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Tattersail's Readings

Page history last edited by Eloth 9 years, 4 months ago

Tattersail's Readings

 

First Reading of the Deck

 

 

Hairlock's answering laugh was eager and mean. 'First House sets the course. Quickly!'

 She turned over the top card. Her breath caught. 'Knight of Dark.'

 Hairlock sighed. 'The Lord of Night rules this game. Of course.'

 Tattersail studied the painted figure. The face remained blurred as it always did; the Knight was naked , his skin jet black. From the hips up he was human, heavily muscled, holding aloft a black two-handed sword that trailed smoky, ethereal chains drifting off into the background's empty darkness. His lower body was draconean, its armored scales black, paling to gray at the belly. As always she saw something new, something she had never seen before that pertained to the moment. There was a shape suspended in the darkness above the Knight's head: she could only detect it on the edge of her vision, a vague hint that vanished when she focused on the place itself. Of course you never give up the truth so easily, do you?'

 'Second card,' Hairlock urged, crouching close to the playing field inscribed on the tabletop.

 She flipped the second card. 'Oponn.' The two-faced jester of Chance.

 'Hood's Curse on their meddling ways,' Hairlock growled.

 The Lady held the upright position, her male twin's bemused stare upside down at the card's foot. Thus the thread of luck that pulled back rather than pushed forward - the thread of success. The Lady's expression seemed soft, almost tender, a new facet marking how things now balanced. A second heretofore unseen detail caught Tattersail's intense study. Where the Lord's right hand reached up to touch the Lady's left a tiny silver disc spanned the space between them. The sorceress leaned forward, squinting. A coin, and on the face a male head. She blinked, No, female. Then male, then female. She sat back suddenly. The coin was spinning. 

GotM, US HC, p.80

 

Second Reading of the Deck 

  

'she reached for the first card. She flipped it almost haphazardly to her right. Eyes still closed, she felt herself smile. ‘An unaligned card: Orb. Judgement and true sight.’ The second card she tossed to the left side of the field. ‘Virgin, High House Death. Here scarred and blindfolded, with blood on herhands.’

Faintly, as if from a great distance away, came the sound of horses, thundering closer, now beneath her, as if the earth had swallowed them.

Then the sound rose anew, behind her. She felt herself nod. The recruit.

‘The blood on her hands is not her own, the crime not its own. The cloth against her eyes is wet.’

She slapped the third card immediately in front of her. Behind her lids an image formed. It left her cold and frightened. ‘Assassin, High House Shadow. The Rope, a count of knots unending, the Patron of Assassins is in this game.’ For a moment she thought she heard the howling of Hounds. She laid a hand on the fourth card and felt a thrill of recognition ripple through her, followed by something like false modesty.

‘Oponn, Lady’s head high, Lord’s low.’ She picked it up and set it down opposite Tayschrenn. There’s your block. ...‘The Coin,’ she heard herself say, ‘spins on, High Mage. Its face looks upon many, a handful perhaps, and here is their card.’ She set the fifth card to Oponn’s right, edges touching. ‘Another unaligned card: Crown. Wisdom and justice, as it is upright. Around it a fair city’s walls, lit by flames of gas, blue and green.’ She pondered. ‘Yes, Darujhistan, the last Free City.’ (GotM, UK Trade, p.81-2)

 

Third Reading of the Deck

 

"Tattersail stared long and hard at the card centered on the field she laid down. She had chosen a spiral pattern, working her way through the entire Deck of Dragons and arriving with a final card, which would mark either an apex or an epiphany depending on how it placed itself.

 The spiral had become a pit, a tunnel downward, and at its root, seeming distant and shadow-hazed, waited the image of a Hound. She sensed an immediacy to this reading. High House Shadow had become involved, a challenge to Oponn's command of the game. Her eyes drawn to the first card she had placed, at the spiral's very beginning. The Mason of High House Death held a minor position among the overall rankings, but now the figure etched on the wood seemed to have risen to an eminent placing. Brother to theSoldier of the same House, the Mason's image was that of a lean, graying man clothed in faded leathers. His massive, vein-roped hands held stone-cutting tools, and around him rose roughly dressed menhirs. Tattersail found she could make out faint glyphs on the stones, a language unfamiliar to her but reminiscent of Seven Cities' script. In the House of Death the Mason was the builder of barrows, the placer of stones, a promise of death not to one or a few but to many. The language on the menhirs delivered a message not intended for her: the Mason had carved those words for himself, and time had worn the edges - even the man himself appeared starkly weathered, his face latticed with cracks, his silvered beard thin and tangled. The role had been assumed by a man who'd once worked in stone, but no longer.

 

The sorceress was having difficulty understanding this field. The patterns she saw startled her: it was as if a whole new game had begun, with players stepping onto the scene at every turn. Midway through the spiral was High House Dark's Knight, its placement counterpoint to both the beginning and the end. As with the last time the Deck had unveiled this draconean figure, something hovered in the inky sky behind the Knight, as elusive as ever, at times seeming like a dark stain on her own eyes.

 

The Knight's sword reached a black, smoky streak toward the Hound at the spiral's apex, and in this instance she knew its meaning. The future held a clash between the Knight and High House Shadow. The thought both frightened Tattersail and left her feeling relieved - it would be a confrontation. There would be no alliance between the Houses. It was a rare thing to see such a clear and direct link between two Houses: the potential for devastation left her cold with worry.

 

GotM, US HC, p.114-5

 

The Deck of Dragons