The Oracle's Secret (The Oracle Saga Book 1) (6 page)

‘Tarian, do you have a knife?’ I ask.

He shakes his head.

‘Me neither,’ I say. ‘Steele, you don’t know a cutting spell or anything, do you?’

‘Nothing that would work on this,’ he admits.

I struggle to think past the fog of exhaustion and fear. No illumination spell or bad smell is going to help us here, and I don’t have much else in my arsenal. I look around for inspiration but nothing suggests itself.

‘A fire spell!’ I gasp. ‘Steele, can you do a fire spell?’

‘I don’t have enough juice for a whole fireball, but I should be able to manage a decent blaze,’ he says.

‘All we’ll need,’ I say. ‘That bridge is just about ready to collapse anyway. We just need to give it a bit of help.’

Still roped up, we rush to the bridge. Steele concentrates on the incantation. I watch our enemies. They’ve spotted that we’re trying to stop them and they’re running - I don’t know how they have the nerve to run across that horrifying excuse for a bridge, but they are.

‘Hurry!’ I say. Steele just gives me the finger, not stopping his chanting.

At last a lick of flame appears on the rope. It’s so small that the breeze almost blows it out. I lean across and cup the flame in my hands to protect it. This is ridiculous. At this rate the most they’re going to get is gently warmed as they cross the bridge and slaughter us.

Steele repeats the incantation with more force and at last the flame gets going properly, spreading rapidly down the rope and onto the planks. The crackling gets louder as the fire eats its way down the bridge. One of the handrail ropes snap, a coil of flame swinging down into the chasm below. On the upswing it catches the bridge again, spreading the fire further down its length. The Northerners on the bridge notice what’s happening and stop running, standing there for a second, unsure what to do. They’re already a good distance away from the other end.

They start running again. They’re seriously going to attempt to get through a wall of flame that could collapse at any moment and hurl them into the abyss. I’m awed at their stupidity, but then I remember the blood oath - if it was me trying to stop them from getting to the Lightstone, would I do the same?

The thought makes me shudder and I push it to the back of my mind.

‘Come on, come on...’ I say under my breath, willing the flames to spread further, faster. At the same time I wish those Northerners would head back - they’re probably under orders to kill us but I don’t really want anyone to die.

This whole side of the bridge is engulfed in flames now, but it’s still just about standing. The Northerners are almost at the fire, and I wince as the first of them runs into the flames - but just then the whole thing finally gives way, and all of them go plunging into the chasm. I hold my breath, and I can’t help leaning over to see what happens.

One of them must have some pretty impressive manifestation powers, because a huge safety net appears below them and they all thud into it, the impact making the net bounce. They scramble off the net and onto the ground, dodging the burning bits of rope and wood falling from the destroyed bridge.

I’m glad they’re not dead, but part of me has to admit that it would have made things easier. If they’re still after us, we can’t afford to let up for a second. Steele’s obviously come to the same conclusion because he’s busy untying the ropes that still bind us all together.

‘There’s no way of knowing if there’s an easy way out of that chasm,’ he says. ‘I hope it’ll put them at least a couple of hours behind us, but we can’t afford to take chances. We need to keep going.’

I’m so tired I want to cry, but I know he’s right. Once we’re all untied we head back into the trees and keep following Tarian’s nose. He hardly seems tired at all, and he’s not bothered by the uneven terrain and the constant obstacles and the mud and the flies. The whole time I was in London I walked to and from work, which amounted to ninety minutes of exercise almost every day. I thought I was getting pretty fit, but this forest is really taking its toll. Steele seems uncomfortable too - he may know a lot about fighting and being heroic, but he learned to do those things at court. Tarian seems totally at home here - he knows where to step so that he doesn’t end up ankle-deep in mud - which, by the way, I now am - he doesn’t trip over tree roots or get his hair caught in thorns. He’s like an elf or something, if elves were real. Except that I picture elves being sort of skinny and wispy, and he’s definitely not that. No elf ever had shoulders like that. But I could imagine an elf having that mysterious smile, those eyes...

No! This is not the sort of thing I should be concentrating on right now. I already need most of my attention to avoid falling over. Steele is hurrying us along at a brutal pace and it’s all I can do to make sure I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

We walk for hours, until the sun is high in the sky and the warmth of the day has us all sweating. The water bottles were in the pack, so we’re all thirsty and hungry and pissed off at the world, but none of us slows down or stops. My mouth is as dry as a desert. My legs can hardly support me. I’m gasping for breath.

And that’s when the vision hits.

I’ve had a couple over the course of the morning - intense because of the strength of the magic here, but otherwise insignificant. One of them was just a vision of walking through trees. Everything looks so the same here that I’m not even sure if that one’s come true yet. But this one slams into me, and I can feel the breath being knocked out of my present body even as I’m falling into the future.

What I see can only be the Lightstone. It’s just small enough to sit comfortably in my palm, it’s rounded, it glows, and strange patterns move on its surface. Plus, in the vision, I just
know
it’s the Lightstone. Right now it’s flying through the air, in a slow, graceful arc that’s made all the slower by the warped sense of time in the vision. I watch it fly for what feels like minutes to me. My hand it in the air, reaching towards it. Am I trying to catch it? What’s happening? The details are clear but the situation is fuzzy. I can’t see where I am or who else is there or anything - just the Lightstone falling, my hand in the air.

I slam back to my own body with a gasp. I keep my eyes closed for a moment, trying to hold onto the vision, work out what it means. Is someone going to throw the Lightstone? Will I have to catch it? God, I hope not, I’m terrible at catching. Cherry used to despair of me when we played together. I wish Cherry was here.

Cherry wouldn’t have just left me where I fell on a soggy mud patch. I sit up, dragging bits of tree out of my hair.

‘Thanks for the help, guys,’ I say to Steele and Tarian, who are a little way off, talking.

‘Oh, you’re awake,’ say Steele. ‘Good. Anything useful?’

I explain about the vision. ‘I know it isn’t much,’ I say. ‘But when that moment comes, it could be helpful.’

Steele nods. ‘We’ll watch out for it. All right, let’s move on.’

‘How about a twenty-minute break?’ suggests Tarian. ‘We’ve been walking for hours, and we know we have a start on them. If we keep going at this pace we’re going to drop. We don’t just need to get to the Lightstone, we need to be in a fit state to get it out of here when we do.’

Steele hesitates, then nods. ‘Twenty minutes exactly,’ he says.

I’m torn. I mean, a twenty-minute break is a great idea, even if a proper night’s sleep in a bed would be a better one. And I’m so tired that I’m shaky and I keep seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye that isn’t there. But I don’t know if taking a rest when I’m on the Prince’s mission violates my blood oath. What if I’m just sitting here relaxing and I start dissolving from the inside out or something, because I’m not obeying his commands?

I think about insisting that we press on, but Steele is already sitting and Tarian is flat on his front on the ground. I’m not sure I can persuade them. I wish I knew more about how blood oaths work. All I really know is that something hideous happens if you break one, but I can’t work out what the rules are or how to follow them. It isn’t fair.

The thought leaves me too restless to sit down, so instead I wander into the trees, first to pee behind some bushes and then to follow the sound of running water that I hear.

It’s a stream running past the trees. The water looks cool and fresh. I kneel down and make a cup of my hands to scoop some up. It’s so cold that it makes my teeth hurt, but I’m so thirsty I don’t care. I keep drinking and drinking and drinking.

‘Hey!’ I call at last. ‘I found water!’

A couple of minutes later Steele and Tarian appear.

‘It’s good!’ I say, pointing at the stream.

They both bend down to drink. My stomach feels like a water balloon but I drink more too. My mouth is still so dry. Then I stick my hands into the water to cool them down, and splash water on my face and neck.

I wonder about washing, but that seems like a lost cause at the moment. I’m wearing more forest than clothes. My boots are invisible inside a thick layer of mud and there are insects nesting in my hair. I feel grosser than I’ve ever felt in my life before, even the time I had to clean all the grease out of the deep fat frier at work. It’s some small consolation that Steele and Tarian aren’t much better. Both of them have stripped down to tank tops and they’re both grimy and sweaty. As I watch, Tarian pushes his hair out of his eyes with a damp hand and leaves a streak of mud across his forehead.

Normally watching two hot guys splash around would be a treat, but I’m getting more and more worried about breaking my blood oath, so I stand up, shaking my hands dry.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘They could be catching up with us. We need to get back on track.’

They both groan, and Steele swears at me, but they don’t disagree. Tarian starts off into the trees again, following his amazing Finder powers. Steele and I follow Tarian, and it’s back to the same old routine of one foot in front of the other, past trees and trees and trees and trees and nothing but trees.

We walk and we walk some more. All I am now is walking. I forget that I was ever a girl called Livya, that I ever had a life outside this forest, that I ever ate Chinese takeaway with my flatmate or got my hair cut or danced to Beyonce songs with my best friend. All I do now is walk. There was never a time when my thighs and calves and knees didn’t ache. This pounding has always been in my head.

When Tarian says, ‘something’s weird here’, I’m not even sure for a minute where the sound is coming from.

‘What do you mean, weird?’ asks Steele.

Tarian frowns. ‘Either my powers are going haywire, or the path to the Lightstone is getting really odd.’

‘Odd how?’ I ask.

‘I know that the stone is in that direction,’ Tarian points ahead, the way we’ve been going all day. ‘I can feel it even more strongly now that we’re closer. But the path... is telling me to go this way.’ He points to the left.

‘We head towards the stone,’ says Steele. ‘I don’t care what the path tells you.’

‘I’m telling
you
,’ Tarian says, ‘that if we try to head straight for the stone, we won’t get there! Since we got here I’ve been finding the path as well as the stone, to make sure we were taking the quickest route. And the quickest route right now is... somewhere down there.’

‘Why should I believe you have a clue what you’re talking about?’ Steele says.

Tarian folds his arms across his chest. ‘That’s why you brought me, remember? Because I’m the only one who can find the stone and you’re lost without me?’

Bad move. Steele hates it when he’s not the most important. He glares at Tarian.

‘Know your place, peasant,’ he says. ‘The Prince allowed you to come on this mission for him and he put you under my command. You’re here to advise me, not to act insubordinate to your betters!’

Tarian’s eyes fire with anger, and before I know it he’s thrown a punch at Steele. Steele’s expecting it though, and he dodges, swings back, narrowly missing Tarian. Then they’re pulling each other to the ground, scrambling, wrestling, their limbs sliding in the slick mud. For a moment I just stare as they grapple - are they really doing this? Now?

‘Stop it!’ I yell, but they pay me no attention.

I don’t want to get in the middle of that, so instead I walk a little way in the direction Tarian pointed, to see what’s actually there. I only walk for a minute or two before I come up against a thick wall of trees, standing so close together that I can’t squeeze my way between any of them. climbing plants and bushes plug all the holes so that the line is impenetrable, as effective as a stone barrier. Even if we had an axe, the trees are too thick to cut down easily.

But Tarian was so sure it was this way. What am I missing? I walk down the line a little and I find it - a gap just large enough for a person to walk through.  I stick my head inside - there’s a path, but it’s bordered on both sides by that same wall of trees. I peer into the gloom - not much light gets through the trees. A little way off I can see the path branch into two.

It’s a maze.

I run back to Steele and Tarian. They’re still writhing on the ground, and Tarian is pinning Steele’s arms behind him. It looks painful. I don’t really feel bad for him but we are in a hurry.

‘Enough!’ I yell. ‘Is this helping us find the stone? What would the Prince say? Steele, you should know better! And Tarian, you shouldn’t let Steele get to you, he’s full of crap. Come on, I’ve found the way.’

They get up, both mud-spattered and red-faced. They don’t look at each other. Steele grunts when he sees that I’m leading them the way Tarian said, but he doesn’t object. Maybe he can learn after all.

‘It’s a maze,’ I tell them, when we get back there. ‘I bet that’s why the path was telling Tarian to come this way. If we’d gone any further straight ahead we’d just have come to the wall of the maze, and we would have had to come all the way back here to find the entrance.’

‘But how are we going to find a way through?’ Steele asks.

Tarian snorts. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

‘You can use your Finder powers for that?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘I can find anything - it doesn’t have to be a physical object. If I concentrate on finding the fork that will lead us closer to the end of the maze, I can lead us through, but it might take a little while. I’ll have to concentrate on each fork individually.’

‘It’ll still be quicker than guessing,’ I say. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

We walk into the maze. It’s immediately darker, the sunlight barely penetrating the dense leaves overhead. It makes me want to nap. I’m losing count now of how long it’s been since I slept - it must be mid-afternoon at least by now. No wonder Steele and Tarian were fighting, I’m feeling pretty cranky myself. I’m just surprised they had the energy. We haven’t eaten since before we lost the pack, either.

We reach the first fork in less than a minute. Tarian stops. ‘I need quiet to concentrate,’ he says.

Steele looks like he’s about to object, but I glare him into silence. I watch as Tarian closes his eyes, breathing slowly, his chest moving in a slow, calm rhythm. I try to breathe along with him, making myself as calm and still as he is. It helps a little with the buzzing in my head. I keep my eyes on Tarian. Watching him like this feels a little like watching him sleep. My eyes roam over his soft lips, his nose that’s just a little crooked, his dark, curly hair. He brings his hands together and I picture their strength, imagine them holding me, pulling me close...

No, there’s no time for this, I remind myself. Maybe if we get out alive. And if we stop hating each other. Yeah. I’m embarrassed at myself for how long it took me to remember that we hate each other. Didn’t he just yell insults at me a few hours ago? Did that happen yesterday or today? It’s all blurring together... but he hates me, and I hate him now too, so there’s no point thinking about it.

Tarian’s eyes are still closed but he smiles, a soft curve that makes me want to dive over there right now and make him smile even more. But I don’t, because we
hate each other
. Get with the program, Livya, I tell myself. I can convince my mouth not to kiss him, my arms not to curl around him and hold him tight, but I can’t say anything to quell the sudden fire deep within me when I look at him.

It’s just tiredness, I tell myself. You’re exhausted and you’re trapped in a forest with two hot guys. You’ll forget all about him the second you’re out of here. You’re probably just mentally preparing yourself for when you fail and get trapped here and have to start a new civilisation with just these two losers.

‘I’ve got it,’ Tarian says. ‘It’s this way.’

He points down the left fork, and leads the way. Steele and I follow in single file, since that’s about all the maze will allow.

‘Why is there a maze here anyway?’ I say, partly because talking helps keep me awake and partly because it distracts me from watching the motion of Tarian’s body as he walks ahead of me, and a tiny bit because I actually want to know the answer.

‘Because the forest wants there to be,’ says Tarian instantly, like it’s obvious.

Behind me, Steele snorts. ‘Look, I know you’re from the land of fairies and nature and all that crap, but come on...’

‘No, it makes sense,’ I say. ‘This is a totally magical place, nobody without magic powers can even access it. Why shouldn’t it be able to change when it wants to?’

‘I’m betting this is part of the Lightstone’s protection,’ says Tarian. ‘The Prince’s ancestor probably made sure that whoever wanted to get it would have to face plenty of obstacles. I’ll be surprised if we don’t find worse ones later on.’

My heart sinks, but what he’s saying makes sense. We keep walking, waiting at another few forks while Tarian decides the way. It gets a little darker. Once I think I hear something behind us, in the distance, but I have another useless vision of trees and I can’t hear it by the time I’m back to myself.

We keep walking as the sun sinks below the tops of the trees. I cast my illumination spell again, softer this time, so that I can carry it in my hand and light our way. The brightness in my face keeps me from falling asleep on my feet, even though I can’t help yawning.

‘I wonder how much further it is,’ I say.

‘We could be stuck in here for days,’ says Steele, who seems to have adopted pessimism as a coping strategy.

‘No, I think we might be nearly out,’ says Tarian. ‘I get a sense that the end of the maze is close.’

I don’t dare let myself be hopeful but we move quickly past the next few forks, and I can’t tell if it’s my imagination but the trees seem to be thinning out a little. And then, finally, there are no more forks, just a long, narrow path with a single exit visible at the end. I’m so glad to see it that I want to run, but Tarian keeps up the same steady pace ahead of me. I’m maybe fifty steps from freedom. Forty. Thirty.

And then there’s a scream behind me, a horrible sound that shouldn’t have come from any human throat, but it did. It came from Steele.

I whirl and see him slam to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head. He stops moving. Is he dead? I think he’s dead. My blood turns to ice in my veins. God, I know I didn’t like him, but I never wanted this. It’s hard to look at him.

I look up and see one of the Northerners from before, a pale, dark-haired woman holding blue sparks between her hands and smirking. Electricity powers.

I look around wildly. There are more of them behind her. They must have followed us right the way through the maze, waiting until Tarian led them to the exit to kill us all. I stifle a sob and brace myself for the moment of my death.

‘Wait,’ I hear one of them say, ‘don’t kill her.’

‘What?’ says the woman. ‘I thought we only needed the Finder?’

‘Yeah, but I recognise her,’ says the other voice. ‘She’s the Oracle. Much more valuable alive.’

‘Ah,’ the woman grins at me. ‘This changes everything... Imagine how thrilled the Prince will be when we come back with not only the Lightstone, but also the only known Oracle around...’

They laugh. I fling an illumination spell at them and run, Tarian running too ahead of me, but I don’t even reach the edge of the maze before cold fire wraps my legs and brings me crashing down on my face. I taste blood, and the electricity still wraps me, keeping me from moving. I move my head and see Tarian ahead of me, trapped as well, struggling with the bright blue crackles that contain him. He’s brave, I’ll give him that much, but there’s no point in struggling. It’s over.