“What should they do about it, Great Ones? You have not told them how they can serve you.”
“Find where they are coming from. Find whatever Wizard or Magician is responsible for them. Come and tell us. Whoever is making these yellow crystals must be sought out, caught out, destroyed! See to it!”
The Oracle bowed. To me the gesture looked mocking, sinister, as though the Oracle, had it willed, could have answered many of the questions the giants were asking. Seemingly, however, the giants found no fault with it.
“Go, now. We are weary of you,” rumbled Dream Miner.
“Beware my lightning,” whispered Storm Grower. “If you think of disobeying. Beware my hail.” The troop I had followed came toward me along the gallery, moved into the hall of pillars. I crawled down to the entrance of my rock cleft, waiting until they had passed. The Oracle was still standing at the parapet, around the curving cavern. I heard the giant ask if all had been prepared and heard the Oracle say yes, it was all in readiness, these words almost in whispers, and then the Oracle swept by in a flutter of ribbons and all of them moved through the hall to the tunnel mouth from which we had come.
I did not think.
This is true. My head was full of giant talk, conjecture, ideas, theories. I wanted only to get out of there, out into the clean air once more. Behind me the great surge of breathing faded as we turned one corner, then another...
Into blinding light and a chanting voice and a smoke that sent me reeling. A fire, a caldron, Huldra there with the smoke pouring forth, the others halfhidden in it, and the Oracle somewhere nearby.
Huldra’s voice. “Disclose by the Deep Powers. Disclose by the Shadow’s dark. Disclose by the Night’s teeth. Smoke surround, dark betray, blood holdfast.” They saw me! All of them but one were turned toward me, eyes upon me, avid and victorious, not moving, not needing to move, for there were other things swarming around me, binding me, while the smoke held me fast and I could not move. Porvius Bloster lay upon the stone, a knife deep in his back. It was his blood that held me. His life.
The words came as though in a dream, from some distantly echoing place. “Let me have her,” begged Dedrina.
“No,” the Oracle said, looking in my direction. “Such is not what the Great Ones prefer.”
“Ah, but let me have her, Oracle. I will dispose of her well enough. For my daughter’s sake, whom she killed, though we have never proved it. For my sisters’ sake. This one did us great harm, took from us a great possession. Let me have her.”
“The Great Ones have their own ways. You have all done your part. Well done, I should say, particularly Huldra. You will all be rewarded for it.”
“I will have her as my reward. Her and what of mine she carries.” Dedrina was persistent.
“The Great Ones intend that you remain free as your reward. I may, of course, go back and ask them. If you would prefer.”
“Shut yourself, woman,” demanded the Duke. “Leave well alone. You’ll have your avengement. She’ll not live long, and she’ll not leave here, ever.”
“Ah.” The Basilisk seemed in agony, dimly perceived through the veils that were settling around me. “So, so, let it be.” She seemed deep in thought, turning to the Witch as though for guidance.
Huldra turned her back, but not before I saw the gleam of triumph in her eyes, not before I heard the words, “Vengeance is sweet, Jinian Footseer. So dies the killer of my brother and the beloved of my son’s killer.”
I hadn’t killed Huld, not really. Peter had. Still, I supposed I was responsible for it, in a way. “You didn’t give a damn about your brother,” I tried to say.
I said nothing. Lips and tongue did not obey. No part of me would move.
They went away into darkness then, Jinian Footseer became someone else. I, the observer, floated in the air somewhere, uninvolved, yet unable to escape.
Where Jinian went, I would have to go. Something was dragging her through the rocky corridors. They came through beams of light from above, and I saw they were Oracles, six, eight, a dozen of them. Surely not. The smoke must have disturbed my reason. Still, they looked very much like Oracles. The same shape, size, costume. The same painted faces. The same napping ribbons. They slipped in and out of vision, finally fading into darkness.
There were creatures. Moles. Not gobblemoles with their clean velvet skins and little pink feet. No, other moles, ragged creatures with fangs and hands and half-blind eyes, which dug and dragged and dropped Jinian in a corner, where her eyes stared, unable to shut. Creatures from Morp, Jinian thought.
From the charnel house at Morp.
There were people in the place. Someone came to peer down at Jinian. “This is the one,” she said. “This is the one I have Seen.” I looked up into a gauze mask painted with moth wings. A Seer, leaning forward to finger the little star-eye pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me when I was a child. A Seer in this place, speaking as though her gauze mask were thick as a curtain, sound-deadening. Though I did not seem to be present, still something within me heard and remembered. “This one wears the star-eye, Riddler. Here on her breast. She has worn it since a child. It was given her by a Wize-ard. And it was given to the Wize-ards by those you know. It has power, Riddler. I would advise you to take it from her.” Even in my weakness, something
