As the sky grew brighter, the shadow of the Oracle’s tower on the calm water grew longer, its shining walls closer. Anna and Marisa huddled close to one another, more for reassurance than warmth. They had passed a strange night in Fann Village, and their thoughts were still a tangle of cryptic whispers. It didn’t help that everyone in the boat was lost in their own silence, making it even easier to hear those whispers repeat endlessly in their minds. It only intensified the sense of dread that seemed to be crowding them on all sides.

Jagged spires of rock and coral, encrusted with shells and slammed continuously by surf, made a ring around the small islet of the Southern Oracle. It looked to Lee that they would never find an opening or a safe place to row their tiny vessel through, and Sam was of the same opinion. In his years as a sailor, he had hardly seen any patch of ocean as dangerous as this. A reef glimmered just out of arm’s reach, beneath them. It further complicated the matter. Even Luke seemed a bit intimidated by the prospect of getting through the treacherous obstacles in their path, until the two village women who had accompanied them as escort instructed them to halt their rowing. Wordlessly, they then slipped into the water and began to swim through a safe path. Luke and Lee, who had manned the oars, followed them carefully.

There was only the narrowest sliver of beach for them to land on. When the boat was tied fast, each passenger gingerly climbed out of it and felt their feet sink into the coarse sand. It was dark, riddled with fragmented shells and shards of rock. In sharp contrast to this, the Oracle’s bright tower rose up before them, its walls as perfectly white as the robes they had seen the villagers wearing the day before. No windows had been set into that perfect alabaster stone. But at the base of the tower, a doorway stood before them—and before it, barring the way, a woman with bow raised, an arrow aimed and ready.

Their escorts, robes still trailing salt water, held their hands out with the palms facing up. It looked to the others like a gesture of peace. “Kivareth. Donshoulle simar tan’vrena.” The words were in a language that sounded as ancient and well-wrought as the brilliant tower, and combined with the melody of the two women’s voices as they wove together in perfect harmony, the effect was indescribable. Anna felt a vast and quiet calm slowly filling her senses, flooding her body with a strange warmth. Marisa blinked, the same sensation working its way up her spine. Glancing at the other faces all around her, Anna tried to find signs of the same strange feeling in their expressions. But Luke’s face was blank, like an empty sky…and Lee only stood by, a somewhat puzzled look on his face as the unknown language filtered through the air. Orris was silent as ever, and didn’t look perturbed in the slightest. Only Marisa seemed to share the realization. Anna took her twin’s hand and squeezed it, trying to communicate her thoughts that way. Marisa gently squeezed her hand back in reply.

The woman slowly lowered her bow, which was nearly as tall as she was and seemed to have been forged of silver. Faintly, Anna could see letters engraved in its smooth, unbroken surface, but she turned her attention away when the woman began to speak as well. “Kivaris-ea tan ravel. Non varien tan’vrena, schanhalt ule Guillare.”

“Erin’beldan. Non varieth aur tan’vrena, jjanquare lin oversamme. Schanhalden yesev, schanhalden harta!” chimed the two voices, but the woman stood steadfast at the door, shaking her head. The escorts continued, though, and spoke in a flurry of words and gestures that meant nothing to the party looking on.

“Something must be wrong,” Lee murmured, and Anna nodded absently. The woman’s eyes had turned in Luke’s direction, and her voice was fierce and unrelenting as she answered the escorts without ever diverting her gaze. Anna shuddered. The warmth was quickly fading, now that the tones of their voices had changed. And why was everyone here so dead set on not letting Luke through? The woman was raising her bow now, and Luke had noticed and was drawing his own cutlass in response. Evidently he was quite fed up with his faults being discussed in a foreign language. His mouth was open as if he were about to speak, or say some word in protest to interrupt the conversation, but it was then that another, different voice cut through the tension on the dark-sanded shore.

“Roxana. Donshoulle, ilrei.” The sound of it was almost hypnotic, and yet so clear and clean that they all felt it flying through them like a needle or a blast of cold winter air. Anna now felt as though she had been laid bare, every secret spilled and every fortune told, the pieces of herself arranged neatly on the sand for all to see. Her reaction was to step back, suddenly afraid and yet suddenly comforted. The escorts dropped to their knees, heads bowed, but the woman addressed as Roxana only glowered all the more fiercely at Luke from her place at the doorway. She stretched her arm out across the doorway, as if to prevent any from coming nearer, or possibly to prevent whoever was emerging from taking another step forward. But the figure kept coming, and it was tall and slim, a long robe pooling at its feet in a fabric that appeared translucent and yet clouded all at once.

“Hansaix, Kivaris-ea.” The escorts did not raise their heads, although their voices lifted in a tone of mingled praise and awe that reflected respect in every syllable.

“Hansaix. Ilrei, vakouln.” There was a pause as the escorts stood up once more, in response to what had just been said to them, and then the voice spoke again. It quite obviously belonged to a woman, although her age seemed impossible to tell. The sound of her voice was no indication—it seemed to carry with it too many years, too many other voices all blended with one another in a ceaseless chain. They were all so caught up in the sound of the voice and the strange language that they were quite alarmed when the language shifted to one they actually understood.

“Stand down, Roxana. Thank you for your vigilance. You never waver. And my thanks to you as well, kiveldan. Thank you for bringing them here, to me. It has been a long time coming, and I have seen much of it, but only now will be given the chance to truly understand. Go, and at sundown they will need you to guide them past the reef once more. I will call for you when the time arrives.”

“Delsanva, Kivaris.” The two escorts bowed deeply then, and without another word they had both stepped into the boat and were pushing off into the shallows.

“Are we to be stranded here, then?” came Orris’s gruff response, the butt of his lance making a solid, thumping noise in the sand as he leaned on it. “All this talk, and not a word of it did I understand. Now they have taken the boat, and we stand here knowing nothing of what is to come. I do not trust it, My Lady.”

“Orris, hush—”

“You dare to question the integrity of the Southern Oracle?” The woman Roxana had a hand to the scabbard belted at her waist, and her eyes were sparking with an indignant glare. Orris frowned, and Marisa tugged helplessly at his armored elbow. She was about to make frantic, panicked apologies to Roxana when the voice came again, as brilliant and bright as the tower looming above them.

“Peace between you. You are both merely guardians seeking to fulfill your duties, and for this you should be praised.” The woman turned to them then, her eyes finding Anna’s and then Marisa’s. Her hair was golden brown, falling past her waist in a profusion of curls. She was unadorned, wearing no jewels and no evidence of her station. She smiled gently, holding her hands out palm-upward in the same gesture of peace that the escorts had used earlier. “I am the Southern Oracle, and I welcome you here. I regret that you were confronted with such confusion. This is Roxana, my sole protector, and as you can see she is loyal to her duties, and to her instincts. She is…right, to be so.”

“Kivaris-ea, what the villagers said cannot be true, it is impossible. He alone is worthy cause to turn them away.” Roxana pointed squarely and accusingly at Luke, who scowled. “The darkness I feel is dense and cold. It is too dangerous to let him near!” The clinking sound of her earrings as she turned her head and looked straight at the Oracle was the only sound above the steady rush of the sea. Luke spoke up, his voice barely restraining itself from a snarl.

“The Oracle is bound to hear the cause of any who approach her. She is neutral. Whatever questions are asked of her, she must answer, and be impartial to all,” he said, and the Oracle looked at him silently. She looked at him for what seemed to Anna like hours, decades, when in truth it was only for a fraction of a second before the Oracle nodded gravely and motioned for them to come nearer.

“That is the truth. A storm rises inside you, Luke Lyon. But I bid you enter, for thus is the law of the Oracle’s tower, and thus will it be upheld. Kivareth-ea, ansaught’ilrei. Let them pass, now. I have seen this, parts of this woven into a larger tapestry. I understand the danger that you feel, but I also sense that its time has not yet come. What danger there is…will not stem from this seed.”

“Elissa, vonracht non varien tan’vrena. Tan’vrena aur-suul livraen ule Guillare, donshoullen ikrain! Garvais, lonsoulle—”

“Roxana. You would question the integrity of the Southern Oracle?” The Oracle smiled kindly at her guardian, who immediately quieted. “I am putting my trust in them. You must trust them as well, and in doing so, you will be trusting me.”

“…You are right, Oracle. I will stand down.” Roxana stepped aside, leaving the doorway clear for them to enter. The Oracle went through it, passing under the carved arch that held the heavy door in place. Her footsteps hardly sounded, as though she were somehow lighter than air. Timidly, Anna and Marisa went forward together, but Luke brushed past them all and began to ascend the tower without a backward glance. He was preoccupied, and it directed his focus to other things as his legs and feet worked together somewhat mechanically to climb the steep steps winding up. Anna wished she knew what thoughts were filling his mind, but she was powerless to find out. Instead, she kept on going, as the staircase kept coiling up and up, like a column of spiraling smoke.

At the very top of the tower was a perfectly round room, and Anna had been wrong to think no windows had been built into it, for it had one—the tower’s ceiling was a thick sheet of round glass that gave a full, unhindered view of the sky above them. It was, Anna realized, much better than any normal window could ever be. She sat down in a stiff, straight-backed chair against the curving wall, and Marisa sat down beside her. The chairs all gathered around the Oracle’s seat, which was directly beneath the glass roof and raised slightly higher than the rest. Sam and Lee chose to stand near Orris, who took up his post at the head of the stairs, but Luke had sat himself down right across from the Oracle’s serene countenance, arms crossed, the preoccupied look gone from his features and replaced by one that was expectant and perhaps a tinge impatient. Roxana, the last to climb up, immediately positioned herself just behind him, as though she were waiting for him to make even the smallest suspicious move.

“Now then, it’s been long enough. We must begin.” The Oracle looked out at them all, her gaze resting on one face and then another. “In this room are all who should be present. It is exactly as I have seen it, many times before. I have not reached a decision, even in all these years. It seems…that I will not be the one whose choice determines the balance…even if I will play my part.”

“Seen…it? What do you mean…?” Anna piped up timidly, the question too difficult to restrain.

“My eyes are the eyes of a century of other Oracles. I know through them, and learn through them. History they have seen and futures they have predicted, I hold it all inside me. For many, many years now…I have known your faces, I have watched the tide bring you closer to this tower. And yet, I am powerless to lift a hand in help or hindrance. I was powerless to bring you to me, tell you what must be done, until you arrived here of your own accord and at the time you were meant to.”

“The Oracle lives forever. Her life may be taken from her, or even given up, but the spirit continues always. The death of one Oracle is the birth of another,” said Roxana, quietly. “She sees many things. She had not spoken of your coming, though. If you are truly the lost twins of Guillare, then……” The words trailed off into empty air. Roxana was suddenly alert, and the others tensed along with her.

The Oracle smiled strangely, and then her entire expression went blank. It was very much like the sudden change in light when a candle is blown out. Her eyes, which had been hazel in the morning sunshine, were now a troubling gray. It had all changed in an instant, and Anna found herself terribly frightened—not of the Oracle, or of any danger that may be present, but of the sudden emptiness that flooded the round tower room high above the waves.

Roxana’s sharp whisper lanced through the air. “She is seeing something. Do not speak to her now. Whatever it is that she is seeing, she will tell us.” And sure enough, the Oracle’s voice echoed against the walls as she opened her mouth and spoke.

“One may rise and the other may fall. Young Queen, you must retrace your steps; Young King, you must betray the cause. Swords shall decide crowns, crowns shall win swords. Where does loyalty lie?”

“The way is clear. A cure for sorrow, a salve for pain. The Fever burns through the warrior-land, but the Architects have long since passed into dust, taking the remedy with them. Your answer lies in Guillare.” Rising, she crossed the room to where Anna and Marisa sat beside each other, arms linked. Anna’s fingers tangled in the chain of her locket even as Marisa reached for hers in alarm. The Oracle, however, reached for the lockets, taking them in her cool fingers. They heard two faint clicks as she opened them, and then a frantic whirring as the compass needles inside seemed to be spinning out of control. Two identical beams of light shot out, flying straight and true towards the north.

The Oracle knelt down. “Hansaix, tan’vrenan ule Guillare.” Her whisper was so soft, it was barely audible. Even Anna and Marisa, inches away from her, had to lean in to hear the gently spoken, flowering speech. And they both gasped simultaneously as the two beams of light slowly shrank back, blending in until they became one—a brilliant golden glow. The Oracle held the lockets in the palms of her hands, and smiled; through the golden light, they could see that her eyes had returned to their warm hazel hue. She snapped both lockets shut.

The others in the room all watched in silence as the Oracle turned first to Marisa, pressing the locket back into her trembling hands. Then came Anna’s turn. Blue-gray eyes wide with fear and joy and anticipation all at once, Anna accepted the locket as it was given back to her.

“Sophia and Sarah Aulstrein ule Guillare, it is time to return to your thrones.”