“Did they?”
“They wouldn’t see me. They didn’t even open the door.” She stopped, shining her light on a pair of huge metal doors that towered before us. “Let’s hope this time they do.”
The doors stood nearly twenty feet tall, coming together at the top in a pointed arch. The knockers, two heavy bronze rings, hung low enough on the doors for someone of average height to reach. Bethany, not being of average height, had to stand on her tiptoes to swing one. The knocker fell against the door with a loud, deep noise that reverberated in my chest and echoed through the corridor. We waited. And waited. The doors didn’t open. Bethany knocked again, and again nothing happened.
She couldn’t hide the disappointment in her face. “They still won’t see me,” she said. She sounded ashamed, as if she were being punished for some imagined infraction. “Isaac was right, he should have come, not me. This is my fault.”
“The hell it is,” I said. I grabbed the knocker and slammed it hard against the metal. “Open the damn door!”
The doors opened this time, swinging inward on ancient, creaking hinges. We looked at each other, surprised. Even more surprising was that no one was waiting on the other side of the threshold. Apparently, the doors had opened on their own.
“Okay, that’s not creepy or off-putting at all,” Bethany said.
We walked cautiously inside. The doors swung closed behind us, once again seemingly on their own. The light from Bethany’s charm snapped off suddenly, plunging us into pitch-blackness.
“Turn it back on,” I whispered.
“I didn’t turn it off,” she answered. She cursed and shook the charm like it was a flashlight with dying batteries, but it stayed dark.
A moment later, the room lit up as the flames of dozens of candles sprang to life around us. We were standing in a circle of tall candelabras arranged in the center of a large chamber. And yet, despite the plentiful candles, everything outside the circle remained as black as night, as if the light itself refused to go there.
Dozens of birdcages were interspersed with the candelabras, hanging on hooks at the end of long chains that stretched down from the darkness above us. A few of the cages had birds in them, pigeons, warblers, and sapsuckers that hopped or fluttered their wings. The rest of them were empty. The chamber floor was carpeted with shed feathers, so many they could have come from whole flocks. They must have kept a lot of them as pets over the years.
A voice boomed out of the darkness, thunderous and echoing. “Speak.” It seemed to come from high above us, as though the oracles were up by the ceiling, or perhaps giants stuffed into the chamber somehow. I couldn’t see a thing, though. Looking up into the dark was like looking into a starless night sky.
A pigeon cooed nervously. Bethany cleared her throat. “My name is Bethany Savory—”
“We know who you are,” the voice interrupted.
“You are not of interest to us,” a second voice said, somewhere to the right of the first.
“Nor is the question of your heritage,” said a third, off to the left.
“I’m not here about me,” she said. I had to hand it to her. She was remarkably calm. It wasn’t everyone who could keep their composure after being told the biggest question of their life didn’t matter. “We’ve come in search of information.”
“You have questions,” the first voice said.
“Questions you believe we can answer,” the second voice said.
“Yet we answer no questions without payment,” said the third.
“I brought an offering,” Bethany said.
“Bring it forward.”
At the far edge of the circle of candles, a chain descended suddenly from the darkness above. On its end was a thick metal hook. Bethany walked to it, hung the birdcage on the hook, and stepped back again.
The darkness on the other side of the candles seemed to swell, billowing forward to envelope the birdcage. In the dark I heard the starlings struggle, flapping their wings in panic. Their shrill birdcalls were cut off a moment later with a sickening crunch.
I looked down and noticed the tiny bones scattered among the feathers on the floor. The birds weren’t pets. They were snacks.
The darkness receded, leaving an empty birdcage behind. Another, smaller circle of candelabras appeared suddenly, deeper inside the chamber, illuminating an old wooden table with an hourglass on top of it. As I watched, the sands in the hourglass began to fall.
“Ask your questions and we will answer,” a voice said. “When the sand runs out, we will answer no more.”
Bethany took another deep breath, steeling herself. “We seek the location of Stryge’s body.”
“You will find him to the north, in the same place where he fell in battle.”
“Stryge still sits upon his throne, entombed deep beneath the stones of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa.”
“And the stones of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.”
“And Bonnefont-en-Comminges.”
“And Trie-en-Bigorre.”
“And Froville.”
Bethany shook her head. “Wait, I don’t understand. I don’t know those names. Please, we don’t have time for riddles. Can’t you just tell us where his body is?”
“We have answered your question already. We will not answer it a second time. Yet the sand still runs. Time remains for other questions, and other answers.”
Bethany swallowed hard and nodded. She thought for a moment, then said, “If we’re too late and Stryge wakes up, how can we kill him?”
“What you ask is impossible. Stryge is an Ancient.”
“A primal entity forged in magic and eternity.”
“You may as well ask how to kill the sky, or the wind.”
“But there has to be a way to stop him,” Bethany insisted. “Willem Van Lente managed to cut off Stryge’s head. How?”
“The answer to that question is shielded even from us.”
“Shielded by Willem Van Lente’s own will.”
“Perhaps you should ask him yourself.”
“We can’t,” Bethany said. “He’s been dead for centuries.”
“No. Willem Van Lente yet lives.”
“He’s alive?” Bethany demanded, incredulous. The oracles didn’t reply, presumably because they’d answered that question already.
I blurted out, “Where is he?” Bethany tried to stop me, but it was too late.
“At last, it speaks,” the first voice said.
“The mighty warrior has returned,” the second said.
“Returned in the guise of a man,” said the third.
“A man that is not a man.”
I stared up into the darkness. “What are you talking about? What does that mean?”
“It has forgotten.”
“It has forgotten what it is.”
“It remembers nothing of its past.”
“I’m not an it,” I said, growing angry. “And frankly, I’m tired of people treating me like one.”
“It does not even know what it is.”
“It is a threat, that is what it is.”
“No,” I said, “you’re wrong.”
“It is a danger to all who live.”
“You’re wrong!” I shouted up at them. “I have an amulet now. I’m not a danger to anyone anymore.”
The oracles remained silent for a long moment. I thought maybe I’d gotten my point across. Then, out of the darkness came a booming voice. “It thinks it has a choice. It does not.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “What am I?”
“An abomination.”
“A menace.”
“It is a combination of elements that were never meant to be combined.”
“As long as it walks upon this world, as long as it dwells among us, it puts us all in peril.”