She’d just reached the Oracle when a different voice came from it, a cold voice, full of cruel indifference. “You have sinned, Icewing Clan. You will now die.”
Screams erupted behind her—terror-stricken, shrill—tearing throats and shredding nerves. Chilaili plunged the control valve under her fingers to release the sealant. Hands shaking, she sprayed and sprayed the place on the right-hand side of the Oracle. Hunter vision narrowed the entire universe down to that one tiny, deadly spot. The Oracle was humming, giving out a high-pitched whine from somewhere deep inside, as though something were spinning or moving—or trying to. The projection under the humans’ hard-drying sealant was vibrating. She sprayed it again and again, hating it blackly, hating the death it was trying to spew out. The entire right side of the Oracle disappeared under a coating so thick it resembled solid rock.
She did not stop until the canister was empty.
When the stream of sealant failed at last, her legs threatened to buckle under her.
But a wave of panic-stricken movement behind her caught Chilaili’s attention. A surge away from the Oracle threatened to become an avalanche, sweeping more than two hundred terrified women, children, and stiff-limbed old men toward the narrow cavern entrance.
“Have no fear!” Chilaili shouted. “Hear me! There is no danger! I swear this, as master katori of Icewing Clan!” Her voice, at least, was one they had trusted for many winters. Even stumbling half blind through the thick, yellow smoke, they heard that trusted voice calling them back, reassuring them.
The huntresses stopped first, forming a dam against which terrified children and trembling old ones broke and foamed like waves in a storm-lashed lake. They slowed and paused, coughing and trembling. “This yellow smoke,” Chilaili waved one hand at the pall of acrid fumes drifting through the cavern, “has kept you safe from the Twisted One’s poison!” It was a lie, but a small one. At such a moment, dramatics were necessary, a fact she knew only too well as a master healer. Half of any cure was the patient’s simple belief. The clan would never have believed in something they could neither see nor smell.
The nestlings would have nightmares for weeks.
But they were still alive.
“Good work, Chilaili,” the Bolo’s voice spoke into her ear. “Very, very good work. I detect a cessation of activity inside the Oracle. It has either shut itself off again or burned out the mechanism attempting to break through the sealant. If you had not sprayed such a thick coating, that aerosol nozzle might well have broken loose and released the neurotoxin. Clearly, the Oracle contained a dead-man switch programmed to activate on a timer in the event of outside electronic tampering. . . .”
Chilaili couldn’t take in another word the machine was saying. Now that the worst of the terror had passed, she sank to her knees, trembling violently, so sick with reaction she needed to spew onto the floor. Sooleawa crawled toward her, eyes streaming, voice hoarse.
“Mother? Are you ill? Did The Twisted One’s poison touch you?”
She shook her head. “No, child,” she managed to gasp out. “No. I’m just shaken with mortal fright.”
“What happened? What was that awful stuff you shouted at us to breathe?”
“An antidote . . . to the poison hidden inside the Oracle,” she whispered.
An anguished cry sounded behind her. Chilaili lifted her head sharply. The akule was down on the cavern floor as well, wheezing and coughing. The look in his eyes was dreadful. That look of betrayal ran so deep, it had shattered something critical to his sanity. He shook violently on hands and knees, rocking and swaying like a terrified and confused hatchling.
“Kestejoo?” she asked softly.
A terrible sound broke from his throat. Then he whimpered, “Gods and ancestors, Chilaili, what have I done? Sending us to war against the humans, worshiping that . . . that false and evil thing . . .” A wrenching sob broke loose. “I have spent my whole life worshiping a lie!”
Chilaili’s heart broke, witnessing his distress. He had already lost so much.
To lose his god, as well . . .
He lifted a wildly haunted gaze and stared into Chilaili’s eyes. “How?” he whispered, voice ragged, on the edge of fractured sanity. “How did you know? How could you possibly have known?”
“Because the Ones Above—the True Ones Above—told me. I have been with them these past three days. With them and with the ones we have wronged, the humans.”
The akule simply stared, perhaps unable to take in even one more shock.
Anevay croaked out hoarsely, “Together?”
Chilaili nodded, unwilling to speak another direct lie. “I have learned their speech,” she said instead, rolling a warning eye at Sooleawa. “They are honorable creatures, Great-Grandmother. If we stop the attack on their nests, if we help them stop the war with the other clans, they will protect us, as they have done just now. It was the humans who made the antidote to the poison concealed inside the Oracle.” She managed a wry smile. “It is even possible that one day we may even call them friends.”
The akule’s voice shook. “How can you even speak the word friend, when we have tried so hard to destroy them? Surely they wish us all hideously dead!” The unspoken “In their place, I would” hung on the air like the yellow pall of smoke.
Chilaili sat back on her heels, gestured at that smoke. “Let me tell you what happened, my gentle and respected friend. One of their great metal ogres attacked a winter nest. That was how the poison in the Oracle was discovered. The Oracle was broken open in the attack. The poison spilled out into the air . . .” She shuddered. “Every Tersae and every beast in the forest from which we were fashioned died, within the span of time it would take to walk to the entrance to our winter nest and climb up to the top of the bluff. They died with blood pouring from their skin, their eyes, their tongues—”
Several of the children began to wail again.
“I am sorry,” Chilaili whispered. “But you must understand how hideous a death the Evil One Above planned for us. The humans and the True Ones Above found the antidote to this terrible poison. Then the humans brought me here, in one of their flying machines, so I could reach the clan in time. I ask you, Kestejoo, would we have acted to save the lives of their hatchlings, had our places been reversed?”
The akule’s gaze dropped to his hands. He shook his head.
Chilaili gentled her voice. “You have asked if we can call the humans friends? Yes, I believe we can. And the only way to begin, respected akule, is to stop being their enemies.”
“Yes,” he whispered, eyes slightly less wild. “If what you say is true—and how can it be anything else?—then the clans of the Tersae have wronged them, dreadfully.” He stopped rocking like a crazed child. “Thank the—” His voice caught and he started rocking again, a motion filled with misery. “At least,” he said carefully, instead, “there is still time to prevent Icewing Clan from committing the same wrong.” He drew a deep breath, coughing slightly as the smoke stung, then rose on unsteady feet. “I will go, myself, to bring the war party home again. They might not listen to you, perhaps, but they will certainly listen to me.” He tipped his head to stare at the Oracle, misshapen now, and silent. “And I will tell them to leave their weapons in the snow.”
“I will go with you, Kestejoo,” she said softly, rising to her feet as well. “There is someone I want you to meet . . .”
As she led the way out into the sunshine, where two humans and a machine waited, Chilaili’s only fear—and it was a sharp one, as they left the cavern and climbed up the steep path—was that somehow, the attempt to stop their males from attacking Seta Point would go wrong. Like Kestejoo, she wanted to offer up a prayer.
And like Kestejoo, she had no idea who—or what—to pray to.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Ruk na Graz stared at the display screen numbly, gazing at his own destruction.
It had taken several moments for the import of the data to sink in. One of the Oracles had started to transmit an “I am tampered with” duress code, along with a rogue transmission channelled through it. The unit had then simply dropped off-line, blocked in mid-transmission by sophisticated electronic jamming from a ground-based source. Once he’d realized what that meant—that the humans knew the Oracles existed and had literally taken one over with their own broadcast in Tersae sub-dialect—it was far too late to prevent the damage.
The continued jamming had prevented his technicians from accessing on-site camera systems to see what was happening down there. Ultimately, of course, it didn’t matter. It was enough to know that something was jamming the Oracle’s signal. If the humans knew enough to do that, they knew far too much. It was disaster of the first magnitude. Utter shame and disgrace . . .