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Glenda Larke: The Heart of the mirage

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Glenda Larke The Heart of the mirage

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I stood, still puzzled. T am deeply honoured, Reverence.'

'You are indeed,' she said. Her voice was as dry as grape leaves in autumn.

She found my summons hard to believe too.

CHAPTER TWO

High Priestess Antonia took me behind the altar to the sanctum, that area of the temple not open to the public. Deep inside the building, we entered a small unoccupied room. 'I must blindfold you,' she said, taking a cloth from a hook. She meant me no harm, I could sense that much, so I acquiesced. However, with the blindfold on, I could see nothing and began to feel uneasy.

There was an odd noise, like the turning of a millstone grinding wheat. I thought, Some kind of opening mechanism for a hidden entrance, and filed the information away. Then she spoke again. 'There are stairs.' She hooked her arm into mine to guide me. I resented her touch, disliking my dependency on her, loathing my sudden sense of vulnerability.

A strong scent tickled my nostrils, redolent of some kind of incense, and after that I lost time, and touch. I floated, weightless. I saw colours – all shades of red, orange or yellow, each shade with its own smell: essence of poppies, wine, sulphur, wet earth, fermenting yeast. I think I laughed, although what was funny I could not have said. I heard the Goddess

herself whisper, chiding me for my lack of reverence. I was chastened, but resentful nonetheless. The next moment that had any clarity was when Antonia removed the blindfold.

I was somewhere else. I must have walked there, but had no recollection of having moved, no memory of time passing. Vortexdamn the conniving vixen, I thought, as a semblance of rationality seeped back. The blindfold must have been soaked with something. She drugged me. There was an irony in that, of course; we of the Brotherhood were not unfamiliar with such tricks, but I was not in the mood to appreciate the parallels. Goddess, I thought, if they expose everyone who comes here to an elixir like that, no wonder there's never been a coherent description of the Oracle.

I was assailed by more pungent smells, a mix of odours of the kind that might drift from an alchemist's shop along the Marketwalk. I looked around. I was in an underground cavern. Light came only from flames burning in a bronze container – a bowl as wide as I was tall – set in the stone of the floor. 'The Eternal Flame,' Antonia murmured in my ear, 'lit by the Goddess herself at the founding of Tyr and never extinguished since. It burns without fuel.' She believed it, too. I nodded, but wondered if it weren't fuelled from below, subterranean gases, perhaps. I always was a sceptical bitch.

She waved a hand at the wall of the cavern directly in front of us. 'That is the Oracle.' She gestured again, this time at a pale young woman seated in front of the wall. 'The words of the Oracle will be interpreted for you by Esme, the Selected of the Oracle.'

Esme, as beautiful as a caryatid and almost as lifeless, did not look at me. Her eyes were wide and expressionless; her body swayed slightly. Behind her

something crouched and murmured, but whether it was a living creature or just a strange rock formation, I was not certain. The drug had left my mind fuddled and my senses blurred. My head was beginning to ache, irritated by the vapours. My eyes watered. The flickering of the Eternal Flame made shadows dance and writhe. The natural indents of the rough stone of the cavern wall behind Esme appeared to ripple. I saw in them a figure, huge, forbidding, lion-like, maned – yet with a man's features centred in the otherwise feline head. Eyes and nostrils and mouth were depthless slits boring back into the rock, to viscera beyond. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Vapours wafted through the creature's orifices, smelling of brimstone and pitch, the breath of Acheron, from the netherworld beyond the Vortex, surely. And the being – if such it was – muttered. No language I had ever heard before issued from its throat.

I stared at Esme. She was young, though her skin had the unhealthy pallor of the chronically ill, and her eyes remained unfocused. Her voice, when she started to speak, was a monotone, but it oozed truth. She believed all she said.

I assumed she was supposed to be interpreting the mumble of the Oracle behind her as she intoned:

'Ligea will travel by land and sea and beast

To places new and far,

She will hunt the fierce hunter to the east

Who seeks our world to mar

And kills our noble emperor's time of peace.'

I blinked. One part of me hoped – with sardonic scepticism – that the Oracle's poetry was better than Esme's translation. The rest of me was appalled by the

content of her lines. How could she know what I had only just learned myself? I moved, attempting to obtain a better view of the Oracle, but Antonia had a firm grip on my arm and jerked me back.

Undeterred by my grunt of exasperation, Esme continued:

'With powers to see behind the face,

With ears to hear a lie,

Ligea shall bring victory to this chase,

And deal death to traitors sly.

All power in her wide embrace,

None will again deny

Ligea Gayed her rightful place.'

I was aghast. How could she – or the Oracle – possibly know of my talents? Acheron's mists, the Oracle couldn't really be percipient, could it?

Legend said so. History gave us records of prophetic verses, written in far more memorable poetry than this. The religious maintained that the Oracle was our conduit to the advice of the gods.

I felt sick. Damn it, Antonia was listening as my secrets were spilled from this silly girl's lips in infantile rhymes…

She droned on, the poetry even more execrable.

'A Legata shall journey back to Tyr, To lay tribute at her ruler's feet; Wreath'd, feted, granted gifts of gold, Honoured at her nation's desire, Her tale by poets shall be retold.'

Fortunately, that seemed to be all. Esme stared blankly at the opposite wall in silence. The Oracle's

murmuring continued, but there was no more translation.

Antonia shook my arm. 'That must be all that is for your ears,' she said. 'Allow me to blindfold you again -'

I jerked my arm away and snapped at her. 'No. No more dulling of my senses. Show me the way out.'

Her eyes flashed, anger roiling with unexpected intensity. 'The Brotherhood has no power here that we do not freely concede,' she hissed. 'All who come before the Oracle are blindfolded. This cavern is part of die Sacred Way, not a path for the undedicated to know.'

"Very well:' I freed the end of my wrap from my waist and wound it around my head to cover my eyes. 'Now lead me out.'

She was silent for a moment, then grabbed my elbow and pulled me after her. I stumbled blindly in her wake for what felt like an age, but was probably no more than five minutes. As far as I could tell, we traversed the cavern of the Eternal Flame to some kind of tunnel which ended in steps. We ascended these, then I heard the scraping sound once more and we were back in the room behind the sanctum.

I unwound the end of my wrap. Antonia stood before me, glaring. 'With the Brotherhood behind you, you think you are untouchable. But before the Goddess, you are no more than each intake of mortal breath. All you are is easily snatched away, Compeer Ligea.' Her use of my title confirmed her knowledge of my Brotherhood status, something I preferred to hide from Tyr's highborn. She added, 'Don't mock the Goddess, or you will live to regret it.'

T wouldn't dream of it,' I replied, schooling my tone to a careful neutrality. There was no point in upsetting the Temple High Priestess if it were avoidable. 'Nor would I mock the Oracle. It has given me, er, food for

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