The Oracle's Secret (The Oracle Saga Book 1) (10 page)

We walk over the threshold and the door closes behind us. I turn, but there’s no handle on this side, and I already know it must be magically sealed. We can only go forward from here.

A faint red mist forms around us, and coalesces into the shape of a man, insubstantial but still there, looking at us.

‘Welcome,’ he says, and his voice sounds echoey and faraway. ‘I am an echo the Nineteenth Prince of the Southern Kingdom. I am the one who locked the Lightstone away. If you have come this far then you have reached the final obstacles. Before you take this on, be certain that you really want the stone. You will be tested before you reach it - tests of strength, wisdom, foresight and judgement. If you fail these tests, the price might be your death. Do you wish to reach the Lightstone?’

‘Yes,’ I say firmly, at the same time as Tarian.

‘Good luck, then,’ he says, and fades away into a mist again before totally disappearing.

The first test seems to be a physical one. Far in the distance we can see another door, but we’re kept from it by a series of obstacles. They look challenging but not impassable - a wall to climb, a rope swing over a little ditch, a pool to wade through, a group of pillars to weave through.

‘Come on,’ says Tarian. ‘This doesn’t look too hard.’

The wall is at head height for me, shoulder height for Tarian, and there are plenty of hand and footholds. I don’t see how it’s going to take us more than a few seconds to climb over it, but the moment my hand touches the wall, it suddenly soars above me.

‘Oh,’ I say.

Tarian jumps back. ‘It looks normal if I’m not touching it,’ he says.

He puts his hand on the wall again. ‘Unless we can fly over it, it looks like we’re climbing the long way,’ he says.

I start to climb. It’s not too bad at first. There are so many footholds it almost feels like a ladder, and Tarian is beside me. Just knowing he’s there makes me feel safer. But then I make the mistake of looking down. The ground is far below us, and I sway in place, suddenly reminded of standing at the top of the falls, looking down and knowing that I’d have to jump.

‘Keep going, Livya,’ says Tarian beside me. ‘It’s no different than it was at the bottom. You’re doing the exact same thing.’

‘You’re right,’ I say.

I keep climbing, pretending that I’m still near the bottom. I don’t make the mistake of looking down again. I try not to wonder how long we’ve been climbing. My arms are starting to ache. Then, we come out at the top, and instead of a wall we’re on a wide platform. And I see that the rope swing over a ditch from before is actually a zip line over a deep chasm.

‘Oh, great,’ I say. ‘More death-defying heights. They’re starting to be my favourite.’

There’s no harness or anything, just a handle to hold onto.

‘You’ll be all right,’ says Tarian. ‘Just stay calm and it’ll be over before you know it.’

‘How are we both going to get across?’ I ask.

He frowns. ‘Good question. I can’t see how the pulley gets back up here. Maybe we should go together.’

He goes to the pulley and tugs at it appraisingly. ‘I think it should take both of our weight,’ he says.

‘How do you know?’ I ask. ‘Are you an expert?’

‘I know a few things,’ he says. ‘I worked at an outdoor pursuits centre for a while, back home. Come on, this’ll be fine. hold onto me. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.’

He smiles, and those eyes charm me again. I’d believe anything he tells me. He leads me to the edge of the shelf and I hop up so that my legs are wrapped tightly around his waist and my arms are looped around his shoulders. I lay my head on his chest, burying my face. I don’t look, but I feel his arms move as he grabs the pulley and jumps.

We’re flying then, hurtling through the air. It’s like the waterfall but not, the same rushing speed but forward, not down, and I can feel every movement of Tarian’s body, his shoulders flexing beneath my arms as we swing to our destination.

We land with a jolt and I unhook my legs, sliding to the ground. He hugs me and I realise I’m shaking.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad,’ he says, kissing my cheek.

I peer down into the chasm we just crossed. I can’t even see the bottom. It just seems to go on and on into darkness. I shiver. At least that must be the worst part.

The little pool I remember is a vast stretch of water with a strong current moving across it, leading to sharp rocks on the far side. I’m not even surprised at this point. Tarian is probably a strong enough swimmer to handle it, but I’m convinced that I’ll end up smashed to pieces. I look over my shoulder, wishing I could still go back - but what good would it do? There’s my blood oath to consider. My life’s not my own. This is what I have to do.

‘Can you make it across?’ I ask Tarian.

He nods. ‘You’re going to have trouble, though. I’ll tow you.’

I feel guilty and embarrassed. He’s carried me across all of these obstacles so far. I may as well be a dead weight.

‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

‘I can do it,’ he says. He sees the look on my face and gives me a comforting smile. ‘Livya, it’s not your fault you can’t swim, you’ve barely left court,’ he says. ‘If you’d spent your whole childhood learning, like I did, it would be different.’

‘I know,’ I say, but I still feel useless, especially when we step into the water and he puts his arm around me to keep me close and starts swimming, strong and fast, cutting through the water like an arrow while I just stay still and try not to get in his way. The current batters us but he keeps us on target and away from the jagged rocks. I watch through the spray that obscures my sight. I’m almost grateful when a vision arrives, pushing onto me before I have time to try to force it back.

All I see is a blur, and I realise that I’m crying. I don’t know what about, I just know that I’m devastated, filled with misery and despair. Nobody is touching me or talking to me. I’m just weeping, alone, like the world is about to end.

I snap back to myself and we’re still in the water, getting closer to the other side, but also closer to the rocks. I can feel Tarian’s heart hammering as he fights to get us through the water, forcing us closer to safety. The rocks are getting nearer and nearer, but then suddenly we’re at the shore, we’ve made it. I climb out, wet and scared but otherwise fine. Tarian is panting, his face red. I help him out of the water and he’s shaking.

‘Lie down a minute,’ I say. ‘Are you all right?’

He nods and then lies back on the stone shore, taking my advice. I stroke his wet hair away from his eyes, trying to shrug off the memory of the vision. What was I so upset about? Is it something that’s going to happen soon, or a long way in the future? There were no clues, and it scares me.

Tarian’s breathing gradually slows.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how I’d have made it through that by myself.’

‘You would have found a way,’ he says. ‘But I’m glad I was here to help.’

There are only the pillars now. I stand to get a better look at them. They look like they did before - a cluster of pillars, close together, in between us and the door. I take Tarian’s hand and we walk in, still dripping water from the swim.

I can’t see the door any more. All I can see is pillars stretching in every direction. We walk forward but the placement of the pillars forces us to curve until I’m not sure where we’re going any more.

‘Stop,’ says Tarian. ‘It’s like the maze. Let me think.’

He closes his eyes for a second and I watch him. His expression becomes calm, confident.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘Come on.’

I’m grateful to follow his lead through the twisting, deceptive pillars, but I feel useless again. Another obstacle that I couldn’t navigate without him. What use am I, really? Maybe having visions isn’t my whole destiny - but what else am I actually good at?

We walk through the pillars, Tarian striding ahead with certainty, and when we emerge, the door we want is right in front of us.

‘One challenge down,’ says Tarian.

I smile in agreement, hoping that the next challenge will be something I feel better equipped to deal with.

At least there’s no obstacle course this time. This room is smaller and there’s just a table made of flat, smooth stone, with raised squares all over it. This is the puzzle I saw in my vision. We walk towards the table and stare at it.

‘What do we do?’ asks Tarian.

Good question. Each of the little squares has something carved on top of it - a line, a shape, a picture. One of them has a sun with rays shining out of it, others have rings or lightning bolts or runes that I vaguely recognise from learning about the history of magic when I was younger.

‘I think we have to move them into the right places,’ I say.

I touch one of the squares and slide my finger across it. It follows the movement of my hand, but it stops against the next square with nowhere left to go. There are spaces between some of the squares, but not all of them. I try picking one up, but it’s firmly attached to the table. The only way to move them is within the pattern. It’s like one of those annoying sliding puzzles where you have to make the picture match up, or like a Rubik’s cube that’s ten times bigger and flat.

‘Well, what
are
the right places?’ Tarian asks.

He’s right, there’s no point doing anything until we can figure out what the pattern is actually supposed to look like.

‘Can you find the right places?’ I ask. ‘Can you tell where they all need to go?’

He shakes his head. ‘This is too small scale for a clear reading - and besides, even if I knew where they should go, I wouldn’t have a clue how to get them there.’

I frown, peering at the squares. Some of the pictures seem related to each other - there’s a crescent moon, a semicircle that could be a half moon, and a circle with a blob across it that could be a cloud moving over a full moon. I try to remember what my handlers taught me about paying attention, seeing patterns, really looking at everything I’m seeing, and I realise that all of the images must correspond to the others in some way. There’s a logic to this, if only I can see it.

I lean forward and examine all the squares, mentally putting them into categories, rearranging them, trying other categories to see what fits together how. And it all clicks into place.

‘Look!’ I say. ‘These ones with the lines, there are just the right amount of them to go all around the edge of the pattern. And the runes would fit in a square inside those, with gaps in between. Then all of the different groups of squares keep doing the same, going in smaller and smaller rings. The sun goes in the middle, with the moon squares around it.’

Tarian whistles. ‘How did you figure that all out?’ he asks.

‘It’s the only thing that makes sense,’ I say. ‘The numbers of squares match perfectly!’

He frowns down at the table, shaking his head. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he says. ‘All right - how do we get them there?’

That’s a bit more complicated, but now that I know what I’m aiming for, I know we’ll get there. I give Tarian the easiest bit to do - getting all of the edge pieces out to the edge - while I work on the squares in the middle, working from the centre outward. I move the sun to the middle spot, then find all of the moon squares, and I get so absorbed that it’s almost like meditating - I’m calm and focused, and there’s nothing here except me and the squares as I move them slowly around, getting them closer to where they need to be. I almost forget that Tarian is beside me until he gets the last edge piece out and cheers.

I look up at him and grin. ‘All right,’ I say, ‘now you actually have to put them in the right order on that outside edge. Look how each one looks similar to the next one, how the shapes follow each other - start with this one here and go from there.’

He works on that while I finish the centre. It’s really taking shape now, the pattern I saw in my mind coming to life in my hands. It’s incredibly satisfying. Maybe if we ever get out of this I should do more jigsaw puzzles.

Tarian finishes the edge, I move the last centre piece in, and the whole thing glows for a moment. I wish I had a way to take a picture of the finished product, but the door is opening ahead of us and we need to go through, so I leave it behind with one last wistful look. It was really fun to be good at something for a while.

The next room is one that I didn’t see in my vision. The only thing in it is a large rock at our feet.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ I ask.

The mist from before appears and the ghost of the Nineteenth Prince nods a greeting at us. ‘Only one of you may perform this task,’ he says. ‘Choose wisely. The one chosen must move the rock from here to the door. Once they have picked it up, they may only put it down once, or the door will not open.’’

It’s a good distance to move something that big - maybe thirty metres or so.

‘I’ll do it,’ says Tarian.

‘Very well,’ says the Prince, and disappears.

It makes sense. Tarian is much stronger than me physically. He does a few stretches, squats down, and picks up the rock. He grunts at the weight and staggers forward, off balance. I walk near him, wishing that I could do something to help.

He takes a few steps, then pauses for a second, shifting his grip. I pray he doesn’t have to put it down before he even gets halfway. But he doesn’t, he sets off again, a little steadier this time. I’m looking ahead and dividing up the distance he still has to go. We’re one eighth of the way there now, then one sixth, then a quarter, then three eighths... when we get to halfway I celebrate silently - he hasn’t even put the rock down yet.

‘How far?’ he gasps after a while. I realise he can’t tell, he’s too busy working on not dropping it.

‘More than halfway!’ I tell him. ‘About five eighths!’

He staggers a few more steps and then drops the rock, narrowly avoiding his own toes. He leans forward, panting. I come over.

‘You’re doing great!’ I say, taking his hand.

He smiles at me and it fills me with light. Even if the worst happens, I’m glad this journey brought us together.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘Time to go again. Kiss for luck?’

I kiss him, slow and deep, and then he picks up the rock and begins to walk again. This time I can see that it’s harder. He’s used so much of his strength already, and it’s been a gruelling few days. Instead of taking several steps at once he takes one, then stops, then another, then stops.

‘I know you can do this!’ I say. ‘You’re three quarters there now!’

He staggers on a couple more steps, stops again to adjust the rock in his arms. Every movement is a strain now, and I wish I could take some of it away for him, but I don’t dare even touch him while he’s carrying the rock, in case that breaks the rules.

Every inch is a battle now. His steps are smaller every time, and he groans with the effort of each one. But he’s getting closer, closer. The distance left to travel gets smaller and smaller until finally, with a last grunt of effort, he drops the stone at the door, so that it touches it. Then he sits abruptly down, his head in his hands, his shoulders shuddering. He’s slick with sweat and panting. I sit beside him, stroking his hair from his eyes as he gets his breath back.

‘You did it,’ I say. ‘We’re one step closer.’

He manages a laugh. ‘Anyone can have brute strength,’ he says. ‘What about you with that puzzle? That was really impressive.’

‘We’re both pretty impressive,’ I grin.

We wait a few minutes while he gets the feeling back in his arms, and then we walk through the open door.

The room looks totally empty this time, except for a small pedestal beside us with a single piece of cloth on it. I’m about to go and see what it is when the ghostly Prince reappears.

‘You have successfully completed the challenge,’ he says. ‘You chose who would do it, and you chose well. Now your choice will have a consequence. The one who performed the last test cannot participate in the next.’

That means, whatever’s coming next, I’ll have to do it alone. I swallow, hoping there are no more heavy things that need carrying. The Prince gestures into the room, and as he does a cube of stone falls from the ceiling - not a little one like the ones in the puzzle, but one that’s easily a metre across. It just drops right out of the ceiling and lands on the floor with a deafening crash and a cloud of dust.

‘Before the door can be opened,’ says the Prince, ‘the chosen one must walk across this entire room, avoiding the danger from above.’ He pauses, and I think I see a flicker of a smile. ‘Blindfold,’ he says, and then he’s gone.