child looked at Iya with an old man’s eyes and smiled.
‘All is woven together, Guardian,’ the Oracle said as this vision faded into something darker. ‘This is the legacy you and your kind are offered. One with the true queen. One with Skala. You shall be tested with fire.’
Iya saw the symbol of her craft – the thin crescent of Illior’s moon – against a circle of fire and the number 222 glowing just beneath it in figures of white flame so bright they hurt her eyes.
Then Ero lay spread before her under a bloated moon, in flames from harbour to citadel. An army under the flag of Plenimar surrounded it, too numerous to count. Iya could feel the heat of the flames on her face as Erius led his army out against them. But his soldiers fell dead behind him and the flesh fell from his charger’s bones in shreds. The Plenimarans surrounded the King like wolves and he was lost from sight. The vision shifted dizzyingly again and Iya saw the Skalan crown, bent and tarnished now, lying in a barren field.
‘So long as a daughter of Thelátimos’ line defends and rules, Skala shall never be subjugated,’ the Oracle whispered.
‘Ariani?’ Iya asked, but knew even as she spoke that it had not been the Princess’ face she’d seen framed in that helm.
The Oracle began to sway and keen. Raising the bowl, she poured its endless flow over her head like a libation, masking herself in blood. Falling to her knees, she grasped Iya’s hand and a whirlwind took them, striking Iya blind.
Screaming winds surrounded her, then entered the top of her head and plunged down through the core of her like a shipwright’s augur. Images flashed by like wind-borne leaves: the strange number on its shield, and the helmeted woman in many forms and guises – old, young, in rags, crowned, hanging naked from a gibbet, riding garlanded through broad, unfamiliar streets. Iya saw her clearly now, her face, her blue eyes, black hair, and long limbs like Ariani’s. But it was not the Princess.
The Oracle’s voice cut through the maelstrom. ‘This is your Queen, Wizard, this true daughter of Thelátimos. She will turn her face to the west.’
Suddenly Iya felt a bundle placed in her arms and looked down at the dead infant the Oracle had given her.
‘Others see, but only through smoke and darkness,’ said the Oracle. ‘By the will of Illior the bowl came into your hands; it is the long burden of your line, Guardian, and the bitterest of all. But 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 dead infant looked up at Iya with black staring eyes and searing pain tore through her chest. She knew whose child this was.
Then the vision was gone and Iya found herself kneeling in front of the Oracle with the unopened bag in her arms. There was no dead infant, no blood on the floor. The Oracle sat on her stool, shift and hair unstained.
‘Two children, one queen,’ the Oracle whispered, looking at Iya with the shining white eyes of Illior.
Iya trembled before that gaze, trying to cling to all she’d seen and heard. ‘The others who dream of this child, Honoured One – do they mean her well or ill? Will they help me raise her up?’
But the god was gone and the girl child slumped on the stool had no answers.
Sunlight blinded Iya as she emerged from the cavern. The heat took her breath away and her legs would not support her. Arkoniel caught her as she collapsed against the stone enclosure. ‘Iya, what happened? What’s wrong?’
‘Just … just give me a moment,’ she croaked, clutching the bag to her chest.
A seed watered with blood.
Arkoniel lifted her easily and carried her into the shade. He put the waterskin to her lips and Iya drank, leaning heavily against him. It was some time before she felt strong enough to start back for the inn. Arkoniel kept one arm about her waist and she suffered his help without complaint. They were within sight of the stele when she fainted.
When she opened her eyes again she was lying on a soft bed in a cool, dim room at the inn. Sunlight streamed in through a crack in the dusty shutter and struck shadows across the carved wall beside the bed. Arkoniel sat beside her, clearly worried.
‘What happened with the Oracle?’ he asked.
Illior spoke and my question was answered, she thought bitterly. How I wish I’d listened to Agazhar.
She took his hand. ‘Later, when I’m feeling stronger. Tell me your vision. Was your query answered?’
Her answer obviously frustrated him, but he knew better than to press her. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I asked what sort of wizard I’d become, what my path would be. She showed me a vision in the air, but all I could make out was an image of me holding a young boy in my arms.’
‘Did he have blond hair?’ she asked, thinking of the child in the beautiful white tower.
‘No, it was black. To be honest, I was disappointed, coming all this way just for that. I must have done something wrong in the asking.’
‘Sometimes you must wait for the meaning to be revealed.’ Iya turned away from that earnest young face, wishing that the Lightbearer had granted her such a respite. The sun still blazed down on the square outside her window, but Iya saw only the road back to Ero before her, and darkness at its end.
A red harvest moon cast the sleeping capital into a towering mosaic of light and shadow that nineteenth night of Erasin. Crooked Ero, the capital was called. Built on a rambling hill overlooking the islands of the Inner Sea, the streets spread like poorly woven lace down from the walls of the Palatine Circle to the quays and shipyards and rambling slums below. Poor and wealthy alike lived cheek-by-jowl, and every house in sight of the harbour had at least one window facing east towards Plenimar like a watchful eye.
The priests claim Death comes in the west door, Arkoniel thought miserably as he rode through the west gate behind Iya and the witch. Tonight would be the culmination of the nightmare that had started nearly five months earlier at Afra.
The two women rode in silence, their faces hidden by their deep hoods. Heartsick at the task that lay before them, Arkoniel willed Iya to speak, change her mind, turn aside, but she said nothing and he could not see her eyes to read them. For over half his life she’d been teacher, mentor, and second mother to him. Since Afra, she’d become a house full of closed doors.
Lhel had gone quiet, too. Her kind had been unwelcome here for generations. She wrinkled her nose now as the stink of the city engulfed them. ‘You great village? Ha! Too many.’
‘Not so loud!’ Arkoniel looked around nervously. Wandering wizards were not as welcome here as they had been, either. It would go hard with them all to be found with a hill witch.
‘Smells like tok,’ Lhel muttered.
Iya pushed back her hood and surprised Arkoniel with a thin smile. ‘She says it smells like shit here, and so it does.’
Lhel’s one to talk, Arkoniel thought. He’d kept upwind of the hill woman since they’d met.
After their strange visit to Afra they’d gone first to Ero and guested with the Duke and his lovely, fragile princess. By day they gamed and rode. Each night Iya spoke in secret with the Duke.
From there, he and Iya spent the rest of that hot, sullen summer searching the remote mountain valleys of the northern province for a witch to aid them, for no Orëska wizard possessed the magic for the task that Illior had set them. By the time they found one, the aspen leaves were already edged with gold.
Driven from the fertile lowlands by the first incursions of Skalan settlers, the small, dark-skinned hill people kept