Page 68 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

‘The kingdom was not always like that,’ Wyldaern said softly.

‘That’s not been my experience.’ She folded her arms, continuing on.

‘Cahra,’ Wyldaern said, slowing to fall into step beside her in the narrow tunnel. ‘Consider why you call the man the “Steward”. Atriposte is not Kolyath’s rightful monarch. He simply minds a place, the kingdom’s keeper in the absence of its ruler,’ the Seer said.

‘I suppose,’ Cahra admitted. Only Atriposte wasn’t some figurehead. He’d been in power her whole life. Stories of blue-blooded high-borns didn’t matter in places like Kolyath. Not when power could be stolen and used to suppress an entire people. ‘Why is that?’

Wyldaern stared straight ahead. ‘The royal family was assassinated, centuries ago. Atriposte’s forebears seized their chance then.’

Cahra watched as Piet’s torch cast fingers of spindly flame into the darkness, feeling something like trepidation materialise with them. She swallowed, trying to find a way to abate the growing disquiet inside her. She opted for distraction.

‘I can’t believe it takes you so long to get to the Oracle,’ Cahra said.

‘It is a journey,’ she confessed. ‘A pilgrimage that I endeavour to make once a month, if I can. The rest of the time, I wander, practicing what She has taught me and calling on the Wildspeople and any villages that I find, should they require aid.’

The Seer’s answer reminded Cahra of Thierre. She swallowed the lump in her throat and asked, ‘What kind of aid?’

Wyldaern’s gaze grew thoughtful in the flickering torchlight. ‘Whatever people need. Helping their healers with herbs and elixirs, scrying for guidance on sowing and harvesting. Sometimes, tending the fields is help enough,’ she said warmly, her voice light and lyrical.

‘But not the weather?’ Cahra joked, fighting to steady her nerves.

‘Alas, no,’ she said with a hint of amusement. ‘That, I cannot control.’

‘Shame,’ Cahra said glibly with a shrug. She would’ve liked more than a torch in this freezing cave. Rubbing her arms, she asked, ‘And you’ve been coming here for how long?’

The Seer tilted her head, thinking. ‘Almost a decade now, I suppose.’

She squinted at Wyldaern in the dark. When they’d met, the Seer hadn’t seemed that much older than Cahra. Maybe she’d been wrong.

Or maybe, the Oracle had helped Wyldaern when the woman was younger, just like Lumsden had helped her, she thought.

Spying a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, it should have filled her with relief. But all Cahra suddenly felt was a nameless dread.

‘What is the Oracle like?’

‘She is the last of the three Oracles in existence,’ Wyldaern explained. ‘The lessons She has taught, the knowledge She has shared… I would never have known such otherwise. She will enlighten you, too.’ Wyldaern smiled. ‘Would you like to meet Her?’

Slowly, Cahra nodded, and strode on until the dot of light became a gateway into a new world.

The cave tunnel opened into a long meadow, walled on all sides by sawtooth cliffs. Turning in a slow circle, she had the crazed notion they were nestled in a lopped peak of one of the ice-capped mountains she’d seen outside the caves. At the end of a pebbled walkway through wild dandelions, creeping juniper and the fierce magenta blooms of fireweed, Cahra could just make out a high-roofed cottage, wooden panels basking in the late afternoon light.

One moment, she’d been inside the cave’s winding maze. The next, she found herself in a rustic garden in full bloom. It should have taken them hours to walk to such a place.

‘It is a veiling,’ Wyldaern explained to her. ‘The ancient Oracles did not just “see” things.’

Cahra frowned, wondering what other magicks awaited them. Thierre’s people stopped, cautiously raising their weapons.

‘Please, there is no need,’ Wyldaern said, beckoning Cahra toward the winding path.

Exhaling uneasily, Cahra and the others followed.

They passed through a central ring-shaped garden brimming with verdant ferns, then crossed a bridge, the sound of running water echoing against the grounds’ rock-faced walls. The Oracle’s dwelling grew as the group neared, a small cabin with a thatched roof, lived in yet sturdy, soft pillows of smoke puffing from the chimney to the cyan sky.

And then they were standing at the Oracle’s front door. The last of her conduit kind, the banished, the ‘heretics’. Hael’stromia’s ancient Seers. Cahra’s body went rigid.

Wyldaern didn’t knock. She stood, Cahra beside her, at the lacewood door and waited. Thierre’s people exchanged glances, Siarl looking uncomfortable as she shifted, hands itching for the comfort of her blades. Not a minute later, the door opened. A middle-aged woman appeared before the group, peering out at them.

Cahra clamped her mouth shut. She hadn’t known what to expect, but she definitely hadn’t expected the Oracle tonotbe a crone.

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