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.
Darkness took her, but it was warm and wet, and when it began to break away, part of her cried out and tried to cling to it. It will be your death, said a voice. Whose? She could put no name to it, but she remembered eyes pale as the dust of the moon and the scent of spring blossoms. She let go. Light returned. Color. And cold. Not the deep cold of the winter or the nameless horror that stalked her memories, cloaked in ashes, but the crisp, clean coolness of the open air. The high, thin clouds of autumn, tattered and torn like rent tapestries, rode across a morning blue sky that stretched from horizon to horizon in every direction except one. Before her, breaking the perfect dome of the sky, rose a high mound, flat and broken on top and bleeding greenery into the grasslands below. She knew it, had seen it from just this view, but she could put no name to it. The name was in her memory; she knew it as she knew breath and blood, but it was closed to her. Something was moving near the crest of the hill. As if spurred by the thought, her vision flew toward it, coming closer and closer until she could make out the form of a man. Clothes of leather and cloth and robes of animal hides covered his lean frame. His hair was raven black, the top and sides pulled back into a thick braid that fell well below his waist. He walked with a staff that seemed to have been made from three woods, each of a different shade, twisted together and bound with leather and silver. Tassels made from bits of bone, stone, and sprigs of herbs dangled from the top of the staff. Arantar, said the voice. The man made his way through the woods. He stopped before a great fang of rock that broke through the surface of the hill. Again she felt as if she should know this place. The rock almost looked familiar, though taller and sharper than she knew it to be. The man stood before an opening in the rock, the autumn wind sending the loose bits of his hair waving before his face like tendrils of seaweed tossed by the tide. For the first time, she saw his face. His weather-worn skin was dark, the color of newly tilled soil, and his face was shaven. But his eyes… she didn't see them so much as she felt struck by them. They were golden, and even in the shadow cast by the fang of rock they shone with a light all their own. She had seen those eyes before-or ones very like them. Not quite so intense perhaps, their majesty weakened by the ages, but still she knew them, and for the first time her memory did not fail her. A name came to her. Jalan. Those were Jalan's eyes. Arantar stepped into the darkness within the rock. Again the darkness took her.