Oracle (Book 5)

by Ben Cassidy

“Please, Mr. Kendril,” Marley said, “you should be lying down. You’ve got cuts and bruises all over you, and that arm is—”

  “I’m fine.” Kendril turned away quickly, hoping that neither of the two men saw him grimace as he stepped on his injured leg. He found himself wishing that Joseph and his amazing herbal bag were here.

  “He’s right, Kendril,” Tomas said. He rubbed a thumb gingerly over his puffy face. “You look like you’ve taken quite a beating. You might as well—”

  “None of us are staying here a minute longer,” Kendril said. He picked up his pistol from where it had been laying by the fire, and returned it to his holster. “We have Bronwyn. Every moment we stay here puts us in more danger.”

  Tomas looked suddenly wary. “You think there are more Jombards?”

  Kendril looked around for his swords. “Did you see any boats?”

  Tomas frowned in thought.

  Marley scratched his white hair. “Boats? Begging your pardon, Mr. Kendril, but what does that have—?”

  “Of course,” Tomas said. “There are no boats here. That means that if these Jombards came by sea, then the boats dropped them off and left.”

  “And those same boats will come back eventually,” Kendril finished. “Probably sooner rather than later, which is why we have to move now.” He found his two short swords where Tomas had put them, near one of the benches. He picked them up with a spasm of pain on his face, and sheathed them both.

  Tomas crossed his arms. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I told you, I’m fine.” Kendril rubbed a hand over his pale face. “Now let’s get moving. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

  Dawn was still a couple of hours away as the group moved off the beach and up the steep path that led to the cliff tops. A cold rain started again, increasing and decreasing haphazardly in intensity as they walked.

  Bronwyn was still unconscious, or pretending to be. Kendril didn’t really care. Either way, she was quiet. Her insensate form was slung over Simon’s back, and the mule protested at every step he took.

  “Well, you’re good at one thing,” Marley called over his shoulder to the animal. “Whining.”

  Simon brayed at the sailor.

  Kendril glanced down at the beach behind them. Through the darkness and the foliage he couldn’t see anything, but he could still hear the dull roar of the ocean. He stepped carefully and slowly, trying hard not to make any sign of the pain that was coursing through his body at each jolt.

  Marley slipped on a patch of mud and cursed loudly.

  Tomas whirled. “Keep it down! You make so much noise we’re lucky we don’t have every Jombard in Jothland on our tails.”

  Marley struggled to hold the large saddlebag that had been on Simon just a half-hour before. “That’s easy enough for you to say. You ain’t carrying this ton of bricks, now are you?” He tossed a nasty glance back at Simon’s black shape in the darkness. “Why can’t the mule carry the bags, I wonder? Why else do we keep around, anyways?”

  “We need the mule to carry Bronwyn,” Kendril said in a tired voice. His eyes were burning, he suddenly realized. He hadn’t noticed it with all the other pain he was experiencing. Sleep. He needed it desperately.

  Tomas dropped back next to Kendril. “This witch had better be worth all this trouble, Kendril.” He kept his voice low, so that the grumbling Marley wouldn’t overhear them. “You know Olan will want to see some kind of results for all this.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t have Olan disappointed, now can we?” Kendril exhaled sharply as a surge of pain shot up his injured leg.

  Tomas shook his head. His hood was raised against the rain. “Fine. Be as sarcastic as you like. We still need to figure out our next move.”

  Kendril peered ahead into the darkness, even though he could barely see five paces in front of him. “Simple. We interrogate Bronwyn. Find out what she knows about this Despair.”

  “Out here?” Tomas glanced up at the dark, thundering sky. “We need some kind of shelter, you know. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we don’t have the supplies to be camping out here for long.”

  Kendril stepped up onto a shelf of rock, wincing. He hoped that their tracks weren’t desperately obvious to follow from the cave. In the dark he had no way of seeing how bad the trail they were leaving was, and even if he did he didn’t know how to cover it. He found himself wishing again that Joseph was around.

  But that was in the past. He wouldn’t be seeing his old friend again.

  “We need a place for shelter, near town so that we can get supplies,” Tomas said, still keeping his voice down. “Somewhere isolated.”

  Kendril felt his boot sink almost to the ankle in a patch of mud. “Have any place in mind?”

  “Maybe.” Tomas wiped the rain off his face and shook the droplets off his gloved hand. “What about that old Ravenbrook estate, the mansion up on the hill? It looks plenty big enough, and it’s abandoned. Seems almost perfect to me.”

  Kendril felt a cold twist of a knife in his gut. He tried to swallow, but found he couldn’t. “Kind of exposed,” he managed at last. “Someone might see us.”

  Tomas shrugged. “We’ll stay out of sight.”

  “There could be squatters there,” Kendril added weakly.

  “We won’t know unless we check it out.” Tomas gave Kendril a keen glance. “If I didn’t know better, Kendril, I’d say you had some other reason why you didn’t want to go to that old place.”

  Kendril choked down his reply. He kept his gaze on the black, rain-swept landscape in front of him. “There’s an old grist mill,” he said finally. “On the backside of the estate, near the edge of the property. Local farmers used to bring their grain there at harvest time. It’s not used anymore, or at least it wasn’t the last time—”

  “The last time what?” Tomas asked quickly. “The last time you were here?”

  Kendril ignored the question. He rubbed his aching leg as he walked. “The mill’s out of sight of the town. There’s a large stream that runs by it, so there would be plenty of water. We could probably even light a fire without anyone noticing. There aren’t any nearby homesteads.”

  Tomas was quiet a moment in thought. The rain popped as it drummed against his black cloak and hood. “All right,” he said at last. “It does sound like the better option. We’ll check out the mill first.”

  Kendril nodded, glad it was dark enough to hide the look of relief on his face.

  “Tell me again,” said Tomas after a long moment, “that your dark and mysterious past isn’t going to catch up with us here in a profoundly bad way.”

  Kendril squared his shoulders, feeling stabs of pain from his right arm. The rain had completely soaked through his clothes. All he wanted to do was to lie down and sleep for an eternity.

  “Kendril?”

  “I told you before,” Kendril said, a little too sharply. “it’s not a problem. Now let’s walk.”

  Tomas mumbled something and looked away.

  Above their heads, thunder rumbled ominously in the sky and the rain grew fiercer.

  Chapter 14

  “Who in Zanthora could that be?”

  Silvanus, esteemed physician, surgeon, and professor of anatomy, physiology, and biology at the Morcanth College in Vorten, rolled over in bed and pretended to snore.

  “Silvanus?” His wife nudged him with her foot. “Don’t you hear the door? I think someone’s at the door.”

  Silvanus tried to answer, but his reply came out as nothing more than muffled groan into his pillow. He snatched at the thick comforter and tried to pull it over his head.

  A pounding sounded from downstairs. The front door was literally rattling at the hinges.

  “Silvanus?”

  Silvanus groaned again. He lifted his head up off the pillow and rubbed his bleary eyes.

  It was still pitch dark outside. It had to be the early hours of the morning. “I think we should ignore it, Hetty,” he mumbled.

  Hi
s wife nudged him harder with the toe of her foot. “I really think you should get the door. It could be an emergency. Someone from the college.”

  Silvanus swallowed a curse. His wife would keep kicking him until he got out of bed. And by now he was awake anyway.

  “Silvanus?”

  “All right, all right, I heard you, you old bat.” Silvanus angrily threw off the covers and stepped onto the freezing wooden floor. “I’ll answer the Void-cursed door.”

  “Silvanus, you shouldn’t talk like that,” Hetty reprimanded. She looked anxiously towards the stairs. “Do you think there’s a fire? Perhaps a robbery?”

  “I really don’t know, Hetty.” Silvanus tried unsuccessfully to keep the irritation out of his voice. He grabbed his ratty bathrobe off the nearby chair, then smacked his feet around in the dark in a desperate search for his slippers.

  The pounding knock came again, echoing up the stairwell from below. Whoever it was wasn’t going away.

  “Hurry, Silvanus,” Hetty urged. She pushed him with her foot.

  “Get off me, woman,” Silvanus growled. He cinched his bathrobe, then fumbled for the flint and tinder in the darkness. After a couple unsuccessful attempts, he managed to get the bedside candle lit.

  Warm light flooded the room.

  Silvanus cursed, then lifted the candle. He made a quick inspection by the bed, and managed to shuffle on his two remaining slippers.

  The knock came again, maddeningly persistent. At this point Silvanus actually hoped it was a fire.

  No, he shouldn’t think like that, not even in jest. On the night that the Void had opened in Vorten, the great fire had destroyed much of the city…and killed thousands of people. Silvanus thanked Eru every day that his house was outside the walls of the city, far enough away from the devastation to escape the destruction.

  Oh, Eru in Pelos. It wasn’t happening again, was it?

  Feeling more awake and a little more urgency now that the last dregs of sleep were being shaken off, Silvanus made his way down the stairs towards the front door.

  Emergency or not, he still found himself wishing that he owned a proper servant. It would be nice to have someone else around to open doors at the wee hours of the morning.

  Silvanus approached the door, coughing as he reached for the latch. His fingers hesitated only a moment.

  Suppose it was burglars? Vorten and the surrounding area had had its share of lawlessness, roving gangs, and violent crimes after the start of the Despair. The gendarmes had been cracking down and restoring order as best they could, but with the war on things were still chaotic.

  Silvanus had the urge to grab for a weapon before answering the door, but he realized that there wasn’t really a weapon in the whole house. There was his father’s old cavalry saber, locked away in a chest upstairs. Silvanus doubted he could even swing it properly.

  The knock came again. It was so loud it made Silvanus jump.

  Oh, well. There was nothing for it.

  Silvanus unlatched the door and swung it open.

  Three people stood outside in the cold and rain, two men and a woman. One of the men wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long, stained greatcoat. The other was dressed more nicely, with an impractical cap that had a large feather stuck in it. The woman wore a long hooded robe. Her face wasn’t visible under the shadow it cast.

  “Dr. Silvanus,” the finely-dressed man began. He coughed self-consciously into his fist. “I, uh, apologize for the inconvenient timing of our visit. I—”

  “Maklavir?” Silvanus narrowed his eyes and held up the candle for a better look. The flame hissed and spat as a few stray raindrops struck it. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Ah, yes,” Maklavir said nervously. “You remember me, then. Jolly good. I don’t believe you’ve met my friend, Joseph.” He nodded to the bearded man beside him. “I thought, perhaps, that—”

  Silvanus looked suspiciously from one face to the other. “Do you have any idea what time it is, Maklavir? It’s hours still till dawn.”

  “Uh, yes.” Maklavir twisted his hands nervously together. “I do apologize about that, Dr. Silvanus, but we’ve had a bit of a time of it. Couldn’t be helped, really.”

  “Whatever it is,” Silvanus said with a roll of his eyes, “it can bloody well wait until the morning, can’t it? Now if you’ll excuse me—” He moved to close the door.

  Joseph moved fast. He slammed his hand into the door and banged it open.

  “What in Zanth—?” Silvanus cried.

  Joseph shoved the man roughly back into the hall. “Inside, Maklavir, now! Before the neighbors wake up. Grab Kara. Move!”

  “Kara?” Silvanus repeated. His mind, still foggy from lack of sleep, took a full second or two to digest the information. “The girl from the Despair? You’ve brought her here?” He made the sign against evil across his chest reflexively, something he hadn’t done since he was a child.

  Maklavir hurried inside, pulling the silent Kara behind him.

  “Now see here,” Silvanus said, recovering his wits. “You can’t just barge in here and—”

  “We need you to perform a surgery,” Joseph said. He turned and shut the door, then locked it. He nodded at Kara. “On her.”

  “Yes,” said Silvanus in a huff, “well I already explained my position on that to Mr. Maklavir here. The surgery is far too dangerous to perform. It can’t be done.” He glanced nervously at the door, feeling a growing sense of apprehension at having the three people standing in the entryway to his house. “Now I need you all to—”

  Maklavir reached over and pulled Kara’s hood down.

  The red-haired woman didn’t move. Her eyes stared straight ahead, unseeing and lifeless.

  Silvanus felt his words die on his tongue. He stared at the beautiful woman.

  Maklavir straightened, his face somber. “She has come out of her coma, Dr. Silvanus, but she’s still lost to us. Lost in her own mind.”

  “Maklavir says you’re the best surgeon in all of Vorten,” Joseph said quietly. He pulled off his hat. “We need your help to get the last shards of the Soulbinder out of her. I think that’s what is causing…” his eyes flickered with pain, “this.”

  “Silvanus?” Hetty’s shrill voice came from up the stairs. “Is everything all right down there?”

  “Just fine, my peach,” Silvanus shouted back. He turned back to Joseph. “Look, what you’re asking is impossible. It would mean the girl’s life.”

  “Look at her,” Joseph said. “She’s already dead. We need to try.”

  Silvanus felt a growing twinge of apprehension. “Bring her to my office tomorrow. I…can take a look at her then. I can’t promise anything, but perhaps if we—”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Joseph said. “We need to do this here. Tonight.”

  Silvanus stared at the bearded man. “You’re mad. Even if I agreed to such a ludicrous request, I certainly can’t perform an operation here in my house. I don’t have my surgical equipment, my—”

  “We’ll have to make do.” Joseph’s face was set like granite. “If you need anything Maklavir or I can get it for you.”

  Silvanus felt his heart beat a little faster. He looked from Joseph to Maklavir, then back again. “I’m not quite sure that I’m understanding you,” he said, trying to keep his voice as steady as he could. “Surely you can’t—”

  “Let me make it crystal clear to you,” Joseph interrupted. “The gendarmes are hunting for us. We’ve spent the last twelve hours dodging patrols and crawling through the rain and the mud trying to get to your house. We are officially out of other options.” He put a hand meaningfully on the hilt of his sword. “One way or another, you’re going to do this surgery. Now.”

  Silvanus was speechless. He felt his insides turning to soup. The room began to spin around him.

  “On the plus side,” Maklavir said smoothly, “we are quite willing to pay you for your time and effort.”

  Silvanus stared at Joseph’s swor
d, then looked back at Maklavir. “You can’t seriously be going along with this? You’re…you’re a man of position, Maklavir, a trusted barrister in this city.”

  A shadow passed over Maklavir’s face. He took a step back. “Kara is my friend,” he said slowly, giving an odd emphasis on the last word. “I owe her my life. And if this is her only chance to truly live, Dr. Silvanus, then I not only support my friend’s assertion,” he put a hand on his own sword, “but if it comes to it I will run you through myself.”

  Joseph lifted his eyebrows and looked at his friend in surprise.

  Silvanus’ mouth dropped open. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “Now,” said Maklavir in the interval of silence that followed, “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a spot of tea? I am absolutely drenched.”

  Hetty lifted the pot of boiling water off the fireplace. Her face was pale, and she was dressed in a nightgown.

  “Put that over there,” Silvanus ordered, pointing to the counter. He leaned over a small open satchel, muttering under his breath as he examined a series of small scalpels and knives.

  “We’ll need more water,” Joseph said to no one in particular. He nodded at Maklavir. “Grab that spare pail in the back. We’ll heat it up too.”

  “Half of these are dull,” Silvanus said sourly. “The other half are worse than dull.” He straightened, groaning as he stretched his back. “Honestly. Surgery in a kitchen? This is beyond insane. If your friend doesn’t die from the procedure itself she’ll surely die of infection. For Eru’s sake, we eat on this table.”

  “Here now,” Hetty said, her face flushing a bright red. “I’ll have you know that I keep a clean kitchen, Silvanus. Good enough for surgery or whatever else you may need.”

  Silvanus rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant, Hetty. I—”

  “You heard the woman,” Joseph said with a grim nod. “It will have to do.” He put a satchel down on the table and opened the flap. “I’ll need a bit of boiling water myself.” He pulled out several small jars filled with colored creams and lotions, then began setting them down on the counter.