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‘I
don’t—’
     
    ‘Wait a moment.’ Tom held up his
hand. ‘Are you saying, Doctor, that it’s not your treatment which has destroyed
my infection?’
     
    ‘My Lord, I’m not— Yes, sir. That’s
what I mean.’
     
    Dark fire . . .
     
    In the cold cavern, the black
flames which sprouted from the old man’s staff...that was the moment when a
strange change had overtaken Tom. And there was something he was supposed to remember,
but could not.
     
    ‘... on your behalf, my Lord.
Haven’t we, Nirilya?’
     
    ‘Yes.’ Her feline eyes were
unreadable. ‘We have an appointment with the Seer.’
     
    ‘An audience,’ said Xyenquil,
almost stammering, ‘is quite unheard of, for, um, outsiders.’
     
    A Seer?
     
    There was a hint of triumph in
Nirilya’s eyes, but it was her words which captivated Tom. Was this some kind
of Oracle?
     
    And if so, he could see no reason
why this Seer would help Tom Corcorigan, whose last memory of an Oracular visit
was his redmetal poignard rammed to the hilt in Gérard d’Ovraison’s side, and
the hot cupric stench of the surprised Oracle’s death.
     
    ‘We should go’—Nirilya stood,
robes rustling—‘straightaway.’
     
    We’re going to consult an Oracle?
     
    ~ * ~
     
    4

    NULAPEIRON
AD 3418

     
     
    The
threadway hung in a long catenary across the abyss, spanning the endless drop
from tunnel’s end to the great silver-grey sphere which hung at the vertical
shaft’s centre. The sphere itself was fifty metres in diameter, maybe more; the
shaft in which it floated was immense.
     
    Even Tom felt vertigo when he
stared down.
     
    Behind them, in the tunnel,
Nirilya and Xyenquil waited with an honour guard of Core Dragoons. Only Tom and
Elva were invited into the Seer’s dwelling place.
     
    ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.
     
    Tom shook his head, unwilling to
share his half-formed thoughts, his strange presentiment about dark fire.
     
    I’m afraid... With ruthless self-honesty. But
of what?
     
    ‘Tactically,’ Elva added, ‘I don’t
like this.’
     
    She grew silent.
     
    The threadway was a narrow
flexible tunnel, quite transparent save for a too-thin strip which ran along
its floor. It was one of thirteen, hanging above the abyss: there was no other
way into the Seer’s sphere.
     
    Elva stepped inside first, with
no trace of nerves, and Tom followed. The threadway swayed from side to side as
they made their way down the curved interior.
     
    ‘I dare say’—with a trace of Elva’s
usual irony—‘the Seer knows we’re coming.’
     

     
    Inside
the hollow sphere, sapphire lightning flashed and cracked. At the globe chamber’s
centre hung a complex silver platform; above, skull-like, an ornate silver
throne was floating: armour-encased, helm-like overhang, bristling with inbuilt
weaponry and controls.
     
    And inside its heavy carapace, in
a small soft seat, a tiny wizened figure sat, peering at the two visitors with
bright, startling eyes.
     
    A Seer?
     
    Tom, like Elva, stood frozen on a
floating lev-step.
     
    Like no Oracle I’ve ever seen.
     
    And it came to him then that he
had no idea what he was doing here, what madness—beyond courtesy to his hosts—had
drawn him to this place, except perhaps a strange unfocused fear, and the
notion that the world was slipping away from him because of his own
inadequacies. He had only a local medic’s word that spacetime had unravelled in
his vicinity, that some influence had reached beyond reality’s constraints to
tear apart the tiny invaders inside him: a cure more mysterious, potentially
more dangerous, than the original infection.
     
    So he shivered, although the air
was not cold, while all around the chamber blue lightning danced and played,
spat and coldly burned.
     

     
    Finally,
the helm-throne moved through the air, drawing closer, and they saw more
closely the small lined figure which might have been a mortally sick child or
an old, old man.
     
    GREETINGS, LORD