To either side of this room were small antechambers where Manwyn’s guards stood, wearing the horned helmets traditional in Yarim and armed with long, thin swords. A large door of intricately carved cedar stood across from them, behind the fountain and its pool, also guarded.
Rhapsody stopped again suddenly and grasped Ashe by the arm.
“Oh! Wait! Remember the last time we came here for a prophecy, Manwyn was very angry because you were hiding your face. Perhaps it is best to remove the ghodin and the veils now; I don’t want to provoke her again.”
“Very well; we will as soon as we are inside.”
Ashe pried her fingers loose from his forearm, took her hand again, and led her around the fountain, stopping before the guards of the great door.
“Ten gold crowns to see the Oracle, for the Seer’s sustenance,” the man said rotely.
Ashe reached into his coin purse and drew forth the amount the guard had demanded.
“If this is really being used for the maintenance of the Oracle, I expect that she will have a new gown since the last time we saw her,” he said, dropping the coins into the offering box. “She looked thin and in a fair bit of disarray, though I see that you are well turned out and of a healthy girth, soldier. But I’m certain that you would never usurp any of the alms given to the Oracle for yourselves, now, would you?”
The guard spat on the floor and opened the beautiful cedar door, motioning them angrily inside.
“You are doing an excellent job of behaving already,” Rhapsody said dryly as they entered the Inner Sanctum.
“I’m a dragon. It’s my job to annoy people.”
“I see that.”
“Well, if we are to reveal our faces in the attempt not to disturb Manwyn, we had best do it now.” Ashe pulled the veil from his face, then gently took down the head veil of her ghodin. He blinked; Rhapsody’s face was almost as pale as the white robe she was wearing, ghostly in the glow of the candleflames around them.
“Aria? Are you all right?”
She nodded wordlessly.
Ashe took her hand; it was cold and trembling slightly.
“Rhapsody, if you don’t want to do this, we can leave now, without a second thought.”
She shook her head, though her grip tightened slightly.
“It’s just all coming back to me now,” she said nervously. “I had forgotten how intimidating a place this is. Manwyn frightens me.”
“Then let’s go back to the bazaar.” Ashe turned and curled his knuckles to rap on the cedar door, but Rhapsody stopped him.
“No. We have to hear what she has to say, have to ask her about her last prophecy, or else something that should be a wonderful, exciting event in our lives will only bring worry and fear,” she said. “I am sorry I am being such a coward. Let’s go in.”
Ashe squeezed her hand, and together they went deeper into the Inner Sanctum.
The room beyond the cedar door was immense, illuminated by a series of small windows in the dome of the rotunda and countless candles. In the center of the room was a dais which was suspended precariously above a large, open well, sideless, flush with the floor.
Manwyn sat, as she always did when in her temple, in the center of the suspended dais. She was tall and thin with rosy gold skin and fiery red hair streaked with silver. Her face bore the lines of middle age. In her left hand she held an ornate sextant, and she was dressed, as Ashe had expected, in a ragged gown of green silk, once a magnificent garment, now frayed and worn with age.
The Seer of the Future had eyes that were perfect mirrors, with no pupil, iris, or sclera to delineate them. The first time Rhapsody had beheld her, it had almost felt as if she were drowning in those eyes, deep, reflective pools of quicksilver that gazed only beyond the present, into the realm of what had not yet come to be.
She had learned, over time, how dangerous it was to the conscious mind to meet the gaze of a dragon or its kin. So she lowered her eyes respectfully and waited for the Seer to address them.
At first Manwyn ignored them altogether. Her long fingers were engaged in spinning the wheel of the sextant, which she did while humming a tuneless melody to herself. The lord and lady stood silent while she played, glancing occasionally at each other but saying nothing.
Suddenly, as if she had caught the scent of fire in the wind, Manwyn lurched upright, sniffing the air. Her liquid silver eyes darted wildly around the circular room, finally settling on them. She rose up slightly on her knees and pointed to the great dark hole that yawned raggedly in the floor.
“Gaze into the well,” she commanded in the same harsh voice Rhapsody had heard the last time she had been here, a raspy croak that scratched at the edges of Rhapsody’s skull.
Against her will she began to tremble again; Manwyn had attended the first Cymrian Council and their wedding, and had not been intimidating or frightening at all, merely detached and confused. But here within her temple, she was terrifying, smiling with a confidence that bordered on cruel amusement. “May the All-God give thee good day, my great-nephew and his lady-wife,” the prophetess said, bowing deeply and saluting them with the traditional address of the Island of Serendair. “And indeed, He shall; it shall be a very interesting day for you.”
“Thank you, Aunt,” Ashe replied, returning her bow. “I hope that’s not the extent of our prophecy. I paid generously at the door.”
The Seer chuckled. “You will always be my favorite great-nephew, Gwydion of Manosse. And your lovely bride; she is quite a hat in your feather. Hat and feather, hat and feather!” She giggled, grinning broadly.
Rhapsody bowed in greeting, glancing askance at Ashe, who shrugged.
“Speak, then, your question,” Manwyn commanded, her solemn expression returning.
The Lord and Lady Cymrian exchanged a glance, remembering what they had planned to say.
“I seek a clarification of two conflicting prophecies you gave to us a few years ago,” Ashe said.
Confusion passed like a cloud over the Seer’s face. “Prophecies?”
“Yes,” Rhapsody said quickly. “To me you said, ‘I see an unnatural child born of an unnatural act. Rhapsody, you should beware of childbirth: the mother shall die, but the child shall live.’”
“And yet to me, her husband, you declared, ‘Gwydion ap Llauron, thy mother died in giving birth to thee, but thy children’s mother shall not die giving birth to them,’” Ashe added. “We seek to know what you meant, Aunt.”
The confusion on Manwyn’s face deepened to bewilderment. She ran a hand over her head through the tangle of matted snarls that was her hair, pulling at it nervously as a child, then shook her head briskly.
“You ask of the Past,” she said petulantly. “I will never be able to see the Past. I know nothing of what you speak.”
Rhapsody’s throat constricted. “Of course she wouldn’t,” she whispered to Ashe. “How stupid of me to phrase the question like that.”
The nervous confusion cleared in an instant from the Seer’s reflective eyes; her back straightened, and she turned in Rhapsody’s direction slowly, like a predator stalking its prey. She slid down onto her belly, causing the suspended dais to swing crazily over the well, and fixed her silver gaze on the Lady Cymrian.
“One should beware the Past, lady,” she said in a grim voice, though she was smiling. “The Past can be a relentless hunter, a stalwart protector, a vengeful adversary. It seeks to have you; it seeks to aid you.” She moved forward even more, her upper body suspended over the well, and whispered, “It seeks to destroy you.” She sat back, pleased with the sight of Rhapsody’s pale face, and twirled her fingers through her knotted hair. “Just as the Future continually seeks to destroy me.”