Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  ‘Far away from the people and things surrounding you, as if the only ideas that mattered were the big ones that affected the entire world.’

  He chuckled at this, rueful. ‘I have to fly high,’ he told her. ‘Remember what your father used to call me? The eagle.’ His hand crept up to his chest, where the necklace of talons used to hang; it was no longer there, discarded since he had ceased catering to the Doctor’s demands.

  ‘My father said a lot of things,’ replied Jocaste grimly. ‘He was wrong about most of them, and he was wrong about you. He called you the eagle, because he thought you were a trained hunter who brought him his prey. But you’re no ravager of innocents.’

  ‘I still see the world from up high.’ He gazed earnestly at her. ‘And it’s very plain to me, Jo, that there are patterns in it. Things don’t happen randomly. We have the Testament — we still have it, I just need to write it out again — for a reason. We should honour that responsibility.’

  ‘I’ll help you do whatever you feel the need to do,’ she answered in a rush, for there were tears in her eyes again. ‘But Ani, it’s only because I love you. The others in the troupe feel the same way. We put up with you, but you’re a mystery to us all.’

  ‘Well, life’s a mystery.’ He closed his eyes again, overcome by exhaustion. ‘We’ll copy out the Testament later. For now, we should do as you say and consult the others. We’ll ask them to vote on the journey east: it’s only fair. This is a big step.’

  He slipped back into slumber then, as his partner continued to watch him. Since the attack, Jocaste thought in anguish, his skin had acquired a luminous transparency, as if all the youthful pith had been sucked out of him and replaced by pure light. It broke her heart.

  8

  The Reading did not end after Tymon fell into the Void. The vision shifted, and all at once he was slamming through branches, plummeting through the Tree of Being as a fledgling bird might plummet from its nest. He realised in horror that his trance-form had acquired a deadly weight, the same that had once sent him hurtling into the Veil, when he had fled Samiha’s Tree-form. This time, however, arms reached out to catch him as he fell. The Focals were there with him in the trance, supporting him, forming a web of safety. At their touch, the heaviness drained from his limbs and he floated free in the bright world of the Sap.

  ‘The mine,’ he gasped to his friends, as soon as he had recovered his balance. ‘It’s going to collapse.’

  He saw his anxiety mirrored in their eyes, but the first words out of Noni’s mouth concerned the Oracle. ‘Ama isn’t with you,’ she said, taking Tymon’s hand in her own and peering into his face. ‘And just when we Saw the curse of Eblas … What happened?’

  Even as she took his hand, Tymon was assailed by a brief vision, not his own. To his surprise, he glimpsed Jedda fighting off a flock of murderous crows that harried and tore at her with their talons. The Nurian girl was clearly exhausted, crouched on a branch-path in the dead of night, and beating off the creatures with her bloodied fists. Then the vision winked out and he found himself staring into Noni’s shocked face again.

  She let go of him abruptly, as if the touch of him burned; the others also released him, and he guessed from their reaction, as well as the rush of Sap-heat surging through him, that he had inadvertently traded his own Reading for theirs. Even as he had caught sight of Jedda beating off the murderous flock, the Focals had experienced his vision of the collapsing mine.

  ‘Ashekiel!’ gasped Ara, confirming Tymon’s suspicion. His eyes were round with awe.

  ‘The Angel,’ added Mata, turning to the others in consternation. ‘All will die, it’s sure … the Saffid, the mineworkers … all of them.’

  ‘Ashekiel only speaks to us at times of great trouble,’ Oren clarified for Tymon’s benefit. ‘Ancients called him “Angel of Death”. He is not evil, but brings warning of disaster. His presence means much ill.’

  ‘And meanwhile, Ama’s gone,’ Noni cried in distress. ‘We have no guidance! Please tell us, Tymon. When did she go?’

  ‘Just before I launched the trance,’ he said sadly. ‘She told me she was being attacked by the Masters. It’s been happening for a while.’

  As Noni hung her head, anguished by this news, Tymon blurted out his own questions. ‘What’s happening to Jedda?’ he asked the other Focals. ‘What were those bird things?’ He had hardly thought of his fellow student in weeks, and was taken aback at this violent glimpse of her.

  ‘Acolyte and master have had disagreement,’ replied Oren. ‘Envoy sent curses after Jedda, in form of evil birds. She will die soon, if she is not dead already.’

  ‘Curses?’ repeated Tymon uneasily.

  But it was Noni who answered. ‘Psychic constructs,’ she sighed. ‘They’re only refuse held together with a sorcerer’s energy, but they’re deadly in large numbers.’

  Tymon shuddered. To be torn to pieces by beak and claw was a fate he would wish on no one, not even Jedda. ‘Well, I suppose we should be glad our enemies are fighting among themselves,’ he said half-heartedly, and not without a pang of guilt. The Nurian girl’s desperate cry still rang in his ears. It had sounded like a warning.

  ‘Do not be glad about constructs,’ cautioned Oren. ‘Envoy can also send them after us. It is bad he has found power to create so many. Ashekiel warns us of more than just mine disaster, I fear.’

  There was an anxious pause as the Focals considered the implications of the combined Reading. The shadow of Ashekiel’s warning seemed to dim and darken even the serene spaces of the Sap-world. Tymon remembered his previous encounters with the creature he had taken for Ash: he had received his first visitation from the ‘Angel of Death’ in the arena in Sheb, prior to the Argosian attack. The second had occurred in the Tree-caves below the Freehold, just before Solis’ murder; the third had taken place in a dream in Cherk Harbour, the morning of Laska’s arrest. He vaguely remembered glimpsing his otherworldly visitor as he stumbled delirious with fever through the Eastern Canopy, prior to Lai’s passing. And of course, he had met the Born when he stepped outside the Tree of Being. On that occasion, Ashekiel had been surprised to meet him, as if he were the visitation. But it did seem as if the ‘Angel’s’ presence in every other instance presaged disaster.

  ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ said Mata, breaking the silence. ‘About Ama. Why now? Why do the Masters attack her now, with so much force?’

  ‘Perhaps they are more awake than before …’ suggested Oren doubtfully.

  ‘That’s not enough to explain it.’ Noni shook her head. ‘Mata’s right. Remember what Wise Ash used to say? They’ve woken in the past, slept, and woken again. Yet we haven’t seen this sort of sustained assault on the Oracle before, an assault able to silence her completely.’

  ‘You’re all talking as if this is a major disaster, and we’ll never see her again,’ protested Tymon. ‘But she has been attacked, and returned several times since I’ve known her. Won’t it be the same now?’

  ‘Do you think it’s the same?’ asked Noni, giving him a piercing look.

  The Focals gazed at him as one. He felt a rush of remorse: he knew that it was not the same at all. He remembered his last conversation with the Oracle before the trance, when she had complained of being blind. She had gasped for help, and been wrenched away in mid-sentence. He realised, with a pang, that she might never come back. He was too ashamed to openly admit to his friends how remiss he had been during that final exchange, how inattentive to their teacher.

  ‘No,’ he said to Noni, subdued.

  ‘So, we need to figure out why,’ she continued. ‘We need to answer Mata’s question.’

  ‘Something is different,’ said Ara.

  ‘Something has changed,’ added Mata.

  Something’s wrong. Tymon remembered the Oracle’s cry.

  ‘This is End Times,’ Oren pointed out. ‘Everything changes.’

  ‘Including the Masters, I suppose.’ Noni grimaced. ‘Just our luck.’


  ‘But why weren’t they killed outright, back in the day?’ Tymon cried. ‘The Masters, I mean,’ he specified as the others stared at him. ‘They just cause endless trouble and give the Envoy the power to do the same. Why weren’t they executed after the war of the Born? Why allow this to happen?’

  ‘You don’t kill a Born,’ said Noni, her expression resigned. ‘The Born are world-architects, or rather world-gardeners, bound up with their creations. You can banish or imprison them, but not destroy them, unless you’re willing to destroy all the worlds they’ve created. Which is a bit unfair, I think you’ll agree.’

  ‘Is there nothing we can do for the Oracle?’ Tymon remembered the five gardeners he had glimpsed briefly outside the Tree of Being, patiently trimming the curling tendrils of space and time. It was a paradox he still could not quite grasp. ‘Why doesn’t Ashekiel help?’ he asked. ‘Are the Masters more powerful than he is?’

  ‘Other Born don’t involve themselves in our world,’ answered Noni. ‘Ama was the only one who worked with us directly. That’s what made her so special. We believe she’ll prevail against the Masters. But who knows how long they can keep her distracted. We haven’t the strength to face them in the Veil: we’re on our own, for now.’

  ‘But Ama wasn’t the only one who worked here.’ The words came tumbling out of Tymon’s lips, unstoppable. ‘You know as well as I do from what Ashekiel said: Samiha was a Born. If she’s still alive, couldn’t she help us? Couldn’t she find the Oracle?’

  The news of the Kion’s true nature had been the one part of the Reading his fellow Grafters had not commented on, he realised belatedly. They had not been surprised at all. ‘You knew about her, of course,’ he finished, rather lamely. ‘You tried to tell me before. I didn’t listen.’

  He remembered their refusal to treat Samiha just like any other person, their vague intimations that she was more than human. Bizarrely, it had been the Kion herself who protested her humanity, when he spoke to her in the bell tower. He wondered, mortified, why she had thought it necessary to lie to him. Had he been so unready to hear the truth?

  ‘We didn’t know she might still be alive,’ Noni assured him. ‘Just that her nature wasn’t like our own. It’s something Grafters learn when they’re properly initiated into a Focal group. The vision does seem to indicate she’s alive. But we have no way of contacting her directly. And we can’t risk interfering with the work of a Born.’

  ‘Which is why,’ said Oren, with some exasperation, ‘we do not Read Kion.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Tymon answered. ‘Ashekiel just knew what I was thinking. It’s clear from what he said that we’re meant to know about Samiha. She might be trapped or hurt from her fall. She might need our help, as well as us needing hers.’

  Even as he articulated the thought, it possessed him, urgent and all-engrossing. Samiha needed him. It was all he could do not to beg the others to let him Read the Kion then and there, to find out if she were in trouble.

  ‘Maybe,’ allowed Noni, as Oren remained silent. ‘I promise you we’ll look into it, Tymon. We can still allow the Sap to take us where we need to go. Others require our immediate attention, however. What of the mineworkers during the collapse? What of Jedda? Do we leave the traitor to reap what she has sown?’

  Tymon hesitated. Despite the horror of Jedda’s predicament, he was unwilling to worry over her while so many people he cared about were in need of assistance. Her welfare, after all that she had done — particularly to Pallas — simply did not compare with that of Zero and the Saffid. The Focals did not even know if their vision of her was past or future, whether her fate was sealed. He could tell, from the uncomfortable silence following Noni’s question, that the others felt the same as he did.

  ‘First things first,’ he said, when no one else spoke up. ‘If we try to help everybody at the same time, we’ll do no good to anyone. The Reading seems to indicate there’s a chance of saving the Saffid. I don’t know how long I’ll have left to warn them when I wake: probably only a few hours. The workers are chained together, so it won’t be easy to escape. But we’ll find a way.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Noni, as Oren and the twins nodded in mute relief. ‘We can at least help the mineworkers. Leave the mine-limb with as many as you can, Tymon, and find a way onto another branch. We’ll have our pilots comb the canopy for you. I should ask Gardan, but I think we can spare four or five machines from the combined Freehold fleet. We’ve heard rumours of Argosian ships crossing the Gap, but we have speed on our side. You’ll arrive back in Farhang long before anyone troubles us.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Tymon felt a wave of relief flood over him, too, the consciousness that now he could achieve something of real worth. Whatever else he had bungled that day, at least he had kept his promise to Dawn. ‘The Saffid have no one to turn to but you,’ he told the Focals gratefully. ‘You’re their only hope.’

  ‘No,’ replied Oren slowly, ‘it is you who are their hope.’

  ‘And their Witness,’ smiled Ara.

  ‘And their Saint,’ grinned Mata.

  ‘Don’t you lot start with that nonsense too,’ said Tymon. ‘So, they have a few odd beliefs about me. Does that make them bad people?’

  ‘We never said they were odd beliefs,’ said Noni.

  His companions’ forms were growing faint, Tymon realised. The Reading was almost over. ‘Just a minute,’ he called to them. ‘What about Samiha?’

  ‘We talk on this again, friend,’ Oren replied. ‘Noni will speak to you when she arrives. For now, we work on saving miners.’

  ‘So, I’m going there?’ Tymon heard Noni ask her brother, as the images of the Focals faded away. ‘That’s new.’

  ‘You are needed,’ responded Oren’s voice, lingering after his form winked out.

  Only when his friends had disappeared completely, swallowed up by the glowing space of the Sap-world, did Tymon notice the subtle change in his surroundings. He did not know if it had already existed when he first fell through the branches of the Tree, following his vision of the mine collapse; he had barely glanced at the tangle of greenery about him while talking to the Focals, preoccupied by other matters. Once he was aware of it, however, the detail was hard to ignore. The Tree of Being was different.

  The forest of tendrils around him had been overtaken by a single Leaf Letter. One branch pattern — a spiral loop curled in a closed circle — was echoed everywhere in the Tree, in larger and smaller variations, from the sturdiest limb to the most delicate new shoot. Wherever Tymon looked, he found Union, Kamsala, the beginning and the end. He wondered what it meant, and whether the Focals had noticed the phenomenon too, as they were bidding him farewell. In any case, they were gone, and he could not ask them about it. He could feel that he was leaving the trance-state himself, sucked inexorably towards his body. Esoteric questions would have to wait.

  He did not wake up immediately. The lengthy double Reading must have given way to the oblivion of ordinary sleep, for there was an interval of dreamless dark, a period of forgetfulness before his eyes blinked open again. He awoke in the light of early morning to find himself sprawled, face down, on Dayan’s conservatory carpet. The second hour-candle had burned out long ago, and sunlight was streaming through the orange sap-panes, a welcome sensation on Tymon’s chilled skin. But it was the sound of the Tree-dogs barking outside that finally caused him to roll over and sit up. He felt stiff and sore, as if he had walked for miles, and he stretched his joints for a moment on the floor of the conservatory, shaking off the fog of slumber.

  And then he remembered, with a thrill of excitement. Samiha was alive.

  The thought was quickly followed by another, guilty one: Jedda, on the other hand, was probably dead. And with that, the rest of the Reading came flooding back to Tymon, and he jumped to his feet in a panic.

  The mine collapse! If he did not warn the Saffid, everyone would be dead, and soon. He hastened to the window, peering out at the bright point of the sun twinkling through the leaf-fo
rests, and calculated there were at least five hours left till noon, a precious period of grace in which to reach his friends and organise an evacuation. Hesitating no longer, he hurried out of the office and slipped down the back stairs to the servants’ end of the House, wary of encountering Dayan or his dogs. He told himself he would warn even his perfidious employer about the collapse, all in good time; for the moment, he did not wish to engage in long-winded explanations. He made straight for the kitchen, where he found Ystafa making pan-fried griddle cakes for the Lord’s breakfast.

  ‘You’re late,’ snapped the cook, in Lantrian. No one at the House but Dayan pretended to be open-minded with regards to Argosians. ‘You may be the Lord’s pet, but that doesn’t mean squat to me. You’re still expected to wait at table.’

  ‘Pet?’ Tymon echoed wearily. ‘As you will. But listen to me, Ystafa. I’ve something very important to tell you.’ He attempted to catch the cook’s eye as he bustled about the stove, but the other man avoided his gaze, evidently resentful of his status as the Lord’s new favourite. Tymon was forced to follow him stomping about the kitchen as he carried out his tasks.

  ‘Go out with the girls and Sun today,’ he begged the bristling Lantrian. ‘Make an excuse to get away from the House and the mine-shaft, around noon. Go mushroom-picking, or moss-gathering, or whatever keeps you out for a while. There’s going to be a terrible accident in the mine.’

  ‘What?’ Ystafa finally swung round and glared at him, his brows knit. ‘What are you talking about, Argosian fool? Isn’t it enough that I have to put up with your infernal laziness? Enjoy your moment of glory, it won’t last for long.’

  ‘Just trust me. You don’t want to be near the mine today.’

  ‘Whatever you say, pet.’

  Tymon exhaled with frustration, hurrying towards the back door of the kitchen. ‘I’ll try to remind you later,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on one moment.’ Ystafa brandished the two griddle cakes on their hardwood platter. ‘What about taking up the master’s breakfast?’