Oracle's Fire

by Mary Victoria

  ‘Now,’ commanded the Oracle suddenly. ‘To the hole. You’re going to jump.’

  Tymon lost no time in stumbling forwards, dragging the shambling Zero after him. ‘Where to?’ he gasped to the Oracle, peering through the circle of wavering flames, his eyes stinging from the smoke.

  She did not need to answer, for there below them was the Lantrian warship, a sleek vessel rising up through the leaf-forests parallel to the Argosian barge. The dark shape he had seen crossing the leaf-forests was one of the ether balloons. Near the stern of the enemy ship, Tymon made out the bulky form of a catapult surrounded by the hurrying figures of the crew. There was a small window of opportunity, a few seconds to leap down onto the deck of the other vessel before anything worse happened. He hesitated.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ asked the Oracle anxiously.

  He turned towards the other Nurians in the hold, still frantically trying to break their way out of the trapdoor. ‘You have to jump!’ he called to them. ‘It’s the only way!’

  They did not answer. They barely looked at him. The deck of the Lantrian ship was now almost level with the gap. ‘There’s another ship below us!’ he shouted desperately. ‘You can make it if you try!’

  But his fellow prisoners were deaf to the warning. At last, heeding the Oracle’s urgent cry, he clutched Zero’s arm and stepped out, pulling the Nurian boy after him. Out of the gap, into the air, falling into emptiness just as Samiha had fallen.

  A moment later, they were both rolling on the deck of the Lantrian ship. Tymon picked himself up before Zero, his back smarting and his eyesight inexplicably restored, though his ear still rang. The trails of colour and light that had troubled him were gone. All too clearly, he beheld the white faces of the Nurians staring at him through the gap in the gutted hold of the plantation ship: a frozen image of disbelief, then dawning realisation and accusation, as though Tymon were the one who had done this to them. The Lantrian vessel drifted up and past, sliding out of reach. Somewhere to the left, an order was given, and the deadly catapult snapped again. Tymon turned away in horror as the entire side of the Argosian barge disintegrated in a sheet of flame.

  Within moments, he and Zero were seized by the Lantrian soldiers, who marched them both down to the hold of the warship. The interior of the vessel smelled of dried hemp and Tree-pitch, a welcome change from the bowels of the farm-barge. The brig was evidently not designed to take many prisoners, though it had a hardwood storage locker equipped with a sturdy barred door. When the soldiers had left them there and clattered back up the ladder to the deck, Tymon sat for a while crouched in darkness, unable to speak. It was the Oracle who broke the silence.

  ‘Don’t feel bad,’ she reassured him. ‘You tried to warn them.’

  ‘They wouldn’t listen,’ he whispered.

  ‘You’re going to have to get used to this sort of thing, you know. No one ever listens to prophets.’

  The shock of their getaway appeared to have struck Zero dumb. The Nurian lad sat gazing fixedly at Tymon; after a while, he simply lay down on the floor of their cage in a helpless heap and closed his eyes. When no one arrived to question them or to bring more prisoners to the brig, Tymon did the same. The sounds of the attack above receded. There were no further explosions, and he could only assume that the Argosian ship had been destroyed. He did not ask the Oracle more about her ‘knot’ of events, or speculate as to how the Lantrians might have come by their weapons. He was too sad, too weary to care what happened next. He stretched himself out on the floor beside Zero and slipped into blessed oblivion.

  How long he slept, he did not know, but it must have been several hours. When his eyes blinked open again, he saw rays of midday sun filtering through the open trapdoor of the hold. Through the hatch, he caught a raucous echo of laughter, sailors talking loudly in Lantrian on the deck. He could not for the moment distinguish the foreign words clearly, or scrape together the concentration to remember his language lessons at the seminary. Zero was standing by the locker bars, gazing up at the hatch door. When he saw that Tymon was awake, his face broke into a slow smile.

  ‘You have powerful friends,’ he said, coming to squat down beside Tymon.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Tymon, perplexed.

  ‘Spirits.’ The youth nodded meaningfully. ‘Powerful, evil ones. You speak to them; I’ve seen you. They warned you about the attack, didn’t they?’

  ‘It’s a form of explanation, I suppose,’ noted the Oracle, from the background. ‘And perhaps the most expedient, for now.’

  Tymon grimaced and shrugged, making an allowance for Zero’s statement.

  ‘I thought so,’ murmured the Nurian lad in satisfaction. ‘Anyway, I wanted to say: thanks for helping.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Tymon sat up, feeling the multiple stabbing points of pain in his back. ‘I owe you my life. Of course I’d try to save you.’

  ‘No, not just that,’ said Zero. ‘Thank you, because my evil had almost run out. I didn’t want to leave the other pilgrims. You made me leave, and live. Otherwise, I’d have given in.’

  Tymon winced again, both at the truth in the statement and the discomfort in his own body. ‘Try not to think about it,’ he said gently. He could not bear to.

  The Marak boy rocked on his heels, considering him with his head to one side. ‘Well, here’s where we are then,’ he observed. ‘I hope your spirits help us again. I don’t know much about Lantrians but I’m willing to bet they’re honourable folks, right? Good, honourable and kind, just like our great Argosi masters. Nothing to choose between them. We’re in trouble, right?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s insightful,’ chortled the Oracle. ‘A rare treasure, this one. Pity he doesn’t have the Sight: I’d have made a fine Grafter of him.’

  ‘I’m sure the Lantrians think they’re very honourable indeed,’ said Tymon to Zero, smiling. ‘But you’re right. I’m afraid we’ve jumped from the pot straight into the fire.’

  ‘We’ll need to look out for each other,’ declared his friend. ‘Make sure each other’s evil stays up to scratch.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ answered Tymon. ‘I’ll be looking out for you, Zero, I promise.’

  They crossed into the South Canopy and arrived in the Lantrian mining concern of Chal that same evening, though they were only told the name as they were herded out of the warship and onto the bridge that served as an extended dock for the settlement. The two bored soldiers who accompanied them clearly considered the job of moving prisoners to be far beneath them; they grumbled all the way as they thrust their charges down the boardwalk, with a swiftness born of impatience.

  Tymon glanced about him, as he was pushed along, in an attempt to take in his surroundings. The hardwood bridge spanned a natural crater in a colossal hollow branch. The rift that had split the vertical limb was roughly a quarter of a mile across, while the great branch itself was at least twice as large as any Tymon had ever seen. Innumerable subsidiary branches extended out from this central column, filling the whole area about it with a fretwork of interlocking twigs and leaves. He had no doubt that it was one of the primary supports of the Lantrian leaf-table, one of the struts extending from the Tree trunk to support the entire South Canopy. And it was largely hollow.

  Tymon found it quite daunting to march on thin planks over unimaginable depths. The fissure below the bridge plunged so deep that its bottom was lost in darkness. The walls of that interior crater, he saw in the distance, were dotted with winding roads and scaffolding, tiny human constructions leading down to the bottom of the mine-shaft. For this was not only a primal branch of the Lantrian canopy, but one of its principal sources of wealth. Hardwood was being mined in the depths of the great limb. Tymon gave an involuntary shudder as he followed his new captors, overcome by vertigo; the Lantrians evidently had no qualms about excavating deep into the very heart of their world.

  Everything about Chal was oversized, grander in scale than he was used to. Dirigibles of all shapes and sizes were moored
at the sides of the dock-bridge, from slow-moving barges loaded with hardwood to merchant greatships of the best quality. With sinking spirits, he glimpsed several of the sleek resettlement ships he had come to know and dread in Cherk Harbour. Although the guards prodded him on at a cracking pace, it seemed to take forever to walk across the acres of planks to the buildings on the far side, a row of colourful constructions bathed in the rays of the setting sun. He wondered gloomily what life awaited them there.

  The custom house, when they finally reached it, proved to be a grandiose three-storey affair, painted a pale pink and lined with columns and windows. Lantrians with their distinctive flowing robes and shaven heads scurried in and out like ants in a ceaseless round of activity. Tymon’s guards plunged inside with the rest, pushing their charges along crowded corridors and up stairwells echoing with the sound of feet, past scribes overloaded with scrolls and merchants arrayed in improbably ornate wooden collars. Tymon remembered the odious Governor in Cherk Harbour, with his clicking earlobes; the richer the Lantrian merchant, apparently, the larger the earrings and the collar. About him were all the trappings of wealth and industry, sophistication and cynicism a great nation would possess. He realised, with a rueful twinge, that he had fulfilled another childhood hope in visiting his dream destination of Lantria. The reality of the place, as well as the circumstances of his arrival, left something to be desired.

  The guards did not halt until they reached the top floor of the building. There, they thrust the two prisoners ahead of them through a pair of large straw-screen doors marked with a word in Lantrian that Tymon recognised as ‘Personnel’. Moving through the custom house, he had begun to recall his foreign language lessons at the seminary, piecing together fragments of overheard conversation and deciphering the writing on signs. He imagined that he and Zero would now be assigned their official duties in the mine, and braced himself for unpleasant news.

  The long room they entered was filled with cramped desks and busily scratching scribes. Most wore the scanty loincloths common to the Lantrian underclass, with a few concessions to weather in the form of cloaks and tunics. One man seated near the entrance rose to meet them. Tymon thought at first that he was an official of some importance, judging by his white robe and headdress. But he carried a carved hardwood tablet about his neck, rather than a collar. Upon it Tymon made out the words ‘This slave is the property of Dayan Hordannan IV’.

  ‘Slaves managing slaves,’ the Oracle mused. ‘A whole nation made up of captives, some of whom rise to enjoy the material privileges of their masters. I’ve always found these people very peculiar.’

  ‘May I help you?’ the man asked the soldiers, in his own tongue. Tymon turned his good ear towards his captors so as to better understand the exchange.

  ‘Two Nurian survivors picked up during a raid on an Argosian farm vessel,’ answered one of the guards, over-officiously. ‘They fall in the Hordannan preserve.’

  The clerk retrieved an enormous bark-bound register from one side of his desk and heaved it open, the leaves crackling. He did not hurry in his task but turned the pages slowly, one by one, as the soldiers fidgeted with impatience.

  ‘Former names?’ the clerk finally asked.

  He did not glance at Tymon and Zero as he dipped his quill-tip in ink, poised over the blank page to write. Tymon did not grasp that the booming words were being addressed to him, until he realised that the question had been asked in Argosian. He snapped to attention as the man looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘My name is Tymon!’ he exclaimed belatedly. He patted Zero’s arm: the Marak lad’s shoulder was too high to reach. ‘And this is Zero, sir.’

  The clerk scratched a few marks on his book. ‘You’re both Hordannan now,’ he remarked. ‘There are no other names here.’

  He continued to write in silence. Tymon could not read the script from where he stood, and waited with trepidation. But the clerk appeared to enjoy having them hang on his every word, perhaps in retaliation against the soldiers. One of the guards snorted with suppressed frustration.

  ‘The assignation,’ the slave-clerk resumed mildly, after an excruciating pause, ‘will be Third Regiment. A moment more, if you please,’ he added, as the guards spun smartly about, preparing to leave the room with the prisoners. The clerk fixed his level gaze on Tymon. ‘You’re no Nurry,’ he drawled, in Lantrian. ‘And you speak our language.’

  A hush descended on the room and the sound of scratching pens ceased. Tymon heard a muffled sound of whispering through the ringing in his ear. A few of the scribes nearby glanced slyly at him.

  ‘I’m Argosian,’ he mumbled in the foreign tongue, dredging up the words learned long ago. ‘I studied Lantrian in school. A little bit.’

  The clerk strolled out from behind his desk. He was a short man and overweight, but carried himself with dignity, coming forward to peer closely at Tymon’s face.

  ‘That wound on your ear,’ he said, as the soldiers puffed and shuffled with impatience at the delay. ‘Does it prevent you from hearing on one side?’

  Tymon nodded, embarrassed. He was about to say that he had no problem on the other side, when the clerk interrupted him. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘That’ll do just fine.’ He turned briskly to the guards. ‘That one’s Third Regiment,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Zero to differentiate him from Tymon. ‘This one is House.’

  Tymon stared in anguish as his friend was dragged away by the guards. He had broken his promise to look after Zero already: they had been assigned to entirely different locations. The Nurian boy gave him a terrified grin as he was propelled out of the office.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ continued the clerk, to Tymon. ‘You happen to fulfil the requirements of our glorious master, Lord Dayan, who wishes to procure for himself a secretary fluent in Argosian. I presume you are able to read and write in your native tongue, as well as understand ours?’

  Tymon nodded dumbly again, still gazing at the doors as they swung shut behind the guards. The office scribes returned to their copies as if all were now back to normal, a thicket of scratching pens and rustling leaves adding to the crackle in his ear.

  ‘Good,’ said the slave-clerk. He took Tymon by the elbow, and steered him out of another, smaller, exit on the far side of the room, pushing him down a narrow back staircase. ‘You’re a seminary lad, that’s clear. I don’t know how you came to be in the hold of a plantation barge, but I suspect it had something to do with crossing your superiors at home, no? Well, I have some advice for you, choirboy. You’d better listen up, no matter how deaf you are. Snap out of whatever doldrums you’re in: that’s an indulgence you can no longer afford. You’re about to be given a reprieve your Nurian friend can never hope for.’

  ‘That’s sound advice,’ added the Oracle quietly, as they wove once more through the labyrinthine corridors of the customs building. ‘A House position will allow you to survive long enough to help Zero. Don’t jeopardise your position by trying to escape immediately. That time will come. We’re far enough from Argos city now to perform a Reading: tonight, we’ll be able to contact the Focals.’

  A Reading! Hope mixed in equal parts with anxiety in Tymon’s heart as he suffered the clerk to lead him out of the building, and away from the docks. He wondered how he would be able to help his friend. Though he had no doubt that the Oracle was right, it galled him deeply to abandon Zero, even for a little while. And he was not at all reassured by the clerk’s observations, walking along the road by the perimeter of the branch-crater.

  ‘Don’t last more than a month down there, most of ’em,’ the Lantrian sighed, as they passed the start of the main ramp, spiralling down into the mine.

  Tymon peered into the yawning chasm by the side of the road with misgiving. There was no sign of Zero or the guards on the ramp, lit faintly by the last dregs of evening sun.

  ‘The Lord stipulated that he wished to have a secretary he could trust implicitly,’ the nameless clerk continued. ‘Deafness is the ultimate
discretion, of course. From now on, you must learn to hear only what the Lord wishes you to hear. Do you know why?’

  Tymon shook his head, miserably silent as they walked on.

  ‘Well then, I have a few more words of advice for you. Give me your good ear.’

  The clerk seemed to be taking a particular pleasure in informing Tymon’s ignorance; the young man could not tell whether it was because he hated all Argosians and wished to see him humiliated, or because he genuinely wanted to help him survive the mine. The little Lantrian stopped in the road and faced him, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘You should know, of course, that as a slave, you aren’t truly human,’ he said. ‘You don’t have a soul, according to Lantrian law. You’d better get used to that or you won’t survive here. But most of all —’ he lowered his voice, glancing briefly about him to make sure no one was close by — ‘you should be aware of one very simple fact. Chal produces hardwood. It also, on occasion, produces corewood. Have you heard of core, choirboy?’

  The whispered word rustled in Tymon’s good ear, a term distantly familiar to him. He remembered the glittering rings adorning the fingers of Governor Omni Salassi, and the tales he had heard during his student days of the fossilised nuggets extracted from the depths of the Lantrian mines.

  ‘Core is the great wealth of Chal and its most dangerous secret,’ murmured the clerk, still fixing Tymon with his bright knowing look. ‘Slaves have lost their fingers after touching it. They have lost their tongues after speaking about it. You are lucky to have given up your ears already. I suggest you put aside all thoughts of your old existence, and concentrate on serving your new master, so that you may one day enjoy a life of relative health and prosperity.’