LITMIR.BIZ

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replaced him on the throne had Illior protected the land again as the Oracle had promised.

      Until now.

      When Agnalain died so suddenly, it was whispered that Prince Erius and his brother Aron had had a hand in it. But the rumour had been whispered with relief rather than condemnation; everyone knew Erius had ruled in all but name during the last terrible years of his mother’s decline. The renewed rumblings from Plenimar were growing too loud for the nobles to risk civil war on behalf of a child queen. The crown passed to Erius without challenge. Plenimar attacked the southern ports that same year and he drove the invaders back into the sea and burned their black ships. This seemed to lay the prophecy to rest.

      All the same, there had been more blights and drought in the past nineteen years than even the oldest wizards could recall. The current drought was in its third year in some parts of the country, and had wiped out whole villages already decimated by wildfires and waves of plague brought in from the northern trade routes. Arkoniel’s parents had died in one such epidemic a few years earlier. A quarter of Ero’s population had succumbed in a few months’ time, including Prince Aron, as well as Erius’ consort, both daughters, and two of his three sons, leaving only the second youngest boy, Korin, alive. Since then, the words of the Oracle were being whispered again in certain quarters.

      Iya had her own reasons now for regretting Erius’ coup. His sister, Ariani, had grown up to marry Iya’s patron, powerful Duke Rhius of Atyion. The couple was expecting their first child in the fall.

      Both wizards were sweating and winded by the time they reached the tight cul-de-sac where the shrine lay.

      ‘It’s not quite what I expected,’ Arkoniel muttered, eyeing what appeared to be a broad stone well.

      Iya chuckled. ‘Don’t judge too quickly.’

      Two sturdy priests in dusty red robes and silver masks sat in the shade of a wooden lean-to beside the well. Iya joined them and sat down heavily on a stone seat. ‘I need time to compose my thoughts,’ she told Arkoniel. ‘You go first.’

      The priests carried a coil of heavy rope to the well, motioning for Arkoniel to join them. He gave Iya a nervous grin as they fixed a loop of it around his hips. Still silent, they guided him into the stone enclosure to the entrance to the oracle chamber. From the surface, this was nothing but a hole in the ground about four feet in diameter.

      It was always daunting, this act of faith and surrender, and more so the first time. But as always, Arkoniel did not hesitate. Sitting with his feet over the edge, he gripped the rope and nodded for the priests to let him down. He slid out of sight and they paid out the line until it went slack.

      Iya remained in the lean-to, trying to still her racing heart. She’d done her best for days not to think too directly on what she was about to do. Now that she was here, she suddenly regretted her decision. Closing her eyes, she tried to examine this fear, but could find no basis for it. Yes, she was disobeying her master’s injunction, but that wasn’t it. Here on the very doorstep of the Oracle, she had a premonition of something dark looming just ahead. She prayed silently for the strength to face whatever Illior revealed to her today, for she could not turn aside.

      Arkoniel’s twitch on the rope came sooner than she’d expected. The priests hauled him up and he hurried over and collapsed on the ground beside her, looking rather perplexed.

      ‘Iya, it was the strangest thing!’ he began, but she held up a warning hand.

      ‘There’ll be time enough later,’ she told him, knowing she must go now or not at all.

      She took her place in the harness, breath tight in her chest as she hung her feet over the edge of the hole. Grasping the rope with one hand and the leather bag with the other, she nodded to the priests and began her descent.

      She felt the familiar nervous flutter in her belly as she swung down into the cool darkness. She’d never been able to guess the actual dimensions of this underground chamber; the silence and faint movement of air against her face suggested a vast cavern. Where the sunlight struck the stone floor below, it showed the gently undulating smoothness of stone worn by some ancient underground river.

      After a few moments her feet touched solid ground and she stepped free of the rope and out of the circle of sunlight. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out a faint glow nearby and walked towards it. The light had appeared from a different direction each time she’d come here. When she reached the Oracle at last, however, everything was just as she remembered.

      A crystal orb on a silver tripod gave off a wide circle of light. The Oracle sat next to it on a low ivory stool carved in the shape of a crouching dragon.

      This one is so young! Iya thought, inexplicably saddened. The last two Oracles had been old women with skin bleached white by years of darkness. This girl was no more than fourteen, but her skin was already pale. Dressed in a simple linen shift that left her arms and feet bare, she sat with her palms on her knees. Her face was round and plain, her eyes vacant. Like wizards, the sibyls of Afra did not escape Illior’s touch unscathed.

      Iya knelt at her feet. A masked priest stepped into the circle of light with a large silver salver held out before him. The silence of the chamber swallowed Iya’s sigh as she unwrapped the bowl and placed it on the salver.

      The priest presented it to the Oracle, placing it on her knees. Her face remained vacant, betraying nothing.

      Doesn’t she feel the evil of the thing? Iya wondered. The unveiled power of it made Iya’s head hurt.

      The girl stirred at last and looked down at the bowl. Silvery light bright as moonshine on snow swelled in a nimbus around her head and shoulders. Iya felt a thrill of awe. Illior had entered the girl.

      ‘I see demons feasting on the dead. I see the God Whose Name Is Not Spoken,’ the Oracle said softly.

      Iya’s heart turned to stone in her breast, her worst fears confirmed. This was Seriamaius, the dark god of necromancy worshipped by the Plenimarans, who’d come so close to destroying Skala in the Great War. ‘I’ve dreamt this. War and disasters far worse than any Skala has ever known.’

      ‘You see too far, Wizard.’ The Oracle lifted the bowl in both hands and by some trick of the light her eyes became sunken black holes in her face. The priest was nowhere to be seen now, although Iya had not heard him leave.

      The Oracle turned the bowl slowly in her hands. ‘Black makes white. Foul makes pure. Evil creates greatness. Out of Plenimar comes present salvation and future peril. This is a seed that must be watered with blood. But you see too far.’

      The Oracle tilted the bowl forward and bright blood splashed out, too much for such a small vessel. It formed a round pool on the stone floor at the Oracle’s feet. Looking into it, Iya caught the reflection of a woman’s face framed by the visor of a bloody war helm. Iya could make out two intense blue eyes, a firm mouth above a pointed chin. The face was harsh one moment, sorrowful the next, and so familiar that it made her heart ache, though she couldn’t say then of whom those eyes reminded her. Flames reflected off the helm and somewhere in the distance Iya heard the clash of battle.

      The apparition slowly faded and was replaced by that of a shining white palace standing on a high cliff. It had a glittering dome, and at each of its four corners stood a slender tower.

      ‘Behold the Third Orëska,’ the Oracle whispered. ‘Here may you lay your burden down.’

      Iya leaned forward with a gasp of awe. The palace had hundreds of windows and at every window stood a wizard, looking directly at her. In the highest window of the closest tower she saw Arkoniel, robed in blue and holding the bowl in his hands. A little child with thick blond curls stood at his side.

      She could see Arkoniel quite clearly now, even though she was so far away. He was an old man, with a face deeply lined and weary beyond words. Even so, her heart swelled with joy at the sight of him.

      ‘Ask,’ the Oracle whispered.

      ‘What is the bowl?’ she called to Arkoniel.

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