Gilla squinted, seeing only the sun shining brightly over a painted city. "Whichone is that?"
"We call it Zenith-the noonday sun-but your husband has painted a city as wellas the sun." Illyra held her hands above it and stood for a moment with browwrinkled in concentration and eyes closed. "As thou wert Zenith, so thou shallbecome this city!" she murmured. She dipped her finger into the paint water andnicked a drop upon the card, then bent and breathed upon it. "By wind and waterdo I name thee Sanctuary, the querent of this reading, and the subject of thiscasting!"
She shouldn't be doing this, thought Gilla, watching Illyra search through thecards she had selected. There was a focus to her movements that held theattention. Gilla remembered how Roxane had compelled the eye, and shuddered. Butshe had never understood what needs drove the Nisibisi sorceress, who for allher great knowledge had no part in ordinary women's joys and pains. Illyra, sheunderstood only too well. We shouldn't be doing this! she thought then.
Gilla felt the pulse pounding in her temples, tasted the fury of the wolf-bitchwhose cubs have been killed. All her life she had known fear, fear of starvationin times of want, fear of theft in moments of affluence. She had grown uplistening for the stealthy step behind her as automatically as she watched formovement in the shadows whenever she went out of her door. And then she hadborne children, and the fear she felt for them was as much greater than her ownpersonal terrors as the White Foal River was deeper and more dreadful than thesewers of Sanctuary. And there had never been anything that she could do aboutit! Never, until now....
Ominous as a mountain moving, Gilla's heavy steps shook the floor as she tookher place across the worktable from the S'danzo.