Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  Dedication

  For Frank

  Contents

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One: Above

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Part Two: Below

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Mary Victoria

  Copyright

  Map

  PROLOGUE

  In the old country, thought Jedda, a man of principle was always considered a rebel. His integrity threatened those in power, who lived by corruption. As his existence was a constant reminder of what they were not, they were unable to rest until they had taken him apart, piece by piece.

  First he would have his teaching post at the local school abolished. The dirty lice did not need to learn their letters, after all. If he then attempted to take up another trade — peddling recycled clothing, or selling bundles of loose bark for firewood, perhaps — his market stall would be routinely smashed and the goods destroyed. When poverty and ruin inevitably followed and he could not pay for his business licence, the authorities would confiscate his house as collateral on the debt. He would be forced into the streets with his young family to live as best he could, while his former neighbours and compatriots whispered to each other about the laziness of these filthy mystics who depended on handouts. Over the winter months his wife and infant daughter would die from exposure. He would become a husk of his former self, wandering with his surviving child from village to village and begging for alms, once a respected professor of the gemhat and abjat traditions, now a homeless drunk.

  Let no one say Nurians knew about justice.

  In the old country, if you were that other daughter, and unlucky enough to have inherited your father’s stubborn character as well as his sharp mind, you would be unable to bear such insults. You would remember him as he had been, before the dust and the kush and the cold, hungry nights. In your innocence you might feel the first stirrings of power within you, and imagine you could one day rout the enemy, bringing your beloved parent dignity again. You would be full of dreams of righteousness and pride; you would be caught looking the wrong way at a foreign soldier and find yourself, a girl of ten summers, locked in a storeroom behind the army canteen and forced to endure whatever abuse the Argosians heaped upon you. The people in the garrison town where you were imprisoned would do nothing to help you, though some must have heard your cries. No one would tell your father where you were, and he would wander away, abandoning you at last. How he could justify such an action, what story of death or disloyalty he might have believed in order to accept your absence, would always remain a mystery. You would even begin to suspect he had sold you. Your fellow Nurians would let you rot in that storeroom for days until you found a way out on your own, clawing loose the grating on the window with your fingernails. The Sap helps those who help themselves.

  Let no one wait for mercy in Nur.

  Was it any surprise, then, that someone who had suffered what passed for a childhood in the old country might invent some story, some yarn about her parents dying in a pirate raid, in order to leave that pathetic history behind? Might such a person not jump at the promise of happiness, though it were given by the very invaders who had made her life a misery? She would only be betraying those who had so often betrayed her. And yet she would come to regret the choice. So it is when we deny a part of ourselves, even the worst part. Hail to Nur, thought Jedda bleakly, standing in the torture chamber beneath the seminary with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Hail to my broken nation and its hard-hearted people. I should never have left you. There is no joy without you. For I missed a priceless beauty hidden underneath all that dust and cruelty.

  Samiha, Samiha: my queen, my hope. I was wrong to desert you.

  A scream echoed through the chamber, interrupting the litany of Jedda’s thoughts. She opened her eyes to gaze at the Nurian youth chained to the back of the room. Sweat ran down Pallas’ neck, glinting in the torchlight. His breath came in gasps after the screaming. He stared past her, beyond her, unrecognising. It humbled her to see how stubbornly he clung to life. She yearned to reach out and crush those hardwood links about his wrists and ankles like bread, crumbling them in her hands. She wished vehemently for fire and ruin to fall upon the head of the one who caused him pain. Pallas had already received a visit from the seminary inquisitors that evening, making a full confession of his activities in Argos city. Despite this he now suffered a further indignity, worse than torture in Jedda’s opinion.

  She could not bear to see the smirk of satisfaction on Wick’s face as he stood before the Nurian lad, the picture of bullying confidence. Her fellow acolyte had only dared approach the prisoner because Pallas was weak and manacled to the wall. Wick had strutted up to him and grasped a handful of his hair, holding him up as if he were a lifeless doll; with his other thumb he had pressed a gleaming rod of orah into Pallas’ forehead, his gaze locking with his victim’s in a silent struggle. Jedda hardly existed beside the two youths. She was grateful to be ignored. She closed her eyes again; this was not the knowledge she had sought at the seminary. She was not here in this chamber. She was anywhere but here.

  It was Lace who had insisted she be present at Pallas’ punishment. The Envoy had her on probation, she knew, monitoring her from afar with the orah-clock. It was the night before the Kion’s execution and the seminary was on high alert. Someone — a Lantrian spy, according to rumour — had in the past few hours broken into the bell tower to communicate with Samiha and absconded with some of the prisoner’s writings. Although Jedda had not participated in the orah ritual conducted by the Envoy and his puppet, Saint, in which they sought out and eventually arrested the interloper, she could guess who it was. She was proud of Tymon, even if he stood no chance against the seminary.

  She herself had been held hostage ever since Lace had caught her outside the bell tower that afternoon, her every movement controlled and watched. She too was a prisoner, though her chains were of a more subtle variety than those of poor Pallas. The Envoy had sent her here tonight to ram home the point, she supposed. Pallas was an untaught Grafter with no means of defending himself. It was her fault he was being subjected to such treatment: she had been the one to divert Tymon’s attention at the temple, while her master struck his blow against the weaker target. It had been the last task she performed for Lace and one that caused her to boil with shame. She had never wanted the Freeholder to suffer like this. She turned away, unable to watch as Wick sucked the life and power from his victim. They had already wiped the young man’s memory. Why were they dead set on destroying his mind as well?

  ‘Because the memory blocks I put in at the temple were impermanent. He would have returned to normal in a few days, Jedda.’

  She flinched as the familiar voice answered her unspoken thoughts, her shrinking gaze alighting on the black-coated figure in the doorway. The Envoy was one step ahead of her, as always, his teeth bared in a mirthless smile. There was no shutting her eyes on him.

  ‘We have to do this, you realise,’ he said, strolling into the room. ‘We’re at war. We cannot be seen as being weak or treating our enemies indulgently. You should participate: it would be good for you. That’s why I asked you to come here.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ she answered hoarsely. ‘You’ll
have to forgive me, sir.’

  ‘Well then, watch and learn,’ snapped her master, coming to stand by Wick. ‘Your colleague here is doing wonderfully.’

  ‘You’re wrong not to try it, you know,’ said Wick, leering over his shoulder at her. ‘This is amazing. This is Power: all the rest is just child’s play.’

  As he spoke, Pallas screamed again. The strength had left the prisoner’s limbs, and he sagged in his manacles, his face working. Wick was obliged to hold him steady, propping him up with one arm wrapped around his chest. It was an oddly tender pose seen from without. But there was nothing gentle in Wick’s expression. He jammed the orah into Pallas’ forehead, his face exultant.

  ‘I can feel it,’ he murmured. ‘Feel his strength running into me. It’s all mine.’ Jedda glared at him in revulsion.

  The Envoy shrugged off her disapproval. ‘You disappoint me, Jedda,’ he sighed. ‘I was hoping to find in you an apprentice worthy of my attention, a strong mind willing to accept the rigours and challenges of absolute freedom. Instead, you’re still shackled to your old ideas. You cannot decide which way to run. You remain a wavering, guilt-ridden slave. You may go if you desire. We have no need of weaklings here.’

  Jedda knew better than to respond to his taunts. The Envoy’s disappointment meant little to her; the glimpse of terrifying knowledge in Samiha’s eyes had put paid to his paltry talk of power. She did not know who or what the Kion was and she no longer cared. All she knew was that compared with her queen, Lace was nothing. The so-called freedom he offered her was no better than dust and ashes. She had truly left her master’s service when she fled in awe and confusion from the bell tower that day, to endure his spiteful threats on the temple buttress. She waited now only for the Kion’s execution, knowing it would be the inevitable end to her career at the seminary. It would be both the death knell to her hopes and a final liberation: after that, there would be nothing to keep her in the city. Her master would either have to turn her loose, or put her out of her misery by killing her, too.

  He had released her for the moment, at least. His last words had given her leave to quit this scene of infamy. As she turned to go, however, Pallas spoke. The whispered, painful words were addressed to Wick, but left an indelible mark on Jedda’s soul.

  ‘You’re Eaten,’ the Freeholder gasped out. ‘Eaten from the inside. I see it coming through. Reaching the surface. Not long now. Burnt and Eaten.’

  ‘What does he mean?’ Wick asked the Envoy, with a frown.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Lace dismissively. He inspected Pallas, peering at him with cold curiosity, as if he were a rare species of butterfly. ‘His mind has been tampered with. No wonder he was so open with us. Who knows where this fool ran into a practitioner of the old arts. He’s as good as an idiot already.’

  Even as he spoke, Pallas’ body stiffened in a last spasm and went limp. Jedda shook off the horrified torpor that had taken hold of her and strode towards the chamber door. But Lace was too quick for her. Although he had himself dismissed her, he sprang forward as she tried to leave, grasping her right elbow.

  ‘Be careful what you choose to do, young lady,’ he hissed in her ear. His eyes were flat and dark, untouched by the lantern light. ‘If you turn away from me now, you’ll suffer the consequences. I’ll not forgive another transgression.’

  She shrank from him, unable to answer. He fixed her a moment longer with his dead eyes before letting go of her arm and stepping aside with deliberate calm. She dodged past him into the corridor.

  ‘Then you shall be cursed,’ he called after her, slowly and clearly. ‘Cursed to injure all who help you, to destroy all those you love. Cursed to See yourself for what you truly are. Be careful.’

  His words clutched at her heels and made her stumble. She did not look back but ran up the steps leading to the College proper, her pulse hammering.

  ‘Abomination,’ Lace said under his breath, as Jedda’s lanky figure disappeared from view. Then he shut his mouth with a snap. It was all the same to him if the turncoat turned again. She was still his, after all, bound to him by the very power he had given her. She would not easily escape her cage.

  He returned to Wick’s side. The acolyte held Pallas loosely; his eyes had a faraway look, and he did not appear to have noticed Jedda’s departure. ‘It’s just like you told me, sir,’ he said to Lace, his voice thick and slurred. ‘The uninitiated are nothing. Nothing but worms and decay. I see that now.’

  ‘You’re better than they are,’ replied the Envoy, nodding. ‘You’re superior.’

  But Wick did not respond. He allowed the inert body of Pallas to slip from his arms, hanging limply from its chains, and knelt down on the floor, holding on to the wall for support, as if drunk. His head lolled back and his eyes were half-closed, his lips stretched into a smile of beatitude as he basked in the heady intoxication of stolen energy.

  Lace regarded him with grim sobriety. ‘Enjoy yourself, acolyte,’ he said. ‘But don’t wander too far. Remember, we’re expected to do our duty on the quays tomorrow morning. And shut down that connection after you’re finished — permanently.’

  It was done, it was over. Her Kion was gone: the moment of pain and liberation was at hand. Jedda stumbled out of the door at the base of the bell tower into a world made ghostly white by snow. White, the colour of oblivion, drifted down to shroud the city and its inhabitants. White, the colour of the mists that had swallowed Samiha’s figure as she tumbled through the uncanopied emptiness. White as the clouds of the Storm through which her delicate body must have spiralled down, down, down to the Tree knew what bloody end.

  Jedda wandered down the stairs from the temple buttress to the snow-lined streets, hardly caring where her feet took her. After quitting the torture chamber the evening before, she had spent a sleepless night in her quarters, counting down the hours to Samiha’s execution. The next day, when the Kion had been taken to the quays and the priests had rung their fateful bells, Jedda slipped into the unlocked tower and spent that anguished hour weeping over Samiha’s empty desk. She had risen and left the building when she heard the dim cries of triumph echoing out from the air-harbour, and spun loose from the seminary like an arrow shot wild. Lace might kill her whenever he liked. Nothing else was left.

  But Lace did not kill her, and the snowfall eased. After a while her aimless drifting through the city brought her face to face with the hordes of spectators returning from the air-harbour. She blinked at them through her tears, feeling the prick of hatred. These people had taken her Kion away, lapped up her death like a Tree-cat laps milk. It was all just entertainment to them: they did not care whether Samiha was a heretic or a truth-teller, guilty or innocent. The only thing that mattered was the thrill of the ride. They talked now of miracles as Jedda pushed by them on the main thoroughfare, of visions of angels above the temple dome and a boy burnt from head to toe by invisible fire. There was no end to their nonsense and perversity.

  Jedda walked more quickly, her despair replaced by a steadily mounting fury. They all deserved punishment, she thought. Each and every one of these Tree-forsaken Argosians, down to the last squealing infant. Maybe it was worth staying alive, thumbing her nose at the seminary as Tymon had done, to see that day. She mouthed half-uttered invectives as she shoved her way through the throng. People turned to stare at her. She dashed her tears away with the back of her hand and barrelled past a sentry at the city gates, ignoring the man’s officious query. From the expression of shock on his face she realised that the Seeming that had hidden her femininity in public had been stripped away, as part of the Envoy’s curse. From now on she would appear exactly as she was: a woman and a Nurian, a pariah in Argos, just as Lace had promised. She walked swiftly along the emptying air-harbour quays with her green acolyte’s cloak and hood drawn close about her. She did not wait to see if the guard was pursuing her but hurried towards the main ramp out of the town, sliding on the icy boards of the dock.

  The Envoy might curse her but she would g
o on. She would do her best to survive. He would doubtless have her followed and murdered; she would probably expire on that ice-bound day, or perhaps the day after. But it was worth attempting to escape, if only as a last act of defiance. She fled Argos city without another thought, as if the place were caught in the grip of a plague.

  PART ONE

  ABOVE

  Far from you, I wander lost

  Tattered, searching through the dust

  In desperate hope that I may find

  A hint, a remnant left behind

  Of you.

  — Samiha Saman

  1

  The South Road was a faint wriggling line, no more than a scratch on the face of the World Tree. Mile after grey mile it traced the circumference of that colossal wall. League upon league it wound its way laboriously around the trunk perimeter. It was pounded by the elements for there was little shelter on the exposed ledge, no place to hide between the sheer bark face on one side and the West Chasm on the other. A person or vehicle travelling along that perilous path, either forwards or backwards, either north or south, was forced to crawl between two extremes, hard up against oblivion. Few attempted such a journey in the depths of winter, and during the three days that Tymon sat crouched in the rattling prison cart beside Verlain, hugging his cold-numbed limbs to his chest, the vehicle did not pass a single voyager. There was barely a bird in the fog-filled skies. A snowstorm on the first evening had caused the wagon to be half-buried in a drift. It had to be dug out the next day by the cursing drivers, who evidently would much rather have left their two charges behind to expire in the cold. And Tymon might well have expired on that journey, had it not been for the steady presence at the back of his mind. The Oracle stayed with him, her voice sustaining him in his darkest hours.