Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  ‘Do you think this place is guarded? Where they keep your body, I mean?’ he asked Samiha, sounding a belated note of caution. ‘I saw something odd before —’ he had a hard time using her word for it — ‘before Zero attacked me. A light leaping between the tops of the towers like lightning.’

  ‘I don’t know what that could be,’ she said, smiling at him again. ‘I see only darkness when I wake. But I suggest we approach carefully. There may be guards, yes.’

  ‘Maybe we should find something to use as a weapon —’ he began again, only to be cut short by a whirring, humming, bristling explosion of movement in the air in front of his face.

  At first, he thought it was a species of bird or giant bat, for he glimpsed reddish hairs that might have been fur on its body. It did not appear to have a head, however, and hovered in the air without the aid of wings, darting like a mayfly about three feet from him and emitting an insect-like, buzzing noise. Its body was the size of a Tree-dog’s, a lumpy central sphere attached to a long, stiff appendage like a tail. The creature, Tymon realised in astonishment, was belching white smoke in the manner of Galliano’s steam-engines. It smelled of burning hair and another bitter odour he could not identify.

  ‘These are the guards!’ shouted Samiha, as he gaped at the whirring, smoking beast. ‘Throw something at it, quickly! Don’t let it touch or stun you!’

  The thing had arms, Tymon saw. They had been folded in tight, and now rose slowly above the lumpy body: two gleaming stick-like protuberances. He retrieved from the loam the heaviest piece of tower-rubble that he could find, aimed for the central portion of the beast, and threw with all his might.

  To his surprise, the projectile knocked the body off the tail. The creature was now in two parts. The central lump crashed onto the ground and rolled over at the base of a ruin, before extending two more limbs from its body and attempting to drag itself away. But one of the long, thin legs was badly bent by Tymon’s throw and the creature wobbled precariously as it moved, bumping over the rubble like a wounded spider. The tail portion spun away and collided with a wall on his right, tumbling down to lie on the loam, trembling and belching smoke. It looked insentient and appeared to be made of some hard, unyielding material. In fact, it looked very much like a grey broom-handle with smoke for bristles. It shuddered where it lay, but did not seem disposed to rise. It was, Tymon grasped, not alive at all, but a flying machine that the other half rode.

  ‘Demons riding on brooms,’ he mumbled aloud, in consternation.

  16

  The turbulence of the Storm seemed to last an eternity. Jedda gripped the edges of the bench in the air-chariot, while Wick grovelled, groaning on the floor. Gowron stood tense and immobile, his legs well apart and his shoulders hunched as he guided the Lyla through the clouds. The wind shrieked past the open windows, buffeting Jedda’s short hair, and rain battered the sides of the vessel in brief gusts, spattering her face. Bags tumbled back and forth across the pitching floor, spilling their contents. A water gourd rolled into Jedda’s feet. She pressed herself close to the window, wondering what in the world had just happened to her. There had been a voice in her mind. Was this another trick of the Envoy’s, or simply fatigue, the effect of the accumulated stress of the last few weeks?

  It did not feel like a trick. The brief chant left her heart as light as a feather. She could not remember if the voice had spoken in Nurian or Argosian; she had repeated it in her native tongue, but the verse might have been sung in a different language, for all she knew. All she had registered was its familiarity. She must have been dreaming, she told herself: she must have been half-stunned by the rattling cacophony of the air-chariot and imagining things. She shook her head, glad of the water whipping her cheeks through the window, for at least she could be sure she was not still asleep. She concentrated on keeping her gaze trained on the front of the craft and her stomach steady. The squall battered the sides of the Lyla with intermittent fury, but Galliano’s miraculous little creation held true, the propellers thudding faithfully through the clouds, where a larger dirigible’s ether sacks would have been torn to shreds.

  The crossing was over abruptly. They passed through the lower strata of cloud and hurtled without warning into open air again, bursting into muted grey daylight. Under the Storm! Jedda caught her breath. The air-chariot no longer leapt and shook; she was able to relax to some degree on the bench, staring out of the window in amazement at the immensity of the World Below.

  It was larger than she had thought, and surprisingly wet. Instead of the piles of blasted loam she had expected — the scale of her fantasies had been far short of the mark, she realised — a vast body of water stretched out to the horizon, flat and shiny as a hardwood mirror. Its gleaming blue-grey surface reflected the underbelly of the Storm, as well as a few branches of the South Canopy snaking down through the clouds. One such limb in the distance caught her attention, for it had broken off and leaned at an angle against the trunk, a vast and lonely ruin on the western horizon. It must have been gigantic, one of the supporting struts of the South Canopy, for it looked at least five miles long. She noted in surprise that the leaf-forests at its tip were still green, joining their own reflection in the water. This disaster had occurred recently.

  None of the Envoy’s schooling had prepared her for how very huge, and how very drowned, the World Below would be. Hell was made, bafflingly, of water. The wispy shadow of the air-chariot moved over the reflective surface like a dancing fly; Jedda understood how a glimpse of that mirror from high above might have sparked the legend of Lacuna, the second canopy beneath the Storm. A moment later, the craft banked steeply to the right, and she lost sight of the broken branch in the distance. Before her, the southern marches of the Tree trunk stretched out in a long, wriggling line, bathed in hazy sunlight. When she craned through the window towards the Lyla’s tail, she could just make out the sweeping curve where the trunk bent north into the Gap, then east once more. The Tree was indeed all one beneath the clouds, the Four Canopies merging together in a single, colossal base. She guessed that parts of the lake at the foot of the trunk were not deep, for she saw the reflective surface was broken by blackened mounds, humps scattered across the water in oddly regular configurations — squares, circles and spirals, the half-drowned traces of deliberate design.

  There was other evidence of an ancient order in the World Below. Even at this height, Jedda could see the unusual marks on the trunk, the straight line slashing across the face of the Tree from west to east, patently artificial. No ordinary growth pattern would create such a sharp, exact gradient. Her suspicions were confirmed as Gowron steered them in a northbound arc towards the trunk-wall. The line proved on closer inspection to be a giant causeway more than fifty feet across, constructed with skill and precision and rising to regions beneath the Gap. Just before reaching the clouds, however, it came to an abrupt end. It had been gouged out, obliterated by an unimaginable force that had left a crater a mile wide in the bark. Even blast-poison would not wreak so great a devastation on the Tree, Jedda thought with a shiver. The Old Ones, she remembered, had been great architects and engineers, but equally skilled in the arts of destruction. She recalled the Envoy’s lessons, delivered in the College library, while he had still been well-disposed towards her.

  The Born were the masters of this universe, possessed of the secrets of creation. Long ago, they shaped the world, the plants and animals, out of three primary elements: air, water and loam. The sacred element of fire they kept for themselves. They made human beings, your ancestors, to be their servants and companions, sharing their ancient knowledge with them, and causing them to resemble their makers to a degree. That was their greatest mistake. It caused the people to become proud and rebel, and sparked the war that tore apart the Born.

  ‘Well, that’s one lie,’ murmured the voice in Jedda’s head.

  The Nurian girl sat up, ramrod-straight on the bench, her nerves tingling. A brief glance about her confirmed that no one else in t
he air-chariot had spoken. Wick was still crouched on the floor in a far corner, clutching his stomach with his face pressed between his knees. Gowron was bent over his controls, oblivious to them both.

  ‘What did you say?’ Jedda whispered.

  But the voice was silent, replaced by the thudding cacophony of the propellers. She prayed that she had only imagined it again, and leaned back against the shuddering wall of the air-chariot, her heart beating uncomfortably fast. Gowron was bringing the air-chariot down in slow spirals over one of the hummocks of bark at the foot of the ramp, overlooking the grey waters. Just where the great causeway began, Jedda caught a glimpse of the ruined remains of an arch, gutted even as the road had been by an unthinkable blow.

  The great war destroyed the old world and scattered its inhabitants. The Envoy’s lectures echoed again in her memory, haunting her. Had he lied to her about everything, then? Only the Tree survived, where humans took shelter. She had wondered, on hearing the story, why the Born had made the World Tree in the first place; it seemed a curious inversion of causality to create first the means of deliverance from apocalypse, then the apocalypse itself.

  ‘A very good point,’ observed the alien voice between her ears, causing Jedda to stiffen with alarm. ‘It only makes sense if you realise that the war lasted for centuries. It was, of course, the weapons like those Eblas used that caused the old cities to be poisoned, and brought the Storm into being.’

  ‘Who are you?’ muttered Jedda, clutching the bench as if she might anchor the part of her mind that seemed to be detaching itself and growing its own personality. Even through her shock, she understood that the tone of the disembodied commentator was familiar, recalling someone she had known before.

  ‘Hello, Jedda.’ The Oracle’s voice was more strained than she remembered it, and deeply weary, though it contained a trace of her old dry humour. ‘I’m very glad to find you listening. I was afraid I’d be shut out.’

  ‘You?’ gasped the girl, turning her face away hastily as Wick moaned with queasy annoyance from his corner. ‘How can you be talking to me?’ she murmured into the wall of the air-chariot. ‘How can you even want to talk to me, after all I’ve done?’

  ‘I can always reach my students, when they’re ready,’ said the Oracle. ‘And when the attacks against me subside.’

  All of a sudden, the image of Lai standing in the grass by the abandoned mine rose up in Jedda’s mind like an accusation. She hung her head in wordless shame.

  ‘Be assured, you didn’t cause the death of Lai,’ said the Oracle, with a gentleness that took Jedda’s breath away. ‘That was only a Seeming. She died, but later, and through no fault of yours.’

  Jedda could not answer immediately. The knowledge that she had not been an accessory to murder was a deep relief, but it also shook her to the core, releasing a floodgate. Emotions held back for months welled up, and she found herself weeping, pressing her cheek to the smooth planks of the air-chariot’s wall. The Oracle waited patiently for her to be ready to speak, but Jedda felt a mounting urgency in her silence, like a beating pulse.

  ‘I’m sorry for everything, Ama,’ she whispered to her teacher, at last.

  ‘I know. Jedda, we haven’t much time.’

  The girl blinked her tears away, with another glance at the still-incapacitated Wick. The urgency lay in the Oracle’s voice, now, not just in her silences.

  ‘Tymon’s in grave danger.’ The words whistled like the wind in Jedda’s ear.

  ‘Tymon?’ she exclaimed, then hastily cupped her hand over her mouth, grateful that the cacophony of the propellers drowned out her voice. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Can’t you feel him?’

  Jedda had not immediately remarked the familiar tug in her belly, confronted with so many other overwhelming changes since they passed through the Storm. But the minute the Oracle mentioned his name, she realised the connection with her twining partner was present once again.

  ‘He’s in the World Below?’ she breathed. ‘Where, Ama? And why?’

  ‘About five miles west of you, right now. But he’s moving.’ The Oracle’s voice was muffled, as if she spoke behind a thick barrier, and punctuated from time to time by a noise like the rushing wind. ‘He thinks he’s saving Samiha. Recovering her body.’

  ‘So the Kion’s alive?’ The news caused Jedda’s heart to leap, a brief stab of joy. She quelled it: the Oracle did not seem enthusiastic.

  ‘In a sense. She’s being kept —’

  The Oracle’s voice faded away frustratingly and Jedda did not catch the next few words. She thought she heard the Oracle mention the Envoy. Or was it his Masters? If they were involved, Samiha had little chance of survival. Even Lace had spoken of those shadowy entities with fear.

  ‘Are you alright, Ama?’ she said with concern, when the Oracle was audible again. Her teacher was evidently harried, her voice increasingly distant. She appeared to be buffeted by forces as strong as that which caused the air-chariot to drop alarmingly into air-pockets during their descent.

  ‘Attacked … Veil,’ came the faint answer. There was another gust of air that swept her words away. ‘Not long now,’ she concluded.

  ‘What about the acolytes?’ Jedda glanced anxiously at the miserably groaning Wick, then back to Gowron hunched over the controls. Did the Oracle know what the Envoy’s servants were doing in the World Below? Jedda guessed it could not be good. Should she ask about their intentions, find out what they were up to?

  ‘Tymon first.’ The voice of the Oracle was broken and drowned in the distant roar. ‘Find him, Jedda. Find him, before it’s too late —’

  And with that, suddenly she was gone, leaving an emptiness in Jedda’s mind like an echo of bereavement. She shivered. Her teacher had sounded as if she were in pain, as though she were suffering. She had mentioned attacks. If anyone were capable of assaulting the Oracle, Jedda suspected it could only be the Envoy’s Masters.

  Preoccupied by the Oracle’s trouble and Tymon’s mysterious plight, Jedda barely noticed the air-chariot bouncing to a halt on a bark hummock about a quarter of a mile from the start of the causeway and the ruined archway. The cessation of the propellers and the ringing silence that followed recalled her to the present moment. They had arrived. They were actually in the World Below. As she stumbled out of the Lyla’s hatch after the two acolytes, her legs trembling on the hard bark, Jedda was amazed by the sheer solidity of Lacuna. The juddering racket of the air-chariot seemed suddenly unreal: vast silence greeted her as she stepped out onto the crest of the hummock. The flat, glistening waters stretched southwards from the foot of the slope, as far as the eye could see.

  Jedda gazed out over the lake in awe. The air was mild, spring-like, but not a single bird sang in the immensity. Behind her, to the north, the flanks of the Tree rose up in long folds, the trunk-wall broken by deep rifts and valleys filled with rising mist. The ruined arch at the base of the old road was a mute ‘o’ of dismay. Her fellow travellers reacted in different ways to the enormity of the World Below, though they must have been groomed by Lace as to what they would find on their mission. Gowron strode to the edge of the slope, and surveyed the glittering expanse of water below with a proprietary air, as if he were a plantation-owner taking stock of his fields. Wick staggered a few paces from the air-chariot and sat down again, hiding his face in his arms; he was evidently still feeling air-sick, and more concerned with the solidity of the bark under him than the sight before his eyes. Jedda pretended to stretch her legs and surreptitiously inspected her surroundings, wondering how she might escape.

  All within at least a mile radius was bare and open, humps of exposed bark and stretches of empty water. If Tymon were as much as five miles away, then she must give the acolytes the slip soon, in order to have a chance of reaching him that day. But she could see no place to hide, no opportunity to break free of her enemies. She no longer feared the Envoy’s curses, for she guessed the birds would not be able to follow her all the way here before they
lost cohesion. Besides, the Oracle would not have suggested she try to escape, if it meant she would be pecked to death. The voice in her mind had always wished her well — Jedda knew that now. But although she no longer doubted the Oracle, she had no idea how she could break free of her captors, without being instantly caught and killed.

  ‘We head west,’ announced Gowron, interrupting her thoughts. He was speaking to Wick. ‘The location we need to find is three miles from here, but we must go on foot to be sure we don’t miss it.’

  ‘What about her?’ Wick peered groggily in Jedda’s direction.

  Gowron’s eye slid disdainfully towards the Nurian girl. ‘The whore’s not welcome on this journey,’ he snapped. ‘It’s private seminary business. I’d suggest you tie her up and leave her in the air-chariot. But she’s your problem now. Deal with her, will you?’

  Wick had managed to readjust his face in an infernal smile by the time he rose shakily and walked over to Jedda. ‘Sorry, m’dear,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘The grumpy old bastard is right, for once. You’ll have to stay behind and I’ll have to restrain you — can’t have you flying away in our transport, can we? My promise to you still stands for afterwards, of course.’

  ‘Wait,’ she whispered to him, as he attempted to lead her away. ‘There’s something you should know. It’s about Tymon.’

  She did not know whether she was making the right decision to tell Wick about her twining partner, but spoke on impulse. She knew she would waste valuable time if she were left behind in the machine, bound and trapped. ‘I feel him,’ she murmured to Wick as he pushed her towards the air-chariot. ‘He must be down here somewhere.’

  Wick’s step faltered and he gazed into her eyes, searching for the lie. ‘I’m not making this up, I swear,’ said Jedda, keeping her voice low. ‘He’s in the World Below. I think I can help you find him.’