I crawled over the upturned hull of a boat. It swayed gently beneath my weight. Something soft fell, then slithered against its side. All the while my hands and bare feet scraped desperately for purchase against the rotting wood.
Then came more rope, more netting, and in the dimmest twilight I was in a chamber where trunks, wicker baskets, and heavy clay jugs all heaved and crashed together as I crawled among them.
Serpents and fishes writhed beneath my touch amid reeking slime.
And yet again in utter darkness I made my way on hands and knees across a seemingly solid, wooden floor. Then the boards snapped beneath me and I tumbled screaming amid ropes and wood and what touch alone told me were hundreds of human bones. I came to rest on heaving netting with a skull in my lap and bones rattling down over my bare legs. I threw the skull away and tried to jump up, but my feet slid through the net and I felt only empty space below.
I dangled there, clinging desperately to the rope netting. It broke and I was left screaming once more, swinging in the darkness while an avalanche of bones splashed into the water far below.
One further story I’d heard came to me just then: that when someone drowns in the river, the evatim eat his flesh, but the bones go to the Sybil, who divines fortunes from them.
So it seemed.
At precisely this point she called out to me, and her voice was like an autumn wind rattling in dead reeds.
“Son of Vashtem.”
I clung tighter to the remnants of the net, gulped, and called up into the darkness.
“I’m here.”
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, I await your coming.”
I was so startled I nearly let go.
“But I’m not a sorcerer!”
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer.”
I started climbing once more, all the while telling her about myself in broken, panting speech. Still a few bones fell, suddenly out of the darkness, striking me on the head as if in sarcastic reply to what I gasped out. But still I told her how I had never done any magic myself, how I had promised my mother never to be like my father, how I was apprenticed to the learned Velachronos, how I was going to be a scribe first, then maybe write books of my own, if only Velachronos would take me back when this was all over.
Then the Sybil’s face appeared to me suddenly in the darkness above, like a full moon from behind a cloud. Her face was pale and round, her eyes inexpressibly black, and I think her skin did glow faintly.
And she said to me, laughing gently, “Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, you’re arguing with the dread Sybil. Now is that a brave thing to do, or just foolish?”
I stopped, swinging gently from side to side on the ropes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“What you mean is not necessarily what you do, Sekenre. Whether or not you’re sorry afterwards means nothing at all. There. I have spoken your name once. Sekenre. I have spoken it twice. Do you know what happens if I speak it three times?”
I said meekly, “No, Great Sybil.”
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, come up and sit before me. Do not be afraid.”
I climbed up to where she was. I could barely make out a wooden shelf or ledge, covered with bones and debris. I reached out gingerly with one foot and my toes found, surprisingly, solid, dry planking. I let go of the ropes and sat. The Sybil reached up and opened the door of a box-lantern, then of another, and another. I thought of lazy beasts winking themselves awake.
Now light and shadow flickered in the tiny, low-ceilinged room. The Sybil sat cross-legged, a blanket with gleaming embroidery draped over her knees. A man-headed serpent with scales like silver coins lay curled in her lap. Once it hissed and she leaned low while it whispered in her ear.
Silence followed. She gazed into my eyes for a long time.
I held out my father’s sword.
“Lady, this is all I have to offer—”
She hissed, just like the serpent, and for an instant seemed startled, even afraid. She waved the sword away.
“Sekenre, you are interrupting the Sybil. Now, again, is that brave or just foolishness?”
There. She had spoken my name thrice. I felt an instant of sheer terror. But nothing happened.
She laughed again, and her laugh was a human one, almost kindly.
“A most inappropriate gift, sorcerer, son of sorcerer.”
“I don’t understand…I’m sorry, Lady.”
“Sekenre, do you know what that sword is?”
“It was my father’s.”
“It is the sword of a Knight Inquisitor. Your father tried to deny what he was, even to himself. So he joined a holy order, an order of strictest discipline, devoted to the destruction of all things of darkness, all the wild things, witches, sorcerers, even the wild gods. He was like you, boy, at your age. He wanted so much to do the right thing. For all the good it did him. In the end, he only had the sword.”
“Lady, I have nothing else—”
“Sekenre—there, I said it again. You are very special. The path before you is very special. Your future is not a matter of how many times I speak your name. Keep the sword. You shall need it. I require no payment from you, not yet anyway.”
“Will you require it later, Great Sybil?”
She leaned forward, and I saw that her teeth were sharp and pointed. Her breath smelled of river mud.
“Your entire life shall be payment enough. All things come to me in proper time, even as you, I think, come to me now, when your need is greatest.”
Then I began to tell her why I had come, about Father, and what had happened to Hamakina.
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, you are lecturing the Sybil. Brave or foolish?”
I wept. “Please, Great Lady…I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I want to do the right thing. Please don’t be angry. Tell me what to do.”
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, everything you do is the correct thing, part of the great pattern which I observe, which I weave, which I prophesy. At each new turning of your life the pattern is made anew. All the meanings are changed. Your father understood that, when he came back from beyond the sea, no longer a Knight Inquisitor because he knew too much of sorcery. He had become a sorcerer by fighting sorcery. He was like a doctor who contracts the patient’s disease. His knowledge was like a door that has been opened and can never be closed again. A door. In his mind.”
“No,” I said softly. “I will not be like him.”
“Hear then the prophecy of the Sybil, sorcerer, son of sorcerer. You shall journey into the very belly of the beast, into the mouth of the God Who Devours.”
“Lady, we are all on a journey in this life, and when we die—”
“Sorcerer, son of sorcerer, do you accept the words of the Sybil of your own will, as a gift given?”
I was afraid to ask her what would happen if I refused. It wasn’t much of a choice.
“Lady, I accept.”
“It is of your will then. If you stray from your path, if you step aside, that, too, changes the weaving of all lives.”
“Lady, I only want to get my sister back and—”
“Then accept these too.”
She pressed something into my hand. Her touch was cold and hard, like living iron. The serpent thing in her lap hissed, almost forming words.
I