by Deborah Hale
While Maura tried to recover from her shock, the servant woman shook her head. “Now, mistress, you know the council doesn’t approve of you being bothered too often. Madame Verise said this lady is a special case.”
“Your pardon, great Oracle!” Maura made a deep bow to the child. Her face felt as if she had a bad sunburn.
“It’s all right.” The child shrugged. “You gave me an excuse to laugh. I don’t get those often enough lately.”
In her large misty-gray eyes, Maura caught a glimpse of wisdom and sadness far beyond her years.
“Will you come in for cakes and a drink?” The Oracle nodded toward the cottage. “The cordial is from a batch the last oracle put down two summers ago. We had a fine harvest of lipma fruit that year.”
“The... last oracle?” Maura followed the girl into a snug cottage, where she immediately felt at home. “Is a new one chosen when the old one dies?”
“Oh, no.” The Oracle laid her mushroom basket on the table. “That wouldn’t do at all. Then the memories would be lost.”
The memories? Maura wanted to ask, but refrained lest the Oracle get tired of hearing herself repeated over and over.
Perhaps the young Oracle divined her question anyway, for she beckoned Maura through the cottage to a large open porch with a spectacular view down to the sea. “Come, sit down and I will tell you how it is.”
Maura sank onto a cushioned chair that looked to be made of many slender branches woven together into a light but sturdy seat. She wondered what other astonishing revelations the Oracle had in store for her.
The child seated herself on the chair opposite Maura’s. “Like every other oracle for hundreds of years, I was brought to this house when I was an infant to be raised by the last oracle.”
“Do you ever see your other family?” Maura thought of the Woodburys of Galene whom she could hardly wait to meet.
“I have no other family. That’s how the council knew I was the one. An orphaned girl child born at the right time.”
Maura nodded. That made a kind of sense.
“Have you ever performed the passing ritual?” asked the Oracle.
“For my guardian, Langbard, this past spring.”
“Langbard?” The Oracle’s eyes took on a far-off look and her innocent young lips curved in a not-so-innocent smile. “He was a fine-looking fellow. If we’d been twenty years younger...”
Realizing what she’d said, the Oracle hid her face in her hands. “Your pardon! Please do not think ill of me. That name brought back such vivid memories that, for a moment, I could feel the old oracle within me.”
Maura wondered what that meant.
The child hastened to explain. “When an old oracle raises her successor, every day is like a prolonged passing ritual. There would never be time to share all the memories going back so many generations, otherwise. By the time the old oracle is ready to depart this world, the new one has received the accumulated wisdom and experience of all those who have gone before her.”
“Amazing!” Maura whispered, not aware she’d spoken aloud.
“It can be.” The Oracle sighed. “When all goes as it should.”
The child’s wistful words jolted Maura upright in her chair. “But your oracle died too soon, didn’t she, before your training was completed?”
With a wary nod, the child drew her legs up onto the chair and hugged her bent knees. “Just a few months ago, she got very ill suddenly and the healers could do nothing to help. At the end I was with her all the time while she poured memories into my mind until I was afraid my head would burst.”
Maura rose from her chair and knelt beside the child. “That must have been a sad and frightening time for you.”
“It isn’t fair!” The young Oracle struck the side of her chair with her fist. “This never happened to any of the others—why me? These are restless times. So many things will change. So many important decisions will need to be made. People will want my advice. But what can I tell them and how can they trust me? I am not ready, and so much wisdom gathered over the generations has been lost.”
How long had the poor little creature been brooding about this? Maura wondered. Though she might be the custodian of memories stretching back hundreds of years, she was still only a child who had lost her beloved foster mother too soon. A child with no one to confide in but her servant and perhaps some council members who might not want to hear their Oracle voice such doubts about her abilities.
The child rested her forehead against her knees and her delicate frame shuddered with sobs.
“You’re right.” Maura wrapped her arms around the child. “It isn’t fair. If it helps, I know a little of how you feel.”
While the child wept, Maura told her about Langbard’s surprising announcement on her birthday and of events that had overwhelmed her since then.
“So you see,” she said at last when the child’s sobs had quieted, “when I started out, I felt unready for such a huge task. I feared I would fail and let everyone down.”
She lowered her voice to bestow a confidence. “I still feel that way sometimes. If I dwell on it too much, it can freeze me worse than a spidersilk spell.”
The Oracle wiped her eyes with the hem of her gown and sniffled. “How do you keep yourself from thinking about it all the time?”
Maura pondered the question for a moment. “I remind myself to trust in the Giver’s providence. I try to keep moving ahead and doing what I need to do. Each little bit of success I gain makes me feel more confident, even if it is only a few miles closer to where I’m going.”
She ran her hand over the child’s hair, wondering if anyone else dared to show the Oracle of Margyle a little affection. At that moment, a most comforting thought settled over her. “Do you suppose the Giver’s will might work better through people like us, who aren’t fully prepared for what we must do?”
The child gave a final sniff as she regarded Maura thoughtfully. In her soft gray eyes glowed the accumulated wisdom of many generations—fragmented but still sound.
After a moment she nodded. “There would be more room for the Giver’s power to work.”
Just then the Oracle’s servant bustled in. “The wash will dry in no time with that sun and the breeze. Here are the cakes I promised you.”
She stopped in her tracks, staring at Maura and the child. “Is everything all right, pet? Is this too much for you? Should I send this lady away?”
“No, Orna!” The Oracle clasped Maura’s hand. “We were having a fine talk. I hope she will come and visit me often while she is on the Islands.”
“Orna?” Maura smiled at the woman as she returned to her chair. “That is a very familiar name to me. The mother of my dearest friend was named Orna. You remind me of her.”
Clearly the woman was much more than a servant in the Oracle’s household—a warm, protective caregiver who did not forget that this special, troubled little girl was a child first.
“Orna’s a real common name over Norest way.” The woman beamed at Maura, clearly reassured by her young charge’s words. “My folks came to the Islands from there when the war started. Now I’ll fetch that cordial.”
“What does this lipma cordial taste like?” asked Maura. “Anything like sythwine?”
The child wrinkled her nose. “It will make your mouth pucker but it’s very refreshing. Now tell me about this friend of yours from Norest. What kinds of things did the two of you do when you were my age?”
For the next little while they talked like any two new friends getting better acquainted. Orna’s cakes proved delicious with their glaze of fruit and honey. At first Maura wasn’t sure she liked the sour lipma cordial, but each time she took a sip, she found the flavor improved from the time before.
As the Oracle plied her with questions about her friend Sorsha and the town of Windleford where they’d grown up, Maura wondered if she felt embarrassed over betraying her uncertainty to a stranger she should have been trying to awe.
Gently she steered their talk back to the task they had been set. “Do you know why Madame Verise sent me here?”
The child drained her glass of cordial with an air of resignation that their pleasant social time had come to an end. “I am supposed to talk to you and to that man. Then I must tell the Council if you are truly the Destined Queen and the Waiting King.”
Why had Idrygon’s rivals on the council agreed to these interviews? Maura wondered. Did they hope the young Oracle would be too uncertain of her own judgment to give a decisive answer? If she endorsed Rath and Maura, would Trochard’s faction try to discredit her because of her age and unfinished training?
Maura did not envy her young friend the task. “Are there any questions you need to ask me?
The Oracle tapped her forefinger against her chin and her clear brow wrinkled with concentration. “You said Langbard was your guardian. Did he have any other children?”
“None.” Maura plundered her memory for everything Langbard had told her on the fateful afternoon of her birthday. “He said the Oracle had told him he would be father to the Destined Queen.”
“She did.” The child squeezed her eyes shut. “I can picture it as clear as anything. I wish you could have seen the look on his face!”
“I can imagine it.” Maura chuckled. Delyon would probably look the same—eyes wide with horror at the prospect of a destructive little creature getting muddy hands on one of his precious scrolls! “I wish the Oracle had told Langbard I might not be his daughter by blood. He went through a terrible time after his wife died without bearing a child.”
“Poor man!” The girl winced as if she knew something of such pain. “The way oracles are fostered, we know it is love and care that make a family bond, not blood alone. She would never have thought to remark upon the difference.”
Rising from her chair, the young Oracle approached Maura with a solemn gait and laid a hand on her head in the manner of a benediction. “You are Langbard’s daughter and you come from the line of Abrielle. I may not be certain of many things, but I know you are the latest Destined Queen.”
“Latest?” The word trickled down Maura’s spine like a drop of water from a deep, cold well. “That is something I do not understand. The sages spoke of sending out messenger birds every year and of King Elzaban’s spirit having dwelt in other men before Rath. Does that mean what I fear it might? Have there been other Destined Kings and Waiting Queens before us who failed?”
The young Oracle nodded with an air of regret. “Those were some of the most important memories Namma passed on to me. We spoke of it too, though I am not sure I understood it all. You see, before the Han came, there were troubled times, but not the very darkest hour. Some Destined Queens laughed off the whole notion of what they were meant to do. Others were too frightened to stir from their own doorsteps.”
Maura could not condemn them. “I laughed at first. I was afraid. If Langbard had not offered to go with me, then Rath, I might still be hiding in Windleford hoping destiny would get tired of waiting for me and choose someone else.”
She gazed up into the child’s face, for the first time wishing she had found a wise old woman here to advise her. “That’s what I cannot understand, though. If those others were truly destined, how could they fail? It took me such a long time to learn to trust in my destiny—now you’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”
Maura tried to blunt the sharp edge of frustration in her voice. It wasn’t the child’s fault, after all, or anyone else’s. And she did not truly expect an answer that made sense. As Langbard had once said, “Look around you, my dear, at all the marvels of the Giver’s creation. How can simple creatures like us hope to fathom its plan or purpose?”
Maura wished she could understood a little at least.
The Oracle held out her hand. “Will you come for a walk with me before you have to go?”
The burden of too much knowledge had left her eyes, and she looked like any child her age, eager to run and play. No doubt she was tired of all this grave talk and hearing words come out of her mouth that she did not fully understand.
“I would like that.” Maura took the oracle’s hand and rose from her chair with what she hoped was a convincing pose of enthusiasm.
Together, they left the porch and wandered out into the meadow that sloped down toward the sea. But the Oracle did not go that way. Instead, she led Maura toward a wooded hill.
She pointed toward the summit. “Up there is the most beautiful place of meditation in all the Islands. I go there often when I’m troubled. Everything seems clearer there, somehow. If there is any place in this world where you might find the answers to your questions, it will be there.”
Answers—Maura could do with a few of those. The hill looked steep and quite thickly wooded, though a gap between the trees at the base of the hill might be the beginning of a footpath. “Very well. Let’s go.”
The child released her hand and ran ahead, calling, “I’ll see you at the top!”
“Wait for me!” Maura did not relish the prospect of a race up the steep, wooded hill. Hiking up the hem of her gown, she ran after the child, who had already disappeared into the trees.
“Oh, these shoes!” Maura bit back a mild curse when the curved toes almost made her trip. The stout walking boots Sorsha had given her when she left Windleford would have been much better for climbing this hill.
Darting through a gap in the trees, Maura saw that the path divided almost immediately. Which way was she to take?
She peered down each branch as far as she could see but both curved after a few yards and the Oracle was already out of sight.
“Hello!” Maura called. “Which way am I supposed to go?”
No answer came, but she heard laughter off in the distance. The right-hand path seemed to lead in that direction so Maura followed it, grumbling to herself about inconsiderate hostesses.
Before long, she was doing more than grumbling. The wooded path wound its way up the hill in a complicated maze, twisting, branching, turning back on itself, and sometimes coming to a dead end. Would she ever find her way to the top?
Maura considered turning back, or sitting down and staying put until the naughty little tease of a child came looking for her. She did stop for a short rest, but soon grew bored with waiting and started off again. If she’d been sure she could find her way back to the cottage, she might have given up. But by this time she had made too many turns and was hopelessly confused.
So she kept going, encouraged that she seemed to be climbing higher. The nearer she got to the top, the less space there would be for the path to branch. As long as she kept going she must reach the summit at last.
And, at last, she did. Footsore, out of breath and very much out of temper.
She found the Oracle sitting in something that looked like a little house without walls—stout beams holding aloft a roof. Only when she drew very close did Maura realize the beams were living trees, their branches concentrated at the top and turned inward to twine together, creating a roof shingled with broad leaves.
The structure stood in the middle of a meadow carpeted with wildflowers of the most vivid and varied colors Maura had ever seen. Springwater bubbled up from a tiny stone fountain beside the little house of trees. A soft breeze wafted and swirled about the summit of the hill, stirring the fresh, sweet perfume of the flowers.
By the time Maura reached the Oracle, most of her irritation had been soothed away by the peace and beauty around her. Understanding blossomed within her, as unexpected and breathtaking as this place.
“You meant to leave me behind, didn’t you?” she asked the Oracle.
The child nodded gravely. “I’m sorry. I know it is bewildering and tiresome. This was one of the first lessons Namma taught me when I was old enough to understand.”
She pointed to the fountain. “You must be thirsty. Have a drink. It will make the long climb seem worthwhile.”
Maura stared around the summit glade. “It already does
. But you’re right, I am thirsty.” With cupped hands, she lifted the water to her lips and drank until she could hold no more.
The Oracle had spoken true, for the water was so cool, fresh and sweet, it would have been worth the long, wearying climb all by itself.
“Namma told me this path through the woods is like our destiny,” explained the oracle while Maura drank. “We cannot tell which way it may take us, and we may make many wrong turns.”
Maura nodded. The frustration she’d felt while trying to grope her way to the top of the hill echoed some of the feelings she’d experienced during her quest to find the Waiting King.
“The path could not pick you up and bring you here against your will or with no effort on your part,” the Oracle continued, “and you had many choices to make. Some of those would have led you away from the top of the hill, others were dead ends. If you had become too discouraged to continue, you never would have reached the top.”
Once Maura finished drinking, the Oracle beckoned her to take a seat beneath the living canopy. “Did you notice that some of the trail doubled back on itself?”
Maura nodded.
“This path may confuse the person who climbs it for the first time.” The Oracle patted Maura’s hand. “But for those who keep trying, there are not as many wrong choices as may first appear.”
But there were wrong choices and Maura could not abdicate her responsibility for them. The specter of failure returned to haunt her. Others before her had failed and she sensed that the closer she and Rath came to their goal, the greater their opportunities for disaster might be.
A dark whisper of temptation slithered through her thoughts as well. If she and Rath abandoned their destiny, another Waiting King and Destined Queen would come after them... some day.
But in the meantime, how much darker could Embria’s darkest hour get?
Chapter Eighteen
“WHAT DID THE Oracle tell you?” asked Maura the following evening while she and Rath prepared for dinner at Idrygon’s villa.