Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  On the afternoon of the second day, Jedda set out for Tymon’s camp to report an important discovery made by one of the scouting parties. The Tree, she saw as she arrived at the top of the slope, had grown with astonishing speed to about the level of her chest, its trunk as thick as her right arm. She eyed it with awe as she approached the gravesite, its shivering explosion of green leaves bright against the ring of grey rocks. The Grafters could find no reason for its extraordinary growth, except what touched on the mystery of Samiha’s being. Tymon was sitting beneath it, apparently deep in thought, a blanket wrapped about his shoulders against the chill breeze. He would not have shown such foresight on his own — Jedda had put the blanket on him herself, on a previous visit. He did not look as if he had moved since then. The pages of the Kion’s testament lay in a neat pile by his side.

  ‘They found Wick,’ Jedda told him as she arrived by his side, without preamble.

  Tymon glanced up at her, smiling faintly. She felt his preoccupation through the twining link that still existed between them; her news did not shock him in the least. It was as if he had already heard it.

  ‘He was walking far to the west,’ she continued, when Tymon did not answer. ‘Crossing the plain below the trunk, through a desert of these rocks. He didn’t look up or notice the air-chariot, and just kept rambling on. They think he’s gone mad. Gardan’s happy to send soldiers out to deal with him, but wanted to check with you, first. She says he’ll die of exposure anyway, given the state he’s in.’

  Still Tymon remained silent, considering her with his calm smile. She waited patiently, telling herself that his behaviour was perfectly understandable, after all he had gone through, and it would take time for him to return to his normal self. When he spoke to her at last, it was not regarding Wick. His tone was distant but reasonable enough.

  ‘I’ve finished it,’ he said, picking up the sheaf of testament papers and handing it to her. ‘I see why you wanted me to read it. Thank you, Jedda. I hope you don’t mind returning it now.’

  ‘I’ll give it to Oren,’ she mumbled, accepting the papers. ‘But I need an answer regarding Wick, Tymon.’

  ‘Wick.’ He repeated the name, sighing. ‘Yes. Of course.’ He said no more for a moment, lost in thought. ‘It’s sad,’ he continued, just as she was beginning to fidget with impatience. ‘Even when we were at school together, he was the same. Always afraid. Always hiding. He would never show his true face to anyone: he thought we would hate him. And now he has left us, gone as far as he can go.’

  Then he fell silent again, so that Jedda was obliged to prompt him. ‘Well, do you want us to go after him?’ she asked. ‘I have to tell Gardan something.’

  ‘Tell her there’s no need to send soldiers,’ he replied, shaking off his reverie and smiling again. ‘Wick won’t trouble us. In fact, I think he’s going to stay as far away from the new Tree as possible. Don’t worry, Jedda. Everything’s going to be alright.’

  ‘What about you?’ She gazed at him in distress. ‘Are you going to be alright, Tymon?’

  The worried questions tumbled off her tongue, for she could see he was entirely uninterested in human company. Already, as if he had decided their interview was at a close, his eyes were sliding away from her, concerned only with the Tree.

  He did not reply for another heartbeat. When he looked back at Jedda, his expression was perplexed, as if he, too, were asking himself that question.

  ‘I think so,’ he said mildly. ‘Do you remember how you felt when the Masters almost killed you, and Samiha sent you back? How you knew certain things afterwards, but didn’t really want to talk about them? Well, it’s like that for me, at the moment. I’m not quite ready to talk about it.’

  ‘I understand,’ Jedda whispered, for she knew exactly what he meant.

  She still had not spoken to him of all the Kion had told her in that fleeting space between life and death — of the glimpse she had been given of her possible future, her part in creating a new world so that others might be free, even as she had tried so hard to be. It was a vision that concerned Tymon, too, but whether it came to pass depended on what he and the others did in the coming days and weeks. For that was how the Born prophecies worked, Jedda had come to understand: however wonderful the vision, it was only a template, a plan, useless without the will to put it into effect. Like the secret blueprint folded deep within a seed, it gave direction and character to growth. But it did not guarantee results. A seed might never germinate. It was up to ordinary people, with all their faults and blunderings, to bring the prophecies to pass — and when they did, the result would not be perfect, but beautiful, flawed, real. The future, Jedda understood, had been entrusted like a delicate seedling to her care, and it was her responsibility to make it grow.

  But would Tymon take up the challenge? Would he lay aside his grief and quit the past for the present, carrying out his task? Jedda could not help wondering, quailing a little for her friend as she left him. Walking down the slope, she glanced over her shoulder to see that he had already turned back to the sapling, stretching out his right hand and placing his palm against the trunk, as if in silent communion. But the Tree, for all its vigorous growth, was only a Tree. It could not talk.

  He would come down, she supposed, when he was ready.

  She’s right, you know. You can’t stay here forever.

  It was not precisely a voice: more like sunshine slanting on Tymon’s mind as he watched Jedda walk away. The words of the Samiha Tree settled in his heart, like leaves on the surface of a clear pool.

  ‘She doesn’t know I hear you,’ he whispered to the smooth bark of the sapling. ‘None of them do. Give me a little longer. One more day.’

  After that you must return.

  He gave a wry half-smile. ‘So, what would you have answered?’ he asked the Tree. ‘Am I going to be alright?’

  I have no doubt of it.

  ‘I won’t be what they call normal.’

  You speak to trees. There was a quality to the voice in Tymon’s mind that might have been laughter, an effect like shivering foliage in the wind. That’s hardly normal.

  ‘I’d rather be considered mad, and always hear you.’

  They will not think you mad. Not those who actually listen to what you have to say.

  Tymon did not need the Grafter’s Sight to understand that the sapling burgeoning from Samiha’s grave was no ordinary plant. Nor was it simply the beginnings of a new World Tree. Whether it would eventually grow into another giant, all-encompassing environment like the world of his birth, he did not know. But even as Matrya’s life had been enmeshed with that of the first Tree, the second was mysteriously linked with Samiha. His love was still present, still with him, though in a form most would not recognise. She did not speak to him in words and phrases, as Matrya had done, for she was one step further away, no longer in possession of her ‘seed-form’. But she whispered to Tymon in the language of knotted bark and wind on grass, falling water and stirring leaves. He always understood what she meant. And she understood him.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ he told the Tree.

  You will return here when your work is done. For now, you have a message to deliver.

  He glanced again at Jedda’s lanky form disappearing down the slope, knee-deep in grass and carrying the bundled testament under her arm.

  ‘You told them everything already, of course,’ he remarked to the Tree. ‘In your own words. You don’t really need me.’

  They need you. There is the word, and the one who speaks the word — the story and the storyteller. Two different but complementary things. And you have words of your own to share, a tale only you can tell. The world needs your way of Seeing, and most of all your way of Listening.

  Tymon had realised belatedly, after his first pilgrimage to the grave with the Freeholders, that no one else, not even his Grafter friends, heard Samiha’s voice. Even Oren and Noni thought the new Tree was just a new Tree, though that was extraordinary enough in itself. The
sapling grew with astonishing speed, burgeoning before Tymon’s very eyes. If he left the graveside to sleep or refresh himself, he was sure to find the supple trunk taller when he returned; if he glanced away even for an instant, he found fresh green buds when he turned back.

  His companions, it seemed, could not bear to contemplate the young Tree’s vitality too closely. They gazed at it in awe and fear when they approached, practically running away once their errand was done. To Tymon, their visits were like fleeting dreams, the Freeholders’ activity on the slopes below no more than the buzzing of insects. Time had little meaning; it might have been a few minutes that he sat beside the Tree, rather than days. He only knew that hours had passed because his friends told him so. After they left, he returned to his conversation with Samiha as soon as possible, speaking the language of greenness and entirety with her, the language of Union.

  For there were no divisions here, in the presence of his Beloved. Tymon’s communion with the Tree included all within its circle: the wind in the grass, the earth underfoot, the Storm clouds in the sky. It encompassed the busy Nurians who rushed about in their air-chariots, exploring the World Below, and the Argosian sailors in their dirigibles overhead, staring down in shock at the hole where the South Canopy used to be. It reached out to Caro and his rebel forces, holed up in their wilderness hideout in the East, and the Lantrian pirates in Cherk Harbour, already scheming to resurrect their poisonous Company. The circle even included the deranged and murderous Wick, wandering lost on the desert plain, a faraway echo of bloody misery. Going farther still, it encompassed the crouched form of Eblas, cringing before his Masters’ wrath in the Veil. All were part of the Letter of Union, whether they knew it or not. All were connected, though they fought each other tooth and nail, struggling for ascendency.

  There was no Heaven or Hell, no saved or damned, no us and them in the presence of the Tree. There was only a cycle of change that must be completed, distance and nearness, cold and warmth, rain and drought. His task, the young Oracle told Tymon, with a shiver of leaves and a soughing of wind through the grass, was to close the circle. He was to gather together everyone he could, all who were lost, and bring them home again. All might see the new world, even the Argosian priests, if they desired it. All of them, Samiha repeated ceaselessly. Tell all of them. He had one simple task to accomplish for her, one message to deliver. If he had to leave her side for a while, he knew it was ultimately to draw the circle back again.

  Another day passed after Jedda’s visit, and a night. By the third morning of his vigil, the Tree had grown to the height of a man, its branches spread in a sheltering green canopy over Tymon’s head. And he was aware that the time had come for them to part.

  ‘Now?’ he sighed, though the question contained no bitterness. ‘Must it be?’

  If you did not leave, how could you hope to return?

  ‘It’s dark and cold out there, without you. What they call life is more like death.’

  Without darkness, how would you recognise the light? Without absence there is no reunion.

  ‘That’s poetic, but it doesn’t help me.’

  You will bear it, said the Samiha Tree. You have work to do. Listen closely, and you will hear my voice anywhere in the world. Look at the hearts of those you love, and find them beating with the Sap-fire. I am with you, always with you.

  Besides, she whispered a moment later, her voice a quiver of sunlight through the branches, there are those who See clearly, and are ready to help. They are precious: in them I burn bright.

  ‘Bolas,’ exclaimed Tymon in surprise.

  For at that moment, he had glimpsed a vision of his old friend in the space between the Tree’s branches, limping down the quays in Argos city to fall weeping into Nell’s arms. Had Bolas lost a leg? Other brief images followed, though whether of the past or future Tymon could not tell: Masha in her bed, Amu Bibi eternally at work with her broom, and a vision of Jocaste chanting in a prison cell. Where was Anise?

  Those are absent friends. Others are already here, of course. The one who arrives now will be the first to champion your cause.

  Tymon looked up to find Oren’s faraway figure climbing the slope towards him, his face a bright speck in the morning sun.

  Oren had delayed as long as possible on that third day, before finally walking up to the grave, reluctant to give Tymon news of their departure. His friend, he knew, would be loath to leave, though Wick was far away or dead by now, and everyone else more than ready to depart. But Gardan had not minced her words that morning: there had been enough mystic communion at Samiha’s graveside, Tree or no Tree, she had announced. The scouting expeditions were over, their provisions were running low, and the judges’ minds were made up. It was time to go. Other expeditions would set out from the Freeholds in the coming weeks, to further explore the World Below. But their own task was to return home. As Oren trudged up the slope to Samiha’s resting place, the final bundles were being loaded into the air-chariots in preparation for departure. They would leave with or without Tymon. The latter prospect weighed heavily on Oren’s mind.

  He had expected to find his friend sitting in a half-dream, as had been the case every time he visited him over the past three days. And indeed, when Oren caught sight of the young man at the top of the slope, he was in his usual cross-legged position by the sapling. But as he approached, Tymon rose to meet him, his expression grave and alert. The long blanket wrapped about his shoulders gave him an oddly regal look. Oren came to an uncertain halt before him.

  ‘It is time, Syon,’ he said apologetically. ‘They wait … Gardan and the others. Air-chariots are ready.’

  He tried to take hold of Tymon’s elbow, to lead him down the slope, but the other lad was immovable, fixing him with his steady gaze.

  ‘Samiha spoke to me,’ he told Oren, as if this were a natural response to all questions of staying or leaving. ‘She gave me a message for the Freeholders.’

  For an instant, Oren felt his heart skip a beat. But he told himself that this was just a grieving man’s fantasy. Tymon was in mourning for Samiha, hardly the right frame of mind to experience a proper Grafter vision. Of course he would hear her voice. Oren’s duty now was to get him back to the Freehold, and get him well.

  ‘They are waiting for us,’ he said gently, and attempted to pull his companion away again.

  But Tymon did not budge. ‘She told me everyone has to come to the World Below,’ he said. ‘Everyone, Oren, not just the Freeholders. Do you realise what that means? It means Argosians, too. The old world is dying. In a few years, a century at most, it’ll be uninhabitable. We all have to leave.’

  Oren gazed wearily at him. He could not move Tymon by main force. If the Syon did not follow him of his own accord, he would be left behind. ‘Can we talk about this on way home?’ he asked. He turned, ready to walk down the slope.

  ‘Home is here!’ replied Tymon.

  There was a ringing note of assurance in his voice that caused Oren to jerk round and stare at him again. The Argosian had grown up in the last few months, he thought, bemused. Tymon was tall now, his silhouette dark against the white sky. But there was a light in his eyes Oren had not seen before. He searched his friend’s expression intently. Could it be …?

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m coming back to the Freehold with you,’ Tymon continued, with a smile. ‘But first I want you to listen to me, because this is important. I need your help, Oren. Samiha told me the World Below doesn’t belong to one people or nation. She wants everyone to be able to live here: Nurians, Argosians, Saffid, Jays … all of them. It belongs to all of them.’

  A breeze stirred and the leaves on the sapling behind Tymon rippled and danced. Oren shivered, despite the fitful sun shining through the Storm clouds. But it was not because he was feeling cold. He had the sudden and distinct impression that they were not alone by the graveside. There was another presence there, a shimmer over the pool, a glimmer between the rocks. He took a deep breath.

  ‘This
will not be easy message to give,’ he warned Tymon. ‘Even if we come to live here, no Freeholder wishes to share World Below with both Argosians and Saffid.’

  ‘They might, if you help me convince them,’ said Tymon eagerly. ‘What do you say, Oren? Will you fulfil Samiha’s wishes with me? Will you be a Witness for her too?’

  Oren gazed at him a moment longer, in dawning joy and wonder. Then he bowed low. ‘To the end,’ he murmured.

  For he knew, then, that Matrya’s patience, and Samiha’s faith, had been justified. Tymon had indeed become the Syon, a ‘Sign of the Sap’ or a ‘Saint’ as the Argosians would call it, in more than just name. And Oren was ready to serve him to the hour of death.

  ‘But this is just the beginning,’ laughed Tymon, as they walked together down the mountainside. ‘Not the end. A new beginning for us all, if we get it right. You’ll see.’

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many people have contributed to the making of this trilogy, it’s hard to name only a few. The Chronicles of the Tree went from dream to reality in a little less than four years, from the completion of the first functioning manuscript to proofs of the third book. Throughout the process, I have valued the eagle eye of my editor, Stephanie Smith, as well as that of my agent, Helenka Fuglewicz. I am particularly grateful to my mother, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, who was my first reader, creative partner, and a staunch support in times of stress. As these acknowledgments cover both Samiha’s Song and Oracle’s Fire, I would also like to thank Mitenae for her excellent beta reading on Samiha’s Song, and all the team at HarperVoyager for their hard work and patience throughout. But most of all, I would like to thank my husband, Frank Victoria, who believed in the dream. I wouldn’t be here without you.