The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (25 page)

In the center of the grove was the oldest tree, a stumpy half-circle, deep fissures in the hollow wood, branches arching outward to curve back down to the soft layer of needles. Some were rooting themselves afresh to send out bright shoots, while fallen wood lay dead on either side. The central tree was crowned with spring green, feathery sprays of glossy needles rising from the ancient wood. I breathed in the resinous scent and childhood memory stirred. No, this untamed place bore scant resemblance to the groves maintained and trained for bow staves in the cities of Ensaimin. I’d once asked my mother why the mysterious trees were so strictly fenced, disappointed by her explanation of poisonous berries. Looking at this mighty tree claiming its ground and extending its domain with seedling and branch, I felt my childhood fancy had been justified. Those trees had been fenced to stop them getting loose and driving out the tyranny of stone and brick.

But that was just a child’s notion. For the moment, I’d found what I’d been seeking. Folk sat where fallen branches offered handy seats, or where the living arms of the tree dipped down to offer their embrace. Loose groups around the fire fed it with dead wood granted by the great tree and her lesser daughters. The flames burned bright yellow, white at their core, crackling and shifting like a living thing.

As I was wondering how to insinuate myself into the gathering, one of those closest looked around and I recognized the good-looking lad.

“Join us.” He extended a welcoming hand.

“Good evening to you all.” I sat next to him and smiled, friendly and unremarkable, that’s me. Three sets of female eyes examined me for adornment and I was flattered by a hint of disappointment in the men’s gazes.

“You are Livak?” one asked politely. “Of the blood but an outdweller?” His hair and close-trimmed beard looked brown rather than red, though that may have been the light. You could find his face anywhere in eastern Ensaimin, round-jawed with heavy brows, but his vivid green eyes were unmistakably of the Folk.

“That’s right.” I remembered a phrase from an old song. “My father cast his dreams upon the wind and followed them. He was a minstrel and he paused a while to sing for my mother who lived in a city of Ensaimin.” Who had never taken pleasure in music since his departure. I discarded that sudden, irrelevant thought.

The girl beside him said something that escaped me, her smile so sweet it was probably none too polite.

“I speak little of the tongue of the Folk.” I dimpled some charm at the man.

“Don’t concern yourself. We all learn the tongue of the outdwellers, for trade and travel. Folk who come from far distant can have speech strange to our ears as well,” he smiled back. “I am Parul.”

“I am Salkin,” the good-looking lad with the necklace offered and the rest introduced themselves. Nenad was a skinny youth with a raw-boned face and freckles more affliction than adornment. The girls, sisters with well-formed figures and tightly curling auburn hair, were, from youngest to oldest, Yefri, Gevalla and Rusia. All wore a couple of unremarkable trinkets and discreetly hopeful expressions.

“What are you doing?” A square of leather on the ground had a set of runes spread on it, wooden and each half the length of my hand rather than the finger-joint lengths of bone I carried. Three triangles made of three runes joined to make a large one, creating a fourth in the center, just like a birth sigil.

“Seeing what the fate sticks show us of the future,” one of the girls, Gevalla, giggled.

“How very interesting,” I said slowly.

“Do you do this, beyond the wildwood?” Salkin asked. I could smell the spicy scent of new sweat on his clean body.

“We game with runes, sometimes for coin,” I replied cautiously. “Do you?”

Parul nodded toward a lively circle on the far side of the fire. “Certainly.”

I looked over and saw two bright blond heads among the range of russet and brown. So ’Gren had decided to pursue more promising game than Zenela. That was probably just as well, because I couldn’t see her romantic virginal notions surviving an encounter with him.

“Do the fate sticks show you the truth?” Looking no more than idly curious, my thoughts raced; aetheric magic is a magic of the mind. I’ve seen enough fortune-tellers to know the charlatans deduce four parts from five in any prediction from clothing or accent or demeanor, but did the Folk somehow hold the missing fifth? Perhaps there was some Artifice hidden in the wildwood. I held my excitement firmly in check but wondered where I might find a less precious book for Usara to choke down.

“If you truly want to know, the runes will speak to you.” Rusia took the sticks, fitted the three-sided rods into a larger triangle and tapped their ends level.

“How?” A woman in Col who claims to be Aldabreshin does good business weaving mystery over a spread of colored stones. Her trick is statements so vague they answer any query.

“You can ask particular questions,” Gevalla volunteered, her face eager, “or lay the sticks for a foretelling.”

“Or for a picture of where you are and where you are going,” added Yefri.

“Are they an accurate guide?” I made sure my skepticism didn’t show.

“It depends.” Salkin spread his hands. “Those who trust the sticks are shown truth. For those who doubt, the runes fall without meaning.”

A convenient explanation for errors. “Who lays the sticks?” If the results were to be manipulated, there had to be a guiding hand.

“The seeker,” Yefri said, as if it were obvious.

“Would it work for me?” I asked slowly. “As an out-dweller and unsure of it?”

The two girls looked at Rusia, who rolled a rune stick between her fingers like a professional fixer. “It’s belief that governs the sticks. If you believe, they will speak true. I’ll read them for you if you like.”

“I’m curious,” I said slowly, “and willing to believe. Is that enough?” I let a hint of a challenge edge my words.

Rusia’s eyes shone dark and determined. She rolled the runes between her hands and pulled one free. “This is your birth rune?”

I held the polished yew wood between my hands, each image upright as I turned the three faces. The symbols were more fluidly carved than I was used to but were undeniably the Wellspring, the Harp and the Zephyr. I nodded slowly. “My father told me he drew this rune when I was born, that these are lucky symbols for me.” Could she have learned this from ’Gren or Sorgrad?

“Rusia’s always able to draw someone’s birth rune,” said Yefri with pride.

“Then he was truly of our blood,” commented Salkin. “Only the Folk take a single stick and read the three sides together. Outdwellers have all manner of strange rituals.”

“The Men of the Mountains draw a single rune,” Rusia corrected him with a hint of rebuke.

One chance in nine was not impossible odds. I looked at Rusia and pointed to ’Gren. “You’ve not spoken to him?”

“No, not at all.” She half turned in her seat. “Why?”

“Could you draw his birth rune, read something from it, even though you know nothing of him?”

Rusia nodded, a combative glint in her eye. “A test?”

“Go on, Rusia, we know you can do it,” Gevalla urged. The others all nodded, entirely confident in the girl’s talents.

Rusia took a moment to look thoughtfully at the nine sticks in her hand before taking a deep breath and plucking one from the bundle. “Are these his birth runes?”

“What do you read about him?” I countered.

Rusia pursed her lips. “The Storm is dominant of those three, a strong rune, masculine. He is inclined to temper and to trouble.”

Which could be true of any man, in the right circumstances.

Rusia turned the rune. “Lightning, so he is given to sudden inspiration but—” she hesitated. “A lightning strike can be calamitous, it sets fires and great destruction can result.”

I saw a curious detachment behind her eyes. The others were all intent upon her and I held my tongue. Rusia continued, her gaze fixed on something unseen. “The chime sounds as it is struck, so he has a reputation he does not care to deny or conceal. Striking is violence though—” She broke off. “I need his heavens sign.” She reached for another rune stick and made an inarticulate noise of surprise.

“This isn’t the heavens rune.” Yefri took the stick from her. “How ever did you mispick?”

Rusia colored and reached again but suddenly stayed her hand. “What ruled the heavens at his birth?” she demanded.

“I don’t know.” The question had never come up.

Rusia’s eyes were distant for a moment as she fingered the first stick she had drawn. “This is a rune of the mountains, linked to winds, to noise and disruption. There is something ill-omened—I cannot tell more without knowing his heavens sign.”

The group all turned to look rather dubiously at both brothers, deep in a game with a gang of young men. I walked over to stand at ’Gren’s shoulder. He turned his head briefly to acknowledge me.

“Your birth runes, ’Gren, do you reckon anything to them?” I kept my tone light.

’Gren glanced back to the noisy gambling. “Not beyond claiming that bone if we’re drawing lots.”

“What’s the heavens rune for your sigil?”

“Empty.” ’Gren turned with a wicked grin. “I was born at the dark of both moons.” He opened his eyes wide, white all around the startling blue. “Born to be hanged, that’s what they said.”

“Who said?”

“So did Sandy go off to find a pretty neck for that chain?” Sorgrad spoke over his brother with a malicious grin.

“When I left him he was tucking himself up for the night.” I looked at Sorgrad. “That was a costly gesture you made.”

He grinned in the flickering firelight. “I’d pay twice over in solid coin for that kind of entertainment. And now we know how to drive the mage out of any conversation.” He reached into a pocket and twirled an emerald signet ring on one finger. “What’ll you put up against this if I say some girl has that collar around her neck and Sandy’s got a spring in his step tomorrow morning?”

“No wager.” I shook my head. “Watch that one with the chain bracelets,” I whispered into ’Gren’s ear before returning to Salkin and his friends.

I sat down by the leather square. “He was born under no heaven’s sign, at the dark of both moons, Rusia.”

She muttered something in the Forest tongue and I cursed my lack of the language again. “What does that signify?” I asked.

“It is… ill omened,” Rusia said with a finality that forbade further inquiry.

Was this only superstitious nonsense or some lore shared by the ancient races?

“What could the runes tell you about me?”

She handed me the sticks with a challenge in her eyes. “Lay them as I tell you and we’ll see, shall we? Don’t look at them, don’t choose, just set them down.”

I took the runes from her and ran the smooth wood casually between my fingers. Polished from years of use, as far as I could tell there were none of the minute nicks or hollows that can tell practiced fingers so much more than the eye can see.

Rusia’s eyes held mine. “One first, laid crossways,” she commanded, “then two below it, crossways again and three in a line below that.” I did as I was bid. “The rest, one each at the corners of the triangle. No, pointing outward, like that.”

I sat back. “So, what do they say?”

Rusia picked up the single rune, the first I had laid. She held it up to show me the sign on its base. “You were born under the protection of the sun.”

“True enough,” I admitted, curious to find that I had laid the heavens stick first.

“This second row speaks of your character.” She looked at the two signs set upright beside each other. “Lightning, so you see yourself as creative, the Zephyr, so you consider yourself lucky.” She looked at the reversed runes on the other visible faces of the sticks. “How do other people see you? The Storm suggests they find you difficult, prone to disagreement. The Wellspring? They think you conceal a great deal.”

I smiled at her. She could try reading what I was concealing beneath my cheery unconcern if she liked.

She lifted the sticks to reveal the runes laid face to the leather. “And these speak of your true self. The Chime sounds for resolve, decisiveness. The Harp is a sign of craft, of skill, of cleverness.”

So Rusia was a shrewd judge of character, even on slight acquaintance. And news of newcomers runs around any village like a dog with a bone in its mouth. She’d doubtless been listening to gossip all day.

“What about the rest?” I pointed to the bottom row of three.

“Your mother, yourself and your father,” she said.

“Go on.” We might as well see this through. There might be something to this if Rusia could tell me anything of significance about my parents.

She showed me the Pine, first of the runes set upright and facing me. “Your mother is strong like the tree yet flexible enough to weather a storm.”

I’d certainly seen my grandmother’s anger come down like summer thunder, my mother passive yet ultimately resisting her fury.

“But there’s also adversity there. The Forest,” Rusia frowned as she looked at the next rune along. “That’s for resourcefulness but also for loss, getting lost. Reeds next, for flexibility but also for weakness.”

I kept my face a mask of polite interest, ignoring recollection of my mother’s laments, over being saddled with a minstrel’s bastard and then over her cowardice in not following him. But surely any combination of runes could be interpreted to strike a resonance from any life?

“I’ve heard those traits linked to those signs but plenty of others besides,” I said cautiously. “Tormalins call the Reeds Drianon’s sign for faithfulness in marriage. In Caladhria they signify Arimelin’s whispers carrying dreams.”

“Rusia always knows which aspect applies,” Yefri said, as if surprised I needed to ask. The others all nodded fervent agreement.

Rusia looked at me for a moment before considering the runes on the reverse faces. “For your father, the Wolf, that’s ambition but also hunger unsatisfied. The Oak is strength, vigor in life, but also stubbornness, hollowness. The Salmon, for travel, for fertility.” She smiled a little. “But also for a compulsion overriding all else. We can stop if you like,” she offered.