Lynn Flewelling - The Oracle's Queen

You must fight for what is rightfully yours, Tamír, Queen of Skala a low voice whispered in her ear. By blood and trial, you must hold your throne. From the Usurper’s hand you will wrest the Sword .

More blood! she thought despairingly . Why must it be so? There must be another way, a peaceful way! I will not spill a kinsman’s blood!

You were born of spilled blood .

“What are you talking about?” she cried aloud. The wind caught the banner and blew it in her face, blinding her. It was nothing but a length of silk and embroidery, but it wrapped itself around her throat like a living thing, cutting off her breath.

“Brother, help me!” she wheezed, clawing at it but finding no purchase in the elusive, wind-torn fabric.

A chilling laugh answered her. Avenge me, Sister. Avenge me, before you ask any more favors of the one wronged!

“Illior! Lightbearer, I call on you!” she cried, struggling desperately. “How can I help him? I beg you, give me a sign!”

The silken banner evaporated around her like mist at dawn, leaving her in darkness again.

No, not darkness, for in the distance she saw a cool white glow, and realized she was back in the Oracle’s cavern. Somehow, caught in the vision, she’d wandered away from the light. Her hands felt sticky. She raised them, squinting in the uncertain light and saw that they were bloody to the elbow.

“No!” she whispered, wiping them hastily on her skirts.

Slowly, on unsteady legs, she made her way back toward the Oracle’s seat, but as she drew closer, she saw someone else in her place, a robed figure with a long, familiar grey braid, kneeling with bowed head before a much younger Oracle. Tamír recognized Iya even before the wizard raised her head. When had she come down, and why? The priest had said only one person was allowed down into the chamber at a time.

Iya held something in her arms. Coming closer, Tamír saw that it was an infant. The child was limp and silent, and its dark eyes were vacant.

“Brother?” Tamír whispered.

“Two children, one queen,” the child Oracle whispered in a voice too ancient and deep for her small frame. “In this generation comes the child who is the foundation of what is to come. She is your legacy. Two children, one queen marked with the blood of passage.”

The girl turned to Tamír, her eyes full of searing white light that seemed to bore into Tamír’s very soul. “Ask Arkoniel. Only Arkoniel can tell you.”

Terrified without knowing why, she fell to her knees and whispered, “Ask him what? About my mother? Brother?”

Cold hands closed around her neck from behind, choking her as the banner had. “Ask Arkoniel,” Brother whispered in her ear. “Ask him what happened.”

Tamír’s hands flew to her throat; she didn’t really expect to touch Brother or stop him, any more than she’d ever been able to. But this time her hands found cold flesh and hard, corded wrists. She grabbed at them as a terrible stench rolled over her, making her gag.

“Give me peace!” a thick, gasping voice moaned close to her face. It was not Brother’s ghost behind her anymore, but his corpse. “Give me rest, Sister.”

He released her and she fell forward on her hands, then twisted around to face the horror behind her.

Instead, she found herself looking at the Oracle again, the woman she’d been speaking with. She sat just as Tamír had left her, hands open on her knees, eyes wide and empty again.

Tamír raised her own hands, and found them dry and clean. Her bodice was still laced. There was no sign of blood anywhere.

“You’ve told me nothing,” she gasped.

The Oracle gazed stupidly past her, as if Tamír wasn’t even there.

A rage she’d never experienced before came over her. She grabbed the Oracle by the shoulders and shook her, trying to find the god’s intelligence again in those blank eyes. It was like shaking a doll.

It was a doll, large as a woman, but made of cotton-stuffed muslin, with a crudely painted face and uneven limbs. It weighed nothing and flopped limply in her hands.

Tamír dropped it in surprise, then stared down in renewed horror. It was just like her old doll, the one her mother had sewn Brother’s bones into. It even had a twisted cord of black hair tied tightly around its limp neck. There was no sign of the Oracle. Tamír was alone in the dark chamber and the light of the orb was slowly failing.

“What are you trying to show me?” she cried out, clenching her fists in desperation. “I don’t understand! What has any of this got to do with Skala?”

“You are Skala,” the voice of the god whispered. “That is the one truth of your life, twin of the dead. You are Skala, and Skala is you, just as you are your brother, and he is you.”

The light was nearly gone when she felt something tighten around her chest. She looked down in a panic, wondering if the terrible doll had come to life, or if it was Brother’s grisly corpse again. Instead, she saw that it was the priest’s rope, somehow looped around her body again. Someone had taken up the slack and she just had time to grab on for purchase when she was lifted bodily off the ground to spin up through the solid darkness. She looked up frantically, found the circle of stars overhead, and kept her eyes fixed on it as it grew larger and closer. She could see the dark outline of heads there now, and hands were reaching down to help her up over the lip of the hole. It was Ki, and his arms were strong and sure around her as her knees gave out.

“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously, helping her to a seat on the edge of the stone enclosure. “We waited and waited, but you gave no sign.”

“Brother,” she gasped, clutching at the neck of her gown.

“What? Where?” Ki cried, alarmed, still holding her.

Tamír leaned gratefully into that embrace. “No— It was only—only a vision.” But she couldn’t stop shaking.

“The god spoke to you,” said Ralinus.

Tamír let out a harsh laugh. “If you could call it that. Riddles and nightmares.”

Suddenly she heard a scratching sound behind her. Turning, she was horrified to see Brother gazing up at her from the cavern entrance, his face a mask of hate. His pale skin slowly shriveled on his skull, and hands like claws emerged and scrabbled at the ground as he began to pull himself from the hole.

You are he, and he is you , the Oracle whispered from below.

The words followed Tamír into darkness as she fainted.

Tamír was as cold as a corpse when they lifted her from the Oracle’s chamber. Ki pulled her away from the others and sat down, cradling her head against his chest.

“Master, did the Oracle hurt her?” Wythnir whispered.

“Hush! It’s only a faint.” Iya took charge, pushing Arkoniel and the priests aside as she knelt and rested a hand on the girl’s clammy brow.

“It’s a good sign,” Ralinus told the others, trying to calm them. “She must have had an important vision, to be so overcome.”

Tamír’s eyes fluttered open and she looked up at Iya. A chill went through the wizard; those eyes looked as black as the demon’s in the moonlight, and just as accusing. Tamír pushed Iya’s hand away and struggled from Ki’s arms to sit up.

“What—what happened?” she asked in a quavering whisper. Then she looked back at the well and began to tremble uncontrollably. “Brother! I saw—”

“Companions, carry your queen back to her lodging,” Iya ordered.

“I don’t need anyone to carry me!” Tamír gave Iya another dark look as she staggered unsteadily to her feet. “I have to go back down there. Something went wrong. I didn’t understand what the Lightbearer showed me.”