“It’s forbidden…” said the S’danzo very softly, “even the little teaching they allowed me said that. But what do I care for anyone else’s rules now?”
“Illyra, what are you going to do?” Gilla asked apprehensively as the other woman levered herself painfully off the couch and went to the worktable where the cards that Lalo had finished were piled.
“Everything goes two ways,” Illyra said conversationally. “See this card, for instance, the Three of Flames. If it were to come up in a reading, it could mean things getting darker or brighter for the querent, depending on the context. And this one. Steel-” She held up the Two of Ores. “In the usual position, with the swords pointing toward the querent, it’s a death card, but reversed it means doom for his enemy.”
“So does a real sword,” answered Gilla.
Illyra nodded. “So does magic. Power is power. Good or evil lies not in the tool, but in the user’s intent and will.”
Gilla stared at her. “You can use the cards as a weapon?” Her heart began to pound heavily, and she realized suddenly how she had envied the gifts that Lalo had acquired so inad-vertently and used with such trepidation.
Illyra was sorting through the cards that Lalo had completed. “Perhaps-if the right cards are here…” She selected one, another, then three more. “When I read, the querent and the cards and I are all linked in the Pattern and the cards that come up reflect his relationship to it. The Pattern is the Cause; the cards are the effect. My Seeing only translates to the querent what is already there.”