Oracle

by David Dickie

  There were doors along the hallway. The one directly inside and to the right would be the one cell the ship sported, according to Fayyaad. Grim quietly opened the door to the corridor wide enough to slip through, entered, opened the door to the brig, stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The room was only about eight feet wide, with a six-foot-long section that he was in and a six-foot section behind bars. Slumped dejectedly against the far wall was Rotan.

  He looked up as Grim entered, and his eyes widened. Grim put a finger to his lips. He had lockpicks and other things in his cloak, but a fast glance around revealed a key hanging from a latch on the wall just inside the door. He pulled the latch open, grabbed the key, and inserted it into the lock. Rotan stood up quietly. He stepped forward as Grim opened the cell door and gave Grim a hug.

  Grim said softly, “My Lord, I think you are becoming a little too familiar with me.”

  Rotan let go, stood back and looked Grim in the eye. “I swear two things to you. One is if you ever call me ‘my Lord’ again, I’m going to punch you in the nose. Second is, the minute we’re near a Hold so we have a witness with a Hold seal, I’m going to induce you into my Hold.”

  Grim had to stifle a laugh. “As a Copper? I’ve already been offered Silver and turned it down. But we can talk about that the next time we meet. For the moment, there are larger concerns. Hold still.” Grim put a hand against Rotan’s face, reached down to touch the doppelgänger jewel, and released the spell. Rotan actually jumped back. Grim knew Rotan was suddenly looking in a mirror, seeing himself where Grim had been standing.

  Rotan got a hold of himself. “A vast improvement, I have to say, but maybe this isn’t the best time to be trying out a new look.”

  Grim grinned. “Here’s the deal. The ohulhug are at the other end of the ship. They won’t be there long. I need you to lock me in the cell, put the key back, slip out through the engine room, slide overboard and swim under the dock. Get to shore, there’s someone there to help you. You can swim, can’t you?”

  Rotan nodded. “I can. What’s an engine room?”

  “The room directly in the back of this ship. Out the door, right, through the door. That’s the engine room. There’s a hatch topside. You slip out that and into the water.”

  Rotan looked at Grim appraisingly. “I’m not going to ask why you’re doing this since time is of the essence. But thank you. I think a fate worse than death was waiting for me.”

  Grim nodded. “You’ll meet up with Lug and the elves shortly. They’ll get you to Tendut. You want to do me a favor, get the Tendut military mobilized, and quickly. The ohulhug are in possession of a lot of dangerous toys. You need to take them away. Lug will give you the details. We have to move—the distraction that’s keeping the ohulhug’s attention will not last much longer.”

  Rotan nodded. Grim moved around Rotan into the cell and closed the door. Rotan locked it. “Stay safe, Grim,” he said.

  “Always. Go be a hero.” Rotan nodded, cracked the door and peered out, then slipped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. Grim settled back against the same wall Rotan had been sitting against. The cell had no bed, just a floor and an evil-smelling bucket that Grim tried to avoid.

  Grim touched the globby gold ring from Alan. All he needed was to get his hand on the sword. Anything he was wearing, anything he was holding, as long as its mass wasn’t more than about a tenth of his own, it would all port with him to the Evael and the elves. From there, it would be another port to an Elvish-controlled World Gate. The elves were waiting, had a path that had been cleared of everyone, given the sword’s propensity for corrupting individuals who were close to it.

  Rotan would, Grim hoped, accelerate the schedule for attacking the shipyard. The Kethem Navy might join in, but it was more important to get the ground troops moving. Even if the Kethem fleet could not stop the black ship, there was only so much it could do to the ground troops, and they should be able to capture or destroy the shipyard. Once Grim took Oracle, Dulaguk would be down to the black ship and a few of his scale models. High ohulhug were smart, and Dulaguk might be able to continue to develop the things he already learned from the sword. But it wouldn’t be leapfrogging forward the way it had with Oracle in his hands, and he would lose a lot of his facilities to do the work when the shipyard fell. That, and humans and elves might be able to understand what they found at the shipyard as well, might be able to emulate the same stuff… what had Fayyaad called it? Right. Technology. They might be able to master the technology as well. The playing field would be level again.

  Or so Grim hoped.

  There were risks. Dulaguk might have teleportation suppression on the black ship. It was unusual, but not unheard of. Grim might not be able to convince Dulaguk to let him lay a hand on the sword. He had a plan for that, but the gods of the dice would ultimately decide if it worked. Despite the fact the ohulhug had gone out of their way to capture Rotan, they might decide to slit his throat and toss him overboard before they even reached the black ship. If worse came to worse, he could teleport out without getting his hand on Oracle. But there wasn’t any plan b. If he did that, Dulaguk might suffer a setback, but he would be back with his ultimate warship eventually.

  Grim wondered what he’d done wrong in his prior lives to be put in this position.

  The door opened, and a low ohulhug walked in. He looked at Grim without interest, turned and went out again. The diversion on the dock must be winding down, which meant Rotan had made it to the end of the pier and the elf waiting there had signaled for it to end. Grim was impressed. Riots were easy to start, but hard to end. He wondered if the elves used spells to calm everyone.

  There was a sudden hiss that made Grim jump, then a thud, then a hiss, a repeating cycle. After a few rounds, he sat back again. He could feel a vibration through the hull. They were getting underway. Whatever this steam engine thing was, it was a noisy beast.

  The door opened again, and a high ohulhug walked in this time. His sheer size made him intimidating. The combat daggers, more like short-swords for a human, did nothing to contradict that impression. The ohulhug grinned at Grim. Grim wondered if Rotan knew who this was, and if so, what they had said to each other during the trip down the river.

  The ohulhug said, “Human. We will be with Dulaguk in a few hours.” He took the key off the latch, walked over and opened the cell door. The ohulhug seemed pretty confident that two hundred and fifty pounds of armed mean didn’t have to worry about a hundred and twenty pounds of unarmed, shivering diplomat. Probably a good assumption, thought Grim. But he was neither unarmed, shivering, or a diplomat. A vision of Aurora flashed through his head, and he found a hand sliding toward a knife strapped against his leg, under his trousers. The ohulhug must have searched Rotan for weapons and scanned for magic when he’d first been captured. Grim, to outside eyes, looked like Rotan, but it was an illusion. This one wouldn’t know he was armed. Grim would have the element of surprise.

  He forced his hand to stop. There would be a time for that later.

  The ohulhug went down on one knee in front of Grim and pulled out a dagger. He watched Grim carefully as he slowly moved the dagger closer to Grim’s face. He stopped when the point of the dagger couldn’t have been more than a quarter of an inch from Grim’s eye. The ohulhug pulled the dagger back looking dissatisfied. “So you have learned this game. You are not afraid of the dagger anymore. This does not please me.” And then he gave Grim a backhanded blow across his face that was hard enough for Grim to see stars. Grim felt the warm trickle of blood start running down his face.

  Grim shook his head and said, “Dulaguk wants me whole. You injure me much, it’s as good as spitting in his face. I’ve heard tell that doesn’t bode well for your kind.”

  The ohulhug frowned angrily. “So, it speaks. It has found courage. It wishes to test me. Let us see what we can do about returning it to its fearful, whimpering state. Injure you much, I cannot do. But there is much pain that can be inflicted withou
t too much injury. You are not a fruit, and I do not think Dulaguk will care much if you are bruised.” The ohulhug reached behind his back, and this time he brought out a short, inch-thick wooden club. “Let the lesson begin.”

  Grim sighed, settled back, and tried to steel himself against the coming pain. It was going to be a long trip.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Grim felt hands on his body, but his eyes were swollen shut and he was in so much pain he couldn’t help or hinder what was being done to him. The ohulhug had worked on him for maybe an hour, an hour and a half, getting pretty far into the torture session before Grim finally blacked out. Or maybe ten minutes, or maybe it was a day. Grim vaguely remembered that they were supposed to be only six to eight hours from the black ship, and he was marginally sure it could not have been longer than that. It was hard to know when the pain was blotting everything else out.

  There had been a moment when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, when he was ready to trigger the ring and port out, no matter how much he told himself that the ohulhug couldn’t do any permanent, or even serious, damage. But Aurora flashed in his head again, and he gritted his teeth, minus one that had been knocked out, and he hung on until everything mercifully went black.

  Now that he was a little more alert, he could hear. There were arguments. A language he didn’t understand, but he understood tone, understood the emotions underlying the words. He was carried, or dragged, but moved in some fashion, then dropped on a floor. The thud and pain, that he understood.

  Moments later, there was… relief. The pain abated, the vast wave of agony that obliterated thought receded. After some point, he was aware enough that he could feel the swelling going down, understood that he would be able to see again, that the swelling of his face was a temporary thing. It finally reached the point where he could see murky images through slits. A picture formed as his eyelids and flesh assumed normal proportions. A skeleton stood in front of him, bones tightly bound to skin, no muscle or flesh to segregate the two.

  Things became clearer still, a floor under his back, a high ohulhug standing over the skeleton’s shoulder. The skeleton now had a face, bright eyes in sunken sockets, a thin white beard and a look of someone completely defeated by life.

  A hand, green and clawed, gripped Grim’s chin and forced his head to look into the high ohulhug’s eyes. The ohulhug said, “Are you aware?”

  Grim nodded. It hurt.

  “Good. Prejack may survive this yet. Can you walk?”

  Prejack must have been the ohulhug that beat Grim near to death. Grim nodded again, although he felt he was being a little optimistic.

  “Good. Stand,” said the ohulhug.

  Grim tried to leverage himself up, failing, and that same green clawed hand came to his rescue, latching on and lifting him to a standing position.

  “You come. Time to meet Dulaguk,” said the ohulhug. Grim felt like the ohulhug was much more certain about that than he was. But truth be told, he was feeling better. He glanced at the skin and bones human. Whoever they were, they must have used spells to reverse the damage Prejack had done. The ohulhug noticed. “It is nothing. A slave. You owe it no thanks. It is a dog on our leash, nothing more.”

  Grim nodded to the healer, saw a spark of thanks in those eyes.

  The ohulhug noticed that as well. “You do not believe me? You think this thing acted of its own volition?”

  Grim wanted to defuse the situation but didn’t know how. Finally, he said, “He’s subservient, he’s done what you ask. Are you so uncertain of your status that you worry about such things?” For a moment, he thought he’d pushed too hard, and that the ohulhug was going to beat him back into raw agony, bruised and bleeding meat. But it laughed instead.

  “You test me. You think I do not recognize how you try to push me? I know your language, but maybe not well. Are you playing a game with me?”

  Challenging the ohulhug had been a bad move. Grim looked down at the floor and tried to look as frightened as he could. “No. I am at your mercy. Please forgive me.”

  The ohulhug waited a minute. Then it shrugged. “You have convinced me. I believe you are sorry.” With a casual push, it forced the healer to stumble into a wall. “This thing is of little use.” It wrapped its hand around the man’s throat and lifted him off the ground. The man started kicking his legs, hands trying to break the ohulhug’s grip on his throat with little effect. “You do not care about it, you do not owe it thanks, am I right?”

  Grim kept his eyes on the ground. “You are right. I owe him nothing.”

  The ohulhug let the man down, released its grip from the man’s throat. “This is an important lesson. Learn it well. Dulaguk is not as patient as I, you understand?”

  Grim nodded quickly.

  “Good. Game is done, I have won, you agree?” Grim nodded again. The ohulhug reached down to its belt, then moved so fast Grim could barely see it, drawing a long dagger, jamming it through the man’s chest, picking him up on the blade, then slamming both into the wall, the dagger far enough into the wood that when the ohulhug let go, the man just spasmed there, pinned to the wall like a butterfly on a mounting pin. Then the man went limp.

  Grim tried to get a handle on his emotions, to control himself. Tried, and failed. Grim looked up slowly, looked into the ohulhug’s eyes. Grim said, “Change of opinion. You just lost. You could have let that go, but no. And yet…. you healed me up. You going to beat me back into unconsciousness? I’m sure Dulaguk would be happy with that. Please, I’m looking forward to it. Nothing you do to me could be as bad as what he does to you. Come on, big bad. Hit me. Stab me. You can kill me, and I’m going to be laughing from the other side of the grave when your skin gets removed from your body a bit at a time.”

  The ohulhug’s face was flushed. He was angry. Grim didn’t care that much.

  Grim smiled at him. “So, what should I call you? Simpleton? Mudrake fodder? You get those are all insults, don’t you? Or are you too stupid?” Except the ohulhug wasn’t. It stood still for a moment, then let out a breath.

  “I understand. You have won this round. When Dulaguk is done… round two, you understand? Then, Dulaguk will not care what I do to you. You will care.”

  Grim thought once more about the items hidden about his body, about killing the bastard. Then he got a hold on his emotions. There were things more important than avenging one man. Grim nodded. “Round two. Looking forward to it, even if you’re not much of a challenge.”

  The ohulhug reached out for Grim’s throat, teeth bared in a snarl, but stopped halfway. “You laugh, human, go ahead. But I do not think you will be laughing long. My name is Kragull. Remember it. We will meet again. Come.” The ohulhug turned and led him up a staircase, so steep it was more like a ladder. On the floor, or deck, above, there was a corridor. It seemed to move slightly, side to side, until Grim realized it actually was moving. He was on a ship, a ship at sea.

  Down the corridor, with doors on the right side and round holes that let in light on the left side, they reached another door. Kragull opened it and gestured Grim through. Grim entered, with the ohulhug behind him. They were in a room, big enough to be the main room of a large inn. There was a throne at the far end, a massive chair of wood and ivory and silver. Another high ohulhug was sitting in it, and a second high ohulhug was down on one knee facing the throne, head bowed. It was hard to tell from the back, but Grim thought it might be the one that had beaten him half to death, Prejack. In front of the two, lined up in two rows, were eight low ohulhug with swords. They seemed more ceremonial than practical.

  The two ohulhug were talking, the one in the chair relaxed, the one on his knee looking tense and angry. They were speaking their own language, and Grim couldn’t tell what they were saying, but he could guess based on Kragull’s comments. So when the kneeling ohulhug finally stood, bowed, turned and walked by Grim, Grim gave him a friendly smile and a wave. Prejack gritted his teeth but continued on and out the door. Grim turned his attenti
on to the high ohulhug on the throne, who had to be Dulaguk. Dulaguk was staring back at him.

  Grim tried to think about Rotan and what a Kethem negotiator would do, and it came to him that he would probably start by buttering someone up. “Hail, high lord of the ohulhug. May your wisdom and power last a thousand years.” That seemed a little over the top to Grim, but he had no idea what the ohulhug was expecting.

  Dulaguk looked at him appraisingly, then at Kragull behind him. Dulaguk leaned back on his throne and cupped his chin in his hand. It made him seem more human. Finally, he waved Grim closer. “Come.” Grim walked by the two lines of low ohulhug, Kragull right behind him, until he was in front of the throne. Dulaguk continued to stare at him. Grim didn’t have anything else to say, so he stayed quiet. Dulaguk looked at Kragull, and they had a short conversation in their native language. Then Dulaguk took to looking at Grim again.