Iron Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  The acolytes twittered nervously. I looked at the second one. She had been there. She knew what I had said. I had said vindication and never admitted to guilt. The acolyte squeaked in terror. Would I have been so useless? So terrified of the old bat?

  Anita, you horrid sow, are you trying to put words in my mouth? I publicly declared I wanted vindication. You think that’s somehow going to change because you tell me it will?

  Anita’s face scrunched up into a mass of compressed wrinkles. “Child, he took you by force. It’s understandable if you twisted things around in your head so you could endure—”

  Child? I was no child! I was an adult, I was an Oracle, I was... or had been... a Luna! I panted, “I am not guilty.”

  She knew I wasn’t guilty, she knew I’d pass all the tests and vindicate myself, and they’d never be able to come at me again. The only chance she had would be to make me think I was confused, that I had somehow made a mistake, and I was too traumatized to see it. I laid my head down on the floor and laughed a miserable laugh.

  “You’re out of your mind.” Anita clucked her tongue. She grunted to the two terrified acolytes. “Take her back upstairs to her room.”

  “Will she die?” one asked.

  “She’s survived the first few days of a broken Bond, but it doesn’t mean the pain won’t drive her mad. She has already suffered a great deal of torment at Alpha Gabel’s claws.” Anita’s voice sounded heavy with grave prophecy.

  And that was her fail-safe. If I refused atonement, she’d declare my mind broken. I’d be stripped of all blame, all responsibility, all dishonor, my title, and any hope of redeeming myself.

  I laughed at how amateur her plan was. Did she really think I was such a fool I couldn’t see through her?

  Pain and weakness did make me a little mad, and I drooled and stumbled and hummed to myself, out of my mind with fever as my soul scrambled around inside my body trying to find a way out.

  The acolytes were kind, and managed to wrestle me up the stairs to my room. They made sure I had some water and some food, and one even smoothed my blankets. One tried to help me into some clothes.

  I refused.

  I’d sleep naked.

  Two more days passed while I flopped around in a fever state. Now my mind was mostly clear, although pain permeated every part of me. My thoughts kept turning backwards towards the abyss. Flint had warned me of the dangers of silence.

  The punishment my body had endured from the shattered Bond left me weak and sick. Right now I had the advantage of being considered out of my mind with pain, but that wouldn’t last. I had to escape Anita.

  My fevered brain shakily sorted through escape options. There was one conclusion: violence.

  Better get moving on that before I couldn’t play the “out of her head with pain” card.

  I still slid down the stairs because I felt so weak. For measure I went naked, hair unbrushed.

  Anita was in the front room again, in those stupid green socks, giving another lecture.

  “Gianna,” Anita said. “Sit. You can begin your atonement.”

  I growled at her. I didn’t even have to fake it. “No. Vindication.”

  Anita sighed.

  My fingernails dug into the wall, fingers elongating and sharpening without my even trying. The anger bubbled up from the Bond, the pain, everything that couldn’t escape trapped within me. And this bitch was the cause of all of it. I howled and staggered forward towards her. “Vindication!”

  The acolytes scrambled to get out of the way. Anita held her ground in her chair. “Gian—”

  “Vindication!”

  My left hand elongated and silvery fur shimmered over the back of my palm, my nails extended, and my teeth sharpened. Anita seized the arms of her chair, eyes riveted on my claw.

  I raked her across the chest, ripping her blouse to ribbons and drawing lines of blood across her sagging skin. She shrieked and yanked her hands up to shield her face The acolytes screamed. My vision wavered and unfocused, the fevered exhaustion mingling with my anger.

  I raised my hand to rake Anita’s face into shreds but my strength failed, my joints melted, and I crumbled to the floor, weak and fevered again.

  They left me where I fell. I drifted on the fever-pain for hours. But it had worked. Through the hot haze I overheard Anita declare me violent, and her shaky, panicked voice speaking into the phone as she summoned SableFur to retrieve me.

  A day later two SableFur came, bound my wrists with silver-inlaid ropes and put a silver-bar leather restraint collar around my neck. The pain was laughable compared to what my soul felt.

  Then they took me exactly where I wanted to go: to Kiery.

  To the heart of SableFur.

  MarchMoon: Currency

  The rabid she-bitch’s name was Lulu. According to her.

  Hix only half-believed her. The gleam in her already-too-bright eyes all but dared him to take issue with her name. He didn’t take the bait. Reasonably speaking (and he was inclined to be reasonable from time to time) he couldn’t just lock her up or tie her to a chair for the rest of her natural life. He had bigger things to do making sense of the MarchMoon.

  Or what had once been the MarchMoon, and now was the IronMoon. Alpha Gabel had been clear on that.

  Try telling that to the MarchMoon. Hix didn’t much care what they called themselves, or were called, and he cared even less what they thought of it. As far as he was concerned, they were traitors, cowards, or children. They got no say in the matter. It was a matter of names, and Hix didn’t give much weight to names. Names were words. Words were useless more often than they were useful. Words meant nothing without physical will behind them.

  He had been ordered to make sense of what the MarchMoon had left. All they had left were words. So now he was compelled to sit in a chair, with notepad and pen, and collect those words.

  Right now a young male sat across from him, trying not to fidget and making such an effort that his muscles twitched. Hix’s own face was so tired of scowling he couldn’t even manage a glare. He flipped to a new page. Asked the usual questions. Name. Age. Rank. Schooling. Occupation. Relatives within two degrees of separation, alive or dead. Their age. Name. Manner of death. Then he threw in a few random questions, hoping to find holes in what the other wolves had told him.

  “When did Lulu come to MarchMoon?”

  The male frowned. “Um... a year ago? No. Wait. A little longer.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  “I dunno. She just showed up one day, I guess?” The youngster said this with the casual boredom of a youth who thought details like that were stupid, and the adults asking them obnoxious pests.

  Everyone agreed Lulu had been born an EmeraldPelt, but nobody seemed to know why she’d come to MarchMoon, or if she’d even come directly from EmeraldPelt. The senior members would have known those details, but they were all inconveniently dead.

  Hix didn’t buy her half-crazy act either. She had been a little too quick to still her viper tongue when Luna Gianna had punched the old dustbag. Those sorts of females were the most dangerous troublemakers. They weren’t stupid enough to get caught in their own trap.

  He dismissed the male with a grunt when his phone rang. Gabel’s number. “Alpha.”

  “It is not,” the voice said.

  Hix stood. His pad fell to the floor. “Flint. Where is Gabel?”

  “Not in a talking mood. Return to IronMoon.”

  “Why?”

  “Gabel repudiated her, and she has been taken to SableFur with the Oracles. There is not time to explain more. Return home.”

  “Are those Gabel’s orders?”

  “They are mine. Your Alpha is unfit to lead, and you are First Beta. You are needed here.”

  His fingers pressed into the phone’s smooth metallic case. He went over to the window, and looked at the world outside. Instinct nagged at the back of his mind, whispering half-formed words. His Luna had been wrongfully disgraced and repudiated
. Now his Alpha was in no condition to avenge the wrong that had been done.

  The duty fell to him.

  “I outrank you, Master of Arms. I am not done here. You will have to lead IronMoon for now. I am on the scent of something.”

  Time to find Lulu.

  Donovan took a drag on his cigar. From the scent it was a cheap affair he had picked up at a truckstop for a few bucks. “So you have nothing to go on.”

  Hix folded his arms across his chest and adjusted his hips a bit, hoping to hide the discomfort of the torn stitches in his abdomen. “Female, very capable, presumably born an EmeraldPelt. She is likely heading towards SableFur, via RedWater or IceMaw, and does not want to be spotted. How is that nothing?”

  Lulu had disappeared from MarchMoon. It could not be a coincidence.

  Donovan shifted the cigar in his teeth. “To mourn a mischief that is past and gone/Is the next way to draw new mischief on.”

  Hix was short on patience at that moment. “Your point?”

  “That’s a fancy way of asking why you want to cause headaches. The crazy wolf is gone. Let her go, who cares why. Good riddance.”

  “She was here to make false charges against Luna Gianna. Now that her work is done she’s returned to her master. Find that master.”

  “So you think the MarchMoon were SableFur toadies?”

  “We know the Shadowless are.”

  “That means nothing, and tracking anything to SableFur is dangerous.”

  “Quit complaining and get on her trail.”

  Donovan dropped his cigar butt onto the ground and twisted it into soot with the toe of his boot. “If she’s smart like you say, and a plant like you think, she’s not going straight to SableFur. Too obvious.”

  Hix grumbled in frustration. “It’s all I have. It’s a lead. Track it.”

  “Maybe it was your charming personality that made her move on.”

  “Our Luna is being held prisoner in SableFur for a crime she didn’t commit, and I have to convince you to do your part?”

  “She is not being held prisoner,” Donovan said. “She’s an Oracle. She didn’t commit a crime. She’s either there to atone, or she’s going to try to pass the Four Tests and vindicate herself. That means prove she’s innocent and reclaim her honor.”

  “I know what vindicate means.”

  “Just checking. It’s a big word for an IronMoon.”

  Hix barred his teeth at the Hunter.

  Donovan shrugged. “This is my way of warning you not to give me shit if your hunch about Lulu is wrong. If Lulu’s work here was done, and she has no payload for SableFur, she won’t risk returning there.”

  “And I would not have risked leaving MarchMoon and drawing suspicion at all.”

  “Nor would I, so there’s a reason she’s going back, if you’re right about her at all.”

  “Speak to no one, Hunter, except myself or Flint or Alpha Gabel.”

  “I almost never do, Beta.” Donovan pulled out a fresh cigar. He unwrapped it, ran it under his nose and chomped off the end.

  “How can you hunt with that in your nose?”

  “You have no scent for me to go on, it disguises my scent and wolves never smoke.” Donovan grinned. “Unless you have a pair of her panties for me to sniff?”

  “If I had them, I would give them to you. She took everything.”

  “Pity. Panties really are the best way to track a female.”

  “Do not be disgusting.”

  “I should drag you to a titty bar and have the girls get that stick out of your ass.”

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t have anything to do with you if you weren’t paying them.”

  Donovan clamped down on the unlit cigar. “So how pissed off were you, Champion of Female Kind, when Alpha Gabel Marked up a female without her consent? Or paraded that little blue-eyed tart in front of Anders just to torture his actual mate?”

  “That trail is not getting any warmer,” Hix answered instead.

  “Thought so.” Donovan sauntered out, as if he were a tomcat with tail held high. “Everyone has their price, Hix. The currency varies, but everyone has their price.”

  The rest of IronMoon reeled under all the news. Most didn’t know what to think, much less believe. Many hadn’t even realized that an Oracle’s vow of silence extended to the Alpha and matters of pack safety. Most of the conversations revolved more about the horror Oracles could keep such secrets, and how could any Luna possibly serve as an Oracle.

  Many believed Gabel needed to go reclaim Gianna and to hell if she was “tarnished” or not. They were all tarnished in IronMoon, and Gianna’s “crime” was hardly a crime in the eyes of most.

  Hix had returned a week later (it had taken that long to locate the Hunter), and Flint’s lecturing tone annoyed him. If Alpha Gabel could not avenge his Luna, then it fell to the First Beta, Moon-nonsense or not. Hix had only one question for the Master of Arms: “How long until she comes back?”

  “She might not come back,” Flint said. “The Moon didn’t promise them they would be together again.”

  Hix drew back. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

  “The Moon only told them what She was going to do so they would each be in the place She needed them. Being together again wasn’t promised. It also wasn’t ruled out. She bound up their Bond so that it simulates death. I think that means that the possibility exists, but the outcome is not assured. I presume they will be together again in death.” Flint shrugged, and added in a sober tone, “If it comes to that.”

  “But how long will this vindication take? How long until she can return?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps a long time. She needs her new bowls, which I think will take several turns of the Moon, and then she has to pass the tests.”

  “What are these Four Tests she has to pass?”

  “She has to discover a secret, find something hidden, predict an event that comes to pass, and prove she still has the Moon’s favor. She only gets one chance at each test, and her sisters judge if she’s passed or not.”

  “Then it is corrupt,” Hix said coldly. “They found her guilty with no evidence, and they’ll never say she has passed any of them.”

  “We will have to hope the Moon provides irrefutable evidence,” Flint said heavily.

  Hix ground his teeth together. “Where is Alpha Gabel?”

  Flint raised a hand to settle the First Beta. “He doesn’t need your anger. IronMoon has executed wolves for betrayal. Gianna couldn’t stay his Luna with this cloud over her head.”

  “Flimsy at best, and the pack agrees!” Hix spat.

  “And most of the wolves here can barely read,” Flint retorted. “They don’t understand what’s at stake. Gabel’s entire kingdom is founded on the idea that promises are to be kept. There can be no exceptions, especially for the Alpha.”

  Hix gripped the fabric of his jeans, anger knotting and unknotting within him. “If the SableFur want Gabel, Magnes should just come for him. Alpha to Alpha. Using his mate is disgusting.”

  “I agree, but that’s not all that’s happening here. The Moon showed Gianna the truth of what is driving all of this. I can’t tell you more than that.”

  “Then she will never come back because SableFur will keep moving the shells!”

  Flint nodded. “We have to figure out what the Moon wants us to do. Solve the puzzle. If we—”

  Hix got out of his chair and marched up to Gabel’s office.

  Flint followed him in silence.

  Hix had half-expected chaos and squalor, the crazed insanity of a male with a broken Bond. He had seen that insanity more than once. The only symptom of grief was the scent of suffering in the air. The First Beta snarled under his breath. Gabel didn’t care? He was up and about and in one piece not eight days after he had given up his mate?

  Gabel looked over his shoulder. He was shaven, but raw patches of skin from where the razor had sliced up layers of skin striped his jaw, and there was a ghastly shadow around
each eye. His face reminded Hix of someone who had been deathly fevered for a month, including the crazed gleam and bright gloss to his eyes.

  Soul-sick or not, Hix didn’t care. “Get out of this office and go get your Luna back!”

  Gabel shook his head as if dazed.

  “You were careless with her many times, and the one time she needs you to defend her, you roll over! I do not care what the Moon wanted. Tell the Moon to solve Her own problems!”

  Flint did not correct Hix.

  “I would never ask Gianna to give up being an Oracle.” Gabel’s voice was hoarse and raw. “That is her choice. She did not choose it.”

  “So you’re just going to stand at that window and wait while the pack falls apart around you? I am not holding it together for you! Not like this! I will go to SableFur today and bring her home. Put your Mark back on her arm—properly this time—and force Magnes to use his claws and not his Oracles!”

  Gabel limped a few paces away from the window. There was blood on his pants where Aaron had stabbed him, and his other shoulder, and he walked as if every internal organ was tender and every half-healed wound had torn open. He rested his hands on the back of the other couch, his fingertips pressing into the fabric. The crazed gleam in his eyes brightened a degree.

  “You think I am going to do nothing, First Beta?” he asked in a quiet, deadly tone.

  “I see you doing nothing,” Hix snarled.

  Gabel’s lips stretched into a ghoulish, horrific smile straight from the Void itself. “I told Gianna that if the Moon took her from me, I would lay waste to Her creation and build a tower so I could climb to the heavens to smash Her Eye. And that is exactly what I am going to do.”

  In/Sane

  The SableFur dungeon (because let’s face it: that’s what it was) was nothing compared to the IronMoon basement.

  It was as impeccably clean as old stones can be, and frighteningly ancient. The sort of dark, dank hole sixty feet under that spoke about innumerable lives that had simply disappeared into it. Half a dozen cages lined one long side, and the other side dotted by pairs of shackles. The end of the rectangular room was curiously devoid of anything. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine any number of punishments that could be enacted in the bare, smooth space.