The chamber of the Oracle was exactly as Shaun, Thomas and Diana remembered it.

     Above the door was the design of the two legless dragons, facing each other and almost touching, nose and wingtip. Inside, sitting on a throne, was the Oracle itself, reading its book of all the world’s knowledge. It looked up as they entered, the book vanishing as it laid it aside, and once again all three of them saw the Oracle as an older and wiser version of themselves. Shaun saw an elderly battlescarred warrior, the veins standing out on his massively muscled arms and legs, while Diana saw an ancient female cleric of Caroli, withered and shrunken by all the holy power that had flowed through her but with eyes that still glowed with compassion and faith.

     The moment Thomas laid eyes upon the Oracle, though, he gasped with horror and staggered back, turning and stumbling out of the room in near panic, his eyes wide and staring.

     “Tom!” cried Shaun as he ran after him. “Tom! What’s wrong?”

     “The Oracle!” cried the wizard, shaking with horror. “It’s...”

     He looked cautiously around the edge of the doorway, peeping into the Oracle chamber, and cried out again, but this time in relief and wonder. The Oracle was exactly the way he’d seen it during his first visit, over a year before. An old wizard radiating power and wisdom. He had a long grey beard and was wrapped in midnight blue robes sewn with runes and sigils. Himself in thirty or forty years, or so he hoped in his daydreams. “Sorry,” he said, regaining his composure and sheepishly re-entering the room. “Just my imagination, that’s all. I thought I saw something.”

     “What?” asked Diana.

     “Nothing,” repeated Thomas, waving a hand to dismiss the subject. “Just my imagination, that’s all.”

     But he hadn’t imagined it, he knew. He really had seen it, even if only for a moment. When he’d caught his first glimpse of the Oracle, coming in through the arched doorway, it hadn’t been an old and wise living wizard he’d seen. It had been a withered, mummified corpse wrapped in rags, and in its sunken eyesockets had glowed two pinpoints of brilliant blue light.

     No! he told himself vehemently. I’m never going to become a rak, no matter how old and powerful I get. He was calming down now, though, as he remembered that, during their first visit, the Oracle had told them that it was impossible to foretell the future. Not even the Gods Themselves knew with certainty what was to come. Thomas had the potential to become a rak, of course, as all wizards did, and that was probably why the Oracle had briefly appeared as a rak to him, but he was absolutely determined that that was one potential that would never be realised.

     Shaun and Diana glanced at each other in concern, aware that something had happened to upset the wizard, but Thomas was anxious to put the matter behind him and was digging a piece of paper and some lumps of charcoal out of his backpack. “Okay, I’m going to ask the question,” he said, tearing the paper into three equal pieces and handing one to each of his companions. “Get ready to write down everything it says. If any of us misses something, the others will hopefully get it so that, between the three of us, we’ll be able to piece together a complete transcript. Okay?”

     “Right,” replied Shaun, taking a piece of charcoal. “Ready when you are.”

     “Okay,” said Thomas again and he turned to face the Oracle, who was gazing steadily back at him with brilliant blue eyes. “O mighty Oracle, we came to you a year ago in search of information to help us in a quest, but I did not ask you any question. I have come to ask my question now.”

     The Oracle nodded. “Ask your question,” it said in a voice that sounded hoarse and rasping to the wizard, but which Shaun and Diana heard differently, in character with the person they saw sitting on the emerald throne. Thomas paused, thinking over the phrasing of the question in his mind one more time to make sure there was no room for error. The last time there’d been six of them. If one of them asked a stupid question that got a stupid, useless answer, there’d been five others to try again, but this time there was just him. Shaun and Diana had asked their questions during their last visit, so if Thomas made a mess of it there’d be no second chance.

     Finally, he was satisfied that he’d phrased it as carefully as he possibly could and, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he spoke. “This is what I want to know. I want you to read to me the complete text of everything that is, or was, written on the Scrolls of Skava, translated into the common tongue.”

     The three of them held their pieces of charcoal poised over their sheets of paper, ready to begin scribbling as soon as it began to speak, but when the Oracle did speak it was such a shock and a surprise that for a moment they could only stand there, paralysed like statues, while the words seeped slowly into their stunned brains. “I am forbidden to answer that question,” the Oracle replied, slowly and emotionlessly. “You may ask another question.”

     “What!” exclaimed Thomas when he was finally able to speak. “Forbidden? By who?”

     “Tom!” cried Shaun in horror, and the wizard put his hands to his mouth in dismay. He’d asked a question! Asked his one and only, once in a lifetime question! He’d blown it! Now they’d never find the Scrolls of Skava and it was all his fault! One careless, thoughtless slip and their one and only chance had gone for ever!

     The fates were merciful that day, however. “I am forbidden to answer that question,” the Oracle replied, in exactly the same tone of voice it had used before. “You may ask another question.”

     They all breathed a sigh of relief, and Shaun grabbed Thomas by the front of his jacket. “In the name of the Gods, Tom! Think before you speak! Think!”

     “I know, I’m sorry,” replied the wizard as Shaun released him. “I was just so taken by surprise, that’s all. The Emerald Oracle! Forbidden to answer a question! Who could have the power to give orders to the Emerald Oracle?”

     “The Gods?” suggested Diana. “Could this be their way of telling us that we’re on the wrong track?”

     Shaun shook his head in bafflement. “The last time we were here, when I asked it whether war was coming, it said that it was unable to answer. Unable. This time, though, it said forbidden. The first time it would have answered if it could, but didn’t know itself. This time it does know but isn’t allowed to tell us.”

     “So what do we do now?” asked Thomas.

     “What we originally planned to do,” replied the soldier. “Just ask it where the Scrolls are. We’ll just have to find them ourselves, that’s all.”

     “But they could be on the other side of the world,” protested Thomas. “It might take months to get there. Years!”

     “Doesn’t matter,” replied the cleric with a smile. “We can use Resalintas’s Farspeaking spell to tell him where the Scrolls are, and then he can teleport directly to the spot. Get them for himself instantly.”

     “Oh yeah,” replied Thomas sheepishly, feeling stupid for not having thought of that for himself. “You’re right. Okay, we’ll do that.”

     They had a brief conference to decide upon the exact phrasing, and then Thomas turned to face the Oracle again. Let’s hope it’s not forbidden to answer this one as well, he thought as he cleared his throat and prepared to speak. “O mighty Oracle,” he said, his voice trembling nervously. “Tell us exactly what we have to do and where we have to go in order to find and obtain the Scrolls of Skava.”

     “You must go to the Ruby Keep, in the southern foothills of the Majestic Mountains,” replied the Oracle as they scribbled furiously, copying it down. “Go to the mountain known to humans as Grad Cannelof. From there you will see a valley leading to the north. Go to the end of the valley, and there you will find the Ruby Keep.”

     “The Ruby Keep?” said Shaun when it had finished speaking. “Ruby Keep, Emerald Oracle. Could there be a connection, do you think?”

     “Doubt it,” replied Thomas. “Gemstones are a common enough thing to name things after, if you want to make it sound impressive. Think of the onyx throne of King Bagle, the opal palace in Mesmarra. The marble halls of the Lords of Ganarra...”

     “That’s not a gemstone,” pointed out Shaun.

     “I know!” replied Thomas irritably. “I’m just saying that it’s common to name things after gemstones, that’s all.”

     “Are we finished here?” asked Diana hurriedly, anxious to change the subject before it escalated into a full scale slanging match.

     “Yes, I think so,” replied Thomas, glad of the interruption. “The Oracle won’t reply to anything else we ask it so there’s no point staying. Besides, the others’ll be waiting for us.”

     He led the way out of the room, looking back just once as he passed under the arched doorway. The Oracle hadn’t changed back into a rak, as he’d half expected it to. The book had reappeared in its hands and it was reading it, ignoring its visitors completely. How long will it be sitting there reading before its next visitors arrive? he wondered. Perhaps it goes off and does something else when there’s no-one here. Perhaps there’s no-one there at all really and that person I can see is just an illusion.

     What was the true nature of the Emerald Oracle? he wondered. How long has it been there? Where did it come from? The questions were almost physically painful to the young wizard. He hated not knowing! And yet in some strange way it was unutterably wonderful at the same time. It gave him a kind of soft, warm glow to think that, no matter how much he learned, how much he found out, there would always be things he would never know. Some things that would always be a mystery to him. To know everything there was to know in the whole universe was at the same time his lifelong dream and his greatest nightmare.

     “Are you going to stand there all day?” asked Shaun. “You’re blocking the doorway!”

     Thomas snapped out of his thoughts, apologised, and the three of them climbed the steps back up to the roof. Shaun unrolled the carpet and laid it out on the floor, but as they were taking their places on it Diana paused. “Perhaps we ought to use the spell Resalintas gave you to tell him where the Scrolls are,” she said to Thomas, indicating the metal tube poking out of his backpack. “We ought to let him know as soon as possible, just in case anything happens to us on the way back to the mainland.”

     “Good idea,” agreed Shaun.

     “I’m not so sure,” said Thomas, though. “You see, if you’re a clever enough wizard, it’s possible to intercept a Farspeaking spell. Overhear what’s being said and trace it back to its origin.”

     “So?” said the soldier. “So what?”

     “So the Oracle wants its location to remain secret,” pointed out the wizard. “It put hypnotic blocks in our minds to stop us telling anyone where it is. So is it likely to allow us to cast a Farspeaking spell here when it’s possible to trace the location from which it’s being cast?”

     “You think it might block the spell?” asked Diana.

     “I’ve got no idea,” admitted the wizard, “but maybe we ought to wait until we get back to the mainland, just in case.”

     “Yeah, suppose so,” agreed Shaun, nodding slowly. “Okay, let’s go then.”

     They took their places on the carpet and Thomas gave the word of command. It rose into the air and reached a height of about a hundred feet above the roof of the shrine before moving forward. Thomas looked back at the emerald building as it receded behind them, the unanswered questions still burning in his mind, until it was lost from sight among the treetops passing by below them. A moment later they reached the edge of the plateau and a moment after that they passed through the Curtain of Invisibility. The island disappeared from view, and there was nothing but rough, unsettled ocean all the way to the horizon all around them. They could almost imagine that the Oracle had been nothing but a dream.