Page 88 of The Dark Mirror

And then, out of nowhere, I recalled the fifth card in the reading Liss had given me.I know the world will change around you. Her voice was clear as a bell.Death itself will work in different ways.

Death, inverted.

I paused, my gaze fixed on Arcturus. The fourth card had promised that we would be lovers, and not just for one night.The card has weight, Liss had told me.This will be a pillar of your life.

How could he be meant to leave me now, when there was so much left undone?

Think.

There was one thing I could try. It had never even crossed my mind, to enter a dreamscape that was also a tomb. There was no reason it should work; it felt like desecration, like trespassing. But all I had left were my instincts, and that morsel of hope that Liss had left me.

I returned to Arcturus and curled up at his side, so our faces were close together. Leaving a shadow of awareness behind, as he had taught me in London, I dreamwalked into him.

Like most of the tarot, the Death card wasn’t always to be taken literally. It was the card most often seen in voyants’ readings, that symbolised the æther itself. In my limited experience, it heralded a time of new beginnings, but in the inverted position, in this context, I wondered if I was meant to fight the change. To not give up on Arcturus.

He was hovering as close to death as Rephs could get. Perhaps that state could be reversed, regardless of what the Ranthen believed.

His dreamscape was as dark as that stone coffin must have been. Even my dream-form no longer glowed, as it usually did when I walked in his mind, but the golden cord held strong. I reached out a hand, finding one of the red drapes.

The cord was only just alight. I retraced the familiar steps around the drapes, putting my trust in our connection, which had, against all odds, survived his separation from the æther.

Even if this was false hope, I would follow it. I was voyant, and I would put my faith in the Death card, no matter its position.

I bumped into one of his spectres, a towering manifestation of memory. Under normal circumstances, it might have noticed an intruder in his dreamscape. Instead, it only listed, as if I had unbalanced it. As I backed away, I glimpsed my own terrified face in its eyes.Don’t choose the side I’m not standing on, it said in my voice.I don’t think I can bear to be your enemy.

If the spectre touched me, that memory might leak, and I couldn’t stand to go back to that night. I kept moving.

At last, I found Arcturus. I knelt beside him, like a mourner, and pressed my forehead against his, feeling his presence ring through my being. The essence of him, in direct contact with the essence of me.

It was as close as I had ever been to anyone.

‘Come back. We still have more to do.’ I touched his face. ‘And I still want you with me.’

It was the longest of long shots. For several moments, nothing happened, and I faced the unbearable possibility that I had misinterpreted the card. That I was going to have to turn my back on him, to walk away a second time. To abandon him to his dark room for ever.

And then my fingertips sparked, and a tremor rolled to the outermost circle of his mind, breaking against its edge like a wave.

Whatever had just happened, I had caused it.

I listened and waited, not letting go. And then light seared in from above, so bright it was blinding. The brilliance shocked me back into my body, where I met a pair of golden eyes, dim as windblown candles.

‘Arcturus?’

He stared at me, as if he had never seen me before. I stared back in wonder, my own eyes brimming.

And then I was flat on my back, and my wrists were pinned on either side of my head, held there by an iron grip.

PART TWO

OVER THE LETHE

Beochaoineadh:[Irish, noun] An elegy for the living; a lament for someone who is still alive, but lost.

14

THE FIFTH CARD

‘I have done with your tricks, dreamwalker.’

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