CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hro'nyewachu Pain pulled Amira back to awareness. Her lungs felt like she was breathing daggers. All she could see was a warm blood red glow, like staring into the sunset with her eyes closed. Panic froze her mind, then her body took over. She coughed out a great gout of water, drew in a rattling breath, then coughed up more water. She coughed and gagged and heaved until she feared her eyes were going to burst from her head. When air began to find its way into her body again, her mind was able to emerge from the panic and take stock of her situation.
Still on her hands and knees-on a stone floor with a thin covering of grit, she noticed-she looked up through her drenched hair. The red light hadn't been brought on by her panic. She was in a cavern.
Stalactites large as war-horses hung from a ceiling far above. Some had melded with the stone below, forming columns of stone that glistened in the red glow. Glow-? She looked around. If the light had a source, she could not find it, but it filled the cavern. Even the great columns of stone cast no shadow. The chamber had no proper walls, but the ceiling formed a dome that fell to meet the floor.
Amira sat up on her knees, brushed her sodden hair out of her face, and looked around. Where is the entrance? she wondered. How did I get here? Where-? Her gaze stopped on the floor behind her. Not ten paces away lay the deer. It had been cut in two perfect halves, right down the middle, and each half set parallel so that the twin antlers nearly touched. Even the thick bone of the skull and spine had been split.
What could have done such a thing? The entrails and a great pool of blood-black in the cavern's light-lay between them, and just beyond them was a stone pedestal. It looked as if one of the great stone columns had been severed at table-height. Whether it had been carved or formed that way through some craft of magic or by long eons of stone-growth, Amira could not tell. Upon the stone table was the deer's heart, still beating, slowly but with a steady, unceasing rhythm. With each beat, a small trickle of blood pulsed from the heart. Already a sizeable pool had formed in the concave surface of the stone table. Amira's eyes widened, and she held her breath. The deer had been dead. How-? Stand. Amira gasped at the voice. It came to her mind, not her ears, and the language was one she'd never heard, though she understood it immediately. It was deep, husky, but obviously feminine. Where had it come from? Where-? Stand. There.
Amira stood and faced the table. A figure stepped out from behind one of the stone columns that flanked the table. She was tall-she could've looked down upon Gyaidun-but thin. Not emaciated, for the grace with which she moved hinted at great strength, but something about the way she moved seemed… unnatural, as if her muscles and joints were not fitted to her bones like other beings. She was quite naked, but Amira could not discern the color of her skin. A slick wetness covered her from head to toe, and in the red light of the cavern it was almost black. Blood. In her heart of hearts, Amira knew it. The woman's hair was made up in dozens and dozens of tight braids that hung to her waist. Woven among them were bits of bone, feathers, and flowers, which surprised Amira-spring flowers of many colors, here on the verge of winter, some in full bloom and some still in tight little buds. As the woman walked to the stone pedestal and stood behind it, her eyes held Amira's. They were set deep beneath hairless brows, and they seemed to deny the blood red light of the cavern and shone back a pale, dusty white-the color of the waxing moon on a cloudless winter night. You bring the gift to fulfill the covenant. As sworn. Name yourself. "I-" Amira's voice came out a croak. She swallowed and tried again. "Amira of House Hiloar of Cormyr. You are the… the oracle?"
The woman raised her right arm and pointed to the bisected deer carcass. In life, we walk in death. In death, life. Come. "Come?" To me. Now. Amira took a deep breath and began to walk around the bloody remains of the deer. Stop! said the figure, though in her head Amira heard the roar of an animal. A predator. "What-?" Through death you will walk, or to death you will go. The woman lifted her head back and took in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. Though the stench of blood and death filled the cavern, Amira knew the oracle was smelling her, and she knew her promise of death was true. Amira closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again and walked between the halves of the deer. The blood was warm-almost hot-beneath the soles of her feet. She winced but did not look down as she almost slipped on the entrails. The stench was overwhelming, and tears flowed down Amira's cheeks. Amira stood before the table, and the tall figure looked down upon her. I smell winter upon you. "I… I have come to seek your aid," said Amira. "Something has my son. Something too powerful for me to defeat. I need your help." The oracle smiled, and it sent a shiver down Amira's back. There was no warmth in it, no pleasure, no human emotion at all. It was merely muscles drawing the lips back over teeth, and the teeth were sharp. The oracle placed her hands on the edge of the table, then bent over and buried her face in the pool of blood and drank, lapping at the blood like an animal.
Amira wanted to look away, but she stood frozen. The oracle straightened, fresh blood smeared over her face and running down her neck and breasts. With her right hand, she seized the still-beating heart, brought it to her open mouth and tore into it. Amira heard the tough muscle snap between the powerful jaws. The oracle put the heart back on the pedestal. Still it beat with a steady, if weaker rhythm.
The oracle chewed and swallowed. Now, you. "What?" Eat. Drink. "What?
I… I can't! The belkagen said noth-" Again a predator's growl cut her off, and this time Amira heard it in her ears as well as her mind.
Her own heart skipped a beat, then set to hammering like a bird's.
Looking up into the eyes of the oracle, Amira knew beyond doubt that her life now hung by the barest thread. Eat the flesh. Drink the blood. Amira placed her hands on the pedestal as the oracle had done.
The stone was warm, and Amira almost thought she felt a pulse beating within it. Before her sense and thirty years of ingrained Cormyrean propriety could talk her out of it, Amira plunged her face into the blood. She felt her hair fall around her, soaking up the blood, and she drank. Not just a sip, for at the first taste a thirst she had never known opened in her innermost being, and the blood down her throat seemed both to slake it and make her even more aware of the need to be slaked. Amira drank until her body cried out for air, then pushed herself up. The oracle looked down on her, eyes still shining, but now Amira thought she could almost see her own reflection in those pale depths. Now eat and fulfill the pact. Amira reached out. Her hand was trembling, but not from fear or weakness. Amira could feel the blood coursing through her, filling her spirit with a strength and warmth she had never known. Her skin burned with sensation, feeling even the tiniest stirring of air. Scents overwhelmed her-raw flesh, warm blood, stone older than Cormyr itself, the tiny buds and petals in the oracle's hair, and beneath it all something to which she could put no name but which awoke something ancient and primal in her, some part of her mind that still dreamed of the time before men built cities of stone and kept the wild at bay with their fires and prayers, when the wild was still part of them. Amira reached out, some part of her registering that her hand trembled not out of weakness or fear, but eagerness. She grabbed the heart, brought it to her open mouth, and bit down. The flesh was tough, resisting, and so she bit harder and harder until her teeth tore through. She grabbed the heart with both hands and shook her head like an animal, rending the flesh and finding herself enjoying it. Against her will, a low growl began to build deep in her throat. The part of her mind that still remembered Amira of House Hiloar, War Wizard of Cormyr, daughter of the royal courts, battered at her mind, screaming-What's happening to me? The portion of the heart tore loose in her mouth. She swallowed it whole, looked up into the eyes of the oracle-and fell in.