“Yes?”
She leaned forward urgently. “I thought I sensed something from Isadora, Fenn, and Davin. A flicker of contact, quickly blocked.”
“Davin!” I exclaimed. He had fallen, along with our brother Locke, while defending Juniper against attacking hell-creatures. “Impossible! He'd dead!”
“I am not sure. Remember, we never did see his body.”
“True.” Taking a deep breath, I looked away. Davin had earned my grudging respect on the battlefield. If he had been captured instead of killed…
“All right, I'll grant you that much. Davin may be alive. What of Isadora? And Fenn?”
“I want Father to make a complete set of Trumps for me—one card for every one of his children, living and dead.”
“Dead?” I asked. “Why?”
“There are… certain ways to raise the dead in Chaos,” she said grimly. “Uthor may have done it with Davin. We cannot be certain. It would take a fresh body to fully restore him. Later, he could be brought back as a zombi… an animated corpse which can do simple tasks for its master.”
I did not like the sound of that. Rising, I paced. She had given me a lot to think about.
Three more of us possibly alive… having Fenn and Davin here would make an enormous difference in the coming battle. But first we had to get them back. Finding them had to be a top priority.
“A complete set of Trumps sounds like a reasonable request. Go ahead and ask Dad.”
“I did, but he refused.”
“What! Why?”
“He did not believe I sensed them. He said he did not have time to indulge my whims. Whims!”
“He has not been quite right since he made the new Pattern,” I said, remembering some of his outbursts.
“But this is important—so important, it must not be delayed.”
“I agree. I'll speak to him tomorrow morning.” I patted her hand, and she smiled in relief. “In the meantime, Aber just went back to Selonica. Why don't you go, too, and try your old Trumps again? Perhaps this time…”
“Very well.” Freda said. She rose. “Come with me?”
I hesitated. The day was not yet half over. Plenty of work remained here.
“Please?” she said. “I want you with me when I try Davin, Fenn, and Isadora. If you sense them, too, Father cannot deny it.”
“All right. I'll go—but I can't stay long.”
She nodded, then pulled out her deck of Trumps. The one Dad had made, which showed her room at the inn, sat on top. She concentrated on it and took us through when it came to life.
She must have been planning to bring me back with her. A table with two chairs sat to one side as if waiting for us. She sat and motioned me opposite her.
Then she handed me her deck of Trumps, face down. Without being asked, I shuffled them and handed them back. I had seen her read the future through them before. Was that what she had in mind?
She set the deck down, then turned over the first card. It showed our brother Locke, who had died a hero's death defending Juniper. For a second Freda traced the smooth bonelike surface of the Trump lightly with her fingertips, but then she moved it to the bottom of the deck.
“Why don't you try him?” I said.
“But he is dead. We cremated his body.”
“Humor me. I have been lied to so many times lately, I'm having a hard time believing anyone or anything. For all I know, he was replaced by a double in Juniper. Right now, he might be locked in a tower somewhere waiting to be rescued.”
She pulled Locke's Trump out again. Raising it, she concentrated for a minute on his image, then shrugged.
“Nothing.”
She set it face-down on the table beside her, and moved on to the next card, which showed a beautiful long-legged woman with reddish-blond hair—Syara. I had barely exchanged two words with her in Juniper.
“Nothing,” she repeated.
Then she drew the next card. Fenn.
She raised it, hesitated. “There… almost!”
I hurried around to stand behind her, leaning forward to see. As we both concentrated, I felt a faint conscious stirring from the card. Was it him? I could not be certain.
Finally, we had to give up. We had not been able to exchange any words with him, but something conscious was connected to his card.
“See?” Freda cried. “I was not mistaken! You felt it, too.”
I agreed. “Why couldn't we reach him, though?”
“It could be anything,” she said. “Distance. The Logrus. He may be unconscious or consciously blocking contact. Father must make me that new set of Trumps based on the Pattern!”
“I will tell him as soon as I see him. Now, what about the others?”
She picked up the next card. Pella. Her full sister.
“Nothing…” she said.
We finished her deck with no more successes.
Even though we hadn't managed to contact Fenn, I returned to Amber buoyed with optimism. Suddenly I had hope of seeing more of my brothers and sisters again.
I set to work with a new enthusiasm and spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing the castle's foundations with the architect, one Yalsef Igar, a frail-looking old man whom Prince Marib had recommended highly. Indeed, I had found his plans to be a nearly flawless interpretation of my vision of the castle.
My earlier threats and screaming had done wonders in motivating the construction supervisors… they now had their team of a hundred and fifty men hard at work shoveling dirt into barrows, rolling boulders down the mountainside, and cutting away trees, bushes, and underbrush. After stripping off the tree branches, mule-teams hauled the logs toward the new sawmill, half a mile away on the river.
“Bring in more men,” I said to Igar. “You have a year to finish. Cut the time in half and I'll triple your pay.”
“Triple?” he gasped.