The Light of the Oracle (7 page)

He called for prayers then, to support long life for Her Majesty, Queen of Sorana, and for Zorienne, the crown princess. The members of the Temple stood with clasped hands, lips moving to join his entreaty to the gods. Voices lapped over one another, muffling the meaning of the words.

Bryn's head ached, and she felt a little dizzy.

To steady herself, she focused on the embroidery that covered the First Priestess's robe. As she gazed, the golden threads seemed to float out of the fabric and come toward her. A soft wind was carrying them, a
wind that had traveled the length of the world before coming to this place.

Whispers stirred in Bryn's ears. One word was clear, spoken in a voice that rang through her mind like a bell.
Prophecy
.

The wind increased, grew louder, whistling now, taking hold of her, bringing with it a storm of change. Oh yes, change would come, blowing sorrowfully across the land. Not only for Bryn, but for the Queen of Sorana.

Bryn's arm lifted, her finger pointing at Princess Zorienne. “Beware his death,” she whispered. “His sleeping death.”

Bryn felt a hand shake her arm. She snapped back to normal awareness and realized she was the only one standing and that Dawn was tugging at her frantically. She fell into the pew, gasping as if all her air had been taken.

What she had seen and heard bewildered her.
Sleeping death? His sleeping death? But who was
he
? And why was it Princess Zorienne who should beware?

Dawn quailed when Nirene yanked her and Bryn aside after the long ceremony with the queen was finally over. The lines around Nirene's mouth were drawn taut. Her ire seemed to fill the alcove where they stood. “When I made you a duenna, Dawn, I assumed you knew the basic protocol for an important ceremony.” She whirled upon Bryn. “Standing when all others were seated! What did you mean by such a display?”

“I'm truly sorry.” Bryn was pale, her golden-brown eyes haunted.

“And did you speak as well?” Nirene demanded.

Bryn looked as if she would start gasping again.

“Did she speak?” Nirene asked Dawn.

Dawn shook her head vehemently. She'd been near enough to hear that Bryn
had
spoken—muttering something about death and pointing at Princess Zorienne. Dawn had grabbed her arm instantly, and hoped no one else had heard; she hated to lie, but if she told Nirene what had happened, there would be no living with it. “No, Sendrata. She was having trouble breathing. That's all.”

“This is the most sacred ground in Sorana,” Nirene hissed. “ You are here to serve the gods, not to show your impertinence.” She narrowed snapping eyes at Dawn. “A duenna is responsible for the conduct of her ward. To remind you of your duty, both of you will clean the handmaid latrines before the morning gong until the summer solstice.” She frowned severely at Bryn. “I have my eye on you, girl. If you break the rules so shamelessly again, I'll find worse chores for you than cleaning latrines.”

Dawn bowed apology. She had to nudge Bryn with an elbow before Bryn followed her lead.

Nirene ignored their bows, a deliberate insult. “See to her training” was all she said as she swept out of the alcove.

Bryn's cheeks were flushed now. “I'm so sorry,” she said.

“It's plain you'll be a world of trouble to me,” Dawn told her.

* * *

That evening, in one of the sanctuary rooms dedicated to the Oracle, the Master Priest met with Queen Alessandra and the First Priestess.

Temple guards and queen's soldiers stood outside the door, but inside they were alone. Alessandra stood upright beside the seven candles burning on the small altar to the gods. Her fingers trembled slightly as she received her scroll of prophecy from Renchald's hand.

“Please, Your Majesty,” he said, “be seated.” He guided her gently to a chair.

The queen looked up at him, dark eyes very alert. “ You know, of course, what the prophecy says.”

Renchald nodded. “If you wish to read it in private, we will leave you, my queen.”

Alessandra held the scroll prayerfully. “Thank you, but you may stay.” She unbound the scroll, broke the heavy Temple seal, held the message close to the candlelight.

Renchald had penned the message himself, as he did all important prophecies. Every word of it was engraved on his mind:

Alessandra finished reading. Long, long, she gazed silently into the flames.

At last she rose.

“Thank you for consulting the Oracle on Zorienne's behalf,” she said. She fixed them both with her intelligent eyes. “I depend upon the sacred trust of the Temple not to reveal what this prophecy contains.”

“Our trust will never be broken, Your Majesty,” the Master Priest assured her. The First Priestess murmured agreement.

“This message shall be burned,” Alessandra told them. “I am still the queen. I will depart here tomorrow. And I shall fight for a different future than the one you have predicted.”

A week later, Bryn woke from a dream of following a silvery plume of thistledown through unknown hallways in the Temple.

She sat up. She knew where she was—in her bed in the handmaids' hall with other girls sleeping nearby, each behind a separate curtain. Her own curtain should have made her bed very dark, but light hovered around her.

Even more peculiar, a bright wisp of thistledown above her head was at the center of the light. Bryn reached out to see if it was real or merely a remnant of her dream. The thistledown drifted away from her fingers toward the edge of the curtain.

In her cotton nightgown, she slipped from her bed, her bare feet gripping the stone floor. Sliding
through the curtain, she saw, shimmering several yards in front of her, the thistledown.

“It wants me to follow,” she whispered. When she took a few steps, the thistledown moved too. She followed it past the curtained row of beds to the door leading to the main hallway. When she pressed on the door, it opened. She expected to be stopped there, for Dawn had assured her that guards always stood by that door. However, the hallway beyond was empty except for torches flickering in sconces on the dark walls.

Bryn hesitated, watching the plume of thistledown, wondering how it could be brighter than fire and moonlight; it made the torches appear dim and the moonlight streaming in through the skylights seem pale and thin. She should go back to her bed. She could almost hear her mother's voice berating the gods:
“Why have you given me such an unnatural daughter?”

The girl took a deep breath. Why should she doubt what was happening to her? She was in the Temple of the Oracle. Her mother did not rule here, Renchald did. She recalled his words the day they met:
“Those who serve the Oracle see what others miss.”

Bryn walked forward, pursuing the glow that drifted purposefully down the hallway. She thought it strange that she saw no one as she continued on, for the thistledown led through many corridors, deep into the Temple. Though she kept expecting to come across a guard or at least a senior acolyte, no one appeared. She crept down winding stairways of stone; as she gradually descended, the floors grew chillier. The thistledown glided in front of her, shedding light.

She came to yet another stairway; its narrow steps led straight down. At the bottom, a blind trench of stone ended in a silver door.

With the thistledown hovering close, Bryn examined the door. Its metal was wrought into twisting patterns around a large keltice at the center. Hesitantly, she touched the keltice. Her fingers pulsed.

The door swung open, silent as Bryn's feet on the smooth floor. She entered a warm chamber that seemed to be formed out of the same light that shone from her thistledown. Pure and bright, the light cascaded over hundreds of symbols she didn't recognize, and flowed across the softly domed ceiling and over the clean floor.

Bryn bent to the floor, wondering how stone could be so radiant. Her father and brothers had spoken of a stone known as alabaster. Was this floor made of alabaster? Was the entire chamber made of it?

Kneeling, she felt the chamber's brilliance pour through her, dazzling her mind. The longer she kneeled, the brighter the light shone in and around her.

When at last she stood, she felt as if her spirit had been altered by a power utterly beyond her understanding.
I'll never be the same again
.

She noticed a couch upholstered in gold velvet next to the wall, and wondered how she had missed seeing it before. She sidled up to it. The cushion felt softer than anything she had ever touched, as if spun from golden flower petals.

She was suddenly tired, terribly so. She knew she
should leave again now, find the thistledown, let it guide her back to the handmaids' hall. But how inviting the couch was; surely it wouldn't hurt to lie down for a little while, just until she felt able to climb the stairs again.

Bryn fell asleep almost instantly after lying on the golden couch, and began to dream vividly.

The only light in the great room where she stood came from one narrow window and a skylight. The newly dead bodies of at least fifty men were strewn on the floor. Beside her was a soldier; he wore a leather doublet, striped gray and black, and steel-banded gloves. A black axe hung at his hip, its wicked blade gleaming. A double line of evenly cut scars ran from his forehead to his jaw. Fresh blood spattered his cheek.

Bryn tried to jump away from him, but she
couldn't move. He paid her no attention, and she realized he couldn't see her.

Others like him were grouped nearby, all looking down at a man who lay bleeding from a cut in his throat. Though his position seemed helpless, the wounded man inspired fear. Who was he? Bryn wondered.

Lord Morlen
, said a voice in her mind—the bell-like tone she'd heard only once before, in the great room that held the altar to the Oracle.

Morlen spoke in a rasping whisper. “I will seek you through death and beyond.”

Bryn's heart pounded in terror. To whom did he speak?

Lord Morlen will die, killed by a young woman with a knife
, said the voice of the Oracle.

Then the wind took hold of Bryn again, carrying her away from the dream of death in Sliviia, rushing her back through the wall of sand.

Stirring uneasily, she was vaguely aware of lying on the gold velvet couch. She struggled to waken fully, wanting to sit up, to get off the couch, leave the bright chamber. But she might as well have tried fighting all the gods at once; she could not even open her eyes.

The wind picked her up and threw her at the heavy wall again; the wall appeared as solid as it had the first time. Again it turned to sand, and she was borne through it to another place, another time, a different dream.

A room with walls decorated in wooden mosaic surrounded her; the colors and shapes had been cut and polished like fine stones and then laid to form
patterns like ripples in a pond. Candles were grouped on a shelf beside a slanted writing desk, their light flickering warmly.

At the desk sat a woman, writing. Her head was bent in concentration, but as Bryn watched, she looked up, hazel eyes aware and staring.

There was no mistaking that face. Clean now, and the lips smooth rather than cracked, the skin healthy instead of burned, hair neatly combed, expression calm, but recognizable nevertheless: it was the one who had screamed at the Master Priest from the side of the road in the desert.

“ You lived?” Bryn whispered.
This is a dream
, she thought.
She cannot hear me
.

But the woman nodded. “Don't tell him,” she said, looking directly at Bryn. “She'll never read my words.”

Tell whom? And what? Bryn took a step closer to ask.

Dawn went to wake Bryn. The two of them had been scrubbing latrines in the early mornings for a week, and still Bryn hadn't learned to wake herself before the gong. Drawing aside her curtain, Dawn was surprised to see that Bryn was up already. Where had she gone?

Rushing to the washroom that adjoined the handmaids' hall, Dawn saw an empty row of porcelain basins. She hurried to check the latrines, but they too were deserted. She tore back to the handmaids' hall. Still no Bryn.

Dawn gathered a water bucket and scrub brush.

“Ellerth give me patience; I'll have to scrub all the latrines myself,” she muttered, shaking flakes of strong soap into the bucket.

Dawn finished the last latrine just as the wake-up gong sounded. She raced to stash her cleaning supplies and wash her hands and face. She threw on her student robe, not bothering to smooth its folds. Standing watch at the door to the main hallway, she quivered with anxiety as face after face passed, none of them Bryn.

“Did you have a nightmare, Dawn?” Eloise said. “Or are
you
the nightmare?”

Dawn barely heard her. She prayed to Vernelda, Goddess of Justice and Love:
Please, Vernelda, if I've offended you by asking so many times to stop growing taller, I'm sorry. If Bryn isn't here I'll have to report her missing, and what will the Sendrata of Handmaids do then? I'll be scrubbing latrines until the equinox
.

But once again Vernelda did not answer her prayers. Bryn did not appear.