The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

“Another boy?” Pythia leaned closer. “Who? From where?”

“From my dreams.” The girl rubbed the heel of one hand at her ear.

Sensing there were depths to the girl that remained untapped, Pythia plumbed them. “This boy?” she asked. “Who is he?”

What the child said next drew a gasp from the gathered crowd—even they recognized blasphemy when they heard it.

“He is the brother of the Hebrew boy.” The child then clasped tight to the hem of Pythia’s skirt. “He burns in my dreams…and he will burn everything. Nothing will last. Not even Rome.”

For the past month, Pythia had attempted to learn more of this doom, even taking the girl into the sisterhood’s fold. But the child had seemed only to retreat into herself, going mute. Still, there was one way to learn more.

If the girl were truly blessed, the power of Apollo’s breath—his prophetic vapors—might burn free what was locked within the girl’s strangeness.

But was there enough time?

A touch to her elbow interrupted her reverie and drew her back to the present. “Mistress, the sun…,” her younger sister urged.

Pythia focused to the east. The eastern skies blazed, heralding the coming sunrise. Below, shouts rose from the Roman legion. Word of the girl had spread. Prophecies of doom had traveled far…even to the ears of the emperor. An Imperial courier had demanded the child be delivered to Rome, declaring her demon-plagued.

Pythia had refused. The gods had sent this child to her threshold, to Apollo’s temple. Pythia would not relinquish the girl without first testing her, putting her to the question.

To the east, the first rays of the sun etched the morning skies.

The seventh day of the seventh month dawned.

They had waited long enough.

Pythia turned her back on the fiery legion. “Come. We must hurry.”

She swept into the temple’s interior. Flames greeted her here, too, but they were the welcoming warmth from the temple’s sacred hearth. Two of her elder sisters still tended the flames, too old to make the harsh climb up to the caves.

She nodded her gratitude to each in turn, then hurried past the hearth.

At the back of the temple, stairs led down toward the private sanctum. Only those who served the Oracle were allowed to enter the subterranean adytum. As she descended, marble turned to raw limestone. The stairs emptied into a small cavern. The cave had been discovered ages ago by a goat herder, who upon nearing the cavern opening, fell under the sway of Apollo’s sweet-smelling vapors and succumbed to strange visions.

Would that such gifts last one more sunrise.

Pythia found the child waiting inside the cave. The girl was dressed in an alb too large for her and sat cross-legged beside the bronze tripod that supported the sacred omphalos, a waist-high domed rock that represented the navel of the world, the center of the universe.

The only other decoration in the cave was a single raised seat, resting on three legs. It stood over a natural crack in the floor. Pythia, long accustomed to Apollo’s vapor, was still struck by the scent rising from below, smelling of almond blossoms.

The god’s pneuma, his prophetic exhalation.

“It is time,” she said to the younger sister, who had followed her down. “Bring the child to me.”

Pythia crossed to the tripod and mounted the seat. Positioned over the crack in the floor, the rising vapors bathed her in Apollo’s breath. “Hurry.”

The younger sister gathered up the child and placed the girl into her lap. Pythia cradled her gently, like a mother with a babe, but the child did not respond to such affection.

Pythia already felt the effect of the pneuma rising from the earth below her. A familiar tingle ran along her limbs. Her throat burned warmly as Apollo entered her. Her vision began to close.

But the child was smaller, more susceptible to the pneuma.

The girl’s head rolled back; her eyelids drooped. Surely she would not survive Apollo’s penetration for long. Still, if there was to be any hope, the girl had to be put to the question.

“Child,” Pythia rang out, “tell us more of this boy and the doom he whispered to you. Where will he rise?”

The small lips moved in a whisper. “From me. From my dreams.”

Small fingers found Pythia’s hand and squeezed.

Words continued to spill from the girl’s lips. “Your house is empty…your springs have dried up. But a new spring of prophecy will flow.”

Pythia’s arms tightened on the girl. For too long, ruin had lingered over the temple. “A new spring.” Hope rang in her voice. “Here at Delphi?”

“No…”

Pythia’s breath grew more rapid. “Then from where will it spring?”

The girl’s lips moved, but no words came out.

She shook the girl. “Where?”

The girl lifted a boneless arm and placed a hand on her own belly.

With that touch, a vision swelled through Pythia, of silver waters gushing from the girl’s navel, from out of her womb. A new spring. But was it a vision from Apollo? Or was it born from her own hope?

A scream pierced her daze. Hard voices echoed down. From the stairs, a figure stumbled into view. It was one of the elders who had tended the fire. She clutched a hand to her shoulder. A crimson bloom spread from under her palm. The black head of an arrow protruded between her fingers.

“Too late,” the old woman cried out and collapsed to her knees. “The Romans…”

Pythia heard the woman’s words but remained lost in the vapors. Behind her eyes, she pictured the spring flowing from the girl, a new font of prophetic power. But Pythia also smelled the smoke from the Roman torches. Blood and smoke leaked into her vision. The silver spring now ran with a thin stream of black crimson and swept into the future.

The child suddenly sagged in her arms, completely lost to the pneuma’s vapors. Still, as Pythia studied the vision, she watched the dark stream form a black figure…the shadow of a boy. Flames rose behind him.

The child’s words from a moon ago echoed to her.

The brother of the Hebrew boy…he who would set fire to the world.

Pythia held the limp girl. The child’s prophecy hinted at both doom and salvation. Perhaps it would be best to leave her to the Imperial legion, to end such an uncertain future here. From overhead, hard voices echoed down. There was already no escape. Except in death.

Still, the vision swelled in her.

Apollo had sent the child. To Pythia.

A new spring will flow.

She took a deep breath, drawing Apollo fully into her.