’s stomach twisted.
“I don’t have a knife.”
The ghost stared at her.
Farideh blew out a breath, her gloom evaporating as if this new element shone a bright, hot light on it. If she could get the ghost’s help, she might be able to unravel Sairché’s plan-or at least figure out what it was Rhand was doing.
She scanned the room. She could shatter the mirror and cut herself on that, but what would Nirka do when she saw it? The cards’ edges weren’t crisp enough to cut her. Smashing a shard of wood from the chair or the chest would make as much mess and probably damage the stone walls-
The walls. Farideh stood and went to one, running her hands over the slick surface. Here and there the black glass wavered as if the room had been chipped at, and the edges of the chips were sharp as razors. She’d caught her sleeve on one walking around a corner too close and sliced a neat line through the dress’s sleeve.
Near the corner, she found a peak sharp enough to slice a small cut through the center of her palm, so quick and neat Farideh hardly felt it at first. She turned her palm up to cup the blood that oozed up.
“Now what?”
The ghost smiled. And dissolved into a cloud of vapor.
Farideh nearly cursed as it swirled in the air over her bed for a moment, but then the cloud streaked across the room and vanished through the mirror, fogging the whole glass.
A line slowly appeared across the surface with the long squeak of a finger drawn over the glass. The line became a letter, and the letter a word as inch by creaking inch the ghost spelled out a strange phrase down the mirror.
Farideh moved to stand beside the brazier, transferring the card to her bleeding hand. “Ibaatori pherognathis molochai.” The flames leaped up, licking at her hand. A drop of blood sizzled into the fire. “Adaachinis labolas maniria.”
The flames surged and Farideh dropped the card and comb, jumping out of the way. The fire turned brilliant red, then fell back, then died down into the glowing coals that had filled the brazier before the spell. On top of them, the comb rested, the card balanced on its ruby flowers merely scorched. Farideh fished them from the brazier. The card was once more ordinary, but the comb had the same faint feeling of something strange that the card had had before.
The ghost reappeared, smiling. Waiting. She gestured to the side of her head.
Farideh set the comb down carefully on the dressing table. This was how she fell into trouble. This was how Sairché had caught her and Lorcan before her-giving her an answer she didn’t have time to consider carefully.
“Not yet,” she said. The ghost’s expression was lost as the light shifted peeling her face back to the bone.
The lock clanked open and Nirka pushed in again. “You have to go, up to his study.” She grimaced at the scatter of cards across the ground. “Now.”
Farideh’s stomach knotted up again, and the pain of the strange magic curled around her skull, as she hurried up the stairs.
“Perfect!” Rhand declared as she entered the room. “Every one of them. And it took no more than confinement to force the manifestation.” His blue eyes were dancing. “A pity for my guards, but a boon for you and I.”
“Good,” she said. “Are. . we finished?”
“We are only just begun!” he crowed. “With your assistance, we might sort the camp in mere tendays. I can bring in double, triple the possible subjects and clear them out as they prove unlikely.”
One of the younger wizards sprinted into the room, skidding to a stop before the basins. “Saer?” he said.
Rhand did not so much as look back at him. “Mere months and they will see how right I have been, how dear my work is. All to the glory of-”
“Saer!” the assistant said, louder now. Rhand whirled on him. “There’s been a message,” the younger man said tremulously. “From the city.”
Rhand smiled, a mirthless empty thing. “I trust there is more to it if you think it worth interrupting.”
The aide wet his mouth. “The Nameless One arrives tomorrow evening.”
“What?” Rhand said, and it was not a question so much as a dagger stab. A chill ran down Farideh’s spine.
“Sh-she will stay four days, the message said,” the younger wizard went on, apologetic. “The Church of Shar is eager to see our-your progress.”
Rhand did not move, did not speak. He knows what it is to battle with the Shadowfell, Nirka had said. Farideh still wasn’t sure what that meant, but she imagined all the darkness in the room sinking into Rhand, condensing around his rage. She did not dare move.
“Well,” he said, sharp and brittle as the black glass. A silence just as sharp hung in the air a moment. “Prepare her rooms. Make a stable ready for her mount. And get me more subjects.” He turned to Farideh. “We have much time to make up.”
Shortly after sunrise, Mehen stared at the edge of a vast forest, and wished the breath that stirred in the corners of his lungs were made of fire not lightning. Miles and miles of karshoji trees between me and Farideh, he thought, tapping his tongue nervously. He would burn them all to cinders if he had the chance. “Are you all right, goodman?” Mehen looked down at the little Tuigan Harper, Khochen, and bared the edge of his teeth. No laying waste to forests with Harpers on his heels. Khochen and Vescaras flanked him as they neared the High Forest, while another flock of them purportedly waited in the damnable wood.