nothing will be the same. Remember it!” she commanded and overturned the card
again. “We were not meant to see what the gods have not yet seen.
“Your third is not a sword, though you thought it was. It is the Lance of
Flames-the Oriflamme: leader’s card. Coming with steel and the revealed future
it places you in the vanguard. It is not a card for a man who believes in
S’danzo curses.”
“Don’t speak in riddles, Illyra.”
“It is simple. You are not cursed by the S’danzo-if you ever were. You have been
marked by the gods; but remember what we say about the gods: it is all the same
whether they curse or favor you. Since the birth of my children this is the
first future which is not clouded. I see a huge fleet sailing for Sanctuary-and
I see the Oriflamme. I will not interpret what I see.”
“The men in Ranke will not reach me and Balustrus will not sell me?”
The S’danzo woman laughed as she gathered her cards. “Raise your eyes, Walegrin.
It doesn’t matter. Ranke is to the north and you’re not going north. The steel,
the fleet and the ori-flamme are right here.”
“I do not understand.”
The incense had burned down. Sunlight came in through the roped-off door. Illyra
emerged from the aura of mystery to be herself again. “You are the only one who
can understand, Walegrin,” she told him. “I’m too tired, now. It doesn’t really
matter; I don’t feel your doom- and I’ve felt doom often enough since the
mercenaries started coming. Who knows. Maybe you aren’t the one who understands.
Things happen to you, around you, and you just muddle through. Tell Dubro I’ll