To complete the dungeon decor were torches, which gave the air a faint oily haze that eventually stung the eyes and nose. Twice a day a male wolf wearing a black executioner’s hood came to change them.
They had stripped me of my clothing and left me on the uneven, ancient stone floor of the centermost cell. Iron bars were driven into the stone, each bar wrapped with silver bands, but instead of bars overhead, the cage had an open top. The bars ended in sharp spikes coated in silver. There was about a foot of clearance between the top spike and the ceiling. A determined wolf could have crawled out, but would have sliced themselves getting between the stone ceiling and the spikes.
The flickering torchlight made the shadows jump and leap, and in the haze of silver sickness caused by my collar, I’d sometimes startle and have to remind myself they were just shadows, although I swore I saw ghostly wolves moving in the unsteady light. Spectral and translucent, blue-white like the Moon’s light, they seemed strangely familiar in my fevered dreams.
Or maybe I was seeing some of the old ghosts that haunted this pit ready to welcome another to their pack, and they knew I’d be one of them soon.
My hands were free, at least, but bruised from wearing silver-inlaid shackles for hours. The collar’s six bars of silver pressed into the skin of my neck, and my skin had formed huge blisters that had popped, then ulcerated. Blood and weeping fluid crept down my chest and back while the silver seeped through the ulcers to poison my blood stream.
Unlike the collar I had put on Gardenia, these were designed for restraint and torment. The silver exposure would eventually kill me, but not before I died from gangrene.
Every breath or swallow pushed my skin against the silver of my collar. My lungs ached from hours of shallow breathing, and when they rebelled so I’d inhale a deep breath, my throat burned and the thick scent of the torches mixed with the scent of sizzling skin, blood, fluid and ulcerated flesh edged with festering. True sleep was impossible. A feverish doze was all that I could manage.
Assuming the torch-bearer came twice a day, I had been here perhaps two, three days. It might have been five, or one. I had no idea, time meant nothing in the burning pain of the torn Bond and my ruined neck. No Kiery, no Oracles, nothing except the torch-bearers, who also brought me food and water.
There was no where to escape the pain. If I tried to retreat into myself, I only met the remains of the Bond. If I turned away to the outside, I met the burning pain of the collar. So I stayed between the two, in a wretched umbra where time meant nothing, and I needed it to mean nothing.
The SableFur couldn’t honestly propose to keep me down here forever, could they? Lock me up, throw away the key?
Doubt needled my brain.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to be above ground, figuring out how to do whatever it was the Moon wanted me to do.
This dungeon was not the IronMoon basement. It was not that concrete, godless, bereft sarcophagus. This was just a dungeon on the shadowy side of the Moon.
The heavy metal door at the top of the long stairwell creaked open above me, then closed again. Footsteps picked their way down the steps, and Elder Oracle Kiery came into the torchlight.
I tried to push myself up off the floor, trembling with the effort. The collar rubbed into my neck and I couldn’t not whimper. The angry red lines of the toxin had moved down to my breasts and probably up to my face. I gave up trying to sit and stared at Kiery from my place on the floor. Hours of laying on the stones had caused sores to open up on my skin, and large bruises to form. The effects of the silver worsened it, and my whole body was wracked with dull, throbbing pain.
Kiery was no stranger to me: she’d helped Anita finish my training. She’d made me an Oracle, and my success had made her an Elder Oracle. Medium height, auburn hair kept back in a tight braid, and like me, unnaturally pale. Her skin seemed luminescent in the flickering torchlight. It was hard to focus my eyes on her.
“Hello, Gianna,” she said, cautiously.
“Kiery,” I rasped. You might not realize how much the skin of your neck moves when you talk, but the collar made sure to educate me on the more subtle points of torment.
She crouched down so her eyes were level with mine. “You recognize me. Do you remember what happened?”
Of course I recognized her. Of course I remembered what happened. If they thought I had been in my right mind when I had attacked Anita, they’d hang me for it. But if I had been out of my mind, I wasn’t wholly responsible. Would Kiery believe me if I accused Anita of not giving me what I wanted, and that had driven me into a feverish rage? Or should I just play dumb?
Lying seemed like such a bad idea. I wasn’t a very good liar. And in this condition I didn’t think I could keep my lies straight. I played for a little more time. “What part?”
“Attacking Anita.”
Pain burned up and down my throat, seeping into my face and down my chest. The collar forced me to pause again, recovering from the wash of pain, which blanked out my mind as well as blanking out whatever I was going to blabber. I decided on a half-truth, because I remembered everything quite clearly until I had collapsed in exhaustion. “Some.”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“No.” That was true. Most of my memories from the past week were incomplete. Things out of focus, or only one sense remembered, like a scent or sound with nothing else, outright holes and blackness, very little was coherent and clear. I barely remembered anything after attacking Anita, and once they had put the collar and bindings on me, everything had become a blank.
Kiery shifted her weight. “How long have you been here?”
Oracles get used to strange questions, but not usually from other Oracles. Was her question a quiz, or did she not know? I couldn’t tell from her expression. “... a day? Two?”
Kiery got out of her crouch. She retrieved the iron ring of keys (after all, it was a dungeon, and no dungeon is complete without a ring of keys) and unlocked my cell. Then she knelt down next to me, and felt along the collar for the buckle. I whimpered in pain. She didn’t mean to hurt me, but the buckle had slid around to the back of my neck and her fingers fumbled with the stiff, unfamiliar leather. But then she pulled it off and cool air brushed my skin and I breathed in, and while my wrecked skin protested, the silver burn didn’t follow.
I collapsed, limp, onto the stones and closed my eyes.
“I don’t think we need that anymore.” Kiery had distaste on her tone. Holding it between two fingers she took it over to the long, low wooden table under where the keys had hung. She dropped it there.
I was far too weak to shift forms even without the collar. She came back into my cell, and using her phone’s light, examined my neck. I shied away from the scalding brightness.
“I can’t bring you upstairs just yet.” Kiery tucked her phone into her pocket. “But there’s no reason you have to wear that collar.”
“Why?” I cracked open one aching eyeball. Why did I have to stay down in the dungeon? Why had they left the collar on me at all? It wasn’t the special hell of the basement, but it was a dungeon, and they hadn’t even spared me a blanket or burlap sack. There were worse places to be, and worse things that could happen down here, but it didn’t mean I wanted to stay.
“Questionable mental stability and you partially shift in your violence,” Kiery said.
I had never been able to do that before. Pure anger has its perks. Not knowing what to say in my defense, I just said, “Oh.”
Kiery seemed satisfied that I didn’t have full recollection of what I had done to Anita.
I couldn’t overplay the insanity card, though. If I was questionably sane, and mentally not fit, they wouldn’t let me pursue vindication. Oracles legitimately did go insane, or at least mentally fracture under the stress of our gifts, and letting an Oracle go into the Tides when their mind wasn’t healthy ended badly. I needed to somehow convince everyone that I had just been sick, and my actions had been the result of my br
oken Bond, and not a broken mind.
“How badly hurt is Anita?” I whispered, figuring that showing a little remorse would buy me some good will with Kiery.
“Not too bad. You swiped at her and peeled up some skin.” Kiery didn’t seem very concerned.
So I hadn’t hurt Anita more than I had scared the crap out of her. Good. Now I had to make sure Kiery didn’t send me back there.
Kiery got up and left, her footsteps disappearing up the staircase to the heavy door above. It creaked open, creaked closed, and I was alone in the red-light darkness again.
I had endured Gabel, fighting with him and his crazed plans, I could endure this quiet a little longer. The difficult part would be when I had to move among the SableFur, and insist on my innocence while knowing that certain individuals wanted no part of it.
In the silence, the fog stole over my brain, lulling me to sleep, pulling me down into the stillness of slumber.
...Gianna...
His voice. A whisper from the back of my brain, from a coming dream.
Or was it?
The Bond’s fragment thumped to life, and the prickling rush of adrenaline came with it.
“Gabel?” I whispered.
Of course he didn’t answer. I waited in the darkness but couldn’t hear anything else over the thumping of my heart, echoing the thumping of the Bond as it twisted and squirmed against its binding.
The spasm of pain Flint had warned about hit, and I doubled over.
...Gianna...
That was my imagination. It had to be my imagination! I had silver going through my system.
I wrestled myself to all fours and crawled to the corner of my cell. I snatched the velvet bag that contained the obsidian chunk and curled my body around it. The chunk was real. Like a young Seer I clung to something fixed from the waking world, something I understood that would anchor me in reality. The rough, unhewn block of obsidian with all its sharp edges and unforgiving surfaces was that thing. When it was ready the work could begin.
I had to survive until then.
Boss Encounter
A doctor-type woke me out of my fitful sleep an unknown number of hours later. She pried the obsidian chunk away from me and unfolded me so she could look at my neck.
I opened my eyes, stared up, saw the ceiling, the doctor, and two ghostly wolves peering down at me.
Wait.
I recognize you two.
Even though they were now ghostly and translucent, I recognized the RedWater wolves. The two I had defied Gabel to defend. They’d guided me through the dark grotto on the Edge of the Tides to the house with the pup-ring.
They perked their ears that I had roused, and wagged their tails.
I tried to move one arm to touch one. I wasn’t alone. Not completely. Not entirely. Had the Moon sent them, or were their fates bound to mine because I owned their fangs?
I’m sorry if that’s true.
I felt drained of everything, and like sand had been poured in where blood had been, and my hands hurt from holding the rough obsidian chunk, and my neck burned and scalded with each breath. And my soul—my soul hurt.
But I needed to demonstrate some coherence and not just be a withdrawn lump. The doctor-type might report back that I was a husk. I couldn’t be a husk.
“How bad is it?” I whispered.
“Oh, it’s not too bad,” she replied with the insincerity of all doctors who don’t want to be dealing with a particular patient.
“It hurts worse than bad.” I wheezed out the last word around the pain.
Her eyes flickered, but still didn’t meet mine. Her gloved fingers felt along the skin very gently. Her silence confirmed to me it was very ugly. My whole neck hurt, and my lower jaw and the base of my skull.
“Is it infected?” I prodded again.
“A little. You have a slight fever, but that’s normal.”
Normal. Because everything about this was so normal.
I am going to dismantle your pack and throw the gates open for IronMoon.
Do you know what your Alpha did?
How many SableFur knew? How many SableFur had known Gabel’s mother? Who had questioned her disappearance? Had there been rumors? Questions?
I needed to find out. Maybe if there had been rumors, or more than rumors, or some kind of records, or witnesses, or evidence, or something... some kind of trail to follow, maybe that was what I was supposed to find. From what the Moon had shown me, Gabel’s mother had been an acolyte and disappeared with a trace. Surely someone had to remember her, there had to have been questions... there had to have been other Oracles, or other acolytes that had known her. I had to find them. Figure out what they knew.
Unless she had been kept with Anita, or Magnes had chased her to Anita, and Anita had disposed of his little problem... or problems, as it were.
The cream the doctor slathered on the wounds was exquisite. I sighed and relaxed onto the stones.
“Don’t move too much. You’ll make the scaring worse.”
No worry of that. I wasn’t pacing the cell, and what did I care about the scars anyway? No, I hoped there would be scars! So when all this was over, there’d be a permanent, visible reminder of what had been done. So nobody could pretend it hadn’t happened.
The doctor gathered up her things and left without another word. The torch-bearer came and brought dinner, then changed the torches. I slept, freed briefly from the pain by the thick goop all over my neck, until the creaking of the door woke me once more.
The RedWater wolves disappeared into the shadows.
Heavier footsteps this time. A male. It wasn’t time for the torch-bearer to come back.
The male’s large frame melted out of the shadows into the red-tinged light. I stared, my eyes focusing on him, but it was his presence that my senses understood. I had never seen him before.
But I had. Parts of him. I had seen that sandy blond hair, the jaw, the frame, the bearing, the raw force of his presence, the iron will that I would be unwise to challenge, and the authority he wielded in both hands.
Inside I quaked from sheer common sense.
He waited, staring at me, face made of stone.
I pulled myself onto my hip, then onto my knees. I wanted to stand, but I didn’t think I could manage it. Maybe it would appease him if he thought I was more inclined to be the obedient little Oracle, and not the former Luna.
He had blue eyes. Not ocean-blue eyes like his son, more like the summer sky. A chasm cut across his left cheek, like a channel of liquid silver had eroded away most of the skin, and the wound had filled in with glossy, mottled scar tissue. It didn’t diminish his good looks, it only made him seem that much more... prestigious.
Oh, Alpha Magnes left an impression.
One I had never thought I’d feel again after being Bound to his son.
Was he as intense as his son? I wavered, not quite sure. They were different in a way.
No matter. I felt it, the force of him, what he was willing to do to me if I made even the slightest misstep.
He’d crack my spine and leave me to rot down here, and like Gabel, wouldn’t even think about it twice. He’d probably not even think about it once.
Except the difference between Magnes and Gabel was Gabel had honor. Magnes didn’t. Gabel had his limits, and he never crossed them. It made him predictable. There were things he’d never do. Magnes... Magnes could do anything.
My unease satisfied him. I hadn’t expected to see him at all.
He would kill me. The longer he stared at me, the more absolutely certain I was he would kill me. I had never confronted anyone who I knew would kill me. Assault me, abuse me, abduct me, then kill me, but never just twist my head off like a chicken’s.
Oddly, I didn’t sense he wanted to kill me, only that he would. It was a peculiar difference.
“Oracle Kiery has said you should be let out of here.”
I shuddered at the sound of his voice. Not in a good way. This was the wolf I needed to
destroy, and I was about to wet myself with how frightened I was.
He very slowly titled his head to the left, eyeing me more sharply as if the vision from his left eye were slightly better.
Did he suspect what I knew?
“Why did you attack Anita?” he asked.
Did I risk lying? Gabel would have sensed the lie. But I had been... no, was, Gabel’s Luna. I wasn’t some little itty bitty she-wolf. I was a Luna, an Oracle. Did I risk a little lie? If Magnes figured out I knew all about his dirty little secret, he’d just kill me and tell Kiery that my mental state had required him doing what Alphas must do.
I bought a second by pushing a strand of hair back behind my ear. “I think I was angry.”
“About what?” His tone made me think of a needle coming straight for my eye.
“I don’t really remember. Anita’s accusations, I think. I want vindication.”
Magnes’ presence shifted oh so slightly, and if I hadn’t been so used to another powerful Alpha, I might not have noticed it at all. Vindication prodded him. It shouldn’t matter to him if Anita had made a mistake. A minor embarrassment that should have very little to do with him—in theory. But the word found purchase in his guilt, and he had to shift under the weight.
He looked at the small pile of velvet in the corner. “Your bowls are broken. There is no vindication.”
“Those aren’t shards. That is a stone being prepared.” He couldn’t deny me access to a stone cutter to make the bowl. Technically.
Gabel never would have acted so dishonorably, but Magnes might.
Magnes asked, “And what happens if you succeed?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I was supposed to be angry at my mate siding with obvious lies. Everyone in SableFur had to believe the only way I’d have Gabel back in my life was as a rug for a floor.
“I don’t know,” I said. IronMoon and SableFur would look very different when Gabel and I were done. I wanted to believe we’d be together again. It seemed impossible (and improbable) it could be that simple.
Iron Oracle Page 10
