Iron Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  Oracle suited me fine.

  I had been born with the Gift, I had mastered it, I had earned the title of Oracle, and I would earn it again. I would rip it from Anita’s hands and make it my own. She wasn’t allowed to take it from me.

  Now I sounded like Gabel.

  “So tell me the part you know,” Lucas said.

  “No.” There was no point in bullshitting him. “You wouldn’t believe me, and even if you did, you wouldn’t do anything about it.”

  I knew those two things to be true. Lucas would not believe me. And he would not go against Magnes. Not on my word alone.

  Not yet, anyway. Maybe never. Not because I told him anything.

  Kiery, on the other hand...

  He slammed on the brakes. “Who do you think you are saying that?”

  I winced as my body jostled. “The person you were just accusing of being a Queen Luna? I know you won’t do anything with what I’d tell you, just like I know Kiery won’t let you Mark her because you can’t accept she’s an Oracle. And no, she didn’t tell me that.”

  Lucas stared at me, furious. “How did you know that?”

  “Because I’m not stupid, and I recognize your type. Anita isn’t going to tell you anything either. Mark my words. I don’t know why she’s protecting the secrets she’s carrying, but I know she’ll protect them to her death. She’ll stonewall you, and we’ll go back to SableFur, and you won’t have your answers, but you can bet Magnes will want to know where you’ve been and why you’ve been there. So stop thinking about Anita, and start thinking about what you’re going to say to your Alpha.”

  There And Back... Again

  Anita was pleased to see Lucas, and she looked at me like I was a fat suckling pig led back to her for slaughter.

  “Are you returning her to me, Lucas?” Anita asked, not nearly as skeptical as she should have been of having a rabid she-wolf back in her little house. The two acolytes cowering behind her seemed properly terrified at the possibility of my return.

  You want me back, don’t you. So you can make me disappear for your precious pet Magnes.

  Lucas said, “No. I have some questions, Elder Oracle. I figured I’d bring Gianna along for the ride.”

  Anita frowned, her craggy brow wrinkling even further. “Why?”

  “Because the Oracles have started a war, and I want to know why.” Lucas pushed past Anita into the house, and pointed at an acolyte. “Tea.”

  He snapped his fingers when she didn’t move right away. That sent her scurrying.

  “This is my domain, First Beta,” Anita told him. But the old she-wolf sidled to the side, eyeing Lucas with sharp eyes as she moved to her favorite chair. “What question do you have for me?”

  Lucas pulled me into the sitting room. He pushed me down onto the couch, then sat down himself. The unoccupied acolyte knelt in a corner.

  “What Oracle in the past fifty years has used a mirror?” Lucas produced the small bag holding Gabel’s mother’s tools. He shook them out onto the coffee table. The mirror gleamed like a dirty accusation.

  “Kiery has already asked me this,” Anita said, eyes on the mirror. “I have no answer for her. I have no answer for you.”

  “You have to know. No Oracle could pass through SableFur without you knowing their tools. This is very rare. What Oracle used a mirror in living memory?”

  Anita shook her head. “I have no answer for you, First Beta.”

  I poked Lucas in the bicep. “That is how Oracles say they don’t want to tell you. She knows. She just has no answer she wants to tell you.”

  Anita snarled at me.

  I snarled back and stood. I was not going to be nice to this bitch any longer. Kiery was the one who mattered, not this withered old hag.

  Lucas grabbed my wrist and yanked me down onto the sofa. “Sit. And you, Anita. Answer my question directly. War is about to break out and you’re the one who started it!”

  “Me? I’ve started nothing. This is Oracle business, not the business of Alphas and Betas.”

  “I am sick of Oracles dancing around behind the veil of the Moon going nyah nyah, Oracle’s business!” Lucas growled. “You sold Gianna out and convinced Magnes to listen to you, and not Kiery. I don’t believe the bullshit story about Gianna not being able to be Luna and Oracle. This is about something else, and I want to know what it is.”

  Anita scoffed, “Why should Alpha Magnes care what some IronMoon dog says about his honor? And what do I care what an IronMoon mongrel does?”

  “You’ll care when they come through the mountain passage and turn you into a scarecrow. Gabel executed the GleamingFang Luna and swears he’ll gouge out the Moon’s Eye. I think Oracles will be tasty targets, considering you’re the Moon’s favorite pets.” Lucas smirked at her.

  Anita recoiled, and the acolyte in the corner turned gray-pale. Anita’s fingers curled into the arms of her chair.

  “Right now Gabel is off razing Shadowless for betraying him. Apparently they had struck a deal with Magnes before Gabel claimed Gianna, because Kiery had a vision of him claiming a Shadowless female,” Lucas went on. “All of this, Anita, points right back at the Oracles. So you’ve started this war. You tell me why.”

  “Don’t question the Moon, pup,” Anita hissed. “I’ve only done my duty!”

  “Your duty!” Lucas shouted. He got to his feet and grabbed me by my hair. I screeched and scratched at his wrist. He hauled me up and shoved me straight at Anita. “Look at her eye and tell me about your duty, you old hag!”

  Lucas shoved my face right into Anita’s, eye for eye.

  She stank. Yuck.

  Anita breathed hard and rough, and Lucas’ hand tore at my scalp as he trembled with fury. Anita’s failing old eyes focused on my eye, and all the color drained from her face, and a huge amount of the fight—

  And most of her faith.

  Her face transformed into that of a damned woman. A woman who realized that her sins had been noted, that she would not escape, and that she had chosen the wrong thing to defend, the wrong cause, the wrong man. And now, years later, she had her confirmation that she should have sided with Gabel’s mother, instead of defending Magnes.

  “You could have stopped all of this,” I whispered to her cracking facade. “You could have prevented all of this.”

  She could have protected Gabel’s mother, she could have protected Gabel, she could have protected whatever littermates Gabel had had... all this, because Anita, who had been the SableFur Oracle, had sided with a powerful Alpha family instead of a single, vulnerable Oracle with an innocent litter in her belly. She had made the weak choice to protect the powerful.

  A very normal choice. A very wrong choice.

  “No.” She shoved me away with shocking strength. Lucas held onto my hair, and as I fell backwards, a clump ripped out of my scalp. I fell onto my rump, caught myself on my ruined hands, and ended up in a heap.

  Yeah. Queen Luna. Right. I picked myself up.

  “No,” Anita told me. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong, youngling—”

  “Youngling!” I shouted. “Youngling! I am an Oracle, I was a Luna, and you dare call me youngling? I’m not the one who set all this into motion! Look at my eye and tell me I’m wrong! Ask Lucas what he saw, and tell him I’m wrong! You know what I am, and no matter how hard you try, you won’t stop what’s happening!”

  I trembled with rage and weakness. “Why did you do it, Anita? All of this is because of you. You were the last one who could stop it. Who was she? What was the name of the Oracle who used mirrors?”

  “I will never speak that name,” Anita rasped. “I swear I will never speak that name!”

  Horrified, I believed her. Her refusal struck me dumb. “Why not? It’s going to come out. It will be revealed.”

  “Not by me, it won’t! I can’t stop you from being vindicated, but I won’t vindicate the Comet! I am not going to just let it smash into the Earth and destroy everything I love! What do you think is going to happen i
f I speak what I know? I will never do it! Never! I will never give you the last piece you need!”

  “Even into damnation?” I asked.

  “If you’re right then I’m already damned,” she said with narrowed, sharp eyes, “and if you’re wrong, then I won’t damn myself.”

  I snarled, “I can tell you what will happen if you don’t tell me.”

  “No, you can’t. The future is too much in flux.” Anita laughed. “If the Moon wanted things to be a certain way, She’d force it to be so. The future isn’t set yet, Gianna. Otherwise you’d already have told Lucas, confident it’d all work out.”

  “I don’t know her name. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know why it happened,” I said.

  “And I won’t tell you.” Anita laughed, high and crazy, like a harpy. “Let the war come. It won’t matter. Let your precious Gabel come here. He will meet only death. He will fail, and yes, there will be death and destruction and ruin, but it won’t matter, because SableFur will endure, and grow stronger.”

  “Have you seen that?” I asked her, thinking of the crown.

  She smirked at me. “Have you? You’ve seen many things, Gianna. The Moon’s Eye is burned into your own. You aren’t well, and you don’t even realize how sick you are, or the price you’re paying. Where have you begged the Tides to take you? Foolish, foolish girl.”

  She was lying. She was just trying to frighten me. I had only gone where the Moon had taken me. Whatever price I had to pay for it didn’t matter. Anita was right, though: if Gabel came to SableFur now, he’d be overwhelmed. Perhaps if he came in force with Aaron, but even then. The plan had never been for Gabel to defeat an intact SableFur, but for me to somehow dismantle Magnes and throw the gates open.

  Anita’s wild grin told me she had seen something: a future where I had failed, and there was war, but in the end, SableFur triumphed and Magnes remained unblemished.

  Just as Aaron predicted he would.

  Had Anita seen Magnes crown himself with bones?

  There was still a possibility Magnes could triumph. I looked at Lucas in realization. There was no time left. None at all. Anita had seen a version of the future where I failed. So what did I do? Lucas was the key.

  But how? Lucas couldn’t just confront Magnes. He had no proof, and Anita would deny everything.

  Lucas grabbed the shard of mirror and waved it at Anita. “You know who this belonged to. Answer me plainly, Oracle!”

  “I do. And I will not tell you the name. If I do, Lucas, it will endanger all of SableFur. You and I both want the same thing.”

  “What’s that?” Lucas asked.

  “SableFur’s continued survival,” Anita said like it was stupid. “If I tell you who that mirror belonged to, it’d destroy this pack.”

  “Is that what you told Kiery?”

  “I told her I’d have to look at my records,” Anita said. “Now I’m telling you. I won’t destroy SableFur.”

  “And what happens when I do it?” I asked her.

  “You won’t succeed,” Anita sneered. “You don’t have any proof. You don’t have a name. Only a few ever knew the secret. No one is left who might remember.”

  “Dear Moon, what did you do?” I breathed “How did you accomplish it? There’s not even a rumor or a whisper. How can an Oracle who uses a mirror just disappear?”

  Anita was smart enough to say nothing.

  “Kiery thinks she knows,” Lucas said, as if something from years past had dawned on him. He looked at the mirror clutched in his hand, then back at Anita, biceps trembling as he resisted throwing it against the walls.

  “You will destroy SableFur if you chase that mirror.” Anita ground it a little deeper. “Walk away, Lucas. Gianna can’t return to Gabel since she can’t prove who that mirror belonged to.”

  “The Moon showed me, but that isn’t enough to make you tell me?!” I asked.

  Anita ignored me, walled in with her reasons.

  Lucas moved on to another conclusion that horrified him. “You were never going to let her vindicate herself.”

  “No. I wasn’t.” Anita glared at me, sourly.

  “How are your tits?” I smirked at her. “Oh wait, why am I asking? You haven’t needed them for about fifty years.”

  “How is the hole in your soul?” she growled back.

  “Fine,” I lied.

  Anita turned back to Lucas. “Let it go, Lucas. You’ll destroy SableFur. Thousands of wolves’ lives changed and ruined. Let Gabel come and smash into the mountain, and wreak havoc that will be suppressed, and heal the damage. The alternative is much, must worse, First Beta. Your duty demands no less!”

  “Look at her eye and tell me that I’m the one who will destroy SableFur!” Lucas shouted. “What is that, Oracle? She has the Moon in her eye! If SableFur is destroyed, it’s because you set it into motion years ago with whatever bullshit this was!”

  Anita didn’t respond. She didn’t have anything she could tell him. There were old stories of the ancient, great Oracles who had moons-in-their-eyes, but in the stories their eyes had turned to blue and the moon had actually been a white ring around the pupil. Not crescent Moons swinging in a sea of ordinary hazel.

  Did she realize her soul was forfeit, and she was damned? Was she trying to redeem herself by protecting SableFur? Or did she really not see that what she had done years ago had been a grave sin? I could see her believing she had done the right thing, except she was an Oracle, and the Moon had to have warned her. The Moon had to have shown her what would happen if she didn’t defend Gabel’s mother. The Moon did not just send Comets and destruction without warning.

  Warnings had gone unheeded. Honor not served.

  No, all this had been decades, perhaps centuries, in the making.

  We were supposed to be able to turn to other Oracles, especially our elders, for safety, like a pup running to her mother. Anita had betrayed Gabel’s mother, and failed her when she had gone to Anita for help: that she was carrying a litter of bastard pups, and had been abandoned and rejected by the upstart who had impregnated her.

  Centuries of bad behavior had rested on Magnes’ shoulders, and it had been Anita who had been the last guardian.

  And she had ignored whatever warnings or whispers she had seen or heard.

  I almost pitied her. Almost.

  Almost.

  Lucas grabbed me and dragged me back to the car.

  One Thread Cut

  Lucas was silent on the drive back to SableFur’s heart.

  An hour out he pulled over. He handed me the bag. “Tell me what the runes mean.”

  “Kiery told you.”

  “You tell me.”

  “Don’t you believe her?”

  “I want your version.”

  I picked out each one in turn. “Pup,” I said, holding that one. I picked out the next. “Betrayal.” I picked out the third. “Balance. Kiery translated it as Justice, which is how it is normally translated, but it is literally Balance. Justice is its own rune.”

  I picked out the fourth. “Faith.”

  And finally, the last one. “Love. Kiery translated it as mates, which is how it is normally translated. But it actually is passionate desire, not the matebond itself. That is a different rune.”

  “So lust.”

  “Not exactly. It just means passion, I suppose, but not random passion. There is no rune for wanton lust. This is something like what you and Kiery have. There is no formal bond between you two, but there is that connection, and there’s sex.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You’re very transparent.” I hadn’t needed the RedWater wolves to tell me that. Perverts.

  He took them and lined them up on the dashboard.

  I waited.

  Lucas’ expression melted into something very, very sad for a few moments, turned inward. Was he remembering something from his own past? I had seen that reflective expression before. Did he know? Had he heard rumors?

  Then he picke
d up the pup rune and said, heavily, “A bastard pup. Passion, betrayal, justice. Pup. But faith? There’s no faith in any of that. I don’t understand faith.”

  I put the mirror on the dashboard. “Yes, you do.”

  His gaze focused on my marked eye, and his thoughts returned fully to the present.

  “Gabel,” he said as he came to the slow, difficult realization that forced him to consider a whole new realm of dark possibilities. “Gabel’s mother. Oh by the Moon, this is all about Gabel’s mother!”

  Lucas sat back in his seat, ran his hands over his face, stared at the runes and mirror.

  I remained quiet while Lucas grappled with the enormity of it. Telling him that Magnes was Gabel’s father was more than he could have heard right then. Oracles knew a great deal about the strength required to look on cruel, horrible things, and our faith and belief shattered to be rebuilt anew. It wasn’t the time. I sensed Lucas was right on the tip of understanding. That he was right on the cliff, but couldn’t bring himself to look down at what lived within it just yet.

  Lucas suddenly betraying himself to Magnes (and I figured he would, just like Hix had never been able to keep his opinions to himself) would blow everything to hell anyway. Best that he not be looking right at his Alpha like he doubted him.

  I put the stones and mirror back in their bag and held them on my lap.

  Soon.

  “I was born in SableFur,” Lucas said. “I’ve lived in SableFur my whole life, and I’ve never heard even a rumor of one of the Oracles disappearing. The students have come and gone, often quite suddenly, but I’ve never heard of one going missing.”

  “Anita could easily have sent Gabel’s mother away and no one would have questioned it,” I said. “Simply gone.”

  “Kiery—” he started to say.

  “What about her?” I asked.

  “When she came here—she’s from far away. I’d never heard of her birthpack. Why did she come all this way? She’s never said, not really. I think—”