Bryan Davis - Eye of the Oracle

Mara swallowed through her tightening throat. “Morgan called it a candlestone. She said the king would know what to do with it.”

Nimrod grabbed the gem and clasped it in his fist, a wicked smile forming on his lips. “This is dragons’ bane!” he yelled. “We shall see whose god wields more power, Noah’s or Morgan’s.” He pushed Mara back into Mardon’s grasp. “Lock her in my chambers. I will deal with her personally later.”

Nimrod strode away, snatching a shield from another soldier as he jumped down the stairs to the courtyard. Tears welled in Mara’s eyes. The mother with the baby had fled, so at least the king wouldn’t murder that one. But would he find another? A new volley of flames struck the side of the roof, setting it on fire.

Mardon took Mara’s hand and pulled her to the side of the portico. He knelt and lowered her veil over her eyes. “Hurry back to the portal. The gatekeeper will be gone, so you shouldn’t have any trouble. Remember to get a firebrand and wave it in a circle over your head. I’ll come back as soon as I can.” He rose to his feet and nodded toward the gate. “Now make haste!”

Mara pressed her hand over her pocket to keep the Ovulum in place and ran toward the gate as fast as she could. The sun’s cruel rays stung her arms, and the gravel stabbed her feet, but her eyes felt safe behind her veil. When she reached the gate, the guard was gone, just as Mardon had predicted. Standing on tiptoes, she turned the latch’s dial through its combination of clicks and pushed open the iron door.

She found the grassy path back to the woods and gazed at her shadow as she ran. Though no one followed, she imagined a hundred other shadows closing in on hers, Nimrod and his people, bloodthirsty wolves who would gladly kill the weak and innocent.

When she passed between the two tall rocks, she found the stack of logs, but the fire had gone out. She picked up a long stick and stared at its charred, smoking end. What now?

She dug into her pocket and caressed the egg. Would it know what to do? If it spoke for a god, it would have to. But would it speak without Nimrod or Mardon around?

She pulled out the egg and showed the stick to it. “I need fire to go back home. What do I do?”

The eye appeared again in a soft crimson hue. Its voice was gentle, and it spoke without rhyme or verse. “You are an oracle of fire. Stand in the circle and call for flames. They will come to you.” The eye then quickly faded away.

Mara squinted at the glassy shell, now dark and lifeless. “An oracle of fire? What’s that?”

The Ovulum said nothing.

“How do I call for flames?”

Again, no answer.

She shrugged her shoulders and returned the Ovulum to her pocket, then stepped into the center of the portal circle. “Okay,” she said, holding the stick high. “Here goes.”

Closing her eyes, Mara spoke into the air. “Flames, come to my firebrand!” She opened her eyes again. Feeling a gust of wind and the sudden coolness of a mammoth shadow, she looked up. A big red dragon swooped low, its wings fanning a buffeting breeze that whipped her dress against her legs. She ducked her head, but it didn’t attack. It just turned and headed toward the tower. She mopped her brow with her veil. Had the dragon seen her? Would it come back?

She brought down the stick. The end was ablaze! Had the dragon breathed fire on her stick? She pulled up her veil and searched the skies. Several dragons circled the tower’s midsection, blasting it with torrents of fire. Much of the building had been set aflame, and the wind from the dragons’ orbit began spinning the fire into a flaming vortex, a blazing tornado that wrapped the tower in a mantle of orange.

The tower sank heavily, a third of it dropping below the ground. As the upper portion continued to burn, one of the dragons faltered. Its wings flapped weakly, and it fell to the ground. The flaming tower followed, first leaning, then toppling straight toward Mara.

She raised the stick and waved it in quick circles. Instantly, a spinning curtain of light surrounded her another tornado, but this one of pure green radiance. Her mind spun with it, and she felt a falling sensation, like sliding down a feeder spring into Lucifer’s Pool. Seconds later, the falling stopped and the cavern appeared, still shaded in green and magnified a dozen times. She took a long step and turned back toward the column of light, the portal Morgan had used to send her to the upper lands. The bright shaft flickered, then faded to a weak glow.

Her eyesight returned to normal. The cave was almost completely dark dismal and lonely. She tore the coif from her head and threw it to the stone floor, then dropped to her knees and cried. As her tears flowed, images of the glorious tower passed through her mind. She wondered at all the scrolls that must have filled the shelves of the museum histories, genealogies, scientific journals, technical drawings but now they all burned in the dragons’ flames. Not only that, her visit to the upper world was a fiasco, and Nimrod and Mardon probably blamed her for the collapse of the greatest creation mankind had ever seen. Now she would probably never get to go back, never get to leave the darkness, the torture, the loneliness of the dismal caverns. And, really, it was all because of the dragons.

She pounded her fist on the floor. “Dragons!” she yelled. “Curse those dragons! May they all die in their own fire!”

As she continued weeping, a gentle voice drifted by her ear. “You have learned much, haven’t you Mara?”

Mara leaped to her feet and spun around. A dark silhouette loomed, casting its shadow over most of the chamber. Morgan!

Makaidos poured a torrent of fire into the spinning column of flames, beating his wings to fan the cyclone as he wheeled around it in a tight orbit. Shutting off his fiery jets for a moment, he glanced back at a smaller, trailing dragon. “Aim lower, Roxil! The fire feeds upward on its own!”

Roxil blasted a volley of flames at a gap in the twisting inferno, igniting a pair of soldiers with arrows fixed on bows. Another soldier, standing on a staircase above the other two, threw a spear. With a quick reach, Roxil snatched the spear right out of the air with her claws and slung it back at its owner.

“My daughter, the warrior!” Makaidos yelled. A glimmer near the base of the tower caught his eye, and a sense of danger pulsed through his body. Feeling weaker, he pulled away from the doomed tower. It had already sunk to about two-thirds of its original height, and since the base had resettled at an angle, the whole structure leaned awkwardly. “Come, Roxil!” he shouted. “We are done here!”

Roxil’s wings faltered, and she began sinking toward the ground. Makaidos banked hard and dove toward her. As he neared the tower’s foundation, he noticed a man raising something shiny in his hand. Danger once again inflamed his senses. Feeling weaker by the second, he flew under Roxil and pushed up against her body, matching the beating of his wings with hers as he barked out a stroke rhythm. “Up! Down! Up! Down!”

Flying more steadily, but still descending, the two dragons glided away from the tower toward an open farm. Crash-landing in a vineyard, they tumbled and slid to a halt, plowing a deep furrow and squishing hundreds of ripe grapes. Makaidos scrambled upright and helped Roxil to her haunches. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Roxil’s head wagged back and forth. “I am dizzy. Something made me ill.”

“I felt it, too.” He gazed back at the tower. As the flames tightened around the huge ziggurat, the remaining dragons continued fanning it toward the direction it leaned. Finally, the entire structure toppled with a thunderous crash, sending a tremor that shook the ground under their claws.