Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  He told himself that there was nothing for it, given his situation, but to try to do as he had been told. Striking a deal with the mine-owner would allow him to free Zero and the others with the least amount of trouble; he might arrange to have the released slaves left at a certain location outside the mine, which he would then communicate to the Focals in the trance. If he could manage it, he would escape himself and join them as a final snub to the Lord. But he was willing to stay behind if it ensured the Saffids’ safety. Having settled this point to his satisfaction, he rose from the stool and installed himself on the weave-mat on the floor of the conservatory, leaning his back against the divan where Tahu had been sitting a few minutes before. Whatever dangers the Oracle was facing in the world of the Veil, he thought, he might at least assure himself that he was carrying out her mandate in the physical one, by protecting the Saffid.

  ‘In weakness find strength,’ he murmured, gazing out of the window at the fading daylight.

  Whether because of his fears for the Oracle, however, or some deep-seated reluctance to help Dayan, strength did not come to him on this occasion. Every time he attempted to clear his mind, he remembered his teacher’s final words, and lost the thread of his concentration. Something’s wrong, she had said. Something’s wrong. He shut his eyes and forced himself to think of his employer’s question, the Lord’s calm certainty about Tahu’s intentions. Not if, but how. But the harder Tymon tried to hold on to the image of the resettler, the further the trance seemed to slip from his grasp. Despite his recent strides in the craft, it was as grindingly difficult to launch the Reading now as it had been the first time he tried it. Part of the problem, he knew, was that he secretly wished Tahu every success in his bloody endeavour. The empty minutes marched by fruitlessly as he sat there on the mat. After what seemed an age, the hour-candle Dayan caused to be regularly replaced in a wall-bracket sputtered and went out. The young man rose to light a second one, then returned to his post on the floor. For a long time, nothing further happened.

  Finally, he opened his eyes, knowing he would never attain the trance in his current state. He had to calm himself down, for the sake of Zero and Dawn, and all those who depended on him. In an effort to distract himself, he allowed his eyes to wander over the design on the silk weave-mat on the floor of the conservatory. It depicted a stylised tree, a classic Nurian motif he had seen many times during his journeys in the Eastern Canopy, though this was the finest specimen he had ever come across. A variety of animals was woven through the pattern of leaves and twigs, with cunning attention to detail. Bird, snake, monkey, cat … he had always wondered why shillees and margeese were not included in the traditional designs. In Lord Dayan’s carpet, there was a creature he had not encountered before — an imaginary animal, a bird with a woman’s head. It sat perched on the very top of the tree, its features reminding him oddly of Samiha.

  At that moment, he recalled his love as she had been on the Freehold, a young wife and companion. The memory was overpowering and he almost groaned aloud. He was overcome by physical longing for her, as if his body were now in mourning, separate from his mind. He would have faced another flogging if he were sure it would conjure up her image again. Even a hallucination was better than nothing. He bent his hot forehead to his knees, despairing.

  When he looked up again, he was standing on the brink of the mine-crater.

  The trance had taken him by surprise. This time, the shift between states was instantaneous: there was no tangle of greenery filled with Leaf Letters, no merging with the Sap in the Tree of Being. He had stepped directly into a vision and found himself gazing into the vapour-filled shaft, at the scaffolds and ramps clinging to its sides. They seemed even more fragile and precarious than before, the work of ants. The dock-bridge and customs buildings, about a mile off to his right, were as ephemeral as gossamer. He realised that he had not been focusing on Tahu. He had missed his opportunity to answer Dayan’s question. This was a vision controlled by the Sap.

  Just as the thought crossed his mind, a tremor went through the bark.

  The mine was about to collapse. The insight arrived without warning, an absolute certainty, like the knowledge gained in a dream. The Sap had brought him to a juncture of extreme danger. He had nothing to fear from a simple Grafting vision, of course: he was not in the Veil. But this Reading was visceral. The prospect of a cave-in, of being buried alive under a heap of bark, terrified him. He stood rooted to the spot at the edge of the crater as the bark beneath him shuddered again. The movement was stronger this time, a shivering, rolling shake, as if the branch supporting the mine were an enormous animal waking up from sleep. The dim sound of tearing timber echoed from the shaft and a blast of warm air hit his face. He looked anxiously towards the dock buildings, remembering the nameless scribe who had helped him on his arrival. He knew, then, that the little clerk would die.

  A scene of devastation met his eyes. The struts supporting the dock-bridge had begun to sway from side to side, causing the long walk of suspended planks to buckle between them. Dirigible barges were breaking loose from their moorings, dragged into each other by the crumpling bridge, and cracking like eggs. A faint cacophony of human voices rose up from the customs buildings. Tymon watched in horror as huge chunks of bark broke off the sides of the crater, to slide down into the mine with a ruinous crash. The supporting branch beneath shook with repeated tremors, and the chain of planks on the bridge flipped upwards, turning inside out. Dirigibles spun off it like beads from a broken necklace.

  ‘The end of the world,’ said a cheerful voice, as if this were the best news imaginable.

  Tymon spun around to find his old friend Ash standing on his other side. The illusion of Ash, he corrected himself, remembering what the Oracle had told him. He had never Seen a ghost in his visions, only the Born. This one, who was smiling pleasantly at him, did not even possess the fifth Focal’s trademark scar. How could he have possibly mistaken this ethereal Being for the poor man from Marak?

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, curt in his surprise. ‘Why do you take the form of Ash? What do you want from me?’ The Born’s gaze was piercing, even as the dead Focal’s had been. In that they were identical.

  ‘I often worked with the one you name, when he was alive,’ said the Being who had borrowed the form of Ash. He did not seem to care that the bark they were standing on had begun to tremble, a forewarning of collapse. ‘I want nothing from you. I am here to help.’

  ‘Then please tell me what to do,’ said Tymon. He fought off the panicky urge to run. ‘When does this happen? Should I warn Dayan?’

  The Born glanced up at the far-off disc of the sun shining through the leaf-forests, as if it could show him the exact hour and date of the apocalypse. ‘This happens tomorrow,’ he answered. ‘At half-past noon, or thereabouts. Yes, I would warn everyone, if I were you.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ repeated Tymon, aghast. ‘But the air-chariots won’t have arrived by then! The Saffid will be trapped down there!’

  ‘Many people will be trapped down there.’

  ‘Why didn’t the Oracle mention this?’ said Tymon in dismay. ‘She must have known! Why did she let me go on thinking that I could save them?’

  The Born raised an eyebrow, laconic. ‘You wish to be considered a full-fledged Grafter, and yet you continually rely on others to do the hard work,’ he replied. ‘Your teacher told you to See for yourself. Now you do.’

  ‘How can you be so calm, when everyone’s going to die?’ protested Tymon, rounding on him in frustration. ‘If you really wanted to help, you’d show more heart!’

  ‘A heart,’ said his companion mildly, ‘is a place where love grows. Tend your own, instead of worrying about others.’

  With that, he turned his back on Tymon and began walking away towards the dock buildings, oblivious to the widening cracks in the bark. The young man hurried after him, battling annoyance and a sense of urgency in equal measure.

  ‘No!’ he called out, his voice hoarse. �
��You can’t do this. You can’t show me this, then walk away. It doesn’t matter how good or bad I am, or whether I’m worthy. It’s the people down there who matter — Dawn, Zero, Nightside and all the others. You have to tell me how to get them to safety!’

  The Being resembling Ash glanced at him then, but did not stop walking. ‘You should ask the Sap to guide you,’ he said. ‘Do what you think is right.’

  ‘You’re just washing your hands of us!’ shouted Tymon, overcome with emotion. He was gasping with the effort required to follow the Born, stumbling and staggering over the shaking bark. ‘You know the answers already!’ he cried to the other’s back. ‘You could tell me! You have all that power, but you don’t use it to help people, not really. You just slip in and out of the world like it’s a game — like it doesn’t matter! I don’t even know your real name!’

  At that, the Born halted and faced him. He did not answer Tymon immediately, surveying him with steady equanimity. The young man lost his balance and fell to his knees as another violent tremor rocked the branch. The crash and smash of falling bark grew deafening. The axis of the world seemed to him to be shifting: the leaf-forests to the south were inching upwards as the supporting limb beneath them gradually toppled over. The Born remained aloof, untouched by the surrounding ruin.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said at last. ‘My name is Ashekiel. And this is no game. It does matter to me. Very much.’

  Tymon shrugged off these vague declarations. Part of him, a corner of lucidity, wondered why he was directing all his anger and frustration at the Born. His friends’ suffering was not Ashekiel’s fault. But the sight of the immortal creature, standing there untouched while the world fell apart, irked him in a way he could not articulate. He was forced to grovel at Ashekiel’s feet, clinging to the bark as the branch toppled ever farther and the lip of the crater became a crumbling slope. And yet the Born did nothing to help, or to stop him from sliding towards the brink. Tymon peered over his shoulder at the gaping hole behind him. For some reason the heart of the mine had grown bright, full of roiling white vapours.

  ‘The Oracle would have helped us,’ he cried to Ashekiel. ‘She cared about the Saffid.’ Then he bit his lip, remembering the circumstances of his teacher’s disappearance with a stab of remorse. ‘You could at least tell me if she’s alright,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘Matrya,’ sighed Ashekiel, ‘will endure for as long as those with whom she does battle. And she would have answered you as I do. Have you not realised by now that your teacher is one of the Born? We are one, she and I.’

  Tymon pondered this revelation from his perilous position on the crater’s edge. To his own surprise, the answer did not disturb him. He realised he had suspected the Oracle’s true identity for a while. Only a Born could See the future continuously, after all. Only a Born would have the strength to combat the Masters in the Veil. He did not mind what his teacher was: he knew her well enough to be assured of her priorities.

  ‘Then why don’t you help us, as she would have done?’ he said.

  The Born’s bright gaze bored into Tymon. ‘Even as you demand one thing, your heart clamours for another,’ he replied softly. ‘You are not thinking of your friends in the mine, are you?’

  It was all too true. Another question had suddenly consumed Tymon, even as he heard the Oracle’s identity confirmed. ‘What about Samiha?’ he blurted out. ‘Was she one of you, too — a Born?’

  Ashekiel’s smile betrayed a glimmer of satisfaction. ‘She was what she was,’ he said. ‘And she is what she is. She has both natures.’

  ‘You mean she’s still alive? She survived the fall?’ Excitement almost choked Tymon. ‘You have to tell me!’ he begged. He tried to get up again, but could not balance upright on the tilting bark.

  ‘Do you wish to help the Kion, or your friends in the mine?’ asked Ashekiel.

  Tymon stared at him, astounded. Born or not, this Being was nothing like either the Oracle or Samiha. Those two would never have given him so cruel a choice. He drew himself up on the shuddering slope, and replied with as much dignity as he could muster.

  ‘I want to help the people in the mine, of course,’ he answered. ‘It’s what Ama would have wished.’

  ‘So be it,’ said Ashekiel. ‘In that case, hear this. If you wish to save them, all of them, then you must go down.’

  Tymon glanced instinctively over his shoulder again, at the cloudy crater. In his vision, it was the Storm that lay at the heart of the mine, a well of clouds. But daylight came from within the hole, filtering upwards, as if the sun were inside the mine-shaft itself. It made no sense.

  Even as he frowned at the light in confusion, the branch toppled too far, and he finally lost his grip on the bark. With a last panicked glance at the immovable Ashekiel, Tymon slid down the slope and tumbled over the brink of the shaft, clawing at empty air. He fell backwards even as Samiha had done — down, down, down into the Void. The Storm opened its cloudy jaws to receive him; the world trembled, whirled and broke apart, and the vision of the mine disintegrated.

  Matrya rose to her feet from where she had been knocked down on the icy floor of the Veil, wrenched out of physical space to face her enemies again. The seven giants loomed around her in an unbroken ring, menacing silhouettes in the gloom of the prison world, their features barely defined.

  ‘So, you choose to appear in human form, Matrya,’ sneered one. Something like a crown was faintly outlined on his head; the folds of shadow about him recalled a kingly cloak. ‘Even here, you’re one of them.’

  ‘And I see that you have practically forgotten what form is,’ she replied tartly, drawing herself up — an ordinary, middle-aged woman in a shimmering black dress, defiantly small before the Masters’ hulking menace.

  The shadow-kings stirred with anger, their cloaks becoming hunched and thick like wings. There was a glint of curved claws on the ice beneath their robes.

  ‘You took our seed-forms from us,’ hissed another. ‘You stole our natural bodies. Now, we use other shapes. Better ones.’

  All semblance of ancient majesty dropped from the figures gathered about Matrya, and they became monstrously avian, clawed and grotesque, stretching out their scrawny necks to gloat over their prey.

  ‘We’ll soon peck you to shreds, whatever form you choose,’ croaked the one who had first spoken, fixing an unblinking eye on the Oracle. ‘We’ll tear your filthy spirit apart. And by the time we’re through with you here, our servants will have done the same to your body, in the world of the living. You’re finished, Matrya.’

  ‘Finished, finished,’ echoed the others in a cackling round of laughter, shuffling forward on the ice and unfurling their great wings to blot out the stars.

  The Oracle did not answer, but held up her right hand. Out of it grew a narrow beam of light that seemed to slice through the murky darkness of the Veil. She raised the light, blade-like in her palm as the bird-kings advanced, calm and ready for battle.

  7

  The image of Anise lying at her feet remained etched in Jedda’s mind as she slithered down the face of the icy branch, leaving the Jay vessels behind. The moon disappeared behind high clouds and she blundered on in the darkness beneath the leaves. It seemed to her that she had never stopped moving, walking, fleeing across the length and breadth of the Tree since the day of the Kion’s execution. She crawled down the branch-slope for almost two miles before she was able to leap into a stand of twigs on an adjacent limb; there, she alighted in a snowdrift which turned out to be covering a deep knothole or gap, and sank into the soft wet snow to her chest, desperately holding Samiha’s papers up over her head to protect them. It took a heart-stopping few minutes to scramble to a firmer position. The new limb was no easier to navigate than the first, covered in dense twig-thickets through which she blindly stumbled, and by the end of the night she was exhausted, aching and wet through from slipping to her knees, getting up and slipping again. She had travelled only about four miles from the convoy’s position a
s the crow would fly, but covered easily three times that distance in her winding journey. The face of the Jay youth on the floor of the pavilion hovered accusingly in her memory throughout. His eyes had been open and staring, the pupils dilated to a yawning black. She was in no doubt that she had killed him.

  Abomination.

  That was what the Envoy had called her, and she was beginning to believe it. It occurred to her that every one of her recent associates — Samiha, Laska, Tymon, Pallas and now Anise — had come off the worse for meeting her. Even little Lai, the Oracle’s host, had suffered at her hands, she thought miserably. All through her apprenticeship with Lace, she had shrunk from contemplating the consequences of her actions in Cherk Harbour and their disastrous effects on the Saffid child. Although she had heard that the Oracle had resurfaced at least once more in the Veil, she had no way of learning what had truly happened to Lai. When she had agreed to switch sides, she had not realised how summarily Gowron would deal with the Oracle’s little host. As far as she knew, an innocent had been murdered as a direct result of her decisions.

  It was an agonising knowledge, which she had buried at first under layers of self-justification, furiously blaming her teacher for any harm that had come to Lai. The Oracle had been aware of the risks to a host in a time of war. And yet she had chosen to inhabit the mind of a child, with the typical cold calculation of her kind. For a while, Jedda had even managed to convince herself that Matrya had chosen that host on purpose, in a cynical bid for self-preservation. The little girl’s death was a necessary evil, according to such logic, the final sacrifice required to bring an end to all needless sacrifice. It was a theory that held only while Jedda believed the Envoy’s cause to be superior to that of the Oracle. Now that she was disabused of that fact, her justifications crumbled and she was overwhelmed with horror at what she had done. She had made all the wrong choices from the beginning. Maybe she truly was an abomination, she thought — a curse to those who helped her, even as the Envoy said. She certainly left a trail of death and destruction in her wake.