Chapter 60
Hoku pressed a hand to his stomach and coughed.
Lunhard raised his brows. "Are you all right?"
Hoku cleared his throat and nodded before straightening his posture.
As soon as he recovered himself, he fastened the fob to the compass ring.
The clasp snapped shut, nicking his thumb. His teeth pressed into the side of his tongue.
Lunhard stepped past him and ran a hand through his red braid at the nape of his neck.
When he spoke again, he raised two of his fingers. "It's not that your idea was wrong. Merely that it isn't fully prepared for use. Just as the mind requires composure to make clear choices, certain rituals demand a steadying force to keep them from slipping their bounds." He lowered one finger. "One to bear what has been thrown off balance…" The second crossed over it. "…and one to lend it ballast.
Hoku pressed his lower lip against his teeth, his brows drawing together.
'Steadying force…' The fob had been spoken of in nearly the same terms, so that had to be the ballast—then, what was meant to bear the rest?
This time Lunhard crossed one finger over the other and tipped his hand once, like turning up a card.
"Hah…" Hoku conceded under his breath. Scraping his heel once along the floor, he lifted the compass by its chain, turned the left dial, and pressed it down.
The room seemed little changed at first, with only a faint ringing in his ears.
The density around him stole in little by little, drawing him past the first drowse, until something cold touched the bridge of his nose.
He blinked and shook his head, and fine droplets drifted around him like mist.
By the time he drew the compass into his palm, it burst into flame.
He jerked his hand back and struck at it with his free hand, trying to smother it, but the fire only lapped at his cuff and unspooled upward into three wisps.
Startled, he stumbled back and flung his arm, cursing under his breath. "Damn—"
Other than the warm tingling, neither his skin nor his clothes were singed.
The fire swelled for a moment, but it did not form the usual deck. It only wavered around his hand in fitful flickers.
He reached over and touched the compass with a fingertip.
Almost right away, heat stirred beneath the nail.
The flame around his arm tilted away like a candle in a draft, narrow tongues lengthening.
Seven ghostly flames rose around the compass—red, blue, black, violet, and the rest somewhere between.
At the center hovered a thin plate of obsidian-dark iron, its rim incised with a slender rinceau.
A small triangular sigil burned at its center with a furious crimson light, and that radiance spread outward, suffusing the seven translucent cards below with a wan light. They had already turned face-up: Temperance, The Fool, The Emperor, Wheel of Fortune, Death, The Star, Judgment.
He had seen spreads like these in his uncle's old notes. For a moment, he thought he understood what he was remembering, but the thought receded.
He brushed the center card—The Emperor—with the tip of his finger.
Almost immediately, a low crackle sounded.
Hoku started. The painted image darkened from the frame inward until only the letters remained in a narrow column along the left edge.
"The Knight?" he murmured.
Beneath the card, neat, crowded script began to appear across the iron plate. Bending closer, Hoku read:
"A Knight caster may impose temporary authority upon a battlefield, dictating control over movement, terrain, and subtler aspects of reality within a set radius until the command is revoked."
For all that talk of movement and terrain, the first thing that came to mind was a chessboard. Even so, "Knight" was a strange title for it.
'I kind ofwould have expected something grander. A Duke, maybe.'
He shook his head and reached toward the spread.
"Don't be in such a hurry to choose."
From just behind him came a mild, unhurried voice.
Hoku turned on his heel. One arm folded behind his back, Lunhard looked at him as though nothing were out of the ordinary.
"I thought you—" Hoku trailed off, bewildered.
A slight curve settled at one corner of Lunhard's mouth. "Just so. Pay me no mind. Go on as if I weren't here."
A chill prickled over Hoku's skin. He kept his eyes on Lunhard a moment longer before resting a fingertip upon the next card.
The same distinct effect emanated from it again, but the words written there had changed.
He went through the rest in like manner, skimming each inscription only long enough to take in its contents before moving on to the next.
When he reached the card marked Death, nothing happened. Then the black word slowly receded, until harsher letters had taken its place:
'The—Inverted Threshold?'
The skin at his temple twitched as he curled his hand towards the middle and swiped a knuckle along each row of letters as they appeared.
"A Caster of Death may arrest a dying process for a brief interval, whether in a person, a structure, or a concept. However, upon conclusion, the reversion of entropy may proceed gruesomely."
His eyes brightened briefly; by the end, his pupils had already constricted.
He swallowed, slipping two fingers beneath the card and lifting it carefully.
As he did, a deep green gleam swept across the other faces of the cards.
Upon each was the same emblem in deep green: an ivory hand lowered from above, a dark one raised beneath it, their fingertips almost touching.
The card in his hand alone hadn't changed.
Amid the spread lay an amber outline.
Hoku pinched the card tighter, narrowed his eyes, and lowered it into place.
The instant it settled, gray-white fire skimmed across the plate.
At that moment, Hoku's ears resounded with a wail so deep it was almost below hearing. By then, it had already risen, taking on the strain of a woman's voice. His heart tensed as the hairs along his neck stood on end.
Rather than quieting, that terrible sound was slowly joined by more.
The bass of it welled up, sinister and malevolent, almost like several men singing in the lower register at church, only fouled past bearing. There was phlegm in it. Cries and ragged gaps soon mixed into the turmoil; agony, anguish, dread, hatred were all borne in those sounds of abomination until they tolled through his skull and set the pit of his stomach turning.
Before they could fold under him, both shoulders were seized and wrenched back.