How much had they seen?

Had they seen any about Maurus?

With no one to care for her, what would happen to the oracle? Surely they could not abandon her now without an apprentice to rise in her place—but who would help her dress and bathe and eat?

Something squeezed her hand, and she realized something had been squeezing her hand for a while now. It tapped at her knuckles. She glanced at the shadows—it was impossible to tell one from another, impossible to tell who was gripping at her elbows, who was digging into her waist… but this squeezing… it was just someone holding her hand.

Tentatively, she tapped back. And then the hand shifted, turning all around hers until she felt something small and flat being pressed into her palm. She closed her fingers around it, and the hand pressed once more with quick urgency, and then, as she held tight to whatever had been left in her palm, she felt the hand release, for she was being lifted and tossed into darkness… into a hay pile of darkness… a hay pile of darkness rolling away.

When the pile of hay, after some time—an hour? two? three? who could say in the jostling dark?—finally stopped, Alba was tossed as roughly from it as she had been thrown into it. Leaf litter thick under her hands, the scent of moss and earth all around, she found herself on a forest floor. A gloomy silhouette leaned over her.

“You are banished,” said the gloom in a voice not unlike the head priest’s. The form turned to go, then, hesitating, turned briefly again. “Parchments,” it spat. “Writing.” The words hung in the air, spittle-flecked and contemptuous. Gathering up the shadows of its robes, the shape hoisted itself into the dark of a cart. The cart shadow trundled away.

Alba, shivering, pulled her shift around her knees and wrapped her arms about herself. Was she frightened? Perhaps. For Maurus and the oracle. But for herself, she did not feel as frightened as she thought she might be. She was not as frightened as she had been when the priests had taken her from her village.

She felt the hard, flat thing still in her palm. The urgent hand that pressed hers must have been Maurus’s. While the shadows around her lifted and the trees formed themselves out of the slow-growing light, she held the thing aloft, trying to see whatever it was Maurus had given her.

It was a pot shard—part of a broken bowl. He’d written something on it.

Alba squinted. Surely there had to be more than this. No. Only two words, hastily scratched on the clay.

Wait there.

That was all? She turned the shard over—blank.

What was she meant to wait for? She glanced around. Through the last remnants of night, she could see she was deep in a forest. Above her, a thick canopy of branches was hiding the yellowing sky; all around was bracken and underbrush.