Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  The creature’s eyes were blind, two milky-white knobs on either side of its matted head. A vile stench rose from its body. It seemed more a mockery of a bird than the real thing, a travesty of ill-fitting bones and viscous feathers. Wick stared at it in stunned silence as it gave another hoarse cry and flapped heavily into the air, blundering through one of the arched apertures of the alcove. But the horror was not yet over. After a few moments the spasms shook the acolyte again and he bent over, moaning. Another head, another filthy beak thrust its way through his lips. A second matted nightmare emerged and flapped off into the night.

  ‘How many?’ groaned Wick, holding his belly and collapsing on the floor as the seizures wracked his body.

  ‘As many as it takes,’ replied Lace coolly. ‘As many as need be to find our two troublesome friends, and bring our curses home to roost. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  Wick nodded through a nauseous mouthful of feathers, and doubled up on the floor of the alcove in pain.

  3

  Time was hard to quantify in the dirigible’s hold, as the only natural light shone through chinks in the trapdoor in the ceiling. Twice daily it was opened to allow a trough of slops to be lowered or hauled up as necessary. No one extended a ladder into the space below. As far as Tymon could tell from the alternating light and dark glimpsed through the chinks, he spent almost a week lying on the filthy floor of the hold before he was even able to move. The wounds on his back slowly closed over and healed, but his left ear remained dull and filled with a faraway ringing. Whether due to the gloom or some combination of pain and disorientation from the blow to his head, he could neither see nor hear properly. His vision was shot through by trails of drifting colour, bright orange and pink, as if a bright and unruly dawn had invaded the bowels of the ship. He tried to ignore the persistent illusion, and spent much of his time sleeping, finding more often than not when he awoke that he was being attended to by the boy named Zero. He was very lucky, the Nurian lad informed him with a snaggletoothed grin, that his cuts were healing so cleanly. People sometimes lost their lives after a flogging, as hungry spirits tried to enter their bodies through their wounds, causing a fever. Their blood turned yellow and they died, the ginger-haired boy announced cheerily.

  Tymon learned from his eccentric new friend that the Lovage ship had arrived while he lay unconscious at Hayman’s Point, picking him up along with the other workers rejected by the overseers. There was a worse fate, apparently, than being sent to a Tree-mine; Zero referred to their current destination as a ‘death plantation’, an outfit near the south fringes of the canopy where unwanted labourers were simply worked until they dropped. His fellow rejects were a tired and dispirited bunch, with the notable exception of this ginger-haired lad.

  Tymon gathered that Zero was an orphan like himself, native to Marak city and sold to the priests a year ago by his one surviving family member, a feckless uncle. The Nurian boy bore no grudge against this relative, however, and accepted his fate with cheerful optimism. His topsy-turvy philosophy of good and evil appeared to have given him infinite hope, for he maintained that the more evil someone was, the better his chances of survival. The two of them were evil enough to escape any fate, he declared to Tymon. Zero’s attentions undoubtedly saved the young man’s life, for despite their loathing of ‘lying Argosians’, the other Nurians did not finish Tymon off while he lay helpless on the floor of the hold. They allowed Zero to minister to him unhindered, as if they considered the Marak youth sacred in his simplicity, and were loath to thwart him. It was thanks to him that Tymon was given his fair share of the scraps sent down by the ship’s guards and slowly recovered his strength; Zero’s unstinting kindness won his gratitude and, over the course of the following days, a firm friendship developed between the two youths.

  There were some subjects, however, that Tymon could not raise in front of his companion. In fact, he had to wait for Zero’s absence before he felt free even to consider them himself. But as soon as he was able to do so, he questioned the Oracle regarding his vision.

  ‘I Saw Samiha,’ he whispered to the floorboards some time after his first awakening, when Zero had left him alone in the fetid darkness. ‘I Saw a vision of her during the flogging, Ama. What does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ responded the voice in his head. The Oracle’s tone was cautionary. ‘Be careful, Tymon. That sort of harsh punishment is known to produce altered mental states. Your vision could have been a hallucination, nothing more.’

  ‘So you don’t think it was real?’ His heart sank. ‘Only a sort of fever dream?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I hear your thoughts, but do not See what you See. Perhaps you had a real vision. Perhaps not. Be careful, in any case.’

  ‘What if it was real?’ he insisted. ‘If I can’t see ghosts, what could it have been?’ A marvellous idea dawned on him. ‘Is she still alive, Ama?’ he gasped, half-lifting his head from the floor, despite the pain.

  ‘There is a slim chance, I suppose. I doubt it.’ The Oracle sighed. ‘My instinct is to tell you to put all this out of your mind, Tymon. To consider such possibilities while you can do nothing to verify them will only make you miserable. It’s easy to become wrapped up in dreams when you have lost so much. Focus on the present. I suggest you worry about staying alive yourself.’

  Tymon was obliged to swallow his disappointment and accept the fact that he would not be able to resolve the matter to his satisfaction, at least for now. He could not launch a trance surrounded by the Nurian prisoners, or search for traces of Samiha in the Tree of Being while he was in the hold of this ship; he was obliged to wait, frustratingly, until he was out of other peoples’ observation and, most importantly, beyond the Envoy’s reach. The point of his liberation from the latter was hard to gauge, for it was a mystical rather than mundane state and linked, according to the Oracle, to the sphere of influence generated by the orah-clock. The Envoy’s power waxed and waned with the time of year and the position of the stars, in a strange amalgam of physical science and sorcery. Tymon had no idea how that sphere of influence was calculated, and could only do as his teacher had advised for the time being, concentrating on recovery.

  Indeed, recovery was his one remaining hope, for he knew no allowances would be made for an injured worker on the Lovage farm. The pilgrims in the hold may have left him in peace because they knew, with bleak practicality, that punishment would find him soon enough in the death plantation. He took some comfort from the fact that neither Aidon nor Aybram were among the unlucky ones on the ship: the brothers had been kind to him, and he had no wish to see them suffer.

  As the journey wore on, and Tymon gradually recovered from his flogging, the hours no longer bled into each other in a formless haze of pain. After a week on the dirigible, his back had healed well enough to allow him to stand up and move about. Although stray lights still bedevilled his vision, and the ringing in his left ear did not diminish, he was able to take short walks up and down the hold, leaning on Zero’s arm. Recovery came none too soon, for he calculated that the ship must have reached the southern borders of the canopy by now. And still the Oracle gave him no practical insight as to how he would escape the Lovage plantation. She was frequently absent from his mind; when she returned, she encouraged and exhorted him as always, but did not tell him what he so desperately wanted to hear.

  ‘You’ll never be free, if you go on like this,’ the Oracle informed him one morning, the eighth after his ordeal at Hayman’s Point.

  He had been shuffling down the length of the hold at Zero’s side, mentally calculating their probable distance from Argos city for the third time that day. Despite his teacher’s warnings, he could not help thinking about Samiha at every waking moment: he waited impatiently for the time when he would be far enough from the Envoy and able to launch a Reading. Perhaps the other Focals would be able to give him some clue about his vision, he thought.

  ‘You’ll always be susceptible to
Eblas while you’re wrapped up in your desires,’ continued the Oracle. ‘You aren’t focusing on the present, like I told you to.’

  ‘It’s hard,’ he mumbled. ‘The present is pain. Can’t a man have some hope?’

  ‘I never hope,’ announced Zero, at his elbow. ‘Hope is for good people. Evil people do not hope. We hold on.’ And he gripped tightly onto Tymon as he swayed.

  ‘I like this one,’ said the Oracle, amusement colouring her voice. ‘Keep him close, he has a lot of sense. If you hold on to any hope, let it be him.’

  ‘I’m holding,’ Tymon protested, in answer to both of them. ‘But I do need something to look forward to, you know.’

  ‘Well, don’t make it the Kion,’ advised the Oracle. ‘Your love for her is your greatest weakness. You were freer when you thought her gone for good, which I feel obliged to warn you is most probably the case.’

  How can you be certain? he cried silently. Even you admit that the future can be vague, that prophecies can change. How do you know she isn’t there? She did not answer him: she never answered his thoughts when it did not suit her. But he was not about to let her wriggle out of a response this time.

  ‘If Samiha were alive, wouldn’t you See her?’ he muttered later, when Zero had left him alone in his corner of the hold. ‘You Read the future differently from most Grafters: you’re always in the trance. The Envoy can’t hurt you, not really. Don’t you sense her in the Tree of Being?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the Oracle. ‘But not in the way you mean. She is there because her influence is there. Her testament will travel far and wide, thanks to you. That’s one of your greatest triumphs and you should be happy about it.’

  He bowed his head over his knees and remained silent, not happy in the least.

  ‘Tymon, I must tell you something,’ she continued. Her voice had become anxious: she sounded, if possible, harried. ‘Remember, on the way out of Cherk Harbour, I spoke to you about the Envoy and his people.’ He nodded, forgetting that she could not see him. ‘Well, the powers that Eblas serves are still very much in existence and more than a match for me. They were banished to the Veil long ago, after the war that tore apart the Born, or the First Born as they were called at the time. Normally, the Envoy’s Masters are not able to access the physical world even to the extent their lackey does, for they are bound by a harsher sentence. But they have other abilities. They can enter this world through our dreams, when they find a weakness. They are also capable of attacking me when they rouse themselves sufficiently. They are doing so right now.’

  ‘What?’ Tymon blurted. He was shocked out of his self-pity. ‘The Masters are attacking you? Are you alright?’

  ‘I can hold my own,’ she said steadily. ‘But I need you to be strong. I need you to focus. If I am detained you must be able to go on alone, do you understand? You cannot let yourself be distracted.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he promised. The thought of losing her to some struggle he could not fathom was sobering. ‘You can rest easy about me, Ama. I won’t be stupid.’

  But his teacher had made one of her periodic exits, abandoning him.

  He pondered her words in his heart, in the gloom of the hold, under the scrutiny of the suspicious Nurians and accompanied by the babbling Zero. What had she meant, about being attacked, detained? How was it possible for him to go on alone? He had no answer to these questions and could only wait, anxious, for her return. Later, when the empty food trough had been withdrawn and the prisoners had huddled in their various corners of the hold, he felt her abruptly present in his mind again.

  ‘It’s happening sooner than I expected,’ she announced, without preamble.

  ‘What is?’

  Despite his anxieties, Tymon had begun to fall asleep in his corner when her voice shook him awake again. He guessed by the diminishing light in the trapdoor that afternoon had given way to evening, and blinked groggily through the scraps of colour clinging to his vision. ‘What’s happening?’ he repeated, wondering nervously if the Envoy’s Masters were about to attack him, too. Nearby, Zero snored softly, his large body curled up like a Tree-bear by the wall.

  ‘We’re reaching a point of confluence, a point in the Tree of Being where many Leaf Letters intersect,’ replied the Oracle. ‘I call it a “knot”. Events are going to speed up. Keep your wits about you.’

  Tymon shook himself fully awake. ‘Is the future clear to you again, then?’

  ‘The future is always clear to me, but it’s also always changing. Knots are dangerous but predictable moments, necessary crossing places. They occur no matter what path we take. Points of prophecy, if you will.’

  ‘What do you See this time?’ he asked, trying to rub the skeins of colour out of his eyes.

  ‘An attack on this ship at noon tomorrow. The Lantrians are retaliating against Argosian manoeuvres in the South Canopy. I thought it would take place on the farm in a couple of days’ time, but it seems set to happen sooner.’ Her voice in his head, unlike the sounds in his shattered ear, was crisp, clear and unequivocal. ‘This is your opportunity to escape. Regain your energy as soon as possible. You must at all costs be able to walk unaided when the attack occurs.’

  He considered this sudden glut of information. The Oracle could be very precise when she wanted to be. ‘What about the Masters?’ he asked. ‘Have they let you be?’

  ‘For now,’ she answered. And suddenly her voice was soft. ‘Did you miss me while I was gone, child?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, to his own surprise.

  ‘Then I will do my best to stay,’ she replied. ‘Rest: every hour counts. You’ll have need of your strength in the morning.’

  He drifted to sleep then, rocked in the cradle of her silence. But it was still dark in the hold when she roused him again, her voice urgent.

  ‘Tymon!’

  ‘Yes?’ He pushed himself up on his elbow rather too quickly, then grimaced as the brusque movement chafed his back.

  ‘The Lantrian raid!’ she cried. ‘It’s happening now. I swear by the Sap, they cannot wait to exterminate each other.’ Her tone was exasperated.

  They were interrupted by a dim shout from above, the muffled cry of the lookout. There was the thud of running feet on the deck and an alarm horn gave three sharp blasts.

  ‘Damn their impatience,’ breathed the Oracle.

  Tymon rose shakily to his feet, clinging to the wall of the hold. The pilgrims who had woken at the sound of the horn gazed anxiously up at the locked trapdoor, the whites of their eyes glinting in the darkness. Then a terrific jolt and jerk of the ship almost knocked Tymon to his knees again, and there was a sickening crunch, as if the dirigible had crashed headlong into a branch.

  ‘God’s vengeance against the wicked,’ yelped Zero, waking belatedly, his eyes round with terror.

  ‘Get back!’ ordered the Oracle, as Tymon stumbled and clutched at the wall again. ‘There’s going to be an explosion!’

  And even as she spoke, Tymon Saw it. For an instant, her prediction hung visible before him: the timbers of the hull shivering under his hand, buckling, replaced by a perilous circle of expanding fire. The vision blinded him and he could no longer make out his ordinary surroundings. He staggered backwards in a black fog, grabbing what he hoped was Zero’s sleeve and pulling the lad away with him as another massive jolt shook the ship. The darkness of the hold was replaced by brilliant light; a gust of hot air hit Tymon in the face and he fell to the floor, rolling away from the wall. The blindness lifted from his eyes, and he gazed in consternation at the spot where he had just been standing. The fiery ring was there, utterly real this time and accompanied by a shockwave of heat and light. The hull had disintegrated, leaving a circular opening punched clear through to the exterior of the ship. Beyond the hole, he could make out the chill grey silhouettes of the leaf-forests where the dirigible had been moored for the night, though as yet no Lantrian ship. Long tongues of fire licked through the gap and into the hold. Zero clung to his arm like a child as the pilgri
ms screamed and scrambled over each other to escape the flames.

  ‘It seems the enemy have their own supply of new weaponry,’ remarked the Oracle. ‘That would explain the over-eagerness to attack, perhaps.’

  ‘Blast-poison!’ Zero blurted out, staring at the hole. ‘Devil’s work!’

  ‘Not devils. People,’ answered Tymon grimly. ‘We don’t need devils to do our dirty work, Zero. Both Argosians and Lantrians have blast-poison now. But a plantation ship won’t be equipped to defend itself. We’re in trouble.’

  He turned aside, addressing the Oracle in an undertone as Zero gawped at the flaming gap in the side of the ship. ‘What next, Ama?’

  ‘It’s all clear now,’ she replied gloomily. ‘Nothing destroys free will more thoroughly than war. The whole damned knot is predictable down to a hair’s breadth. Stay sharp and do exactly as I say.’

  She told him to wait a little longer where he was and to be ready to move at her signal. He kept hold of Zero’s arm to prevent him from wandering off and remained crouched on the floor. Several pilgrims were attempting to reach the trapdoor, climbing on each other’s shoulders to form a ladder of bodies. The man at the top called and pounded against the hatch, but his voice was lost, or perhaps ignored, in the shouting from above. The ceiling shook as people ran across the deck. Some of the remaining Nurians ventured to the edge of the hole caused by the explosion, in an attempt to escape their trap. But flames still crackled greedily about the opening and it was impossible to get a firm grip on the side of the ship. The dirigible was moored too far from any horizontal branch to allow the prisoners to jump to safety. Another rending crash went through the vessel, and a part of the ceiling collapsed on the unfortunate pilgrims by the gap. A dark form passed over the leaf-forests outside.