Iron Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  Magnes was about to say something. I jumped ahead. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’ve been accused of a crime I didn’t commit. Proving my innocence is all I care about right now.”

  He did not smile but his scent did. In a way that sent a shudder across my skin. “You are more sensible than I expected. I was expecting some girlish answer of running back to IronMoon with flowers in your hair.”

  “Gabel is the one who put Kiery’s word ahead of mine.” My voice cracked. The Bond throbbed and convulsed, and I closed my eyes, gasping for breath. “I owe him nothing!”

  Magnes went to retrieve the keys.

  I instinctively shrank back from him. I was completely naked, and more than a little exposed. Magnes grabbed my arm. I shrieked and lashed out, catching him with a fist in the thigh. He didn’t seem to notice. His fingers clamped down until my bone creaked.

  His eyes were so blue.

  He cranked my arm to look at the Mark.

  I focused on not sobbing and whimpering. I was an Oracle, dammit, but only an idiot wouldn’t have been afraid of him, locked in a dungeon that he ruled over, and my life his to end or not.

  Satisfied by what he saw, he released me.

  He tossed the keys onto their peg and went back up the stairs.

  My arm throbbed. With a shaking hand I reached up and felt the Mark. Or what was left of it.

  In nine days it had already started to fade, the scars receding into my flesh. Soon it would be gone.

  Tears welled up and spilled over, and I couldn’t stop the sobs. In the private emptiness of the dungeon, no one heard me weep.

  All must believe.

  Gabel: Run, Fight, Die

  Gabel would have preferred to crush one of his territories, and rip from them their names, as he had flayed the MarchMoon from the world. But he could not shed his honor. The other packs under his rule had not given him reason to rip them into pieces. It would not be right to suddenly change the terms of their previous submission. He would have to build that tower to the Moon from pieces found elsewhere, and wait for the other packs to betray him.

  He stood on a hill overlooking the small cluster of houses and buildings below. Smoke came from a few, a few street fires, and screams. Bodies tumbling over each other as some fled, others cowered, others ripped and tore into those who fled.

  Was this what the human hell was like? Bodies screaming and twisting and writhing while creatures tore at them?

  He tapped his teeth together. He wanted to be down there, but the anger was too raw. He just wanted death and violence, feeling bodies pulling apart and breaking, blood soaking him, and it was hollow rage. It was not these wolves he was angry with. The anger ate a hole in him, gnawing around and around like one of those bottom-feeding fish scouring scum from the bottom of a tank. The dark fury sat at odds with the weakness of his body, the aching pain that invaded every joint and muscle and organ.

  Gianna’s loss had ripped life from him. Consumed and burned part of him away.

  So he supervised from the hill. And if Eroth lost control of the IronMoon hordes, and perhaps some who weren’t supposed to die did... he would not care.

  The GrassClaw. That was the name of this pack. A small pack that had been on his to-do list. He had intended to offer them a bloodless deal made of words and promises, but no. No more promises. Not when the Moon broke Her word. No.

  Brutalize the GrassClaw until their pack was nothing but tatters, and when he descended from the hill and gave them their new name, and their new Alpha, they would grovel at his feet and kiss them for his graciousness and mercy.

  And those who did not would die.

  Rip this place apart. Find them all.

  If it fights, it dies.

  If it runs, it dies.

  Everything else lives.

  “I should have included an order for children,” Gabel mused.

  Flint glanced sideways at him. “You would have a child cut down for being a child?”

  Gabel glared at the chaos below him. A few cries of surrender reached his ears. He ignored them. No surrender. Not until they were all dead or prostrate. He was not going to accept less than cruel, brutal, bloody triumph. He would beat it out of them until they begged him to accept it.

  They must be broken, and he must be willing to break them.

  Flint said, “The fastest way to make a female despise you is to kill her offspring. You will never break a female that way.”

  “I must be willing to go as far as needed.”

  “That is a fool’s talk. You cannot go somewhere from where you cannot return. Pups are a bigger threat dead than alive. Didn’t Gianna teach you anything about a female’s heart?”

  “Do not say her name,” Gabel snapped as his entire body twisted in a spasm, and his soul howled for her. The howling rung in his ears and mind. He shook his head violently to try to clear it. He was the one who had repudiated her, he should have been protected from the agony.

  Maybe if it had been a real repudiation, not with him cornered and his own principles used against him, and his soul tugged and yanked at its shackles, and howled at its bonds.

  His enemies couldn’t see. If this was the Moon’s will, didn’t She know Her Comet couldn’t be weak? What did the silvery sky-bitch want?

  He was going to ask Her personally. With the tip of his goddess-forged claws.

  Flint went on in a matter-of-fact tone, “You want to build a tower, not create a void that will consume you. You build the tower and fall off—which you will—you still built the tower. This is a void. You can do nothing with a void. Except throw bodies in it, and what then? You are no closer to the Moon than before, and invariably you will fall into the void and be forgotten.”

  There was a void inside him. He knew the futility of a void. “I made my promises before the Moon, and I meant them. This is how She answers faith?”

  Flint did not reply.

  Gabel snorted in disgust. “Your faith is obnoxious, old man. What has She done for you except bind you to the same hell I’m in?”

  “Faith is believing there is a larger purpose to our suffering, and that there is purpose beyond our own lifespan,” Flint said. “One day, when you have pups, you’ll understand.”

  “Oh, like you?” Gabel barred his teeth.

  “Yes. Like me,” Flint growled back.

  Ana worked up the will to approach the edge and look down at the masses. “Fuck.”

  “We are not human,” Gabel reminded her with warning.

  “You think wolves got the monopoly on cruelty? Yeah, right. There’s a reason I’m a vet, not a doctor. I hate people. Can’t say I much like you wolves either. Different species, same fucked up shit. And here I am fucking standing here watching it. What does that say about me?”

  “It says you are more honest than most.”

  A war-form splattered with blood loped up the slope on all fours. A few scratches had peeled up strips of hide from his shoulders, but he was otherwise unharmed. He shifted back into human form. “Alpha, they are howling to surrender.”

  “No. No surrender. If it fights, it dies. If it runs, it dies. It must cower. Break them until they are shards and ripped skin that beg to submit.”

  The wolf shifted back into war-form and bounded down the hill, the howl to continue combat shaking the tips of the trees.

  Two hours later Gabel stood in the center of the decimated buildings, the surviving GrassClaw huddled in front of him. Mostly females, some shielding children with their bodies. There were some males too, a few badly injured.

  Ana pulled one over. He gurgled from the hole in his side.

  “Leave him,” Gabel said. “Leave all them.”

  “This is a shit way to die. At least have someone come rip his head off so he doesn’t suffer.”

  “Let him suffer. Tend to the IronMoon warriors.”

  Ana stood up.

  “Do not test me, human. I wasn’t the one who wanted you around,” Gabel growled.

  Ana
threw up her hands. “Fine. Fine. Alpha.”

  She stepped over the dying GrassClaw male and further into the organized, destructive chaos of IronMoon swarming over the buildings like a hive of termites.

  The void inside him twisted around itself like a spiral-armed galaxy, a black hole in its center. A hole was right through him, and there would never be enough blood or death or agony to ever balance or fill it. He looked at the darkening winter sky. The Moon would rise soon. Good. Let Her see this.

  I will destroy everything You profess to love. I will rip apart all You value, and we will see what You truly think.

  “This is IronMoon territory now,” he told the wolves. “And all this will be razed back to the earth. You may go east, towards IronMoon, and call yourself that. Or you can leave. I do not care where you go. Do not think you can find safety anywhere else. I will come for those packs too, in time, and do to them what I have done here.”

  A few war-form IronMoon warriors began to destroy an outbuilding with claws and snarls.

  “Destroy everything!” Gabel shouted to them. “I want this place reduced to rubble! Burn it, splinter it, shatter it! Any who try to stop you, kill them!”

  Some of the females with younger children squeaked and clutched their babies closer.

  “You will leave us out in the winter?” one with two slightly older children tucked against her side asked.

  “If you would call me your Alpha, then go to IronMoon.” He pointed to the east. “Or you and your spawn can rot into the earth.”

  “What do you want?” one of the uninjured males asked, barely old enough to shave and skinny and undeveloped.

  “I have what I want from you,” Gabel replied

  “What about a treaty?” another voice asked from the back.

  “No more treaties. They are not honored. Alphas get on their knees and say nice words to me, but they mean none of it and make arrangements and plot. No more treaties. I have learned my lesson. Not even the Moon protects promises made in good faith! I will make no more bargains with anyone!” Gabel raged.

  He returned to his hilltop perch to watch the destruction of GrassClaw, holding one arm across the ache in his ribs, feeling considerably older and haggard. He growled under his breath.

  The survivors huddled like idiots for another hour until they realized that it was over for them. Gabel ground his teeth together, disgust bubbling in his gut. “I should kill them for being so stupid.”

  “They are dazed,” Flint said.

  “They are idiots!” Gabel snapped. In the moonlight Flint’s tattoos swam and shifted, like underwater plants. This aching, dull pain ate at his sanity. There was no triumph over this pain. There was nothing to best. There was nothing to fight against. It was just a void.

  The darkness turned to orange and yellow as GrassClaw burned.

  Gabel turned his back.

  The RockTail waited.

  Ready Or Not, Here I Come...

  The next time I saw Kiery she came to let me out of the cage.

  She wasn’t alone: she had two SableFur warriors with her. They were older men, going grey, and glared at me in a way that made it clear they weren’t happy about being anywhere near me. They also did not give me their names, and Kiery didn’t introduce them.

  Goon A.

  Goon B.

  Kiery unlocked my cage and swung the door open. “Alpha Magnes has decided you may be released. However, given your past behavior, and where you’re from, you’re not a welcome guest. You’ll be kept in SableFur’s heart so we can keep an eye on you.”

  My heart surged. I was not only in SableFur’s heart—I was living with the ranked members of the pack.

  So that’s why the Goons were grumpy. They had drawn some short straws. Nobody wanted to follow around a questionably sane Oracle that should have been miles away in a little cottage with Anita, and not underfoot in SableFur proper.

  Too bad for them.

  SableFur’s heart had originally been an expansive estate, with a huge central ski-lodge type house. Over the years a few more houses and buildings had popped up, and the whole property sat a mile off a remote road and was fenced with an old palisade fence. The rest of SableFur was scattered throughout their huge territory.

  Northern SableFur was rough open tundra, difficult to get across if the handful of existing roads didn’t get you close to where you wanted to be. Mountains wrapped the south, west, and most of the east.

  SableFur, simply because of its geography, kept mostly to itself. A long time ago they had gobbled up packs and built that huge territory within the safe valley, but since then, they had been quiet. As long as trouble hadn’t come to their borders, they ignored everyone and everything around them. With a pack and territory so vast, they were practically their own country.

  The silence of the main house struck me. Like IronMoon, very few wolves actually lived within its walls. This still bewildered me. Was it something large, powerful packs did? Shadowless hadn’t been so... selective.

  The SableFur gave me a room on the third floor. A small room, nothing special, and it smelled dusty. The only prominent feature was a large, east-facing window that gave a view of the forests beyond the fence.

  The trees poked into the sky, swaying slightly in the breeze.

  Just like...

  “Don’t wander around the house.” Kiery pulled me out of my thoughts. “Your meals will be brought to you.”

  “Am I being held prisoner?” I asked, taking in the room, and looking for the RedWater ghosts. They’d flickered in and out only once since I’d seen Magnes. Perhaps they hadn’t mastered the art of making themselves known.

  Or my broken mind was just trying to fill in some cracks.

  “No, but you’re not a guest,” she told me, voice dry.

  The trees swayed in the breeze, pulling me back in my memories. “Can I go outside?”

  “Yes, as long as your wandering is beyond the fenceline. Your guards will follow you everywhere you go and prevent you from going where you shouldn’t. There are candles and salt on the top shelf of the closet for your work.”

  This room, despite its awesome view, was tiny, and I was going to risk my meditative space getting inadvertently trampled. Well, nobody said the SableFur had to make vindication easy.

  I couldn’t fail.

  “Don’t wander around within the fence,” Kiery warned me again.

  “Why? Fear I might spy?” I asked, unable to sound less than bitter.

  “No, this isn’t your home. Don’t be rude.” She slammed the door behind her.

  I flinched at the noise, then the realization I had no home, and the SableFur could ship me back to Anita if I wasn’t careful.

  I needed to move fast, before Anita tried to get me back, or Magnes decided I was getting close to something dangerous.

  But without a bowl what was I going to do?

  I unwrapped the smaller spear of tourmaline. It had a good weight in my palm.

  The blue color drew me in, blue like the ocean, blue like—

  ...Gianna...

  I shoved it back into the velvet. Not yet. It wasn’t a replacement for the bowl. It served some other purpose. The damn blue stone! I wished I hadn’t brought it, but I hadn’t been able to leave it behind. Gabel had the other one. Hopefully he wouldn’t do something with it, and it was just a paperweight on his desk.

  Will the tourmaline take me to him? He has the other one, perhaps—

  The ache started under my ribs and spread outward. My body twisted around it in a single large cramp. I heard the faint howl in my head and caught the scent of blood and burning. Burning. Something was on fire—

  Focus. How can we de-fang Magnes?

  Stiff-legged, I turned around and took stock of everything in my room. There was a small bathroom with a tiny medicine cabinet, and a long, narrow mirror hanging behind the door.

  I could use a mirror. A handful of Oracles did resonate with mirrors. Mirrors were far more dangerous and unreliable.
Their flat surface couldn’t protect the Oracle on the Tides. The Oracle would be completely exposed. Mirrors were lighter, easier to toss about, faster... or so it was said.

  I had immediately resonated with a bowl, so I’d never risked a mirror. Mirrors were the last option for Seers who couldn’t make a bowl work. Most took it as a sign they weren’t powerful enough, or didn’t have the Moon’s favor, and simply withdrew from further training. Very few Oracles used a mirror by choice, and even fewer survived.

  Mirrors didn’t need to be carved, just consecrated, and that was simple. Broken mirrors were easy to replace. Actually, any reflective surface would do in a pinch. Even a crappy old mirror with nasty rust spots.

  ...What are you doing, Gabel?...

  “You look like shit,” I croaked to my reflection. I was gaunt, my skin covered in dusky, oily soot from the haze of the torches and general squalor; huge, ghoulish bags under my eyes. My neck was a necklace of ulcerated wounds. I looked like I belonged in a hospital. I probably did.

  My fingers pulled at the sleeve of my far-too-large shirt, trying to get up the courage to see my Mark.

  The hideous, crude, bars slashed into my arm had faded. The ridges sank back into the skin. I pushed my fingers into them, but they felt more faded and receded than when Magnes had done it.

  I yanked the curtains closed and pulled the obsidian chunk from velvet. The rough edges raked my skin, threatening to slice me like a blade, but the cool well of secrets rose to my palm, a piece of the night sky without stars.

  The Oracle was the one who decided when a stone was ready. Choosing that moment was our first major test since the later training all required a bowl. Acolytes who chose the wrong stone, did not purify it correctly, sent it to be cut too soon, all failed. It was always better to wait than to guess. A flawed bowl was useless, or dangerous.

  Was I powerful and experienced enough to risk using a flawed bowl? Should I use the mirror instead? Should I wait?