Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  He did not answer. She had her doubts whether he had really heard her. Outside, the debate continued, with Ambrose suggesting that they give the boy a cautionary hiding and return him home before he was missed, under strict orders never to breathe a word of what had happened. Lud responded that the brat would squeal anyway, and that they should ‘stick’ him. Varana noted that this was his answer to most problems. Shoot told the others that they were behaving like squealing girls themselves, and that it came of having a woman for a chieftain, which provoked another shouting match with Varana. Jedda rose and went to sit on the other side of the cart, near the child but not too near, and studied him in the dim light seeping through the canvas walls.

  ‘I find,’ she said, ‘that when I don’t want to be somewhere, there are two ways out. Most of the time I escape to a place I call “the Quiet”. It’s in my mind, see. No one else can get in.’

  She reached up and, at the back of her head, mimicked a little door opening and shutting with one hand. With the other she made a bird that stretched out its beak from the doorway to squawk and jabber at the boy, then pulled it in, slamming the door shut. After several rounds of making the squawking bird appear and disappear, the tiniest twitch of a smile appeared on the child’s face. Ambrose had now joined forces with Lud to advocate the sad necessities of life; Shoot yelled at them all, and Varana yelled back.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Jedda asked the boy.

  After a further hesitation, he replied in a husky whisper: ‘Issy.’

  ‘Well, Issy, I must tell you the Quiet doesn’t work every time,’ said Jedda. ‘Sometimes I have to use another way.’ She carefully moved closer to him: he flinched but stayed put. ‘When the others come in,’ she murmured in his ear, ‘I want you to do something for me. I want you to stay right where you are, until I tell you to move. Do exactly as I say, or the bad men will get you. When I tell you to run, go out through the flap at the front of the cart, over the driver’s seat, understand? Run all the way home. Do you remember the way?’

  He nodded wordlessly. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Remember, only move when I tell you to.’

  The voices had died down outside. Jedda had barely finished speaking before the canvas flap at the back of the wagon was drawn aside, and Varana entered.

  ‘Go outside,’ she told Jedda perfunctorily.

  The Nurian girl rose to her feet. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, I hope,’ she said to Varana, glancing at the boy, who cowered in the corner behind her.

  ‘Hurt him? Of course not.’

  The thief-woman smiled with easy assurance, but Jedda’s quick eye noted the gleam of the hardwood blade hidden in the palm of her right hand. ‘I won’t let you,’ she said, moving between Varana and her quarry. ‘I’m warning you.’

  Varana gave a snort of derision. ‘You, threatening me?’ she scoffed. ‘Don’t make me laugh, doll. Stay away from business that doesn’t concern you. Get outside, now.’

  She kept her knife arm discreetly low, and tried to elbow past to reach Issy. But Jedda remained immovable. Her fingers, already hovering at her throat, closed over her orah-pendant at the same time as Varana attempted to shove her aside. The highwaywoman uttered an exclamation of annoyance.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Varana,’ Jedda murmured.

  The flow of energy was immediate and overwhelming, far stronger than it had been with Anise. Varana’s fingers cleaved to Jedda like glue even as she tried to push her out of the way, and the knife dropped with a clatter from her shaking right palm. She stared at Jedda in dumb amazement, before the strength abandoned her limbs and she toppled forward into the other girl’s arms. Waves of the Sap-power passed over Jedda; she sank to her knees, almost losing herself in the giddy sensation. It was with difficulty that she kept her wits sufficiently to call out to Issy.

  ‘Run,’ she croaked. ‘Run now, and don’t stop for anything!’

  The boy had been staring at her with round eyes. When she spoke, however, he jumped obediently up and scrambled through the flap at the front of the wagon that led to the high driver’s seat. No sooner was he gone than the head and shoulders of Shoot appeared in the back entry, his mouth already open to ask a sarcastic question. The sneer died on his lips as he caught sight of Jedda kneeling among the scattered bedding with Varana slumped against her.

  ‘What in hell’s name is going on here?’ he cried.

  ‘Witch-shit,’ murmured Lud, awestruck, peering through the canvas beside him.

  Jedda saw Ambrose’s face floating behind the other two through a shining fog. She did not know whether the cloud of Sap was visible to the others, but for her the wagon was filled with scintillating, darting flames. They streamed up from Varana, writhing through the air in a living torrent to pierce Jedda with unbearable sweetness. She could not let go of her victim or stop the flow. She did not want to. The stolen energy wiped away all the pain and remorse of the past few weeks, erasing sorrow. It was pure joy, pure forgetting.

  She smiled drunkenly at the bandits when they overcame their surprise and leapt into the wagon, prying her loose from the unconscious Varana. She did not care that they shouted in her face, or when they set upon her in fury, kicking her out of the wagon. They continued to pummel her as she lay on the bark outside; she did not feel it. She lay smiling up at the leaves above while they stripped her of her outer garments, cloak and boots. They did no more to her, abandoning her with superstitious caution to die of exposure rather than at their hands, for they were terrified of her in spite of their fury. They seemed to fade away like a cloud of buzzing insects. The wagon was gone in the blink of an eye, and the leaf-forests were empty again. None of it had any importance for Jedda. There was only the Sap. It cradled her: it was her life, her truth, her paramour. This was all there was to his instruction, she remembered. Gowron had been right. The Envoy only had this one blinding insight to offer. And now that she had understood it, she wanted nothing else.

  She came to her senses several hours later, when the setting sun stretched in dazzling orah-coloured bands through the twigs. She sat up on the frozen slush to find herself dressed in her underclothes, the pages of Samiha’s testament crackling under the flannel. It was all the bandits had left her with — that, and the pendant about her neck. A dim echo of the Sap-flow still pulsed within her. Her body did not feel cold, nor was she hungry. She rose to her feet, teetering dangerously, and staggered out of the twig-thicket onto the road. There was no sound but that of her own footsteps in the quiet winter’s evening. She continued southwards along the planks with an unsteady gait. Her instincts warned her to press on despite the afterglow that gave her strength, to reach a farm or holding where she might steal clothes and food. There would be a time, she knew, when the warmth of the Sap ran out.

  That time came after midnight, when the waning moon had risen to shine through the leaves once more. The return to full normality was bleak. The cold cut Jedda’s skin like a knife and she was overcome by the desire to weep. She forced herself grimly to carry on. At long last the road, which had been meandering in zigzag fashion towards the base of a steep branch, reached its lowest point and turned onto a more level limb. Jedda could see the path wriggling ahead of her along the crest of the branch, a white scar on the exposed bark. Neat vine-terraces had been cut into the slopes on either side and farm buildings were visible on the limb, about a mile off. The glimpse of the settlement came none too soon. Her body was racked with cold, shivering convulsively, her hands and feet entirely numb.

  She had stumbled about half the distance to the farm when she realised what she was doing. Although she was cripplingly cold, she was not seeking shelter. Though starving, she was not looking for something to eat. What she wanted to do was to go into that farm in order to find someone else to drain of the Sap. The thought of food and clothes had evaporated, replaced by a more urgent need. She had been eager to feel that rush of power again, to quash another existence between her fingertips like a candle flame. The awareness of what she had been see
king caused her to stop short on the road in horrified dismay. The orah was addictive. Lace must have known she would abuse the pendant this way sooner or later, and be caught in its thrall; it was just as Gowron had said. She belonged to her master now, as thoroughly as if she had never left Argos city — as thoroughly as did Wick.

  ‘No,’ she whispered vehemently, her breath a curl of white on the night air. ‘Not that. Not yet.’

  A ragged sob, half-furious and half-agonising, escaped her lips as she turned and plunged into the line of vines to her left. These were bare and pruned back for winter on their frames, no more than stumps in their bed of loam. She did not pause at the edge of the first terrace but jumped down onto another field several feet below, the last before the sloping side of the branch turned vertical. At the end of that terrace she came to a slithering halt, teetering on the brink, dashing the tears from her eyes.

  She would rather die than live in slavery. Was that not what she had promised herself, all those years ago, in the stinking canteen storeroom? The decision had given her the strength to pry open the window, tearing through the grating until her fingers bled. There was no way, none at all, that she would barter up that hard-won freedom and belong again to anyone, man or Born. Better to fall over the edge of the terrace and tumble down, down, down.

  Like Samiha, who had belonged to no one but herself.

  The thought sent an almost electric thrill through Jedda. In a single sweep, before she could change her mind, she tore the orah from the cord at her neck and flung it into the Void. Her heart seemed to leap after the pendant arcing over the precipitous edge of the branch. The moonlight caught the reflective trinket briefly as it fell, a slick white gleam, abruptly swallowed by darkness. After staring a long moment after it, she turned her back on the edge of the terrace, and retraced her steps slowly through the vine-frames.

  She regretted her decision by the time she reached the road. The use of the orah may have been perilous, but it had also been her only means of defence. The night seemed to close in about her as she trudged on towards the farm, and she fought off a creeping sense of dread. The moonlight was strong enough to cast shadows through the rows of posts on the terraces, sending faint lines across the road, black and white and black again. Occasionally, the lines were sliced through by a shape that sped over Jedda’s head. A black form flitted across the leaf-forests. She glanced up to see the wheeling birds again, or what passed for birds; they were closer this time, swooping down and round between the great arcs of the leaves. She hurried along the road in terror now, wiping away the last of her tears, the sound of wing beats in her ears.

  All at once, something hit her between the shoulder blades then tumbled onto the road, causing her to spin around with a gasp. A clumsy avian shape sprawled before her, about the size of an ordinary crow; it recovered its balance and waddled towards her, both horrific and ridiculous. But a glance was enough to confirm that this was no natural bird of the Tree. Its feathers were a dull black in the moonlight, the matted down of a dead thing, and it moved in jerking hops, head sideways and beak agape. One putrid eye gleamed at Jedda, full of vile intent.

  ‘His curses,’ she breathed, her whole being thrilling with revulsion as she stared at the bird.

  She had no doubt that the nightmarish thing had been conjured up by the Envoy, for she knew a powerful sorcerer might call forth his hatred in physical form to track down his unhappy victims. She could have laughed at her own naivety in thinking her former master would rely only on the orah to keep her in line. He had sent another grotesque gift to find her. Such psychic constructs were parodies of life, decomposing over time into the true matter from which they were formed. But they could be mortally dangerous, especially if they attacked in large numbers.

  She glanced up at the sky to see her fears confirmed. Other dark shapes wheeled between the leaves. First one, then another, then the whole unnatural flock hurtled down in a flapping cloud towards Jedda, their wings carrying the stench of carrion. She screamed and beat them away as they blundered into her, turning to flee along the road with her arms cradling her head. But she could not outrun the creatures. No matter how many missed her and smashed onto the bark, there were always more on her shoulders, pecking at her head and at her eyes. Although their claws could not rake through the thick paper stuffed into her garments, they scored every available inch of bare skin, bloodying her arms, her hands, the back of her neck. She tried to fend them off, but only succeeded in shredding the flesh of her fingers on their beaks and claws.

  Finally, she came to a halt and withdrew a roll of Samiha’s paper from one of her sleeves, using it to ward off her assailants. That weapon was more effective, but the birds still came — wave after wave of them, smashing into her with mindless insistence. She withdrew a second roll of papers and used both hands to combat the creatures, retreating as she did so towards the farm buildings. If she could only find shelter, she thought desperately — some hole to shut herself up in — she might escape the horrific spell until she found a way to fight it.

  Oddly, the attack served to strengthen her resolve to resist the Envoy. It banished, for a moment at least, her craving for the Sap. No longer did she waste time regretting her decision to forgo the orah. Instead, to give herself courage, she sang aloud the words she had read on the Jays’ dirigible, the words she had heard her rescuers sing and the words she could see now, glinting in the moonlight on the rolls of paper.

  Fear neither darkness nor defeat. Fear no loss, for you and I again shall meet.

  She sang with a smile on her bloodied lips and a spark in her eye, beating off the carrion-birds as she walked step by step along the road.

  When Anise awoke, he took a deep and shuddering breath, as if he were just remembering how to pull the air into his lungs. He lay on a mattress in the Jays’ sleeping tent, his head cradled in Jocaste’s lap. Morning light streamed through the open flap of the tent, shining full on the Jay girl’s tear-streaked face as she peered anxiously down at him. She gave a gasp of relief as Anise opened his eyes.

  ‘Oh, thank the Tree,’ she said. ‘We weren’t sure you’d make it. You were so cold when they brought you in, Ani: so cold, I thought you were dead.’

  He attempted to rise to a seated position, but she would not allow him to and pressed him back down on the mattress.

  ‘Jedda?’ he asked, the one name containing all of his enquiry.

  ‘Disappeared,’ answered Jocaste, her expression growing hard. ‘We guessed she was the one who did this to you. Oh, just you wait till I get my hands on that witch. She’ll be lucky to keep her worthless life —’

  ‘No,’ he interrupted hoarsely. ‘Not revenge. Not what I want, Jo.’

  She frowned over him. ‘She can’t be allowed to get away with it. She took the Testament. We’re going after her. She has to get back to a branch-road at some point —’

  He waved this away feebly. ‘I know it off by heart. Testament, I mean. Can recopy it if you get ink and paper, Jo.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said firmly. ‘You rest first. And you eat something: whatever that harridan’s done to you, it’s weakened you dangerously. Food first, and everything else after.’

  She would not brook any argument, for he was barely coherent. She brought him some leftover soup and he submitted to be fed by her, in shallow spoonfuls. After the meal he lay back exhausted on his bed. But before long he roused himself again. Something was evidently troubling him, Jocaste thought with pity.

  ‘I’m the one who’s done a stupid thing, Jo,’ he croaked. ‘I should have given the Testament to Jedda in the first place. No, hear me out,’ he said, when Jocaste tried to protest. ‘She attacked me by accident. I don’t think she meant to. She loved the Kion, in her own way: I should have recognised that. Instead, I kept on trying to make her love in my way, to force her into my mould. It doesn’t work like that.’

  He had been trying to keep his head raised but collapsed back on the pillow, fatigued by the effort. ‘We all ha
ve our own road to travel,’ he continued after a moment. ‘Leave Jedda to find Tymon, if she can. We have something else to do.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jocaste, resignedly.

  ‘Meeting Jedda made me realise something,’ he whispered. ‘No one owns the Testament. The Kion would have wanted her words to reach everyone. Everyone, Jo — that means Nurians, too. We have to take the Testament to Nur.’

  ‘What?’ Jocaste burst out. ‘You can’t be serious. We’re risking our necks right here in the Central Canopy, harbouring the works of a convicted heretic, and you want to go and mix yourself up in the East? Ani, think about it. This is madness.’

  ‘Sometimes the only logical course in a lunatic world is mad,’ he said, his eyes drifting shut. ‘The Kion had a legacy to give her own people. We’re the only ones who can deliver it.’

  There was silence between the two of them after that, broken by the occasional sound of the other Jays talking or whistling on the deck of the little dirigible. Jocaste bit her lip with worry as she looked down at her companion. His stubborn conviction seemed to have grown in direct proportion to his fragility. And yet she still yearned to make him happy, even if it was madness. When his eyes opened again and he smiled wearily up at her, she reached out and pushed the sweat-slicked hair away from his forehead.

  ‘What about the others?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think they should be consulted before we do something so drastic? A journey to the East would involve at least half the troupe.’

  ‘Yes, we should ask,’ he admitted bashfully. ‘We shouldn’t do anything against their wishes. Thank you for reminding me, Jo.’

  ‘I sometimes wish,’ she murmured to him, after a further pause, ‘that you wouldn’t fly so high the whole time. That you wouldn’t be so … so …’ Her voice trailed off as she searched for the words to articulate her thought.

  ‘Idealistic?’ he suggested.