“One more…” Illyra winced as she pulled herself upright against the pillows.
She was pushing herself. Lalo wondered if she was beginning to feel incomplete without a set of cards, as he always did without drawing materials somewhere at hand, or if she simply wanted to get rid of Kama.
“The next card is the Three of Flames,” said Illyra. Her voice altered, developed a peculiarly flat timbre, as if even visualizing the cards was enough to push her into the seer’s trance. “There is a tunnel, dark at one end and at the other bright. In the tunnel I see three figures bearing torches. Are they moving toward light or darkness? I cannot tell….”
As if the S’danzo’s words had entranced him, Lalo found his hand moving, dipping up dark pigment for the shadows and red-orange for the three bright flowers of flame. As Illyra spoke of the meaning of the card, shape and color emerged from the slip of vellum before him as if his brush were a wand that made visible what had always been implicit there.
The torchbearers were in silhouette, their faces hidden, but he could see that one was small, one broad, one wiry and active. Could the big shape be Molin
Torchholder? Lalo finished painting in the number of the card, and in the moment between the last brush stroke and his return to normal consciousness he thought he saw something of Gilla in the larger figure. Perhaps the other two were
Illyra and himself, then, but were they moving into deeper shadow or toward the light?
Lalo straightened and looked at Illyra, who lay back against her pillows with the stillness of sleep, or trance. There were dark smudges beneath her closed eyes, as if he had touched her with his paint-stained finger there. He had felt the power moving through him as he painted, but this time the meaning of his work was hidden from him even when he came out of his own trance of creation and looked at the cards.