The Oracle's Secret (The Oracle Saga Book 1) Read online

  I summon the vision power again, letting it tell me where to go. I feel myself walking ahead, then turning right, then left again after a few steps. I hear crashes all around me, but none close enough to touch me. I pull myself out of the vision and retrace the steps I just saw. Dust and debris from the falling cubes catches me, but I’m still safe.

  I repeat the pattern twice more - bring on a vision, follow my own footsteps. I can’t believe I’m doing this, I can’t believe it’s working, but I can’t stop to think about it or I’ll run back to Tarian and probably be crushed. I’m breathing fast, my heart hammering. My palms are sweaty. How much longer can I keep this up?

  I bring on the next vision - sideways, forward, sideways. I follow the pattern, but I’ve lost myself with all this counting. Was it four steps or five? I hover on four, hesitating, and, I decide on five just in time to avoid being crushed. The cube lands just behind me, and little chips of stone batter the backs of my legs, stinging me. I feel blood trickle.

  I’m starting to panic now but there’s no time for that, I can’t stand and wait to be crushed. I summon another vision, let it guide me the next few steps, repeating the numbers to myself to make sure I don’t get it wrong this time. I halt, waiting for the crash to my left. There it is. I reach for the vision again, but it’s not there. It refuses to come. Have I used it all up? Is that possible?

  I don’t know. All I know is that I’m reaching desperately to know what to do next and nothing’s happening. I’m stuck here in the present, unable to see anything now or in the future. I’m itching to take the blindfold away but I can’t, I can’t get this wrong. I must be almost there. I breathe deeply, trying to calm myself.

  A cube crashes beside me, so close that it glances off my shoulder, scraping down me and leaving a burning pain all down my arm. I can’t stop myself, I run headlong, no idea where I am or what’s around me. My visions won’t help me any more. Nothing can help me any more except getting away.

  I run smack into the door and scream, startled. It takes me a second to realise that I’ve made it, that I haven’t run into another cube on its way down to crush me. I huddle close to the door and gasp, unable to do anything for a moment. I can’t believe I’m alive. I made it.

  I take off the blindfold and the light’s so bright that I have to squint for a moment. Then I see Tarian running towards me, the room safe now that I’ve completed the challenge. He skids to a halt, kneels beside me and looks at me with concern.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asks. ‘That last one looked like it got you pretty hard...’

  ‘It’s not too bad,’ I say, but my whole arm is throbbing so much that it hurts to move it. I look down and see that the cube scraped off a few layers of skin at least, leaving the whole outside of my arm red and bloody. The backs of my legs hurt too, where the flying debris caught me.

  ‘I wish we still had a first aid kit,’ Tarian murmurs as he inspects my wounds. ‘Or even just some water to wash these out.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ I say weakly. It’s not even the worst thing I’ve had to put up with these last few days. ‘Let’s just keep going.’

  I push open the door with my good arm and lead us through to the next chamber. The first thing I see is a table, on which there is a pile of bandages and a basin full of clean water. We stare.

  ‘I wish we were out of here and safely on our way home...?’ says Tarian, just in case.

  Nothing happens.

  ‘Worth a try,’ I tell him, with a grin.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The chamber is small but well equipped - as well as first aid supplies there’s drinking water and snacks, and blankets in a neat pile in a corner. I’m anxious, eager to press on, but Tarian convinces me to stop long enough to tend to my injuries and have something to eat.

  I let him sit me down on a chair while he takes a sponge and gently washes the dust from my scraped arm and legs, so carefully that it hardly hurts at all. He spreads some sort of salve over the scrapes that numbs my arm a little and helps with the pain, and then he sets to work bandaging it. He seems to know what he’s doing, and when he’s done my arm is encased in neat bandage from shoulder to wrist. My legs aren’t so bad - the tiny scrapes are already healing, barely noticeable now.

  ‘Lunchtime!’ Tarian says, even though we’ve been underground so long that we’ve both completely lost track of what day it is, let alone what time.

  We sit at the little table and start to eat. The food is good, the same array of delicious fruits and vegetables as before, and I realise that I’m pretty hungry. Tarian is too, and we eat silently for a while, too absorbed in the meal to worry about anything else. I must be fuller than I realised, because after a while I start to feel sluggish, in a cosy, relaxed sort of way. I can barely muster up the effort to put another slice of apple in my mouth. I lie back on the bench, feeling calmer than I have in days.

  ‘This is nice,’ says Tarian. ‘We’re in no rush to move on, are we?’

  ‘No, no hurry,’ I say.

  I remember the blankets in the corner. It takes me a while to summon up the energy, but finally I manage to get off the bench and wander over there. I unfold a few of the blankets and make us a little nest on the ground.

  ‘Let’s just have a little lie down before we move on?’ I suggest.

  ‘Good idea,’ says Tarian. ‘The Lightstone will still be there later.’

  The Lightstone - there’s something important about that, something I should remember, but I’m absorbed in making the nest now, curling up in the blankets. Tarian comes over and nestles beside me, cuddling me close to him, his chin on my shoulder and his arm around my waist. I snuggle closer, craving his warmth. His hand on my waist moves slowly, soothingly. I’m utterly comfortable, completely at peace.

  We fall asleep. I don’t know for how long, there’s no way of telling time in these caves that are always lit by eerie glowing stones. When I wake, I feel just as relaxed as before. I don’t move, just lie there in a happy fog, and I’m almost asleep again when a vision takes over.

  It’s a vision of the door, the one on the other side of the room. I’m walking towards it, determined.

  That’s all I see. It jolts me awake a little, and I suddenly remember that we were in a hurry. I scramble out of Tarian’s embrace and shake him.

  ‘Tarian!’ I say. ‘Come on! we have to go! I can’t believe we just fell asleep!’

  He blinks. ‘What’s the rush?’ he asks.

  And just like that, I can’t remember.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Um... I’m not sure. We had to... go somewhere? To get something?’

  Why can’t I remember?

  ‘Relax, we’ve got plenty of time for that,’ says Tarian. ‘Come here, it’s so cosy...’

  I start to lie down again, but something keeps me upright.

  ‘No...’ I say. ‘No, there’s something important...’

  I turn and look at the door. I know that I have to get through it, but it’s so nice in here, so peaceful, and I have everything I need...

  No! A voice inside me shouts, and as I listen to it, it gets louder. No! This isn’t me! This isn’t what I want.

  And it’s hard, because in so many ways this is what I want - quiet, safety, nobody bothering me or using me for their own purposes. But I can’t have this, not this way. I remember the blood oath, and shudder. I have to obey the Prince’s orders and get the Lightstone. But more than that, I didn’t choose this. It’s safe and warm and peaceful but it’s not real. It’s not really mine.

  ‘Come on, Tarian,’ I say. ‘Just get up for a minute. I want to show you something.’

  He grumbles but he gets up, lets me lead him by the hand. I walk towards the door. The closer we get, the more the calm, cosy feeling presses down on me - I can barely keep myself awake and walking. It would be so easy to just lie around here, so easy to just stop, to give it all up...

  No! I think of the things I love that I can’t have here - Cherry and her friendship, o
ur dance sessions in my bedroom, the secrets we’ve shared; my mother, complicated as our relationship is; Emmeline the healer and everyone else at court who watched me grow up; the sky and the wind; the feeling of walking alone down a busy London street, watching the other people go by...

  I keep it all there, at the front of my mind, as I drag Tarian closer to the door. I touch the handle and my mind clears, the pleasant fog blowing away. I lead us through.

  The door closes behind us.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Tarian asks, rubbing his face like he’s been sleeping for days.

  But I’m too preoccupied with our new surroundings. Remember the three doors side by side, from my vision? They’re here. They’re just not the only three doors.

  We’re in a circular room, and doors line the walls, each one of them identical. There must be dozens of them. I spin around - there’s nothing else, just doors. It makes me a bit dizzy.

  Tarian whistles.

  I touch the door behind us, the one we just came through. From this side it looks exactly the same as all the others. I don’t want to lose track of it. I unwind a strip off the bandage around my arm and tie it to the ornately carved door handle. It makes me feel better, somehow, even though I know I can’t go back through it until I have the Lightstone.

  Tarian’s walking slowly around, looking at the doors. He stops at one and leans close to it, listening for sounds from behind it.

  ‘Anything?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Can you use your powers to find the right door?’ I ask him.

  He frowns. ‘I should be able to, but I can’t. There are powerful spells here. It’s protected against me somehow.’

  I sigh. ‘And there’s no point me even trying - a vision wouldn’t help us to know which door it was when they’re all the same.’

  The doors are starting to creep me out now. This close to the stone, I’m scared there might be consequences if we pick the wrong one - any one of them could lead to a pit full of sharks or something. I mean, sharks are unlikely in Sherwood Forest, but I’d probably have said the same about a lot of other things that have happened today. So I’m not about to go flinging doors open at random until I have a better idea of what I’m doing.

  ‘OK,’ I say, ‘there’s got to be some way of figuring this out. Let’s just think about it logically.’

  I start walking slowly around the edge of the room, looking at each door as I go past it. I count them. I touch each one as I go past to see if it feels hot or cold, like there’s something behind it. All of them feel the same - warmish but not hot, smooth wood. When we listen through each one, straining to hear, there’s nothing. None of them smell any different than the others. We walk around over and over, together and apart, clockwise and anti-clockwise, examining the doors from every angle, using every method we can think of.

  ‘I’m about ready to start licking these doors,’ I say to Tarian, at the end of yet another pass.

  He laughs. ‘Hey, whatever you’re into is fine with me...’

  I roll my eyes. ‘So helpful,’ I say.

  He grins at me and I melt.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We’re ok. At least we’re safe in here. We’re doing fine.’

  He strokes my good arm and squeezes my hand. I kiss him, revelling in the few moments of escape in his arms. I wish we could just do this. But I can’t, so I pull away after a minute and focus again on the doors.

  ‘Um...’ I say. ‘Were the lights like that before?’

  Tarian looks up and sees what I’ve spotted - the glowing stones that light the room are going out. The ones nearest the ceiling are already dark, and the next layer down begin to wink out as we watch.

  ‘Huh,’ says Tarian. ‘I’m guessing we don’t want to still be here when all of the lights have gone out?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I say.

  We get back to work, quicker now. I’m tense, watching the lights disappear one by one. I try to think, but it’s so frustrating. The doors are identical. There’s literally nothing that sets one apart from the next, apart from the strip of bandage on the handle of the one that least back the way we came, and I know if we go back there now we’ll be trapped again in the sleepy stupor of whatever spell is on that room.

  It’s not fair! There should be something, some clue, a hint. I look up at the ceiling and down at the floor in case I’ve missed anything obvious, but I haven’t. There’s no way to know what door leads us closer to the Lightstone and which ones could send us back to where we started or to a horrible death or any one of a million other places.

  ‘Livya,’ says Tarian, ‘the lights. We have to hurry.’

  I look up. He’s right. The lights are out almost down to the ground now. There might be time to go around all the doors once more, if only we knew what we were looking for. But there’s nothing to look for! There’s only sameness everywhere, nothing to base a decision on, nothing to guide me.

  I’m starting to think that this is an impossible choice, that the only way to find out what’s behind one of the doors is to open it and deal with the consequences. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is meant to be where we die, and if we get the right door it will be a miracle.

  But no. Anyone who wants the Lightstone has to come this way. The Nineteenth Prince wouldn’t have designed things so that we could struggle through all the trials we’ve been through so far, only to be eaten by lions or whatever now.

  So what does that mean?

  And suddenly I know, and it’s so obvious that I feel stupid for not knowing it before. It doesn’t matter what we choose, as long as we choose it.

  I look up, and the first door that catches my eye is one across the room, a dozen doors down the row from where we are. That’s the one.

  ‘Come on!’ I say. ‘It’s this way.’

  Tarian follows me to the door in the gloom. It’s almost dark now but I don’t care. I look at the door with total confidence - as long as I think this should be the right door, then it will be. I grab the handle and push it open.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  My heart’s pounding when we stumble through the door. A part of me thinks I’m wrong, but, like I hoped, we find ourselves in another stone-lit chamber, a small one, with a door on the other side. This feels right.

  ‘How did you find it?’ Tarian asks, and he kisses me.

  ‘I realised that it didn’t matter which door it was,’ I said. ‘I just had to choose one.’

  ‘Genius,’ he says, grinning.

  ‘Hey, it worked, didn’t it?’ I laugh.

  We look around the room.

  ‘I wonder what’s coming next...?’ I say.

  The room seems empty, apart from the door. Surely it can’t be as simple as going to the door and opening it?

  It isn’t. As we start walking across the room, the mist appears again and the ghost of the Nineteenth Prince is standing in front of us.

  ‘Your journey is almost complete,’ he says. ‘This is your final test. This door will open and lead you to the Lightstone. But first, one of you must reveal a secret that nobody else alive knows.’

  He disappears as suddenly as he arrived.

  Tarian and I look at each other. I can’t read his expression.

  ‘A secret...’ I say.

  He doesn’t reply. I wrack my brains. A secret that nobody else alive knows. I’m not sure I have any. I’ve been watched so closely all my life that I’ve never had a chance to have secrets, and those few things that I could keep to myself, I always shared with Cherry.

  I think about my blood oath, how that’s a secret that’s burning a hole in me, how badly I want to explain to Tarian and yet how I don’t want it to change how he looks at me. But the Prince knows about that, so it doesn’t count.

  I sift through memories, looking for things in visions I’ve had, but there’s nothing.

  ‘I don’t know if I have one,’ I tell Tarian. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean we’re going to be trapped in her
e forever...’

  Tarian shakes his head slowly, doesn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Tarian?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have one,’ he says. ‘I have a secret that nobody else alive knows.’

  ‘Ah,’ I say.

  His face is solemn, sad. I wonder if the secret is something awful, something he hoped he would never have to share. I go to put my arms around him, help him through this torment, but he shrugs me off and backs away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  It’s like a physical pain, seeing him so upset. Sympathy makes my chest hurt. I don’t want him to feel this way. He’s become so important to me so quickly, and I never want him to be in pain, not for a second.

  ‘Is it hard to talk about?’ I ask softly.

  He nods.

  ‘Then don’t,’ I say. ‘If it’s too much, you don’t have to reveal it. It’s your secret, nobody else’s.’

  I don’t know what this will mean for my blood oath. Maybe I should be trying to persuade him to tell, so that we can get the stone. Maybe I should be threatening him, begging him, anything to reach my Prince’s goal. But I can’t do that to him. This has to be his choice. I won’t take that away from him, even if it means breaking my blood oath. Even if it means death, or eternal torment.

  He’s silent for a few minutes. I try not to think of the stories I’ve heard about breakers of blood oaths - some who died in horrible, magical ways, others who had death stolen from them, cursed to live forever in pain and misery.

  Finally he shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I should have told you anyway. This is right.’

  He sits on the floor, gestures that I should join him. I sit, confused. His brown eyes glisten as he looks at me.

  ‘When I was a little boy,’ he begins, ‘my grandmother, my Nain, was the best Finder for five generations. Anyone who wanted something found, it was my Nain they asked. She’d been to court, she was the most important woman for miles around, she was trusted and respected and that respect spread to the whole family.’