The Oracle's Secret (The Oracle Saga Book 1)

by Amber Darke

The tree is huge, maybe thirty feet across, and it’s not hard to believe that it’s a thousand years old. There’s a quiet energy to it that makes me feel safe. I look around us - I can see the visitor centre in the distance, and a tourist signpost pointing out the various different walks. This is still the mundane side of Sherwood. We need to get to the other side.

  ‘How do we get through?’ Tarian asks.

  ‘We have to be touching. Again,’ Steele says. ‘Right hands on shoulders, left hands touching the tree.’

  Tarian and I obey. I put my hand back on Steele’s shoulder and Tarian puts his hand on mine. We touch our left hands to the Oak.

  ‘Now, close your eyes,’ says Steele.

  I don’t like the sound of that, but I obey.

  ‘Now,’ says Steele. ‘We have to walk thirteen times around the tree - exactly.’

  ‘That would be a lot easier with our eyes open,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ he growls. ‘That’s the point. It’s not supposed to be easy.’

  I find a knothole in the wood just under my hand. I touch it, trying to remember the shape of it so that I’ll recognise it again. Then Steele starts walking and all I can do is follow, fumbling my way around the roots and leaf litter in my way, I don’t know what will happen if I open my eyes to look where I’m going - maybe it’ll just make the spell fail, maybe it’ll trap me in some sort of hellish limbo forever. I squeeze my eyes as tight shut as they’ll go. I don’t feel like taking the chance.

  I’m starting to wonder if I’ve missed my knothole - surely we must have been at least once around the tree by now? - but suddenly there it is, I’m almost certain of it, but by then Steele is already moving us on. I hope he’s keeping a good count too. It seems like less time before I pass it again. I keep counting, three times around, four, five. With my eyes closed, I keep thinking I hear noises in the distance. I think about how weird this would look if someone else was here - three people playing some sort of weird game in the early hours of the morning.

  I suddenly remember our pursuers, the servants of the Northern Prince who are on their way here too. If they get to the Oak while we’re wandering around with our eyes closed, we’ll be like sitting ducks. My stomach clenches in fear and I almost miss counting off our ninth time around. But there’s nothing I can do. If they see us they’ll kill us, but all I can do is keep my eyes closed and count and hope.

  Ten times around, eleven, twelve, and the last one seems to take forever. I’m terrified I’ll miss it. Steele slows in front of me.

  ‘Um...’ he says. ‘I think we’re there?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Keep going, we haven’t made it yet.’

  Steele really must be unsure, because he does what I say and carries on. A few seconds later I find the knothole.

  ‘Stop!’ I yell. ‘This is it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Steele asks.

  ‘Positive,’ I say.

  ‘All right,’ says Steele. ‘Here goes nothing. Open your eyes.’

  I open them and gasp. We’re through.

  Chapter Eight

  The space around me now is nothing like the one we just left. That one was open, clear, tame and safe even in the darkness of the early hours. This is somewhere primal, this is what my soul feels when it hears the word forest. The trees are thick around us, moonlight filters down through the leaves, the place is alive with the sounds of nocturnal creatures, not all of them the ones you’d see in the mundane countryside. I hear howls and animal cries in the distance, and somewhere the rushing of water. Something small with glowing eyes stares at me for a moment then runs away. Everything smells green.

  ‘There’s one bit of the spell left,’ says Steele. ‘Put your hands on mine.’

  I lay my fingers over his and Tarian puts his over mine. Steele uses his other hand to scrape up a fistful of soil and sprinkles it over our joined hands, whispering. I feel energy jolt through me. Steele lets go with a grunt of satisfaction.

  ‘What was that?’ I ask.

  ‘Binding spell,’ he says. ‘None of us can leave Sherwood now unless we have the Lightstone.’

  I stare at him. ‘So if they get to it first, we’re trapped here forever?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he shrugs.

  I fly towards him to punch him, but Tarian holds me back.

  ‘Don’t touch me! Who said you could touch me?’ I snarl.

  Tarian lets go and I aim a punch at Steele, but he blocks it and flips me onto the ground.

  ‘Calm down!’ he yells at me. ‘It was Prince’s orders. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react like this. There’s nothing I can do. He wants us back with the Lightstone or he doesn’t want us back at all.’

  I swear at him and he just rolls his eyes.

  ‘Look,’ yells Tarian, stepping between us, ‘what’s done is done. We’re in this situation now, let’s just find the damn Lightstone and get out of here before anything else happens.’

  It’s the angriest I’ve heard him get all day. His dark eyes glitter and he’s breathing hard. He didn’t ask for this either, I remember. He’s probably just as pissed off as I am about the whole situation.

  The magic here is strong, so strong I can feel it on my skin like static or like tiny insects buzzing. It’s so strong that it catapults me into another vision, one with a clarity and intensity I’ve never experienced before. Every detail is clear, crisp, high definition. Sounds are real and audible, they don’t come to me through glass or water. Colours are bright. Everything moves in slow motion so that I can pay attention to every tiny nuance, remember every little detail.

  I’m eating a banana. I’m eating a banana in a room. The banana is a little overripe but still good. The room isn’t one I’m familiar with.

  A banana. All the magic here and that’s what I’m foreseeing.

  When I come back to myself I’m lying in leaf mulch on the ground and Tarian is sitting cross-legged nearby with his eyes closed. Steele is prowling around looking suspicious.

  ‘Vision?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘Anything useful?’

  ‘Well... I’m going to get plenty of potassium,’ I say, sitting up.

  He snarls at me then goes back to prowling.

  I mean, I suppose it’s encouraging that sometime in the future I might be doing something as ordinary as eating a banana in a room, but for all I know there are bananas growing here in Sherwood and I’m seeing my far future when we’ve been trapped here for years eating bananas while the outside world has gone to hell. So actually not that encouraging. Stupid visions.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I ask, cocking my head towards Tarian.

  ‘Finding,’ says Steele. ‘He says he has to concentrate.’

  I watch Tarian. He’s breathing slowly and he’s totally still. The wind moves the loose waves of his hair, but that’s the only motion I see. He’s in his own bubble of stillness and calm. I wish I had one of those. A long time passes before he opens his eyes and looks at us.

  ‘Do you know how big this forest is?’ he asks Steele.

  Steele shrugs. ‘Nobody does.’

  ‘It’s big,’ says Tarian. ‘I’m finding it difficult to get a read on the Lightstone. The most I can tell you right now is that it’s at least two days’ walk that way.’

  He points in a direction, but it might as well be any direction, all of them are just as bad. Two days’ walk? At least?

  Tarian looks at Steele. ‘Did the Prince give you any more information about how to get to the stone?’

  ‘No,’ Steele shakes his head. ‘He only knew that it was in Sherwood. His father never told him anything else. It’s deliberately hard to find, so that nobody goes to get it unless there’s a really good reason.’

  I frown. ‘The news Arin brought... did he mean that the Northern Prince knows the exact location of the stone, or does he just know that it’s in Sherwood, the same as we do?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Oracle,’ says Steele. ‘For a
ll we know they could be picking the stone up and taking it away right now, and by the time we get there it’ll already be days too late. But we swore we’d do everything we could, and that’s what we’re going to do.’

  His expression is serious, his blue eyes intense. He’s determined, so focused on the mission that for a moment he’s forgotten his usual sarcasm.

  ‘Or they could be waiting in the forest to kill us,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, they could,’ he agrees. ‘But we don’t know and there’s nothing we could do about it anyway, so we may as well get going. Finder, lead the way.’

  Tarian stands up, gives both of us an angry look that I really don’t think I deserve, and leads the way into the trees.

  I’ve led a sheltered life, mostly, but you get used to being scared quickly when you have to walk home by yourself late at night in a part of London where the streetlights are few and far between and the taxis won’t stop. A couple of those nights will stay with me forever, but walking through Sherwood in the darkness is scarier.

  Now that we’re away from the clearing by the Oak, the trees are thick and close together, sometimes so close that I have to squeeze sideways between them. My feet catch every few steps on rocks and holes. Things brush against me and I shudder. In the distance I hear a scream like a child and I dart towards it, but Tarian holds up a hand to stop me.

  ‘Just a fox,’ he says.

  ‘You sure?’ I ask.

  ‘Positive,’ he says.

  I shiver, that scream still echoing in my head. It sounded so human.

  ‘I guess you’d know about it,’ I offer. ‘You probably see foxes all the time at home.’

  He shrugs. ‘You’re more likely to hear one in London, I’m surprised you didn’t while you were there.’

  His voice is suddenly abrupt, he walks away from me again, leading the way.

  ‘I didn’t live there that long,’ I say.

  He doesn’t reply. I’m still kind of angry with him for finding me when I didn’t want to be found, but now it seems like he’s angry with me, and that a whole different kettle of fish. What have I done to him? What right does he have to act like that to me when I’m the one who’s been dragged away from my whole life?

  I glance back at Steele, walking a little way behind us to make sure we’re not being followed. I jog a few steps to catch up with Tarian.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘What’s your problem with me?’

  He doesn’t look at me. ‘I don’t have a problem with you,’ he says.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, looking down just in time to avoid getting my foot caught in a tree root. ‘So why are you acting weird?’

  ‘How do you know what’s weird for me?’ he asks. ‘You’ve known me less than a day. And already you’ve...’

  He stops, turns his attention back to our slow journey through the trees.

  ‘Already I’ve what?’ I demand.

  ‘Let’s not talk about this,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ I say.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘I felt bad for you this morning, I really did. It seemed a shame that you had to be taken back home to the Prince when you didn’t want to be. I tried to be understanding. I tried not to mind that the Prince’s guards came and dragged me out of my house to get you, so suddenly that I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to my family. Because we all do the Prince’s bidding. That’s just the way it goes. We all know the consequences of disobeying him.’

  I watch him, wondering where this is going.

  ‘We all know that,’ he says, ‘except for you, apparently. You can just run away to London, have your little adventure, and then when you return you get back to your party lifestyle like nothing ever happened. No thought to the guards who were punished because they were meant to be keeping track of you. No thought of your friends worrying about whether you were even still alive. No thought to the total strangers taken away from their lives to find you. Oh, no.’

  My mouth drops open. ‘That’s not..’

  He’s not done. ‘All of that I can forgive. You’re sheltered, you’ve been living in the court almost your whole life. You don’t understand. I can’t blame you for wanting to see the outside world. So all day I’ve been trying not to hold it against you... but this! This is...’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  He whirls to glare at me, and his eyes glimmer in the approaching dawn light.

  ‘Do you think I would have been anywhere near court, anywhere near that party tonight if it wasn’t for you?’ he asks. ‘I never expected to even see the Prince, not in my whole life! But there I was, right when he needed a Finder to go to Sherwood. And now, here I am. Trapped here. If it wasn’t for you I’d be home in my bed right now. As it is I’m probably going to die out here or be stranded forever with you - and right now I honestly can’t decide which I’d prefer!’

  My throat catches. ‘I didn’t mean for...’

  ‘No, you didn’t mean for any of this to happen,’ he says. ‘But it did happen. You dragged me into all of this, and I’m probably never going to see my home again, and you’re such as spoiled princess that you can’t even see it, can you?’

  Spoiled? Princess? I open my mouth to tell him exactly what I think of him and his opinions, but he’s already stalking ahead of me, so fast that I can hardly keep up.

  This is terrific, I think. I’m going to be trapped forever with two guys that hate me. And I’m pretty sure there are woodlice in my hair. There’s no way this could get much worse.

  I hear a yipping close by that can only be a wolf.

  Damn.

  Chapter Nine

  I’m fairly sure I read an article online once about how you’re not supposed to run if you see a wolf because wolves can run faster than you and they will catch you and drag you to the ground and tear you limb from limb and you’ll die in agony, but unfortunately that’s not fresh in my memory and the yipping is really loud, so I run.

  Ahead of me Tarian is running too, and I hope the crashing behind me is Steele and not the wolves. It sounds too heavy to be wolves. I risk turning my head to check, almost tripping. It’s Steele making the crashing noise.

  The wolves almost right behind him can apparently run really quietly. And they’re catching up fast.

  ‘Can wolves climb trees?’ I yell to anybody that might have an answer. Where’s Google when you need it?

  ‘I don’t think so!’ yells Tarian.

  ‘I thought they could!’ replies Steele, his voice hoarse from running.

  ‘Do you have any other ideas?’ I ask. I can hardly hear myself over the pounding of my feet on the ground.

  ‘No, but I don’t think we’ll have a chance to get up a tree, they’re gaining...’ he pants.

  I think hard. Hell, the illumination spell worked before, it’s worth another try.

  ‘Get ready to climb!’ I yell.

  I whisper the incantation as quick as I can and fire the spell at the wolves. They stop running, whining with confusion at the bright light. It hurts my eyes too but I can see well enough to scramble into the lowest branches of the nearest tree. Ahead of me I can see Tarian doing the same, a few trees over.

  Steele is stumbling. I must have set the spell off too close to him, he can’t see.

  ‘Three feet to your right, climb!’ I yell.

  He stumbles to the tree, finds the trunk with his hands, hauls himself up. Satisfied, I start to climb higher. I guess now we’ll really find out whether wolves can climb trees. The branches scratch my arms and face and bugs crawl all over me, but I don’t care. I’m not being eaten yet and it feels great.

  I climb as high as I can and peer down. There are wolves milling around at the bottom of the tree, but none of them seem to be climbing. I’m tempted to yell insults at them from my perch but I’ve already tempted fate enough times today.

  ‘How do we make them go away?’ I yell at Tarian, parallel with me in his own t
ree.

  ‘How should I know?’ he shoots back.

  ‘You’re from the countryside!’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, I’m from North Wales, not the Yukon!’ he retorts. ‘I’ve never even seen a wolf in the zoo! If you have any questions about sheep, though, I’d be more than happy to help!’

  ‘Well, when a pack of vicious sheep has us trapped, I’ll be sure to give you a call!’ I say.

  This whole exchange helps a bit with my feelings of frustration, but it doesn’t really do anything to fix our situation.

  ‘Steele, any ideas?’ I call.

  He just shakes his head like he’s regretting every single one of his life choices. Which is fair enough.

  ‘Well... let’s wait a bit and have a think,’ I say. ‘Maybe they’ll get bored and go away on their own.’

  Tarian snorts. I glare at him. I haven’t forgotten that he called me a spoiled princess. It’s not like it’s my fault that I’ve been kept in the court my whole life. All I wanted was the chance to make my own decisions. Who is he to tell me off?

  Wolves. I should focus on the wolves. We could wait and see if they leave, but that could take forever and we have to beat the Northern Prince’s people to the Lightstone or die trying. Maybe we could travel through the trees somehow without having to touch the ground. I picture myself swinging on vines like Tarzan, but I’m not sure this is the kind of forest that had vines and I’m almost positive I don’t have the upper-body strength for something like that, even if Tarian and Steele probably do. Maybe we could find something up here to throw at them, but unless we could knock them out that would probably just make them angrier. The illumination spell might work again, but I doubt it would buy us enough time to actually get away.

  I’m racking my brains for spells that might be useful. I only know a handful.

  ‘Steele, any defensive spells that would help here?’ I yell across to his tree.

  He shakes his head. ‘Sealing us in here depleted my powers, I won’t be doing any spells for at least an hour.’

  An hour is a long time to be stuck up a tree. Already I’m starting to ache from holding on, and the damp of the trunk is starting to soak through my jeans and make my legs cold. At least I can see the glimmer of dawn in the distance. It might help to have some light.