Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  20

  Tymon sped down the tunnel, following the call of his stolen body. The journey did not take more than a few moments, though he was dimly aware that he had traversed a significant distance, moving far faster in the trance-form than he would physically. Even as he rushed through the dark, he felt a wrenching urgency, over and above the pull of his body. Someone ahead of him was in pain; someone dear to him was dying. He hurtled through the tunnel and burst into a circle of torchlight, a bright spot in a large gloomy hollow beneath the roots of the Tree.

  It was a natural cavern in the earth, its domed ceiling lost in shadow. Tymon had noticed in passing that the tunnel was fashioned at least in part from the Ancients’ tough grey building material, but this chamber was different, all made of loam and choked with Tree-roots. Beside him, at the tunnel entrance, someone had planted a torch in the floor. A second circle of torchlight danced in the darkness ahead. The burning Sap-fire within him dropped to a quiescent glow as he took in his surroundings. The mute mental echo of pain was all around him, so that he could not at first pinpoint the source. The chamber was filled with winding columns and tangled spires of roots. Large and small, they twisted through the hollow hall in a bewildering net, but all seemed to radiate from a central point. It was there, Tymon realised, that the pain originated. When his gaze came to rest on the figure at the heart of the root system, he almost sank to his knees again in astonishment.

  Before him was a giant, a woman, more than twice the height of an ordinary person. She stood, or rather hung, about ten feet from the floor, her body cradled and transpersed in a hundred places by the roots of the World Tree. Tymon was reminded once more of Samiha’s Tree-form, for the giant’s grey, bark-like flesh was almost identical in colour and texture to the woody roots, merging seamlessly with them. He had already witnessed the Masters’ nightmare harpy, the Envoy’s Beast-shape, and Wick’s aping version of it in the Veil. But he had never seen a Being like this, completely inhuman and yet somehow belonging wholeheartedly to his universe, a part of the natural order and not some sorcerer’s travesty. The giant amazed but did not horrify him.

  He did not know whether the creature before him had grown the great tendrils that burgeoned from her body, or was trapped by them; he did not know either whether she was holding up the Tree, or being crushed under its weight. But if he read her expression aright, she was in terrible pain, her shoulders bowed with suffering. She held something in her hands, cradling it protectively against her belly. She was old, very old, Tymon thought, in awe. She raised her head at his approach and he could tell that she Saw him in the trance. Her smooth face with its high brow and pronounced cheekbones was unlined, her large eyes a deep and liquid blue. She was one of the Born, he grasped, though how he was so sure of it he did not know. This was what they must originally have looked like, when they lived among humans; the giant was the last of her kind. And then, with a final thrill of surprise, he identified that steady blue gaze.

  ‘This is my seed-form.’ The Oracle’s lips did not move when she spoke to him. Her voice was a weary gasp in his mind, taut with pain. ‘My first body in this world.’

  At the comprehension of her agony, Tymon glanced downwards, towards the second sphere of torchlight at the Oracle’s feet. There, wriggling like termites through the nest of roots, three traitorous creatures moved, bent on destruction. The human acolytes and their Masters had chewed through the protective net enclosing Matrya, leaving a trail of gouged-out tendrils and severed connections. The Oracle could not get away from them, merged as she was with the root system. They were killing her, ripping out her entrails, hurting her, and hurting the Tree.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Tymon. The Sap brimmed up in him again, a hot surge of outrage as he leapt through the tunnel of broken roots.

  Neither Wick nor Gowron Saw into his trance, unaware of him as he arrived beneath Matrya’s towering form. The two acolytes and the Masters’ host had climbed high into the root-tangle, to stand about level with her waist. Wick held up a torch, while Gowron was busily hacking with a knife at the innermost net of tendrils encasing the Oracle. Tymon identified the slick gleam of orah in the cruel-looking blade. The deadly tool cut through the Tree-roots with hardly a pause, every hacking strike setting Tymon’s teeth on edge. He writhed in empathy, as if he were being cut himself.

  But the Masters had a specific goal in mind over and above hurting Matrya. Tymon caught sight of the bright gleam of orah between the Oracle’s fingers; the object cupped in her palms was entirely made of the stuff, a roughly egg-shaped mass. The Masters in Tymon’s stolen body balanced on one of the roots to Gowron’s right, their attention focused greedily on the egg, waiting for the last strands protecting the treasure to be ripped away.

  It was unspeakably strange for Tymon to see his own body moved by another, relentless will. He could not enter his physical home, though it called to him. And others must have heard that call, too. Unlike the acolytes, the Masters were able to sense his approach. Tymon shivered as the host’s head swivelled abruptly round, its cold gaze piercing him in the trance. The Masters’ eyes flashed an uncanny blue and they bent down to whisper in Gowron’s ear; the older acolyte then murmured something to Wick, and both priests peered uneasily over their shoulders.

  ‘So, you got away,’ the Masters called out to Tymon, smiling insolently at him from their perch. ‘No matter. You can’t stop us now, Grafter. You know your order doesn’t hold with violence.’

  ‘You have something that isn’t yours,’ said Tymon calmly, ignoring the jibe. ‘That’s my body. And I’m going to take it back.’

  He raised his right hand and stepped forward, the flaming energy of the Sap surging in his palm. The consciousness of the Oracle’s suffering gave him a bleak confidence: he would defend her to the death, if it came down to it, he thought. There might have been the briefest spasm of doubt in the Masters’ expression, quickly replaced by blank hatred.

  ‘Oho, so you do want to fight!’ they snapped. ‘Have it your way, worm.’

  The host slithered down through the roots and landed on the floor of the cavern in front of Tymon, simultaneously raising its right hand to conjure up a blue, crackling ball of energy.

  ‘Eat this,’ hissed the Masters, throwing the blue bolt straight at Tymon.

  The young man did not stop to think, but reached quickly up to catch the bolt with his scarred right hand, before it hit his face. The energy prickled in his palm for an instant, then dissipated.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ he said, advancing on the Masters.

  They glared at him in surprise and dawning apprehension, then shrieked with fury, casting bolt after crackling bolt at him. Tymon continued to catch each one, advancing step by step on the host; when he missed one of the balls and it struck his shoulder, a wave of searing cold passed through him. But a moment later the Sap-fire returned, burning hot and bright in his red right hand, banishing the Masters’ crackling power. The pain he had once endured now gave him strength, even as the Oracle had promised.

  ‘Laska and Pallas,’ he muttered as he strode towards his enemy, summoning up the memory of those in whose name he fought. ‘Dawn and Nightside.’

  This time the Masters produced a twisting lump of blue energy as large as Tymon’s head, casting it at him with both hands.

  ‘Samiha!’ gasped Tymon, grimacing with shock as he caught the lump. The massive bolt shook him to the core before dissipating.

  The host was backing away now, howling up to the acolytes to hurry, hurry and finish the job. It leapt into the tangled roots again; Tymon jumped after it.

  ‘Solis and Zero,’ he shouted to the fleeing Masters. ‘The Saffid and the Freeholders. You and your Envoy are responsible. You will pay.’

  ‘Human fool,’ cried the Masters, almost spitting down on him in fear and rage. ‘You can’t possibly hold us responsible for every ounce of suffering in existence. Do you think we orchestrate your pathetic world? Far from it. You control your desti
ny: you make your own mistakes.’

  The host dodged past Tymon, leaping nimbly from root to root to reach Gowron, just as the older acolyte broke through the final tendrils encasing the Oracle.

  ‘That, after all, is what Matrya in all her infinite wisdom wanted,’ continued the Masters savagely, rounding on the giant trapped amid the severed roots. ‘Free will for humanity. And look what it’s produced.’

  As he spoke, Gowron took hold of one of the last and largest roots emerging over the Oracle’s heart, and severed it at the base. The Oracle cried aloud, a terrible, gut-wrenching sound. It shook Tymon to his very core; he could not have felt worse if he had seen poor Masha, the closest person he had to a mother, writhing in agony under Gowron’s knife. All the roots in the chamber shuddered as the Masters gleefully snatched the orah-egg from Matrya’s trembling hands, climbing up ever further into the net of tendrils.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ yelled Tymon in outrage.

  He remembered belatedly, as he was scrambling after his stolen body, that he did not have to traipse from one point to another as he normally would. Instead, he willed himself forward as he had in the passage — shot upwards through the trembling roots to alight in an instant beside the Masters, even as they raised the egg, gloating over it.

  ‘For Jedda,’ said Tymon. And with the Nurian girl’s name on his lips, he summoned up all his courage, and grasped the host’s neck firmly with his right hand.

  He did not touch his physical body, of course. But his insubstantial fingers closed over a film of crackling energy within it, a sticky blue miasma that clogged up the casing. He struggled to detach the blue lightning from his body, pulling the Masters out of their host, hand over hand. They resisted, their sticky energy spitting out sparks, changing shape like viscous Tree-gum beneath his grasp. The blue miasma transformed into a nest of snakes, hissing in his face, but Tymon held on. Then the snakes wilted like an old bouquet, and the Masters’ energy bloomed into the shape of a slavering beast’s head, snapping at Tymon with its fanged jaws. Still he did not let go, wrestling his opponents loose with all his might. His body slumped against the shuddering Tree-roots as it lost its guiding impetus, the orah-egg slipping from its grasp to tumble to the cavern floor. The Masters fought to stay in the host, snapping and snarling and shifting into a bewildering array of forms.

  ‘My love, you’re hurting me.’ The miasma settled into the likeness of Samiha, gazing pitifully at Tymon as he held her by the throat. ‘Let go, you’re killing me!’

  Tymon looked her steadily in the eye, holding on until the likeness transformed with a savage howl into the three-headed harpy again. The bird heads shrieked and stabbed at him with their hooked beaks.

  ‘Maggot!’ screamed the Masters. ‘Creeping worm! If we were not bound by our sentence, we would peck out your mind’s eye! We would rip your soul to shreds!’

  Tymon did not answer, holding the jabbing beaks away from his face as the roots of the Tree continued to heave and shake in response to the Oracle’s pain. He had to regain control of his body to help her; there was no other way. He held on grimly while the Masters’ blue light grew gradually weaker and more transparent. At last, with a final yank, he ripped them clean out of their host.

  ‘You’re too late to help her,’ snarled the Masters vindictively, even as he shook them loose.

  They loomed like a blue cloud over Tymon, beaks agape, and reached their snapping fingers towards him, seeking to rake him in the trance with their cruel talons. But at that moment, a vortex opened up directly behind them, a whirlwind glimpse of the Veil. The shrieking harpy dissolved and was whipped away into the maelstrom, the three straining heads sucked away with a last drawn-out howl.

  ‘Late, late, late …’ wailed the Masters. The vortex swallowed them, diminished to a point, and was gone.

  Emptied of their will, the pull of Tymon’s body became inescapable. It drew his spirit home, and a moment later he blinked awake from the trance, only to find himself half-slipping off the shuddering roots of the Tree. He barely caught hold of a tendril in time, swinging a good twenty feet over the floor of the chamber. The whole cavern was shaking, the rock groaning in sympathy with the Oracle. Tymon scrambled frantically down the trembling ladder of roots towards his teacher.

  But even as he approached her, even as he slid down the intervening roots with a defiant yell, Gowron cleared the final tendrils away from the Oracle’s chest. The acolyte raised the orah-knife high in both hands and, with a yell of triumph, plunged it deep into Matrya’s heart.

  The convulsion that passed through the Tree was tremendous. All Tymon could do was cling to the quaking roots to stop from falling, as the Oracle’s body shuddered in its death throes. Wick was already far below them, he noticed dimly, scrambling over the cavern floor towards the abandoned orah-egg. Gowron lost no time in wrenching the knife out of Matrya’s chest and leaping after his fellow acolyte. Tymon caught a stray yellow gleam as Wick picked up the Oracle’s treasure and bundled it in his cloak, then turned and fled from the chamber without waiting for Gowron. The older man howled in fury and sped down the tunnel in hot pursuit. The cavern was plunged in shifting shadows in their wake, with only the half-spent torch by the tunnel-mouth remaining.

  ‘Ama!’ cried Tymon in distress, as he arrived by the Oracle’s side. The giant’s beautiful old face was tilted upwards in pain, her eyes darkened now almost to black. Her breast ran with blue-black blood where the savage knife had bitten deep.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he murmured to her, weeping freely now. Unable to think of what else to do, he climbed the roots, so that he could caress her great face with his small hand.

  ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about.’ He heard her voice in his mind, but her lips were unmoving as she gazed at him out of those dark pools. ‘You’ve done well. You have to leave now, it’s all going to collapse on this side. You must retrieve the World Key, and you must bury me.’

  ‘What’s the World Key?’ asked Tymon anxiously. ‘Is that what the acolytes took from you? The egg?’

  She was right, he thought: the cavern would not survive the shaking roots. Already, sections of loose earth were dislodging from the chamber walls, and he could feel the rumble of disquiet spreading far beyond them, through the Tree.

  ‘You know where it is.’ Her voice in his mind was hardly a breath, and it seemed she was raving in her final moments. ‘You know where to find the Key,’ she whispered. ‘Bury me on the mountain, where the sky meets earth. Bury me where the sun shines and clear water rises.’

  With that, she closed her eyes and spoke no more. He knew he could not free her from the enclosing net of tendrils before the chamber caved in, or drag her body out to bury it anywhere, let alone on a mountain. He did not even know what the word meant. He only felt he had failed her as he dropped awkwardly to the floor, his arm raised to protect himself against the lumps of loam raining down from the roof. He grabbed the guttering torch by the tunnel-mouth and stumbled into the passage, blinded by tears. His last glimpse of the Oracle was of her marvellously tall form cradled amid the roots, great eyes closed and peaceful, while the walls of the cavern slowly collapsed and the Tree trembled to its core.

  The torch soon guttered out. Tymon stumbled down the tunnel from the Oracle’s chamber in total darkness, with one arm pressed against the wall to keep himself upright. A fine, choking dust had begun to fall from the roof of the passage, coating his hair and clothes. It did not look as if even the Ancients’ tough grey building material would survive the bereavement of the Tree. Tymon wept for his teacher as he staggered down the juddering passageway, hardly caring whether the whole construction fell on his head, for the cruelty of ending that ancient and benevolent life had struck him afresh. He knew instinctively he would not see Matrya’s like again in his world. Whatever the Born were now, they had ceased walking among humans in those gentle, giant bodies.

  The journey out of the chamber was far longer than it had seemed on the way in. Befuddl
ed by the Masters’ sorcery, he had forgotten how many aches and bruises his body had endured in the past few weeks. Now his muscles were reminding him of it, his tendons shrieking with pain, clamouring that they were alive, he was alive, even as he mourned the death of the Oracle. He gritted his teeth and carried on, steadying himself on the left-hand wall as the earth beneath shook and trembled. To his surprise the tunnel walls held for the moment, despite the tremors. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably little more than half a mile, he glimpsed the grey smudge of the exit hatch ahead. A few minutes later, he was out and on the beach again, blinking in the dimmed light of the World Below.

  The first thing he noticed was that Jedda’s body had vanished. There was a depression in the silt where it had lain, but the corpse itself was nowhere to be seen. He did not know if it had rolled away into the lake, or come to grief by some other means; he had no time to solve the puzzle, for a glance at his surroundings showed him that it was not only the roots but the entire Tree, and everything close to it, that was affected by the Oracle’s passing. The beach was shuddering beneath his feet, the waters of the lake rising in waves that crashed on the trembling shore. He peered up in alarm at the towering buttresses and deep clefts of the trunk behind him, to see bark slabs breaking off the shivering slopes, whole sections of the Tree slithering down in clouds of dust that turned the late afternoon light a murky brown. High overhead, the Storm itself was seething. Frothing leaves alternated with grey cloud as the great branches of the South Canopy pitched and swayed, sending down a rain of dust and small particles of bark that caused the waters of the lake to boil. The whole world was filled with a deafening, ruinous roar.