Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  Tymon could hear his fellow student breathing laboriously and felt a pang of pity. The Oracle did not spare Jedda: she fixed the girl for an excruciating, wordless interval, holding her eyes with her own.

  ‘It hurts, Ama,’ whispered Jedda, her face grey. ‘Please. It hurts.’

  She sagged in exhaustion as the other released her. The Oracle pursed her lips, the world-weary expression strange on her childish face.

  ‘Well,’ she observed. ‘What’s done is done. And what’s yet to be done cannot be held against them. Always the same old business. Pride and fear, fear and pride. As if the world hasn’t seen enough of those two bedfellows.’

  ‘Where were you all this time, anyway?’ asked Tymon, rallying to Jedda’s defence. He had meant to accuse the Oracle, as he felt the two of them were being accused, but the counter-charge only came out as a peevish complaint. ‘If you’d contacted us none of this would have happened. Laska would be … Laska would be alright.’ He swallowed.

  ‘I’m sorry about your friend,’ remarked the Oracle; for the first time, her manner softened. ‘His fate was unavoidable, I’m afraid. Even had I wished to contradict the Sap on this point I could not have done so. I was detained yesterday. A cunning stroke on the part of our enemies! The Saffid were left to their own devices. Their scouts did see you, but were unsure whether to approach.’

  ‘Detained?’ echoed Tymon. ‘What does that mean? You’re the Oracle. Didn’t you See all this coming? Couldn’t you have warned us to stay away from the inn?’

  The Oracle did not respond. She sat on the mat, picking at it with her fingernail, suddenly absorbed in the straw fringe. Tymon was about to repeat his question when she gave a chuckle of delight and pounced on the rod of orah.

  ‘Shiny,’ she crowed. Her voice was now undeniably that of a little child. Her expression had become bland and innocent, even slightly simple as she beamed at Tymon. She held out the orah in her small fist. ‘See, shiny!’

  The astonishing transformation appeared to be a signal to the rest of the people in the room. The Nurians relaxed and exchanged whispered comments, as if the audience with the Oracle were now over. Some began filing out of the shack. A young woman in a long cloak, by every evidence the child’s mother, gathered up the little girl in her arms and crooned gently. The Oracle allowed herself to be carried out of the room, unprotesting. Her eyes and smile lingered on Tymon until she disappeared.

  ‘What in the name of all things green is going on?’ He turned in amazement to Jedda. ‘Help me, Jedda. I feel like I’m the only one who isn’t in on the joke.’

  ‘The Oracle is not always with us,’ replied his fellow student hollowly. She raised tired eyes to him. ‘Her body is elsewhere. She communicates with us through a host, inhabiting her mind for a little while. It’s called an Exchange. That way she remains hidden from her enemies. Did they tell you nothing on the Freehold?’

  ‘No,’ muttered Tymon. ‘No one tells me anything. I’m just supposed to pick up on it all like a plant in the sun.’

  ‘Probably, Syon, they not tell you, because they wish to protect you,’ remarked the cloudy-haired woman. ‘Knowledge of Oracle is dangerous.’

  She approached, smiling shyly, and squatted down on the floor beside Tymon. There was an over-eagerness in her expression that struck him.

  ‘My name is Dawn in Argosi language,’ she said. ‘This, veni Isheban—’ she waved over the white-haired youth who had first spoken to them on the dock — ‘is my brother. You may call him Nightside. We are glad to find you, thank the Sap.’

  The Nurian boy joined the little group on the floor; the shack was gradually emptying of its other occupants. ‘Yesterday, I was not sure,’ he confided to Tymon. ‘Oracle told us Syon is coming, but she did not say exact day. She did not say two students, apologies.’ He nodded to Jedda. ‘When I saw soldiers at inn, I regret.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t have known,’ sighed Tymon. ‘It doesn’t matter now. You helped us get away and I thank you. But now we have to go. I’m afraid the Oracle was right. Our enemies have scored a victory. Our dear friend Laska is in trouble.’

  He attempted to rise but the two slum-dwellers leapt up in great agitation, each one laying hold of one of his arms.

  ‘Neni!’ cried Dawn. ‘You have come to us! You cannot leave. You must study with Oracle — all prophecies agree!’

  Tymon blinked at her in surprise and vague foreboding. He shook himself slowly loose from the white-haired Nurians.

  ‘Syon, you must not think to go,’ Nightside chimed in. ‘Soldiers still looking. Very dangerous in city. Only here you safe.’

  ‘Green grace,’ protested Tymon. ‘I can’t just abandon a friend. I won’t.’ He turned to Jedda, who remained slumped on the floor. ‘Come on, Jedda! You can’t agree with these people, surely? We have to find a way to help Laska. If we can’t do it ourselves, we should at least try and get back to the Freehold to warn the judges.’

  Her voice when she answered was hoarse, barely more than a whisper. Her quiet despair was infectious, dampening his zeal.

  ‘What’s the use?’ she murmured. ‘Don’t you understand, Tymon? If the Oracle doesn’t See it, it isn’t meant to be. We’re just pawns to her. You, me, Laska: we’re just channels for the Sap, accomplishing some grand and inscrutable design. She doesn’t care what happens to us. The Sap doesn’t care. If we fall away someone else will take our place. She didn’t even See me coming here, or if she did, she didn’t mention it to her faithful slaves.’ She glared at Dawn and Nightside, her mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Do you know what that means? It means I don’t exist. I’m entirely insignificant. These people know it: they don’t care one way or the other about me. Only you. You exist because you’re part of the Oracle’s big picture. Laska has played his part, so he’s no longer important. You may not like it but you’d better get used to it. This is what being a Grafter is all about.’

  6

  Tymon did not say much after that and Jedda remained plunged in her own thoughts. Numb fatigue had taken hold of him, and he had the sense that with regards to his fellow student, at least, he was fighting a losing battle. Besides there was little in her tirade he could deny. Even if she had misjudged the Oracle, the fact remained: no one was going to help them liberate Laska. No one really could. The Oracle’s insights, however valuable, would bring them no closer to actually accomplishing a rescue. The slum-dwellers were outcasts, visible from afar and certainly unable to help him break into the city jail, where he imagined Laska was being held. For the moment he was too exhausted to contemplate an attempt on his own.

  Dawn and Nightside seemed pathetically eager to please him, and he allowed himself to be led away along with the taciturn Jedda to a shack belonging to the brother and sister. The dwelling was built entirely from food crates pilfered from the market; the floor creaked and rattled alarmingly under their weight. The visitors found themselves pressed into accepting breakfast, a scant serving of bean-paste garnished with a leathery fungus Tymon could barely swallow. His hosts ate nothing and he suspected that he had been given their food allowance, too.

  The slum-dwellers were all members of the Saffid tribe, Dawn explained to him as they took their meal on the balcony outside the shack. Hers were a people native to the East Fringes of the canopy, now dispossessed by drought and much reduced in numbers. These days the Saffid wandered the canopy, finding shelter where they could. They were honoured to welcome the Oracle among their number, she declared, with a sidelong glance at Jedda. The host was often, though not always, of Saffid extraction. It seemed that the Sap had given them something in return for all their suffering.

  ‘Long ago, it was different,’ she mused, drawing her bony knees up under her cloak and clasping her arms about them. ‘Long ago, Syon, Saffid were proud and great. Our cities were finest in Nur. You do not believe but it is true. It was we who built Nurian empire. The gardens were green in old Nur city. Towers were high. They used to shine, my mother say, like water in the sun
.’

  Tymon gazed at the omnipresent compost cloths above them. He realised that he had already grown used to the smell. Far away, half-obscured by hanging garbage, sunlight welled down through the air-harbour and struck the depths of the fissure in dusty shafts. It was noon, Laska had been in the Governor’s custody for the past six hours.

  ‘Your mother?’ he repeated dully. ‘I didn’t see many adults in your group, Dawn. Where are they? Did slavers take them all?’

  ‘No,’ said the white-haired girl. ‘Slavers not want grown Saffid.’

  ‘Don’t want them? Why?’

  ‘Because they’re cursed.’

  It was Jedda who answered, rousing herself from her torpor. The bruise on her temple had turned almost black. She gave Dawn a savage smile.

  ‘Isn’t that right?’ she mocked. ‘You don’t live long enough to be really useful in the mines. Damaged goods. Tell him, why don’t you? Or better yet, show him.’

  Dawn hesitated. She and her brother frowned at Jedda as if she had just uttered some blasphemy, and even Tymon wondered why his fellow student was being so mean. He could appreciate that she was angry with the Oracle. But he did not understand her aversion to the Saffid. She seemed to take out all her frustrations on Dawn.

  ‘Beni,’ replied the white-haired girl at last. ‘As it should be.’

  She silenced her brother with a pre-emptive gesture and undid the fastening on her cloak. ‘Syon has right to see,’ she said. She faced Tymon, rolling up the sleeves of her long shift. ‘See how your curse marks us, Lord.’

  ‘I haven’t cursed anybody,’ he objected, staring at her in horror and pity. For the girl’s gaunt, white arms were covered in lesions, encrusted with disease.

  He had seen the telltale bloom of the Slow Death before among the poorest and most despised of beggars in his home town, those evicted in the notorious prison carts. Lepers were considered both physically and ritually Impure in Argos. Tymon had to force himself to remain calm, to stay quietly seated on the balcony. Every instinct fostered by the priests screamed at him to leap up and distance himself from the pariah. She lifted up the bottom of her hem. She wore shoes made out of bark-fibre, he noticed irrelevantly, the filaments beaten flat and carefully stitched together. The infection had already colonised her ankles, her calves. He prayed that she would stop there.

  ‘We Saffid not live long,’ she explained matter-of-factly. ‘In a child there are no signs. But by marrying-time, maybe thirteen summers, marks show. Only a few years after that remain. Six months, I think, for me.’

  She glanced at Nightside. With some reluctance, the boy rolled up his sleeves and showed that he, too, was marked by the disease, though to a lesser extent than his sister.

  ‘Few Saffid live longer than twenty year,’ he observed shortly.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Tymon. ‘But I don’t understand why you think I’m responsible. How’s that possible? Besides, it’s a disease, not a curse. There are lepers in Argos, too.’

  ‘This not Slow Death.’ Dawn had wrapped herself up in her black cloak again. Her face shone with certainty, a pale beacon among the folds. ‘Death come quickly and only to Saffid. A thousand years ago Saint Loa cursed us for failing to believe. Curse will be lifted in End Times, when our Lord is reborn. Oracle say that Friend from West is return of Saint Loa. You curse us, Syon, in previous life. Now you set us free.’

  Tymon heard Jedda’s soft grunt of derision.

  ‘That’s nonsense. I’m not the return of anyone,’ he protested. ‘I’m just a Grafting student and not a very good one at that. I’m sorry but I don’t believe in curses. And even if I did, someone who cursed that many folks and their children and grandchildren over generations—’ he gritted his teeth, incensed — ‘well, I think that person is a monster. Worse than a monster. If Saint Loa did that then he’s no saint, and I’ll have nothing to do with him, whatever the Oracle says.’

  ‘You not know yet,’ stated the white-haired girl imperturbably. ‘It is not just Oracle who say. I have heard stories from Freehold. You fight demon-Envoy. You defeat Argosian fleet. You come here bearing orah, birthright of Saffid, sign of Old Times.’ She lifted her chin defiantly. ‘We wait thirteen generations. You are our Lord.’

  Now he knew why she had disturbed him. The light in her eyes was fanatical. Nothing would dissuade her from what she had already decided was true. She reminded him in that one respect of a more stubborn, far more pitiable version of Samiha. Why was it, he thought, that Nurians — the women in particular — always looked to a saviour to sort out their troubles? Even Samiha, his own brave and beautiful Samiha, so capable herself, clung to that old story of redemption. He wondered why the Oracle had fed this obsession, then realised it was quite possible she had not. Dawn would have interpreted whatever was said to fit her own desires. Nightside’s eyes were as hungry and hopeful as his sister’s. Only Jedda obviously had no use for saviours. Her face as she witnessed the exchange was sardonic.

  ‘Listen to me, both of you,’ sighed Tymon. ‘You’re wrong. The Oracle must have meant something else. It wasn’t as glorious as all that back on the Freehold. I had a lot of help. And think of what happened to Laska, this morning: I can’t even save my own friends. I’m no Saint Loa.’

  Dawn opened her mouth to argue, but at that moment a thin shout reverberated across the abyss. They all turned to see a faraway figure leap from the edge of a gallery beneath the compost cloths and slide down a cable on a ‘fly-rope’ toward the slum. Voices rose in a babble of response. An instant later, a clanging alarm rang out. It sounded as if someone were beating on a hardwood cauldron with a broom-handle. The Nurians scrambled to their feet.

  ‘Soldiers come,’ said Nightside, after listening briefly to the tenor of the alarm. ‘We go now. Take you to Tree-caves. You safe there with Oracle.’

  The early warning system the slum-dwellers had in place was an efficient one. Tymon and his companions were given enough time to clamber down the rope-ladders to the base of the fissure wall. There they met with the young woman carrying the Oracle’s host. The child was now wrapped securely in a travelling cloak, sound asleep in her mother’s arms. Together they threaded a path through the forest of spikes on the fissure floor, toward a low opening in the dimmest recesses of the cleft. Just as they reached the mouth of the tunnel, the Lantrian soldiers appeared. Men ran out on the galleries high above and stopped, checked by the long drop to the floor of the fissure. Orders and counter-orders resounded. More soldiers arrived carrying long wooden ladders.

  ‘Quickly, Syon.’ Nightside tugged at Tymon’s sleeve, pulling him after the others into the narrow tunnel. ‘We must be far when they search houses.’

  ‘What about the people we left behind?’ asked Tymon.

  His question was engulfed in the gloom of the passage. It narrowed to a chute within a few paces, slanting steeply downwards, and was barely wide enough to take a full-grown man. The Saffid carried no torches. They had to feel their way along the tunnel, sometimes walking upright, sometimes slithering down the steep slope on their haunches in the musty darkness. Tymon could hear Nightside breathing ahead of him. The young Nurian’s answer was full of quiet satisfaction.

  ‘No danger, Syon. Many times soldiers come, look for Oracle. Many times they find nothing. Now, not talk; Tree-way carry voices.’

  They descended the twisting course of the chute for what might have been a blind hour. Nightside only broke his peace to offer whispered words of advice when the passage grew particularly steep or dangerous. Constrained to silence and without the use of his eyesight, Tymon found his other senses sharpening, particularly that of touch. The cavity, he guessed, was a natural one, its walls free of loam and smooth except for the occasional growth of bubbling, spongy fungus. The Tree-grain had been polished to a silky finish by rainwater in more clement times.

  Lulled by fatigue, he stopped worrying about where they were going or who might be behind them. He felt as though he had spent his whole life run
ning from the soldiers. It was enough to be able to draw breath, to find his footing in the tunnel. In any case, there was no indication that they were being pursued. No stray whispers drifted down the chute to meet his straining ears. After an eternity of darkness, he noticed that the bodies of his fellow travellers were becoming visible, outlined in faint grey. The light grew stronger and the passage levelled out. They clambered briefly up through clumps of dried grass and broke through at last into a well of filtered afternoon sunlight. It seemed intolerably bright after their sojourn in the bowels of the Tree.

  They had emerged in an abandoned mine shaft, thirty feet across and about as many high, its circular top overgrown with weeds. Tymon was aware that they had walked too far to still be within the confines of the branch supporting the city; he calculated they were in an adjacent limb farther down the canopy. The entrance to the old spice-mine was opposite them at the base of the well, an ancient, sagging doorway half-obscured by a pile of angular objects he could not at first identify. He understood after a moment that these were upturned carts half-buried in loam and overgrown by rampant grasses. They had presumably been used to carry out the Treespice when the mine was still in operation. It was a cheerless place.

  ‘Charming,’ observed Jedda, stepping up beside him to stretch her limbs.

  Although the spreading bruise on the Nurian girl’s temple showed purple in the daylight, she seemed to have recovered her spirits. She cracked him a rueful grin. ‘I look a complete fright, don’t I?’ she said.

  Nearby, Nightside and the woman carrying the child-host conversed in low tones. Tymon saw with a jolt of surprise that the little girl’s eyes were wide open now, resting on him. Her cheek lay on her mother’s shoulder in a candid, trusting pose, but there was no mistaking her reawakened identity. The Oracle’s gaze was coldly remote, full of an experience no child could possess. He wondered who she really was and where her own body could be. Ash had spoken to him from all the way across the Tree: the Oracle might be anywhere. But this was no mere Sending. She had completely overtaken the host’s mind. Her use of the child reminded him uncomfortably of the pilgrims’ madness in Argos, the state of suggestibility called into being by the Dean to drive a man to voluntary death. What was the difference here? Did the host have any choice about what happened to her?