by Tracy Lane
“I help to guide the spirits to salvation, you see,” the old woman said, voice soft and gentle. “It’s the only way out of here.”
Aurora nodded. “And what of the living? Do they deserve salvation as well?”
Sharazam hissed, her anger forcing her into clearer focus.
“We’re all alive in some form or fashion,” she spat. “Don’t think that just because you’re flesh and bone that you’re more alive than my friends and me.”
Aurora considered the young girl’s words, and nodded. “Of course, you’re right. I’m… I’m sorry. It’s frightening, this place.”
Sharazam nodded, softening a touch, half her face wavering in the mist, the other more fleshy and real. “It is frightening, yes,” nodded the woman.
“Unfortunately, for us, it’s home. But not for you, dear. Time is short. The Sacred Forest waits for no man, or woman, or girl, in your case. You and your friends must—”
“My friends?” Aurora barked, taking a step closer. Sharazam hissed and blocked her path, as did several other ghosts. Aurora put her hands up, in surrender. “I mean no harm, I just… how did you know about my friends?”
“Mathilda is a spirit guide,” explained Sharazam almost reverently. “She sees between both worlds, and knows every resident of the Sacred Forest, new and old.”
“But how?” Aurora asked.
“She was hired to help grow the forest,” Sharazam explained patiently. “Many, many eons ago, when these towering trees were but seeds in her pockets. The Oracles hired her to erect a forest, to protect them. They let her live here, and tend the trees, and water the plants, and feed the forest animals. Then, when her time was at hand, when she was an old and frail woman, the Oracles were set to send her off to sleep.
“But the forest grew greedy, and didn’t want to let her go. The trees, living so close to the Oracle’s power, had grown enchanted, and now had a mind of their own. They enchanted poor Mathilda, giving her the blessing – and the curse – of immortality.”
“So… you’re a ghost?” Aurora asked the old woman.
“I wish,” chuckled Mathilda, shaking her head in sorrow. “Alas, I am flesh and blood, cursed to live out my days with aching joints and weary bones, with all the ailments and sorrows of a woman who’s lived far too long on this earth. I roam the forest, trapped, for the trees will not let me go. But the ghosts are my friends and now, Aurora, I hope you will be, too!”
“How did you know my name?” Aurora asked. “Are you enchanted as well?”
Mathilda used her walking stick to point to Aurora’s hand, the one that had flickered to life with magical power only minutes earlier. “No more than you, my dear. I heard you tell Sharazam here.”
Aurora nodded, feeling a stirring in the mist. She heard grunts, and breathing, and knew it wasn’t coming from her ghostly friends. “Aurora!” Kayne said, bursting into the clearing. Immediately, the ghosts rushed to crowd around Mathilda.
Aurora held up her hands in a cautionary gesture. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, noticing Lutheran right behind him, walking stick raised in a threatening manner. “Where have you been?”
“Looking for you,” gasped Kayne, bent at the waist, struggling to catch his breath.
“Young man,” said Mathilda, more forcefully than before. “Come here.”
“Why should I?” Kayne sneered.
Sharazam hissed, flying to block him.
“Because she asked you to,” hissed the ghost, wavering and misty. Kayne’s eyes grew big as he looked toward Aurora for guidance.
“Do as she says,” Aurora said, gently. “Trust me, it’s all right.”
Kayne nodded and inched closer to Mathilda. Next to him, Sharazam hovered slightly above the ground, the hem of her ghostly dress fluttering much as Kayne’s shimmering white cloak.
“You possess something of great power,” said Mathilda, gently, quietly, once Kayne had stopped before her. “That is why you seek the help of the Oracles?”
“Yes,” Kayne said, gentler now, more trusting. Behind him, Lutheran and Aurora watched cautiously. “We only hope to restore the balance between darkness and light. We… we mean no harm.”
Around them, the ghosts murmured. “Sharazam,” said Mathilda, gesturing with her cane. The teenage ghost floated over and bent down, listening, nodding, as the old woman counseled her.
At one point, the teen ghost looked at Aurora, nodded, then back at Mathilda.
“I will,” she said at last, hovering between them. “I will.”
Mathilda smiled, patting Kayne on the hand. “Go with peace,” she said, nodding toward the three humans. “Go and finish your quest, and may it be successful.”
“T-t-thank you,” Kayne said, bowing respectfully.
An awkward silence followed, the ghosts hovering silently, Mathilda’s eyes meeting Kayne’s. “But I warn you, boy, that death and danger await.”
“How?” Kayne asked, eyes wide. “When? Where?”
Without preamble, Mathilda shuffled away, tiny feet still hidden in the mist.
“Wait,” Aurora called out, but she was gone, surrounded by ghosts, hovering all around, ushering her away from the clearing and back into the mists that grew between the trees.
“Where is she going?” Aurora asked Sharazam, the only specter to remain.
“Where she goes,” said the ghostly girl, watching her go. “Back into the forest, to tend to her Masters, the Guardian Trees.”
“And what of you?” asked Kayne, hovering around Aurora protectively. On the other side of her, Lutheran still held what remained of his walking stick at arms-length. “Won’t you join your friends so we can journey onward in peace?”
“I wish I could,” she said evenly, ghostly lips set in a firm, gray line. “But Mathilda has ordered me to guide you to the Land of the Oracles.”
“What did she mean?” Aurora asked as Sharazam hovered to her right. To her left, Kayne and Lutheran struggled through the misty forest. “About death and danger.”
Sharazam shrugged her ghostly shoulders.
“She does that,” she said, becoming more and more “real” with each step, until her ghostly legs disappeared into the mist at their feet. “Warns of danger. She’s usually right.”
“How do you know?” asked Kayne, still distrustful of their spectral guide.
Sharazam chuckled, spreading her gray arms, more real now, to encompass the towering trees that surrounded them. “Look around you,” she pointed out. “This forest is full of danger.”
“And death?” grunted Lutheran.
The ghost rolled her dead, gray eyes. “That, too.”
Aurora wasn’t so sure. The old woman sounded more specific than that, and she wondered if their ghostly guide was hiding something. She had to assume the worst, given the forest – and the ghosts, and the danger, and the death – that surrounded them.
For so long she’d been running on pure adrenaline, from danger to danger, minion to minion, tree to tree. Now that their quest was almost over, with the Oracles looming somewhere in their near future, she wondered what might happen next.
Or even… after?
Would Kayne remember her, years from now, when her hands were filthy from a day on the farm and his were still soft and clean in Mage City? Would there even be a “years from now”? Not if Kronos and his minions got their way.
Could she trust Sharazam or, for that matter, Mathilda? Or were they just minions in disguise? Prettier, kinder, gentler versions of giant Hooters or Howlers, leading them toward Kronos so he could dispatch of them himself?
She sighed and followed Sharazam’s lead.
What else could she do?
40
At last, swampland greeted them, gassy and humid, dim light filtering through a low patch of ground fog. The fog seemed to move, a fidgety green, when suddenly three giant women appeared, three eyes on each huge, black face.
They stood over a massive cauldron, bubbling, issuing a slow ooze of bright
green haze that seemed to creep and crawl over the lip of the giant, bubbling bowl and ooze throughout the very swamp.
Sharazam shimmered in front of them, half-ghost, half-human, half-protective, half-disinterested.
“Aurora,” she said, smirking. “Meet the Oracles.”
The Oracles towered, grim and imposing, just past Sharazam’s shimmering form. Aurora studied them, not sure whether to be scared or disgusted. Giant dreadlocks hung down from massive heads, carefully tended, with flowers woven inside each salt and pepper braid.
They dressed in rags and clung with bony fingers to the gnarled roots of trees long dead; their own walking sticks, ornately carved with ancient symbols and faces and animals and forms, pierced the soft, loamy ground beneath their six giant feet.
“Who dares enter the Land of Morgis?” The middle one bellowed, her teeth yellow and cracked, her third eye unblinking even as the other two blinked.
“Who dares?” asked the second, to her left.
“Who dares?” asked the third, to her right.
“Ignore my sisters,” said the first, stepping forward and handing one sister the giant oar she’d been using the stir the cauldron.
“Ignore us!”
“Ignore us!”
Sharazam hovered nearby, turning to Aurora, Kayne and Lutheran. “This could take awhile,” she sighed.
The first oracle inched closer, stooping down to sniff at Sharazam before asking her, “Who do you bring to me, Spirit Girl?”
Sharazam sounded bored, as if seeing the Oracles were a daily occurrence for her. And, perhaps, it was.
“I bring you three wanderers,” said their ghostly guide. “Who bring you tidings of… well… I’ll let them tell you.”
The first Oracle grunted, waving Sharazam away with a giant black fist, nails yellowed and bitten to the quick. The massive woman studied Aurora and the others with all three eyes, sniffing them intently as she bent over her massive, bubbling cauldron.
“My name’s Esmeralda,” she finally said. “And these are my sisters, Esmeralda Two and Esmeralda Three. But I do most of the talking.”
“Esmeralda!” said Esmeralda Two.
“Esmeralda!” said Esmeralda Three.
Esmeralda 1 frowned, inching closer to be heard.
“Enough with the riddles,” she sniffed loudly, giant nostrils flaring as she cast a disappointed glance at Sharazam. “I asked who dare enter my swamp, and I expect an answer.”
“It is not who dares enter your swamp,” Kayne said, forcefully, lifting his hood once more to expose his startling green eyes and a grim smile. “But what…”
Esmeralda frowned and put one leathery finger against her hairy chin. She sniffed them each, twice, and then stood up straight. “Who dare possess the Orb?” she shrieked, waving massive arms in the bright, swampy sky.
“The Orb!” shrieked her sisters, each one in turn.
“The Orb!”
“It is I,” said Kayne, undoing the clasps from his pack and unveiling at last the Orb of Ythra. Inside the swamp, it glowed a brilliant orange. It was said to do so only in the presence of great magic.
The Oracles, all three of them, gasped and backed away, bowing in its presence. Aurora looked and found Sharazam, face a mask of amazement, bowing even as she peeked through her long, waving black hair at the glowing ball.
Kayne knelt as well, forcing Aurora and Lutheran to join them as he covered his head with his cloak once more. Beneath her knees, the ground felt mossy and damp.
The air was humid and thick, cluttered with fluttering insects with bright, gossamer wings and Stingers, whizzing here and there, forcing her to wave her hand in front of her face.
The kettle burned on a fire pit, crackling and oozing bright green smoke as well. The entire swamp seemed enchanted. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened. She decided to be both.
At last Kayne rose, still clutching the orb. “Rise,” he said, to no one in particular. One by one, they all rose; Aurora, Lutheran, Sharazam, even Esmeralda and her sisters, Esmeralda Two and Three.
They gathered around, the giant Oracles blocking out the sun as they ignored their bubbling cauldron to admire the orb, glowing as brightly as the fire at their giant feet.
“You bring great power to our Swamp,” said Esmeralda.
“Great power!”
“Great power!”
Esmeralda frowned, massive finger under her hairy chin. “And great danger, too.”
Her sisters nodded, dreadlocks dangling over the bubbling kettle. “Great danger!”
“Great danger!”
Kayne nodded, Aurora at his side.
“Forgive me, Oracle,” he said, bowing out of deference. “I knew not where to go. Since your people forged the Orb, I felt it was only right I return it to you for safe keeping.”
Esmeralda nodded, accepting his apology.
“It is not you who I blame,” she said, knowingly, eyes turning more gentle and kind with each word. “But he who forced you to flee Ythulia with the Orb in the first place.”
“You know of him?” asked Kayne.
Aurora marveled that, even here, in this place of great power, none dared speak Kronos’ name aloud, as if even the very word was enchanted with darkness and death.
“We do,” said Esmeralda, nodding toward her two sisters.
“We do!”
“We do!”
Kayne flashed an alarmed look at Aurora. She returned it. Turning back to Esmeralda, he swallowed a gulp and asked, “And what of him, Oracle?”
Esmeralda blinked her eyes, turning from one sister to the next, and then back again. Leaning forward, her sisters following suit, she whispered carefully, “He’s closer than you think, child…”
41
Kronos heard his Hooters circling from high above, staying close to the ground as he flew in the shape of a restless Stinger, searching endlessly for Kayne and his accomplices.
He’d heard nothing of his other minions, only seen the wreckage of their bodies, pieces and guts and beaks and paws scattered across the journey. Now the Hooters called to him, circling high above the Smoldering Mountains.
He cursed himself, racing against time to reach the vantage point. The Oracles! He should have known Kayne would take the Orb there rather than try to hide, master or even destroy it.
Puny boy.
Mindless weakling.
Kronos should have known the boy was too weak, in body and spirit, to try and master the Orb’s power as he had feared. Instead, the puny squire had sought refuge in the Smoldering Mountains, behind the Sacred Forest, in the Land of Morgis.
Kronos flew, tempted to become something larger, like a giant falcon or eagle or, more appropriately, a sleek, black vulture. But he knew the Oracles lived in a Swamp, knew the terrain would not hide such a creature and settled for his current form instead.
The flight was long and by the time he reached the Hooters, Kayne had already learned the password to the Hidden Wall, critically injuring one of his precious minions in the process.
He watched the fallen minion, hobbling around on one leg, his body already decaying as the other Hooters stood, awkwardly, skittish, on the small rock outcropping.
“Be gone,” he ordered, having no use for the foul beasts now. “Return to whence you came.”
But Kronos knew the minions would never, could never be the same. As they shrank and shriveled in his path, their disease remained a part of their genetic makeup.
Hideous boils covered their skin, their feathers aged and fell off their leather hides, their beaks, cracked, useless, their talons, limp and soft, they fell from their perches, unable to fly or stop themselves from plummeting straight to the ground far, far below. Their hoarse hoots disappeared on the wind, making their deaths silent and grim.
Kronos sailed on, tiny and insignificant in form but growing more powerful with every inch he drew nearer to the orb. Pitiful Kayne could only hint at the powers contained in the small, orange globe,
but Kronos knew full well what glories awaited its rightful owner.
Kronos reached the highest peak of the mountain, covered in mist and clouds, hiding its hollow opening impenetrable to all but those who knew its hidden secret.
He buzzed and flew and soared and spiraled down, down, down through the mist, through the oval shaped opening at the highest peak, down more, and more, until he was sailing through the forest, the Orb calling to him, drawing him, until he could see the Oracles themselves, towering over Kayne and his pitiful crew.
They stood, massive beasts, ten, eleven, maybe even twelve feet tall. At their feet a cauldron bubbled, containing all their powerful secrets of mentalism and enchantment.
Kronos ignored it, buzzing amongst the insects and the birds, the bugs and the flowers, sailing until he could summon the power he needed to achieve his goals.
Esmeralda, the tallest, wisest and most powerful Oracle could not see through his shielded mind as he existed in insect form. Only when he was Kronos, and only Kronos, could she tell of his dark intent with her own magical, mystical powers.
But not for long. Instantly he beset upon the poor troll, towering though she was, but not immune to his considerable powers. He buzzed the giant’s woven dreadlocks in his insect form, Stinger humming with power and violence, sensing the most vulnerable spot at the back of her neck, where the skin was soft and her brain was near.
He stung her, the pinch of the insect no match for her giant immune system. But it was not pain Kronos sought, only power. His spell seeped through her bloodstream, oozing through each cell of her massive body, as did his own essence. No longer himself, assuming her identity, he waited until the spell had worked its way through her entire system before assuming control.
He eased into her body, her massive arms and legs quite the contrast to his tiny Stinger limbs, now empty and chafing on the back of Esmeralda’s neck. Inside her cells, her pores, her bloodstream and her thoughts, Kronos took over, there to seize the orb at last.