It was impossible to describe to anyone else exactly how she felt when she probed inside her own mind. Ryan had asked her, and she’d made an effort to explain to him, aware of how vague and unsatisfactory it all sounded.
“It’s not that I see. More a kind of a feeling, inside my mind. A kind of representation of what’s happening or what might happen. Like watching a blurred vid that moves erratically through time and space. Shows me what might happen.”
Ryan had shaken his head, unable to understand what she was trying to explain.
Now Krysty struggled to see something of the future for Wolfram and the Magus, for Ryan and for J.B. Dix, for all of them over the next few dangerous days.
But it was clouded.
Shifting images gibbered at her from a gelid mist, dappled with daggers of red-purple chem lightning. The faces of all her friendsand the enemiesswam in and out of focus, smiling or snarling, in a silent mosaic of confusion.
But there was no sense of order, no glimpse of what the future might truly hold for any of them.
Krysty squeezed her eyes shut tighter, trying to close out the noise of the others eating. But the harder she concentrated, the less she could make out.
There were tiny flashes, like the visions seen during a vicious thunderstorm, crisp black-and-white images that froze for just a heartbeat and then disappeared Ryan, water streaming down his face, running through the trees, a knife in his hand that wept blood; J.B. lying still, head thrown back, rain bouncing off his glasses; a picture that faded into the Magus in a similar position, steel eyes open wide, looking up into a darkening sky, snowflakes settling on the glittering, frosted lenses; Jak laughing, juggling with his knives in a tumbling array of whispering steel; Mildred shaking her head, the beads in her plaited hair bouncing and rattling, all in silence, while her mouth opened and closed as if she were trying to shout a warning; Wolfram naked in a bath of steaming water, smoking a large cigar while he picked at his crimson nails with a tiny golden stiletto; Doc leaning like an elegant dandy on his swordstick, sipping at a fluted glass of frothing white wine. His head was on one side, and he was staring intently at her, looking slightly puzzled, as if he’d been told something that he didn’t quite understand, as though his world was slightly out of kilter with his senses.
A cold voice broke into her thoughts, as icy as the wind that blew between the worlds.
“You see nothing, do you?”
Krysty didn’t reply to the Magus’s sudden probing, seeking to keep herself wrapped warmly in the security blanket of her own visions.
But it wasn’t possible.
The voice grated, like someone pushing a ragged thumbnail at the insides of her eyes.
“You hear me well enough in your fake trance. I know you do, Krysty Wroth.”
Her eyes opened, and she swayed a little in her seat, looking down at her plate, scattered with the oily remains of her breakfast. She was aware that everyone was looking at her and felt Doc’s hand on her sleeve.
“I’m all right,” she said quietly.
“You saw my fate?” pressed the skinny man across the table from her.
“I saw a bleak and lonely passing for you,” she replied. “The dogs licked your cooling blood, and not a living soul mourned for your death.”
Krysty had been staring at the Magus and she saw, to her surprise, that the random, angry shaft had struck home. His jaw had sagged a little, and his eyes widened. He was holding a serving spoon in his right hand, and the metal bent and split as his fingers clenched on it.
Wolfram chuckled, the noise like gas bubbling through a tincture of warm honey. “My dear Magus, I believe that the green-eyed temptress has pierced your defenses.”
“Shit she has! Just the usual kind of stupe lies you’d look for from the poxed slut of that cocksucking bastard Cawdor.”
Doc tapped on his empty coffee mug with the handle of his butter knife. “He speaks well of you, too, Magus,” he said very gently.