Iron Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  I hugged myself, suddenly cold.

  “But say the word,” he whispered to me, low by my ear, thrilling my skin and torturing my soul, “and I will make you my Luna.”

  “I’m not yours,” I whispered back.

  “You’re not Gabel’s either. Who is to say you aren’t mine?”

  My whisper shook in my throat, “I say so.”

  “I could grab you and force the Mark on you, and it wouldn’t fester. No one would stop me. Gabel did the same thing, and now you’re free, but you’ll invite him to put it back on your arm?”

  “I’m not yours.”

  “You’re not his either. He repudiated you,” Aaron said.

  “Our Bond is tied, not severed,” I whispered. “The Moon did that Herself so everyone would believe.”

  “Then that makes it true on some level, doesn’t it?” Aaron pressed. “Ask yourself this: if you have to invoke the Bond again, will you? Will you make him a King?”

  “A King? That has nothing to do with me.” I backed up a step to get distance between myself and the strength of his presence.

  There had only been a crown for a female.

  I trembled.

  Aaron shook his head once. “One doesn’t chop the head off a serpent without blood spraying everywhere as the corpse thrashes. If you succeed and remove Magnes, you will surely be the one pointing which way that blood sprays. So I am asking you again. Will you make Gabel King?”

  “If I tell you I will, will you kill me right here?” I asked.

  A sad smile. “You know I won’t do that. But I will kill Gabel, and I would spare you going through this pain again, and my having to spend years proving I’m worthy of you.”

  There had only been the one crown. The crown for a female’s head.

  “Leave with me. I will take you to IceMaw myself. Let whatever happens here happen. Wash your hands of this. You’ve set it all into motion, the planets will move through the cosmos without you.”

  “Gabel will come for me. He will always come for me. He will rip apart the cosmos to find me.”

  “I’m sure he will, but it doesn’t change his mind is gone, and he clings to his sanity by threads. IronMoon will be defeated within a year with or without you.”

  “Then I won’t destroy what’s left of him.” I was still Gabel’s mate by promise, if not by Bond or mortal fact. “Anita and Kiery have both seen a version of the future where I fail, and I know if I leave with you, I will fail.”

  He bent and looked me full in the face, hungering to kiss me and restraining himself with a trembling effort. “You and I will meet again. Forgive me in advance for what I will do to the wolf who has his unworthy claws so deep into your soul. He destroys everything he touches, and I will not let him destroy you.”

  Deep in my mind, I sensed the Moon turning and moving, sly and almost mocking, but not cruel, as if clouds had finally passed before Her and now the forest before me was better lit. Fat lot of good that did: I had no comprehension of what I was seeing.

  “I am still mated, in my own mind,” I whispered.

  “But in your heart?”

  “Get away from me. Get out! I’m done humoring this! Get out!” I hissed, shaking all over.

  He obeyed.

  Will you make him king?

  All Must Believe

  “What have you done?” Kiery grabbed me, shoved her face in mine, and hissed, tears brimming high. “I told you to leave with him!”

  “I can’t,” I whispered back. “I can’t leave, Kiery. I have to stay.”

  “You will die, you stupid bitch!”

  “Have you seen that?”

  “The Moon won’t show me,” Kiery said. “I can barely see, Gianna. It is so dark. Lucas and I are going to die, I can accept that. But you have to live. If you stay here you’ll die! You are the Balance-Keeper!”

  “If I leave, I fail.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed.

  “Gianna, you aren’t well. You’re sick, weak, messed up. You don’t know what you’re saying. Let me summon Aaron back here.”

  “No. I have to stay here. The answer is here, Kiery! I just have to find it.”

  “You don’t have time,” Kiery whispered. “Lucas is going to call Magnes out in front of the pack for why he refuses to move against Gabel.”

  I gasped. “He has no proof!”

  “Do we have a choice? That’s why you have to survive!”

  “But I can’t leave!”

  Kiery rubbed her eyes with her hands. She composed herself, then grabbed my wrist. “Come on.”

  “Where?” I pulled back.

  “To the doctor to get your hands looked at. And then I’m vindicating you.”

  “What?! No!” I tried to yank away, but her grip was too strong.

  “Yes,” she snarled. “Whatever is going to happen is going to happen fast. I’m probably not going to be alive much longer, and if you somehow manage to not get yourself killed, I want you vindicated.”

  “Don’t say that, Kiery, you aren’t going to die.” I couldn’t handle another death. I couldn’t let Kiery die.

  “If it makes you feel better, I’d rather not die either.” She yanked me after her.

  I couldn’t let her and Lucas die. I had to find a way to save all of us.

  Kiery dragged me to the clinic and bullied the unwilling doctor (who didn’t like me) into looking at my hands.

  I had to look away as he unwrapped them. My hands were still swollen, flushed, the cuts crusty and dry around the edges and some of the stitches had popped again. I hadn’t been caring for them properly. Laying in snow and bathtubs and shoving grabby males off me and all. Bad patient I was.

  The doctor said, “You have to let them heal. You also have a fever. You have an infection brewing.”

  Well, that explained why I felt like garbage. Aside from everything else. What had Anita meant about the hole in my soul? Did she mean the Bond? Something else? She had implied she knew I was going beyond the Tides, and that I was paying a price for it.

  “Do you need to keep her?” Kiery asked the doctor.

  “No, you can take her.”

  The doctor wouldn’t have kept me even if I had been dying right in front of him. He gave me a sideways look, wary, noting my altered eye.

  “Does it make you nervous?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  Liar.

  After that, Kiery took me to Magnes’ office.

  “Will he even be there?” I whispered to her. “Aaron ripped his arm up.”

  “Yes. He’s seething. We’ll have an audience.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Kiery—”

  “Shut up.”

  Magnes’ office wasn’t empty, and it wasn’t just him. A seething Luna Adrianna was there, along with Bernhard, and several other SableFur I didn’t know. Lucas wasn’t present. Was it a good or bad sign that Bernhard was? Bernhard was one of Lucas’ allies... unless he wasn’t.

  Kiery didn’t seem shocked Bernhard was there. Bernhard must be the inside man in Lucas’ impromptu rebellion.

  “Oracle,” Magnes didn’t hide his annoyance at Kiery’s intrusion, or seeing me again that day.

  Luna Adrianna gave me a withering look.

  I glared right back. That bitch had ordered Hix’s execution. I suppressed the urge to growl at her.

  I’d be a Luna again soon, and then I’d grind her face into paste.

  “We are busy, Oracle,” Magnes said. Although his arm was bandaged under his shirt, he didn’t move like it bothered him at all. If Gabel was anything like his father, Magnes didn’t care about missing flesh, and possibly got off on it.

  “This won’t take but a moment, Alpha,” Kiery said, “and it will be one less thing for you to worry about.”

  Magnes gestured for her to speak. “Then the floor is yours, Oracle.”

  Kiery said, matter-of-factly, “Gianna has passed the final test of revealing a secret to
me. She told me her intention is to send word to Aaron. She has accepted his offer to visit IceMaw.”

  What?! No, I hadn’t!

  It took every shred of my Oracle training to not whip around and throttle her. That and I didn’t feel well, and my reactions were dulled.

  “How droll.” Luna Adrianna clicked her fingernails together.

  Magnes cricked his neck one way and eyed Kiery. “So you will swear before the Moon, Oracle?”

  “Of course. She has found something hidden, her eye is proof of the Moon’s favor, she has predicted events that came to pass, and she has revealed a secret to me. I cannot mention the secret, however.”

  “So you will never tell anyone the secret?” Adrianna asked.

  “It would be a violation of my vows to do so,” Kiery said.

  Except that’s exactly what we were going to do, because it was the Moon’s secret, and She had told us we could.

  Adrianna clicked her nails together a few more times. She sat on the edge of Magnes’ desk, he within reach of her. He glanced at her, then touched her thigh with gentle fondness.

  Kiery added, “To be clear, Magnes, I don’t need your validation of this, nor Anita’s. I’ve informed you as a matter of courtesy. I have restored Gianna’s title and honor as an Oracle. She will not remain in SableFur longer than is absolutely necessary.”

  I closed my eyes. It was a profound relief even if it wasn’t over yet.

  “Aaron is not welcome here at the moment. She will have to travel to him,” Magnes said. Adrianna gave me a look of pure venom.

  Kiery nodded. “The Oracles will make arrangements for one of our own. I will also see her bowls are supplied to her when they are done.”

  Afterwards, back in my room, I hissed at her, “What were you doing? I’m not going to IceMaw!”

  “Stupid! You can’t stay here, and it backs them off you if they think you’re leaving sooner than later. Or did you not see that Adrianna wants to eat your liver?!”

  “I saw,” I said sourly.

  “You’re an Oracle, Gianna, you’ve reclaimed your title.”

  “I want to see Anita’s face when she finds out.”

  “You and I will both have to just imagine the old hag twisting like an rag.”

  I laughed.

  “If we live long enough,” Kiery whispered, “one of us will have to do her in, and strip her of her title. She’s no Oracle.”

  “She is if she still Sees.”

  “I don’t think she’s had a vision in years,” Kiery said dryly. “Whatever you are going to do, Gianna, do it quickly. Lucas is pushing to have Magnes held to account tonight.”

  I reached out and clutched Kiery’s wrist.

  “If we don’t meet again,” Kiery said, “remember. You are the Balance-Keeper. Make this right. Somehow.”

  She left.

  One word, one phone call, one messenger, and I could be the IronMoon Luna again, or the IceMaw Luna. I could leave this place.

  But that wasn’t the answer. This had never been about vindicating myself.

  I knelt before my tools and picked up my bag of runes. I ran my hands over the lumpy shapes. There had to be an answer. Something I had missed. Some small detail.

  I poured out all the stones and examined each one. A few were blank, still the little tourmaline chips that I had brought back from the Rock Warden, not yet carved but had spoken.

  Using a nail file, I carved a rune on one of the blank chips: comet.

  I couldn’t scry for myself, but I could pray, and I could meditate, and see what the Tides offered me.

  I was back at the grotto at the border of the Tides and the Place Beyond. The RedWater wolves flanked me on either side. I turned around, absorbing it all again. I knew this place. Through the tunnel was the destroyed ancient house, with the pup-ring in the box. Now that made sense: the ramshackle house was Gabel’s mother. Her life had been destroyed, burned out, used. The pup-ring had been—or should have been—hers.

  Overhead the Moon sailed on, watching with a slitted eye, a waning crescent, just the thinnest sliver before She went dark. The ocean was calm, and the air suspiciously still and thick. Waiting. Darkness, darker than the night around me, waited on the horizon.

  The water was so still and quiet it seemed like I could walk on it.

  I walked towards the water, seeing the little island curve left and right in a rough arc. A scent caught my nose.

  I walked up a tiny bit of rock, and three figures stood on top of the grotto, facing east.

  I hurried up the hill towards them.

  I approached the three figures: one was me, wearing the necklace of fangs from my first vision for Gabel. In her (my?) left hand was the crown of blood and bone, in the other the still unfinished necklace of obsidian and white quartz. Standing just behind Other Me was Gabel, standing by the arm with the necklace, and Aaron stood on the crown-side.

  Gabel had the Comet rune carved into his chest, the skin peeled down to muscle and blood weeping black and thick onto the ground, the rivulet staining my toes as it flowed to the ocean. Aaron had tattoos like Flint’s, but they were carved in blood as well, his right arm and upper body entangled with ancient symbols, half of which I did not recognize. On his right arm was a large tattoo gripping the curve of his bicep, an ancient rune I did not know, but that burned at the edges, smoldering and lava-like, while dark blood wept from it. Like Gabel, his blood flowed towards the ocean.

  Then they looked at me.

  I gasped. They knew I was there!

  This was not...

  “All must believe,” my other self told me. “Even you must doubt. Even you must question. But all must believe.”

  “Stop saying that!” I yelled at myself.

  “All must believe,” Gabel told me.

  “All must believe,” Aaron told me.

  “Stop it!” I screamed. “They believe! They believe, dammit! They believe!”

  “Do they?” Gabel asked me.

  “You know they do,” I told him.

  “Do you know what they believe?” Aaron asked me.

  “All must believe.” The other me told me. “Or else it doesn’t matter.”

  “Believe what?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Aaron said.

  “But—”

  Gabel pointed to the horizon. The sliver of the Moon sank towards it, like the downward blade of a scythe. The horizon churned with darkness, punctuated with glimmers of fetid yellow-green-orange lightening.

  It brought damnation with it.

  I uttered a tiny, terrified mewl, then wretched my gaze away from it.

  “All must believe,” Aaron said.

  I fell forward onto the little mat, gasping.

  The RedWater wolves stared at me.

  “All must believe,” I whispered to them, heart still thumping from the sudden shove back into the waking world. “How long was I gone? More than an hour?”

  A shake of the head.

  All must believe. Or else it doesn’t matter.

  What had they been talking about? It was important. Desperately important. I felt around for my runes and found the one for the comet. I looked at it, frowning. I didn’t have much time.

  Believe what?

  Exactly.

  Believe. Faith. Believe.

  Everyone had to believe. Believe what? Everyone did believe that my Bond had been broken. Even I questioned if it would ever be the same again. I doubted. Mission accomplished.

  Believe.

  I stared at the ceiling, rubbing the comet rune. The Moon had sent Her Comet to punish us for the collective sins of our kind. She was angry about Alphas like Magnes playing games, wolves who didn’t behave the way the Moon had ordained, and Oracles letting themselves be used and not honoring their—

  Oh.

  I stared at the rune. Believe.

  I sat up. The Moon wasn’t just talking about the Bond.

  The Moon was talking about Herself.

  “But if the Moon
sent the Comet, why even bother with a Balance-Keeper?” Because it was kind of pointless to just destroy everything and punish everyone without explaining why because then nothing would change. If She had intended to destroy the werewolves for their sins why not just let Gabel ravage the countryside? Why involve me?

  No, there was a point to it. She wanted everyone to know about their sins. But if I was the Balance-Keeper, I was in the middle, between light and dark. Gabel was darkness... I couldn’t figure out where the light would come. Lucas, perhaps.

  But Kiery and I had both foreseen Lucas failing to overthrow Magnes. It couldn’t be Lucas, and it wasn’t me.

  The rune on Aaron’s bicep. What had it been? Why had he been marked up like a Moon’s Servant? Why had he been in my vision at all?

  I clutched the rune in my wrapped fingers. I didn’t have time to puzzle over that. My problem was more immediate.

  All must believe.

  “Oh, by the Moon,” I whispered. “If I’m wrong, I’m going to die. Then again... I’m going to die anyway. So does it matter?”

  I couldn’t let Lucas challenge Magnes. He’d fail, I’d fail, I’d die. Kiery would die. No one would believe. We’d all fail.

  I looked at the RedWater wolves, shaking all over, feeling every strand of weakness and pain in my body, how I was threadbare and tired and terrified and grieving. They sat shoulder to shoulder, calm but alert, betraying nothing except that they would go with me.

  I set the rune down. I took a breath, then another, then a third.

  “An Oracle,” I whispered the old, familiar words to myself, “looks at the difficult and terrible. She rides the Tides. She listens to the things that whisper from shadows. She sees the Moon’s glory, and the Moon’s wrath. She will lay down her soul in her duty.”

  I was an Oracle, and with that came the risk to my soul, that I would be lost on the Tides.

  The Moon called me, and the price I’d pay would be my life, and perhaps my soul.

  What I was about to do was within that purview.

  I had only the mark in my eye.

  It would have to be enough.

  Starlight Falls