Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  Protect the fledglings, the Oracle had told him.

  Those two had been inexperienced Grafters, too, placed under his care. And although Oren had been angry with the one for betraying them and the other for abandoning them, he suddenly realised he had expected far more of Jedda and Tymon than he had of himself. He had hardly thought of them at all in his concern to defend the Freehold. What if they were the ones crying out to him, across the reaches of the Tree? If he could not keep faith with those earlier fledglings, how could he protect the new ones?

  It was then, as he listened to Noni trying to comfort Tudah in one corner and Ara whispering to Mata in another and Ishi grumbling in the middle of it all about not having had his chance to knock the skittles out of that beastly Envoy, that Oren knew. He understood at last who had given the heartrending cry, and leapt to his feet.

  ‘Ama!’ he coughed, staggering to the corner of the tent where he kept his backpack. ‘I’ve been such a fool!’

  Noni surfaced from her own torpor, startled. Her brother was fumbling with the ties on the bag, his face deathly pale. ‘What do you mean, Oren?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘We’ve been tricked!’ he wheezed as he bent over his pack. He seemed to be having difficulty opening it and breathing, too. ‘The attack was a feint, Noni!’

  ‘For goodness sake!’ his sister remonstrated as he doubled up in a fit of coughing. She jumped to her feet and thumped him on the back. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The cry,’ he gasped. ‘Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘I thought it was you,’ answered Noni.

  Oren gave another hacking cough, finally clearing the dead weight from his lungs. ‘It was her,’ he said. ‘The Oracle. The Envoy’s been trying to blind us with his fog and his blast-poison. He’s been keeping us busy, gathering his filthy cloud in our little buckets.’ He was shaking with emotion as he pulled the bag open with Noni’s help. ‘When all this time, we should have been trying to contact Jedda. Through her we might have found Tymon, and through him the Oracle. Our duty was to protect the fledglings — all of them, even the ones that had strayed.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Noni protested. ‘We tried and tried to contact Tymon —’

  ‘Not enough. Not the right way,’ said Oren hoarsely. ‘But it may not be too late. That cry — it came from the future. We have to prevent it from happening!’

  ‘But what can we do?’ asked his sister. ‘We tried to launch the trance, we sang the songs —’

  ‘The old chants are not enough.’ Oren shook his head. ‘We need new songs, songs for the future. It’s the Year of Fire, remember? The beginning and the end.’

  He straightened up with a soft exclamation of triumph, having finally retrieved what he had been looking for in his backpack. Samiha’s testament had been hidden at the very bottom. Noni felt herself breathe more freely as Oren drew the bundle out. The sight of the papers seemed to banish the fog a little, and the air felt cleaner in the tent. She fixed her eyes on the testament, recalling the words that gave her hope. The verses were already growing green in her heart, spreading through every part of her, ready to leap through her lips.

  ‘Ara! Come, Mata, Ishi, Tudah!’ cried Oren, beckoning the Grafters towards him again. The twins gathered around him instinctively, while the younger ones looked up, summoned by the urgency in his voice.

  ‘We need to launch the Reading again,’ he continued, as Ishi scrambled off the floor and Tudah blinked and blew her nose in a rag. ‘But not to go into battle this time, not to play more paltry games. Not even to create the globe of Union. No, Ishi —’ he added, holding up a hand in warning as the fledgling opened his mouth to protest. ‘That’s not the way, not this time. We’re going to enter the world of the Sap, where Lace cannot follow us. We’re going to sing her words — Samiha’s words. Only they have the power to reach our friends. Come, now. For Tymon’s life, and for Jedda’s! For the sake of the Oracle!’

  Lace stretched himself luxuriously through the air, like a shimmering swarm of buzzing black flies over the crumbling sweetmeat that was the Freehold. Though he would rather have plunged a knife into the Oracle’s heart himself, it was some comfort to mop up the upstart Nurians instead. He was enjoying the feast of fear and mayhem he had cast over them, choking the last dregs of courage out of them with his cloud. The village was ablaze, the Freehold dead piled by their useless barricades. As the Saint had ordered, the Argosian soldiers took no living prisoners. They were now scouring the village for survivors, singing as they went. Soon they would move on to the refugee camp five miles away where, if the Envoy guessed aright, they might sniff out the Grafters. Lace was looking forward to a little further amusement after routing the Focals’ trance so successfully.

  They had been too weak to combat him, and had withdrawn with barely a fight. For the moment, he let them be. He had another adversary in his sights, for he had glimpsed old Galliano stumbling out of the burning dining hall at the height of the fighting, crawling blindly through the embers with the last group of evacuees. They had been headed for the refugee hideout, five miles away. The Envoy had no intention of allowing the infuriating scientist to escape with his life again. It was time to put an end to Galliano’s little inventions.

  For the scientist’s air-chariots were proving troublesome, the one hiccup in an otherwise flawless battle plan. The armies of the Saint might have succeeded in burning Farhang to ashes, but the job of crushing the Freehold was far from finished. Hand-to-hand fighting was persistent in the thick undergrowth around the village, where the Argosian soldiers were having greater difficulties, harried by the Nurian flying squadrons. The Freeholders had built hidden platforms in the twig-thickets from which their abominable machines took off and returned at high speed; the Saint’s army had become the target of a horde of wasps that swooped down over the twig-forests to pick them off, one by one. Had their visibility not been reduced by the Envoy’s cloud, the Freeholders on the ground would have seen that Galliano’s machines were providing an indomitable counter-offensive to the admiral’s attack. These infernal little air-chariots were harrying their enemies relentlessly, impeding their progress as they tried to finish the job on foot. But for the Envoy, the armies of the Saint might have been at a distinct disadvantage.

  First, thought Lace, settling his tendrils over the Freehold, he would deal with the irritating, stinging wasps, then he would crush the crawling louse that invented them. He turned his attention to the buzz of air-chariots that tried to compete with his cloud, sending his blanket of black flies and crawling spiders towards them. He gathered himself into a vast and clotted web over the Freehold, while the squadron swung round for another attack. Their leader had evidently seen the line of the Saint’s soldiers below, making their way towards the refugee camps; he must have imagined that three of the air-chariots would be sufficient to stop the Argosians in their tracks as they marched single file through the twig-forests. He was wrong, thought the Envoy sardonically.

  The minute the air-chariots swooped down, the Envoy thickened his cloud around them like frog-pea soup. Finding visibility drastically reduced, the first pilot swerved violently to avoid crashing into the twigs, and tumbled headlong into a vine plantation. The second turned a somersault in the heavy mist and nose-dived into a branch, breaking all his propellers. And the third, overcome with dismay, beat a hasty retreat to higher air.

  Once more, the wasps rose from their launching pads; once more, they swept in a wide arc over the twig-forest. And again the Envoy smiled in anticipation and spread out his hazy tentacles to receive them. His wisps and trails of mist were as sticky as cobwebs and clung to the sides of the Nurian machines like an enormous butterfly net from which they could not escape. Their air-chariots were buffeted about without the benefit of any wind. They were nudged in directions they had no intention of going, their craft careening out of control. When the sole survivor of the second squadron limped back to safety in his stuttering machine, he raved to his fellows about ba
ts’ wings and birds’ eyes in the unnatural fog.

  There was a lull, then, and no further attacks occurred. For the Envoy’s cloud blotted out confidence as well as visibility. It filled the Nurians with bewilderment and despair. The United Freeholds could not come up with a new plan of action, although the Argosian soldiers were hacking their way step by step closer to the refugee camp, singing their ribald songs of victory.

  Come out, scum! Taste my bum! Eat my spear, let’s have some fun!

  Eager fools! thought the Envoy complacently, as the strident chorus reached up to his cloud. He was doing what he could to conceal the whereabouts of the Saint’s army, but if they were not careful, the Nurians would hear the soldiers’ idiotic rhymes and hunt them down. They would attack that infernal noise, if they were not so duped by fear themselves. Lace sniggered, a cackle of mean-spirited merriment. The battle was almost over: he could practically smell the coming Nurian defeat, a heady mixture of smoke, dust and burning bodies.

  But just as he had his moment of gloating anticipation, in the midst of his laughter he heard another far-off song through the din of war. It was a very different melody from the soldiers’ anthem.

  Ye are the wind that carries forth the flame …

  Lace concentrated all his fragments, gathered all his droning flies together to listen. The sound was coming from the refugee camp, a music more felt than heard. The Grafters! They were chanting again in an attempt to launch another trance. He listened with growing fury as the music from the Focals’ inner world echoed through the thrum of propellers in the outer one. For it seemed the confounded Freehold wasps had also chosen that very moment to begin a counter-offensive. The squadrons were rising again, all of them at once, in a concerted effort, a distracting hum to his right.

  Ye are the call raised at the break of day.

  Lace felt himself shrivelling at the edges, his bat-cloud shrinking. He thought he had snuffed out the little Grafter wimps, but no! They were at it again. Just like the air-chariots swooping out of their hiding places. What were they up to now? There were four squadrons of three machines each: they split ranks and closed in on the admiral’s fleet from the south, north and east.

  Before you, armies lay their arms to rest …

  Lace flung his tendrils out in disgust, and gave chase. But he was no longer bothering with the air squadrons of the United Freeholds. He was lunging back towards the Grafters’ tent. For their song filled the air with a bright shimmer he dreaded. A fiery river of Sap was flowing strong between them again. They were slipping away from him, swirling beyond him to a place and state he could not reach. It was an insult far more vexing than the stinging air-chariots on the fringes of his cloud.

  The promise kept and all signs manifest.

  The Grafters had entered the world of the Sap. They were communing directly with the Tree of Being, a condition from which Lace was forever excluded. He seethed with rage on the perimeter of their circle, whirling his tendrils of fog about their tent, unable this time to distract them. He fumed frogspawn and salivated bat wings and spat bird feathers into the air, not caring for the moment that the Freehold squadrons were carrying out their first successful attack on the fleet. Greenly could deal with the wasps himself, for once, the Envoy decided. He had had enough of babysitting the Argosian army. He sulked, wrapping his miasma about the Focals’ tent.

  Let the fools sing and pray all they liked, he thought savagely. Let them stay trapped in their bubble of a Sap-world, like flies caught in amber. Much good might it do them! The minute they stopped their caterwauling, the minute they broke their confounded unity, he would throw a tendril of fog around their necks and strangle each one of them. Once the Saint’s army managed to reach the camp, their prayers would be of no use to them, anyway. He had their bodies at his mercy. All that was left to be done was for the Argosian soldiers to search through the twig-thickets, and find and crush every last remaining louse.

  19

  Jedda’s initial joy at sensing Tymon’s approach was quickly replaced by confusion. The twinge in her belly had acquired a queasy edge of duality she did not understand, an inherent contradiction. Tymon drew closer, and yet he did not; he was obviously moving towards her, but remained distant. There was a paradox or, more precisely, a wrongness to the twining link that caused her to feel faintly ill. She bowed her head to her knees again, concentrating instead on loosening the bonds about her wrists, for she wanted to be able to jump up and help Tymon when he arrived. If he really was on his way towards them, he would need her help to resist the two acolytes.

  It might have been an hour or more that she sat on the wet granules of the beach, while Wick and Gowron crouched on the higher ground by the Oracle’s door, arguing with each other about which prophecies to translate into the abjat numerals. The acolytes mercifully ignored her, preferring to vent their bile on each other. And all the while the odd, queasy sensation in Jedda’s stomach grew stronger. At last, after steadily and grimly twisting her wrists beneath the ropes until the skin of her arms was raw, she noticed the bonds slowly beginning to loosen, and simultaneously felt something soft brush against her right hand. Craning her neck to peer behind her shoulder, she saw the loose page from Samiha’s testament that Wick had abandoned fluttering on the loam, tantalisingly within reach.

  She glanced at the two companions under the escarpment. They had their backs to her, bent over the door, and paid her no heed. She inched her body over the gritty loam and with infinite care caught the sheet between her thumb and forefinger. But even as she drew it into her palms, crumpled it between her fingers and tried as best she could to shove it back up her sleeve, the verses on the page sang in her memory, like the lapping of the waters of the lake.

  Far from you, I wander lost, tattered, searching through the dust …

  ‘I don’t care if it isn’t part of the canon.’ Wick’s voice rose up, strident, breaking through Jedda’s thoughts. ‘It’s old. Try it anyway.’

  The acolytes seemed to be having such difficulty with the hatchway, and such a difference of opinion about how to open it, that Jedda began to hope they would never break the code. Perhaps the Oracle would be saved through the influence of other, more subtle powers than those of the Envoy. But although Jedda had called out silently to her teacher many times as she sat on the beach, there was still no breath of response. Matrya’s presence no longer inhabited her mind. She had also tried to reach out through the twining connection to Tymon, to touch his consciousness, as she had done in Argos city. But the character of the link between them had definitely changed. He was no longer open to her. He did not answer when she called but simply approached, or rather both approached and did not. The effect made her feel decidedly dizzy. She found herself feeling sorry for the air-sick Wick, for the tug and pull in her belly was nauseating.

  The two acolytes had just begun a fresh round of arguments, their voices rising vociferously from the top of the beach, when Jedda’s nausea abruptly increased. She gasped for air, feeling violently ill; the skewed twining link had intensified and was like a clanging bell in her gut. She glanced across the lake, her eyes dragged towards the source of the call. Far off to the southwest, hardly more than a sliver of darker grey on the grey waters, a figure had appeared on the horizon. She recognised it long before the features were visible on the face.

  In desperate hope that I may find a hint, a remnant left behind of you … she thought, frowning at the faraway figure. Tymon appeared to be walking on the water.

  A moment later, she understood that he was wading through it. The lake must have been very shallow, barely up to his knees. She wondered in consternation why he approached so openly, and without bothering to hide from his enemies. Even as she watched him, astonished, she realised Wick and Gowron were no longer arguing. The two acolytes stood as still as statues on either side of the door, staring out over the water as she did, hypnotised by the approaching figure. They neither spoke nor moved, apparently in no hurry to attack their enemy. All
three of them watched Tymon in absolute silence. The plash of waters grew louder and louder against the beach.

  Jedda gazed at her twining partner in mounting dismay. With every step he took towards her, the humming dissonance of the link that bound them became more distracting, more unbearable, until she could almost hear as well as feel the skewed connection in her gut. She did not know what to call the twisting wrongness. Nothing she had experienced before, no violation of body or mind had ever felt so terrible. She both anticipated and dreaded the moment when Tymon’s eyes would turn on her — and why did he take so long to turn towards her? He did not even recognise her! His gaze, she saw with alarm, was trained on the Oracle’s door, never once deviating as he strode purposefully through the water. She stared, amazed, as he splashed out of the shallows and passed her without a shred of acknowledgment, making for the top of the beach where the acolytes stood transfixed by the hatchway.

  ‘Tymon?’ she croaked as he passed, voiceless in her surprise.

  She could barely force the word out, overcome by waves of nausea. Tymon did not pause or answer, though his eyes darted towards her briefly, then, a flicker of blue. Had his eyes been blue before? she wondered groggily. She watched with sick dread as he reached the door and extended his hand in greeting to Wick and Gowron. The two acolytes appeared bewildered by his arrival, but did not behave towards him with hostility. Instead, to her amazement, they responded to his greeting with dazed respect. Jedda was about to call out to Tymon again, to ask him, aghast, what he thought he was doing, when he spoke. And at the sound of his voice, the protest died on her lips.

  ‘Well met, my friends.’ The tone was flat and harsh, lacking all emotion, entirely unlike the Tymon Jedda had once known. ‘We see you’ve found the location Eblas gave you. Excellent work.’