Despite her age, the woman held herself erect and walked with no difficulty. She came and stood before Jason. “I would converse with you first.”

“Me?” Jason asked.

The woman gave no reply. She pointed to Ferrin next, then Tark, Nedwin, Drake, Aram, Jasher, Nia, Farfalee, Io, Nollin, and then Corinne. She indicated Rachel second to last, and finally Galloran.

Without another word, the aged woman withdrew from the chamber through the same portal she had entered.

“Go,” Ulani told Jason, gesturing toward the recessed door.

“Okay,” Jason said. He went to the portal and found the door ajar. He opened it further, stepped inside, and shut it behind him. Incense burned in sculpted vessels around the room.

The elderly woman sat on a cushioned chair that looked like a curving length of ribbon. She gazed at Jason with fathomless eyes, her expression neither kind nor hostile. “Come take my hand,” she invited.

“Are you the oracle?” Jason asked.

“I am. Give me your hand and relax your mind.”

Jason crossed to her and gently grasped her bony hand. She clasped his hand in both of hers and closed her eyes. Jason sensed no otherworldly powers at play. If anything, he felt a little awkward.

She released his hand and looked up at him. “Sit down.”

He sat on a low, round, cushioned stool. It might have been an ottoman.

“What do you wish to ask me?” she invited.

“You can see the future?”

“At my best.”

“How?”

She smiled. “You wish to understand. Do you think of time as sequential?”

“One thing happening after another? I guess so.”

“Do you consider space that way?”

“Space? As sequential? Not really.”

“Yet when you gaze upon the stars, you see them as they were, not as they are.”

“Okay,” Jason said, trying to make sense of the statement using some of what he knew about astronomy. “The light travels through space. The farther the light has come, the older it is. Some of the light we see tonight could be from stars that have died long ago. It just took the light a long time to get here. So we’re seeing back in time.”

She smacked her lips. “In the Beyond, you have those who gaze deep into space through lenses, who gather light and sound and particles as they seek to understand their place in the universe.”

“We have astronomers.”

“I am like an astronomer.” She said it as if she had fully explained herself.

“You have a telescope that sees through time?”

“In a sense. Time is more like space than you appreciate. You recognize time as sequence only. Beginning and end. Before and after. We dwell in a temporary state, and so this is natural. Your current state began. Your current state will end. But that which is eternal views time differently.”

This wasn’t making sense. “You’re eternal?”

“I try to touch the eternal. You and I move through time like a flame on a string. The ashes behind are the past, consumed, unreachable. The string ahead is the future. But the only moment we inhabit, the only moment where we can act, is the present, the point where the flame burns, the point where time touches eternity.”

Jason nodded. “All right.”

“To the eternal mind, the entire string is ever present, ever burning. No point is out of reach.”

“Are you trying to break my brain?”

She grinned. “Try simpler terms. Before making a particular choice, have you ever endeavored to anticipate the consequences?”

Jason thought about the dungeon at Felrook. Maldor had offered to free him in return for servitude. Jason had known that to deny him would mean long days and weeks and months of torture. He had glimpsed his future. He had also guessed what serving Maldor would mean and how it might change him.

Jason had experienced this same kind of foresight for simpler choices throughout his life. He knew generally what a bike ride with Matt would bring versus a day volunteering at the zoo. “Yes. Is that what you do? Guess at the consequences of decisions? Try to visualize them?”

“It is similar to what I do,” the oracle explained. “Like you, I am a temporal being. I was born. I will die. I am caught up in what feels like the stream of time, my body gradually aging, the seasons changing, each breath keeping me alive. But I am trying to see beyond the present, into the future and the past. I am trying to see beyond the point I currently inhabit in space and time to the infinite points I do not inhabit.”

“How?”

“By tapping into senses beyond the five most obvious,” she replied. “By striving to access the eternal mind. Viewing the future is more difficult than seeing the past. The past is singular, definite. The future is also singular. Something definite will happen. But since what will happen shifts with every choice made, there are kaleidoscopic possibilities when the future is viewed from the present. Instead of looking for truth through a telescope, try a kaleidoscope. It is a challenge. The farther you dare to look, the more destinies involved, the more difficult it becomes.”

“So you make educated guesses,” Jason said.

She shrugged. “Some forecasts are more certain than others. Maldor’s rise has eclipsed most possible futures. Sometimes we oracles try to see the future in order to influence it. We do our best to nudge the coming years toward prosperity and away from disaster. I searched for many years to find some way to avoid Maldor’s dominion. In all those years, scouring every reality open to my awareness, I only glimpsed a single path that might lead to his premature downfall.”

Jason felt chills. “That’s why I’m here.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

He swallowed dryly. “Have I already played my part?”

“I believe we are on the proper path. I knew that you, Rachel, and Galloran would need to come here for success to be possible. I will be sure tomorrow.”

“Why me?” Jason asked.

“Imagine standing on a mountaintop. Imagine stones scattered at your feet. Imagine you have been tasked with selecting a stone or two and then throwing them for the purpose of causing an avalanche that will devastate the surrounding wilderness.

“Simeon of the Giddy Nine came to me. I considered all of the possible stones. I elected to throw him at you and Rachel. You both impacted Galloran. I hoped that you three would in turn collide with other key targets in precisely the right way. I believe that your arrival here means I selected good stones and estimated correct trajectories. But the avalanche is just beginning. Tomorrow I will know more about the possibilities.”