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

  I wake from the vision and remember every single thing with total clarity. I feel a thrill of triumph. We’re getting away. Maybe not right now, maybe not even permanently, they could catch us in five minutes and things might get even worse - but we’re getting away. And when we do, I’ll be ready.

  ‘Was that a vision?’ Elise’s face is hovering over me and I realise I’m lying on the ground.

  I struggle upright and nod.

  ‘Did you see anything important?’ she asks. ‘Did you see the Lightstone?’

  I shake my head. She slaps my face. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  I growl at her. Tarian hurries over, dragging Rourke in his wake.

  ‘Hey!’ He yells. ‘I’m cooperating, leave her alone!’

  ‘You may be, but she’s not,’ says Elise. ‘She’s lying.’

  ‘She can’t even say anything,’ Tarian points out, struggling to contain his anger.

  ‘She had a vision,’ says Elise. ‘But she says it wasn’t anything important. She’s lying.’

  Tarian laughs. ‘I’ve only known Livya for a couple of days,’ he says, ‘but in that time she’s had about a dozen visions about various breakfast foods, and maybe two that were actually about anything important.’

  Elise peers at me. I shrug.

  ‘I’d have thought an Oracle would have more control over her powers than that,’ she says. ‘But all right. I believe you. For now.’

  I nod gratefully to Tarian. He smiles back. I notice for the first time that his eyes aren’t just brown - in the sunlight they glint almost golden, a colour like autumn. I want so badly to smile back at him.

  Elise stalks away again and, while Rourke is busy complaining to Dearden about how long they’ve been walking and what a load of crap this all is, Tarian takes the opportunity to sit down beside me.

  Rourke glares at him and jerks at the rope holding him.

  ‘Why bother?’ asks Dearden. ‘We’re both here to keep an eye on them, and she can’t say anything. We’ll be going in five minutes anyway.’

  Rourke seems to decide that it’s not worth his trouble and goes back to whining about his rations.

  ‘I’m so sorry this is happening,’ Tarian whispers to me, in his voice like warm honey. I want to dive into it. I want him to keep talking to me forever.

  I nod, trying to make him understand that it’s all right.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t have disobeyed the Prince’s orders,’ he says, ‘but I couldn’t let them hurt you. I’m sorry.’

  It’s not his fault. He was never trained for this. He’d never even been to court a few days ago. I shuffle closer to him, so that our sides are pressing together, and lean my head against his shoulder. Just touching him makes me feel better. He’s the only constant, these last few days. He’s all I have left here now that Steele’s gone. Knowing Tarian is still with me makes everything less hopeless. I wish I could tell him about my vision. He leans his head on mine, too, and we sit there for a moment, breathing together.

  ‘I know we can get free, somehow,’ he says. ‘We just need to keep...’

  He’s jerked away as Rourke pulls on the rope. ‘Hey! No escape talk!’

  Rourke drags Tarian back to a standing position and I follow him with my eyes, feeling cold without him beside me. But I know now that all I have to do is wait. Wait and watch until I see the place from my vision. We’re going to escape.

  After that, anything could happen.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elise calls for us to start moving again. There are groans and sighs that stop abruptly when she yells for quiet. The Northerners aren’t happy. Maybe they weren’t expecting it all to take this long.

  Me neither, I think. at least they’re having a miserable time too. That’s some slight consolation.

  On we go, back to our normal formation now that we’re out of danger - Tarian and I at the front with Rourke and Dearden, everyone else somewhere behind us, invisible to me. We walk for a couple of hours through forest that all looks the same. I begin to wonder how long we’ll be walking - maybe my vision won’t happen for days, maybe even weeks. Sherwood hasn’t exactly been cooperative with us so far, and it is a magic forest. Maybe it can just keep throwing obstacles at us until it decides we can have the Lightstone. Maybe it’ll never decide we can have the Lightstone.

  Then, sometime around late afternoon, I notice that we’re starting to walk uphill.

  This could be it. We could be close. I keep my eyes open, looking in every direction for the rocks I saw. The mud track beneath my feet abruptly becomes a path of large, flat stones. The same path I remember. I smile around the gag, and my heart starts to beat faster. Every step is taking us closer.

  I spot the rocks on my right, through the trees. They look like they go on for a while and eventually become caves in the edge of the hill. I’m almost at the place where the shaking began in my vision. I feel a rush of adrenaline course through me, getting me ready to run. I wish I could have warned Tarian too.

  And then it begins - there’s a rumbling sound first, that makes everyone look around in confusion.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ demands Elise.

  Then the ground is shaking, so hard that it blurs my vision. There are screams and shouts of fear and confusion, and out of the corner of my eye I see a few people fall to the ground. But I’ve braced myself, planting my feet firmly so that I won’t fall. I wrap my tied hands a couple of times around the rope holding me and yank it free - Dearden’s so busy worrying about staying upright that he’s not holding on tight.

  I scream Tarian’s name, and although it’s unintelligible he hears me, pulls himself free as well, and follows me as I run towards the rocks. The ground is still shaking, harder now than before, and I stumble but manage to right myself. I wonder if this will just make things worse - if it’s an earthquake maybe the rocks will come crashing down on us - but it’s too late for second-guessing. This is what I’ve chosen and I’ll see it through.

  I know where the gap between the rocks is because of my vision, and he must be able to find it using his powers, because we both head unerringly towards it. I slide through first, then he squeezes through too, his broad shoulders almost trapping him. He takes the lead then, guiding me down a narrow path through the piles of stones, squeezing through cracks and under barriers. He’s in his element.

  I can’t hear any sounds of pursuit, but we keep going and going while the ground still shakes. I fall more than once, leaning myself against rocks to push myself back up again. Tarian stops to help me up when he sees, letting me lean my tied arms on his and drag myself upright. I’m beginning to feel sick with the shaking and the running and the gag making it harder to breathe. Finally the shaking stops. Tarian turns to me.

  ‘Almost there, I promise,’ he says, with a reassuring smile.

  He leads me only a little further through the rocks, until we get to a little patch of bare ground, surrounded by stone on all sides but open to the sky.

  ‘We should be able to stop here long enough to get untied,’ he says. ‘Look for sharp stones.’

  I walk the walks of the little space until I spot one jutting out. I start slicing through the tape holding my fingers down, but the rock isn’t sharp enough and I just end up scraping my hands without actually freeing myself.

  ‘Here,’ says Tarian.

  I turn around and he’s behind me, flexing his freed hands. They look sore, and I want to hold them and make them better. He goes to untie my hands too but I make a muffled protest and he goes for the gag first. His cramping fingers can’t manage to untie it properly, but he pulls at it so that there’s more give and manages to make enough space that he can slide the gag sideways and move the knot out of my mouth, making it simple to roll the whole thing down and away. It sits around my neck, a limp, soggy weight. Tarian runs his fingers softly across the lines where the gag bit into my cheeks and makes a low, angry sound. My mouth is as dry as a desert. My lips crack, and I can barely move my tongu
e.

  ‘Thanks,’ I manage, a croak. My jaw is so stiff.

  Tarian is already using a loose stone he found to cut through the tape confining my hands.

  ‘You’ll be out of there in just a moment,’ he says, soothing. ‘I’ve almost got it.’

  The tape comes off, and it feels like it takes half my skin with it but when I look at my fingers they’re still intact, just bone-white and rigid. I can’t move them at all. Even when Tarian manages to cut through the cable tie and free me completely, my hands are stuck like claws.

  I don’t care, for the moment. All I want is to throw my arms around Tarian, so that’s what I do, weird claw hands and all. He puts his arms around me too and holds me tight, breathing hard, and with my face buried in his chest I can feel his heart hammering. I scrabble at him, trying to pull him closer, and he squeezes me tighter, wrapping me all around with his powerful arms. I feel safer now than I’ve felt in my whole life.

  Pain shoots through me, distracting me. I yelp. My hands.

  ‘Feeling coming back?’ Tarian asks.

  I nod.

  ‘It’ll be over in a few minutes,’ Tarian says.

  He guides me to the ground and we sit. He pulls me into his lap sideways so that I can lean against his chest until the pain goes away, and he strokes my hair. My fingers throb and sting and I watch, half-fascinated, as they start to regain their colour.

  ‘We can’t stay here too long,’ Tarian says.

  ‘Looking for us,’ I agree. With my parched mouth, I can only manage short sentences.

  ‘But it’ll take them a while to find us in all of these rocks,’ says Tarian.

  I sigh. I wish we could stay here.

  ‘Nice here,’ I say. ‘Safe.’

  ‘It is safe, for now,’ he agrees. ‘But it won’t be if they surround us.’

  I raise my eyebrows in acknowledgement. We sit there for a few more minutes and I relax into him, feeling sheltered in his embrace.

  ‘Hands better,’ I say, finally. ‘Should go.’

  ‘All right,’ he says.

  My hands aren’t better, exactly, but they’ll do, and we can’t afford to waste time.

  ‘Follow me,’ says Tarian, and he leads me out into the rocks again. We walk for a few minutes and then, abruptly, we’re at a stream, flowing through the middle of the rocks. The thought of water makes me dizzy with excitement.

  ‘Time?’ I ask him, listening out for pursuit.

  He looks around too, his height giving him an advantage in spotting the enemy. ‘I think we can risk a minute or two,’ he says.

  I kneel by the stream and awkwardly scoop water into my mouth. Nothing in my life so far has ever tasted as good as that ice-cold water does. Nothing ever can again. I don’t even care that there are bits of leaves floating in it. I drink what I can and then I just splash my face with it, rub it over my lips. I feel so much better.

  Beside me Tarian is drinking too. I look up at him and he grins.

  ‘This is just like going for mountain walks back home,’ he says.

  ‘Bit more dangerous,’ I say, with less effort now than before.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘some of those wild ponies can get vicious...’

  ‘Maybe one day you can show me,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe one day I will,’ he says, and he grins at me.

  We both stand up again and he takes my hand. A shiver runs through me that’s nothing to do with the cold water.

  ‘Livya...’ he says.

  He leans in to kiss me and oh, god, I want to kiss him back so badly, but my mouth still hurts and I can’t see it being anything but awkward and painful, so I turn my head and his kiss lands on my neck instead, leaving a spot there that tingles deliciously. I put my arms around him and pull him close so that he understands I’m not rejecting him.

  ‘Mouth too sore?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah...’ I say. ‘Rest of me’s ok, though.’

  He laughs and kisses my neck again, then my jaw. He moves my hand to his face and kisses my palm, then he kisses my wrist, then he kisses all the way up the inside of my arm, leaving a slow trail of fire that makes my knees weak.

  I want to kiss him back but I can’t, so instead I stroke the back of his neck with my free hand, then move it slowly down his chest. I press my cheek to his, and the stubble he’s grown over the days we’ve been here tickles me. Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with deja vu again.

  ‘There!’

  That’s Elise, yelling in the distance. They’ve found us. It was stupid, so stupid, to stand there kissing when we were being pursued, but I can’t make myself regret it for a second. If that’s the last good moment I get in my life, I’m glad of it.

  ‘Which way?’ I ask Tarian.

  ‘Along the bank of the stream!’ he says.

  His hand wraps mine and we run together, following the water as it rushes away. I can still hear Elise shouting behind us, and more of them now too, but I don’t pay any attention. I just keep running, feet pounding on the pebbly shore, splashing now and then in the shallows.

  The stream gets wider, then joins onto a bigger river. Still we keep running. I’m out of breath and my chest and lungs and feet and legs and everything hurt, but I’m going to keep running until I fall over, and Tarian hasn’t fallen over yet, so neither will I. It’s like we’re one creature, moving in step, our feet rattling the pebbles in tandem.

  ‘You’ve got nowhere to go!’ calls Elise behind us. ‘This is pointless! There’s only death that way!’

  I wonder what she’s talking about, and then I see what she means. The shore disappears a few more paces away.

  ‘Tarian, stop!’ I say.

  We stand there on the last of the bank, at the top of the waterfall. The Northerners are approaching from all sides. This is it, I think.

  But then I look down at the water cascading below us, at the plunge pool at the bottom, at the landscape surrounding us, and I remember a vision that feels like weeks ago but was really only a couple of days.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I yell over the noise of the water, turning to Tarian and smiling. ‘We’re going to jump.’

  He stares at me. ‘Are you sure?’

  I nod. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘All right,’ he says. ‘After three?’

  Elise’s people are getting closer. It’s now or never.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘One, two, threeeeee...’

  We leap.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It’s so loud, louder than I remembered from the vision. The waterfall behind us roars so that I can’t even hear myself screaming, even though I know I am. The view is blurring past us so quickly that I can’t make anything out. Tarian’s hand grips mine tightly.

  I remember suddenly that the vision ended with us plunging into the water - what if that’s it? What if that’s the end and I’ve condemned us to a watery grave?

  Before I have time to think about it the water hits, and it hurts, like slamming into a wall of ice. And then we’re beneath it and fingers of cold are pinching me all over, and there’s water in my mouth and ears and eyes, and I don’t know what to do but I know that I’m still holding Tarian’s hand like a lifeline. And he’s pulling me somewhere, swimming determinedly.

  I don’t know what he has in mind, but when a Finder knows where they’re going, you follow. So I kick my legs and start swimming too, as best as I can. I can’t see anything and I can’t breathe, but Tarian is with me.

  Just when I feel like my lungs are about to burst, we surface. I gasp in a few breaths of sweet air, coughing and spluttering. And then I stare.

  We’re in a cave. We’ve popped up into it from the pool that takes up most of the space. There’s a stone shelf across the water, big enough to walk around on. Above our heads, the ceiling of the cave is studded with some sort of shining white stones - at first I think they’re gleaming where the light hits them, but then I realise that they are the light - every single one of them is glowing softly, illuminating the ca
vern. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can hardly make myself look away long enough to swim across the cave and climb up onto the dry shelf.

  Water runs off me like another waterfall when I drag myself out of the pool. My hair hangs limply around my face. I look at Tarian, soaking too. He grins at me, and suddenly I’m laughing and I can’t stop. I don’t know what’s funny or why but I don’t stop laughing even when it starts me coughing again.

  ‘We’re alive?’ I finally manage to say. ‘We’re... we jumped down a waterfall and we’re still alive! This is ridiculous! We should be ten kinds of dead by now!’

  Tarian’s laughing too, and we both just sit there, soaked in a cave, giggling.

  ‘Where is this place?’ I finally ask. ‘Is it safe?’

  He nods. ‘I don’t think they could find it unless they knew where it was. It wasn’t obvious at all.’

  I take his word for it - I wasn’t exactly paying attention to my surroundings on the way.

  ‘So... what now?’ I ask.

  He gives me a long, thoughtful look. ‘For right now,’ he says, ‘I think we should stay here for a while, clean ourselves up and recover. After that... I don’t know.’

  Getting clean sounds like an amazing plan. Our frantic trip through the plunge pool got rid of a lot of the surface dirt but I still feel grimy. I wish I was at court right now and I could use my huge bathtub with the water jets. Even my lukewarm shower in London would be bliss. But this cave pool is still the best option I’ve had in a while. I run my hand through the water.

  ‘Hey!’ I say. ‘It’s warm!’

  I must have been too cold and scared to notice when we came in, but the warmth of the water is all the invitation I need to strip off all my clothes and slide into it. Briefly I wonder if I shouldn’t, because of Tarian, but it’s hard to have inhibitions when you’ve just been dragged through a forest together and jumped into what should have been certain death.