“Where do they come from?”

The question was unexpected. Varajas was standing in the maze with him, tracing his own fingers over the shape of the knife.

Samir stopped walking and the world around them froze. “Where does what come from?”

“The cards. The pictures on them.”

“The tree.” That was Ruan. “We saw the tree when we were looking for you. It was in the castle—the dream castle—” He shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “Whatever you would call the place we’re trapped.”

“And the tree is connected to…” Samir had his suspicions, but he wasn’t ready to say them out loud. “To this power that the knights were guarding—the power Peyter is looking for.”

Varajas nodded.

Samir was the Samir trapped in the past, but he was also himself, now. Which was why he could reach into the jacket his past self wasn’t wearing and draw out the card that was at the center of all of this.

It was his card…and it wasn’t. He could see the familiar illustration of the long, slim black knife, the vines reaching up and around. But as he turned it back and forth, he also saw another image—one that matched the etchings in the stone. The knife now superimposed on the tree behind it, and the dead tree reaching out.

“What you have to know about the cards is that they are not, themselves, magic.” Samir turned the card slowly back and forth and watching the images shift. “They’re more complicated than that. The artists who create them aren’t wizards, but there are rituals, attunements, meditations. Anyone can draw a fate deck, but those are useless for real magic. Cards like mine have to be carefully crafted through a process even I don’t fully understand.

“There are traditional images. Every artist puts their own touch on things, of course, but there’s only so much the cards tend to vary. And some can vary more than others.”

Keeping Death tweezed between his first two fingers, Samir pulled the Tower from the deck. “For example, this should look familiar.” He held it up, noted Varajas’s slight flinch.

“Ulek,” Ruan supplied.

“The card itself—it’s meaning—is about a fall from power. Arrogance punished. Destruction. This card is brand new. Sheluna had it made for me. She gave it to me right before I left to come south. It’s probably the first Tower card made with Ulek as the image, but I don’t believe it will be the last. I know for a couple hundred years after the uprising, Darkivel was a popular image. Not that Sheluna has any decks in her possession with Darkivel on the Tower. But you get the idea. Some cards change.”

He slipped that card back in, then drew the Star. “Others have a more fixed imagery.” He showed them the picture, the stylized four-pointed star on an empty dark field. “Of all the decks I’ve seen, every representation of the Star looked like this. This seems to be just how this card is illustrated. Always. Every time.”

He slid that back in, then flipped Death back up into view. “This one is more like the Star than the Tower. They’re always very similar. Not exactly the same, but there’s always a knife, and it almost always looks like this knife—a slim black blade with a black-wrapped hilt. Sometimes there’s a tree.” He turned the card, shifting the image. “Sometimes not. But even if there’s no tree, there are always the vines, or branches. Dead. Reaching.”

Varajas closed his eyes, leaning back against the stone wall of the maze, as though for support.

Samir held the card up, still turning it, so he could watch the changing image and Varajas all at once. “It’s a knife, isn’t it? The hidden secret of the knights?”

“It’s both,” Varajas said softly. “Knife and tree. Somehow. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But it’s…mine now. Somehow.” His eyelids opened and he met Samir’s gaze. “And it gets worse.”