Rachel Caine: Firestorm

"The Mother forgot us," he said softly. "Heat. Pain. Birth. A slow and quiet cooling. We were her children, but she forgot us."

"She remembers you now." I looked over his shoulder at the open doors, the glow of light through the huge expanse of glass window at the far end of the chapel. It was a simple place, with polished wood benches, a plain altar. I could hear the whispering again, stronger now. A union of voices. The Oracle was within. "You've killed your own, right in front of her. I don't think she'll ever forget you again."

He couldn't get paler, but I think he might have, at that. "Nature is selfish," he said. "Sacrifice is meaningless. Only survival matters."

I couldn't think about Imara, about sacrifice. "I'm not fighting you anymore."

His eyes filled with a silver sheen of tears, and he pulled in a sudden breath. "No," he said. "I choose this. I choose to stop you, now, here."

"Don't."

" I choose !" He screamed it, and reached out with all the power that was inside of him to destroy me.

Stop.

It was a pulse of intention, not a word, and the world froze between one pulse beat and the next, waiting breathlessly. I thought it was Ashan's doing for a second, but I saw the wild fury and fear in his eyes, and I knew.

I turned. The air dragged at me, slow and thick as molasses.

The Oracle was doing this. She was giving me a chance, and I knew it was my very last one.

I walked into the chapel.

The Oracle was sitting on a bench, facing the glorious sweep of glass that looked out on the stunning vista. It really was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I'd looked into the eye of more than one storm, and seen the complex, mathematical beauty of it; I'd seen most of the most savage, gorgeous, violent faces of nature.

But this was different. Deep and slow and silent. There was no math to it, no science. Only spirit.

Unlike the other Oracles, this one looked… normal. A woman, with generous curves and a lived-in face, with lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She was wearing a dress the color of the rocks outside of the window, brick red, with a subtle patterning to it, like the creases and shadows and textures of the sandstone. It had flowing sleeves and a loose drape, and it pooled around her feet, into shadow.

She was no race I could identify—coffee-and-cream skin, with a faint golden glow underneath; slightly upturned eyes, but not enough to make her distinctly Asian. Full lips. Beautiful bone structure under a soft mask of flesh. Her hair was dark, shot through with wide swathes of gray, and her eyes reflected back the light from the chapel's windows so strongly, I couldn't tell what color they were, at least not from a side-on view.

She was sitting with her hands neatly folded in her lap. Rough, scarred hands. Hands that had seen a lot of work, and little gentleness. She looked tired, poised on the knife-edge between middle age and growing old.

Her head slowly turned, and then she was looking at me. Seeing me. I can't describe what that felt like, except to say that it was beyond terrifying. As if the stars had come alive in the sky and were weighing me, judging me, finding me wanting. I felt small and dirty and ridiculous, a clumsy freak of nature with no business here, no business at all. The Oracles barely recognized the Djinn. Humans were beneath contempt.

And yet, she was looking at me.

I got to my knees. I did it instantly, without thinking, because I knew I was very close to something greater than the furious energy of the Fire Oracle, or the menace of the Air Oracle.

The Earth Oracle was closest of all to the Mother.

She tilted her head slowly to one side, considering me like a particularly interesting piece of abstract art.

"Please," I said. The sound washed over us both, meaningless in this place. Talking wasn't going to get me anywhere. The Earth didn't use words. It spoke in the whisper of leaves, the hiss of grass, the groaning of rocks buried deep. Communication was something very different here, and I was completely unprepared, completely unworthy to try it. Not even an Earth Warden, which at least would have been something , some connection, however slight and fragile.

I was just dirt on the floor in this place. No, less than that. She'd at least understand dirt.

Her gaze slowly shifted away, toward the altar, the flickering banks of candles on either side in their red glass holders, and the astonishingly beautiful vista stretching out before us.

She wanted something from me, and I had no idea what it was, or how to provide it.

I felt the gradual withdrawal of her presence from me.

I was being dismissed.

"No!" I said, and held up my hands. "Please! Please listen to me, I need you to understand—"

No answer. She didn't even blink. It was as if I didn't even exist to her anymore. Maybe I didn't. Time was different in her world. Geologic. Human lives came and went faster than the ticks on a clock.

"Please!" This time, I shouted it, and I did something that was either very, very brave or abysmally stupid: I reached out to her, and took her hand. It felt warm and rough, more like sandstone than flesh. " Please listen ."

Not a flicker. Not a tremor. I'd come so far, fought so hard, run so fast… and she was ignoring me. Unlike Rahel, this wasn't someone I could give a hard right cross to the chin to get her attention. There was a strong sense of deep holiness here. Respect was required.

Respect was demanded.

Outside of the glass windows, I saw the sky… change. It had been getting darker, but now it curdled, like ink dropped in clear water—a sense of something wrong, something desperately and fatally wrong. I felt it happen inside of myself, too. I felt the deathclock we all carried, all mortal things, speed up.

Oh God. Was she going to just wipe everything clean? All life? Destroy it all and wait that long eternity for things to grow again? Or would the Djinn step back into their place as firstborn, best loved?

I went up into the aetheric, and there I saw it for what it was. A storm coming. A storm that showed bloodred, full of fury and power. I felt a tethering tug, and looked down at my aetheric form to see that there was a line, a thin, unbreakable line stretching from the center of my being up into that storm.

It was connected to me, and as I looked around, I saw hundreds of lines. Thousands. Millions. Like solid raindrops, each leading down to a human life. A human who'd just felt an instant of shadow, of doubt in his or her own immortality.

Who'd had the sensation of someone walking over their graves. Six billion graves, and only one entity walking, but it only took the one.

It was starting.

"Please," I said. "Please don't do this. We don't deserve this. We can't deserve this! Dammit! What do you want me to say ?"

The Oracle trembled, a sudden all-over shake, and I felt the Earth itself groan in response. What the hell—?

Her eyes closed, and the hand I was holding suddenly turned and took hold of me . Hard, hot, unyielding. I felt the tremors continue, both through my knees and where she was clutching my fingers. Something was wrong. Terrifyingly wrong.

Oh no.

I took an aching breath and reached forward to move the neck of the Oracle's robes aside, and there, battened on her like a black nest of worms, was the Demon Mark. The skin around it was drained white, leached of life, and I could see the black writhing tentacles bulging under the skin. It was burrowing.

I was too late. It already had a firm grip on her.

I reached out and put both hands on the Demon Mark, willing it to come to me. It ignored me, burrowing for the rich, burning source of power that was the Oracle. I was insignificant. There was no way I had enough power to make it come to me.