“Why take it?” Laconic, a voice I knew. “The old ones, Ganver and the rest, they pretend it has significance. Oh, I recall that pretense, Seer. In my youth I was shown many things. ‘Watch and learn,”’ they said to me. ‘Bao,’ they said to me. So I watched, but it was only nonsense. They showed me this and showed me that, but it meant nothing. It was only pretense, done to mystify us young ones and keep us subservient. The sign has no power. It is nothing. A symbol only; a symbol of our degradation. If it had any power at all, it would be the power of our people, not hers. She could never learn to use it.”
“You’ve been playing with her, Riddler. Playing. Games. Oh, I can See, See what you’ve been doing. Games. Risky Games. You gave her the Dagger.”
“Why not?” it asked in a bleak, careless voice, full of malice and yet without emotion, as though its evil were an abstract thing, intended but not felt. “I created it out of my anger. I gave it to Daggerhawk Demesne, saying it came from them” And he gestured back, toward that place where the giants were. “In time I grew annoyed at Daggerhawk Demesne and wished to remove my gift from them. So I played with them, with her. Why not play with her, with any of them? A moment’s amusement at least?
“Am I not protected by your Seeings, Seer? You looked into the future and Saw her fall into our hands. You Saw she could not use the Dagger against me. Now. Why should I not play with her? Why not, Seer? Are you saying now you did not See what you told me?”
“No,” the Seer mumbled. “I Saw as I told you. And yet the place I Saw her was not like this. The time was not this time. Do you not fear, Riddler? Fear she may yet find the book and the light? Fear she may yet find the bell?” The words held association for me. They circled into my dizzy fog and whirled there, like moths made of light, and I remembered Sorah the Seer upon the Wastes of Bleer saying, “The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell.” What Wizard was that? Was it Jinian?
The Oracle paid no attention, made no answer.
She—I—was dragged away again, seeing things at the edge of vision, as through a cloud. Glass jars, vats, tall vats full of the same silvery stuff that had filled the pool of the sevens. Crystal milk. Wires hanging down inside the vats, and on the wire crystals growing.
Green ones. Amber. Red. Amethyst. All with that shading across them, dimming the color. From the tops of the vats the wires ran out along the walls.
Where? Where do they go?
The moles have picked Jinian up again, tugging her along, head bumping on the stone. They are dragging her along the wall of the cavern, near the giants’ feet, just out of reach. See the fingers reaching for her, just out of reach. High against the cavern roof are great caps where the wires go. That’s where the wires go, into the caps, and the caps on the giant heads and the thoughts of the giants flow down into the vats and crystals grow. There. In the crystal milk.
Darkness and pain.
Then only darkness.
I came to myself at last, knowing nothing except that a very long time had passed. All of me was present in one place. I wanted to giggle about that and couldn’t. Someone had put a gag in my mouth.
Light.
Low, at the level of my eyes where I lay. Dim. A long, bow-shaped arch between the place where I was and some other place. Out there the dim light swam and blurred. Things were moving between me and the source of the light. I slipped away, faded into black, realizing how uncomfortable I was. Something hard and curved was pressed into my back.
When I came back, the light was a little brighter. I could see what lay to one side. A pole. A long pole, extending outward through the window into the light. There were a pair of hoofed feet in front of me.
There was something tied to the pole. Something dead.
I could move, some. I twisted my head, trying to roll myself on the curved surface. It shifted, rolled.
On the other side, another pole, something tied to it as well. This body was human. The feet were on a level with my eyes. I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth, realizing for the first time that my hands were free.
The gag first. It came loose after a time, some wad of filthy stuff. I spat it away, blacked out for a moment, then came back to begin a frantic exploration of the ropes that bound me to the pole I was on.
No knots. Two heavy ropes bound below my breasts. Two around my thighs. I could move my arms, my lower legs, but it did no good. I was lashed to the pole.
My pack! In it the things needed to lay some spell upon the ropes, some freeing magic. It had been a little pack. When Huldra’s smokes had caught me, it had been on my back. I raised my head, twisted, trying to see, sorry I had looked. The poles stretched away on either side, each with its burden. Not many.
Half a dozen or so. Against a far wall was a packshaped blot, put where I could see it, where I could know where it was without reaching it.
There was a fine cruelty in that. The Oracle, perhaps. It felt like a thing the Oracle would do.
I lay back, breathless, screams trembling at the edge of my throat. I could feel them gathering there, like birds, fluttering in panic. They were ready to come out, fly out, shriek their way into the cavern’s quiet.
Quiet. Too
