Lisa Smedman - Storm of the Dead

He moved to the other side of the door and summoned up the vision again. Once again, someone blocked his view. Q'arlynd concentrated on this person, trying to bring him into focus. The staff fought him. It felt as if the diamond and his forehead were two lodestones, pushing each other apart.

Q'arlynd persevered, concentrating until sweat beaded on his temple.

At last he saw that the third person clearly. The person's back was to him, but Q'arlynd recognized him at once by his distinctive hairclip. It was Eldrinn blocking the view.

For a moment, Q'arlynd thought the real Eldrinn had stepped in front of him. Then he remembered that his eyes were closed. The duplicate Eldrinn was also holding the staff. The two Eldrinns were identical in every way, except that one held the staff to the side as he traced the sign on the door, while the other held the staff to his forehead, eyes closed. And no matter what Q'arlynd did, the second Eldrinn blocked his view.

Q'arlynd tried to force the second Eldrinn out of the vision, so that he could see how the first was opening the door, but the staff wouldn't let him. He drew the staff closer, until the diamond was a painful dent against his forehead, and gritted out through clenched teeth, "Show… me…"

The staff flew from Q'arlynd's fingers and clattered to the floor.

Q'arlynd swore, barely suppressing the urge to kick it.

"What's wrong?" Piri asked, backing away in alarm.

Alexa shrugged. "Maybe it doesn't want to show him the past."

"Maybe he's got it wrong," Baltak rumbled. "Maybe the staff doesn't show the past, but the future."

"It shows both," Eldrinn said. "I'm certain of-"

"Of course it does!" Q'arlynd cried. He threw back his head and laughed. That was it! That was why there had been a double Eldrinn in the vision, because the staff was showing Q'arlynd two pasts at the same time-pasts that were separated by mere moments. Eldrinn hadn't used the staff to reveal how the ancient Miyeritari had opened the door. The boy had looked into the future, instead. His own future. He'd watched himself open the door, then duplicated what was about to happen.

Q'arlynd reached out and gently punched Eldrinn on the shoulder. "Very clever. Very clever indeed."

The boy blinked, uncomprehending. "Huh?"

The other apprentices mirrored his blank stare.

Q'arlynd scooped up the staff. "All right," he told his students. "I'm going to try it again. As before, please maintain silence. And…" he tapped his temple, "keep your distance." He closed his eyes and touched his forehead to the diamond.

Show me the future, he silently commanded. Show me myself, a few moments from now, opening the door.

The moment he thought the words, the push-pull sensation came back. He tightened his grip on the staff, refusing to let it tear from his hands. Then the vision came, as commanded. Q'arlynd watched, barely breathing, as his hand lifted to trace a sign on the door. A different sign from the one the vision-Eldrinn had traced.

Then, just as the kiira-dominated Q'arlynd from the past had done, the Q'arlynd of the future deliberately hid the sign he was tracing from sight.

"Why did you do that?" he exploded.

The vision ended.

His apprentices stared at him, waiting expectantly. For once, even Baltak said nothing.

Q'arlynd was still trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. Like the kiira, his future self didn't want anyone to see how he opened the door. But that meant that Q'arlynd himself couldn't see how it was done. Yet someone had to observe how it was done, or the door couldn't be opened.

Q'arlynd stroked his chin, thinking. An idea occurred to him-one that he almost instinctively rejected. Grudgingly, however, he realized it was the only course of action that might work. If he invited the others into his mind, let them watch the vision-Q'arlynd from the future open the door, perhaps one of them might able to recognize the sign from its first, preliminary motions.

He glanced around at his apprentices. At Baltak, his broad chest puffed with his own self-importance. Piri, slinking about in his demon skin. Eldrinn, chewing his lip, no doubt nervous about what his father was going to say about their having abandoned the expedition to the Acropolis. Alexa, standing next to the boy, taller than him by a head. And Zarifar, who stared dreamily at the door, not paying the slightest bit of attention to the others.

"I need your help," Q'arlynd said, each word a stone he had to force out. "Use your rings to join minds with me, everyone. Observe the vision I'm seeing. You're about to see me, in the immediate future, opening Kraanfhaor's Door. Pay close attention to my hand, we need to know what arcane sign is being made."

Eldrinn's eyebrows rose. "So that's how I did it."

"Yes."

The others glanced at the boy, a new respect in their eyes.

"Let's begin," Q'arlynd told them.

A moment later, he felt them slip into his mind, one by one. Thrusting their way in or stealing in on velvet slippers, as was their wont. Baltak had to elbow Zarifar to get the latter's attention, but at last the geometer mage was inside, too-for all the good that would do.

Q'arlynd drew the staff toward himself. "Show me," he commanded it. "Show me the future. Show me myself, opening the door."

As it had before, the vision unfolded. When it finished, Q'arlynd lowered the staff. "Well?"

His apprentices glanced sidelong at one another, stared at the ceiling, or scowled, thinking-all but Zarifar, who swayed back and forth, humming. Then Zarifar struck a pose. He pirouetted on one foot, one hand raised above his head.

Piri eased away, as if afraid Zarifar's madness might be contagious.

Q'arlynd grabbed Zarifar's wrist. "What are you doing?"

Zarifar tugged against the restraining hand as if he couldn't understand why he'd suddenly stopped twirling. "The pattern," he said. His raised fingers twitched. "I'm the pattern."

Alexa signed something to Eldrinn. Q'arlynd caught only the last word and the finger flick that made it a question:… feeblewit?

Q'arlynd sighed and let go of Zarifar's arm. Maybe Alexa was right. Something had stripped both his own and Eldrinn's minds of memories. It was possible that merely observing that last vision might have done the same to Zarifar.

Zarifar stopped dancing and grabbed Q'arlynd's left arm in both hands. "The pattern," he said again, his eyes bright and intense, all trace of their former dreaminess gone. He yanked Q'arlynd's hand up in front of his face and waved it back and forth. "The pattern!"

Q'arlynd scoffed. All he was looking at was his own raised hand and the leather wristband below it, which bore his House insignia.

"Yes," Zarifar breathed. "That pattern."

Belatedly, Q'arlynd realized the apprentice's mind was still touching his own.

Zarifar at last let go of his arm.

Q'arlynd realized his mouth was hanging open. He didn't care. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "That's what opened Kraanfhaor's Door?" He waggled his fingers, pretending to practice a gesture. Silently, he asked Zarifar a question: Have I got it right? The pattern is the glyph for House Melarn?

Zarifar nodded.

Q'arlynd had to fight hard to hide his smile.

The others might, in time, figure out the truth. Q'arlynd doubted it would matter. In his vision of Eldrinn opening the door-the vision he hadn't shared with them-Eldrinn had traced a different symbol on the door. A different House glyph, Q'arlynd surmised. Likely that of his own House.

Kraanfhaor's Door, he suspected, would open only to someone who knew how to use his own, very personal, knock.

Q'arlynd understood why he had hidden his hand from view. Why he would hide his hand from view.

"Right," he said. "Time to get this thing open."