A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Orphan took all her will to pull herself together, turned her back on the Bastard, who was approaching from his house, and said firmly, “The conk won’t tell him. She’ll make up something interesting. Then she’ll find some way to get pregnant by someone else and convince the lord it’s his. That’s what she’ll do.”

  Bastard arrived in time to hear the end of this remark.

  “Such an imaginative young woman,” he sneered, with a tentative clutch at Orphan’s backside. “So opinionated, for one who knows so little of life.”

  Orphan moved away from his groping hand with a feeling of revulsion. Despite Oracle’s prophecy and Hero’s threat, Bastard continued to be free, both with his hands and his nighttime whispers.

  “Getting pregnant by someone other than the gang-lord would be difficult,” mused Burned Man, moving toward his porch railing. “She probably shares women’s quarters, and they’re usually well guarded.”

  “Nonetheless, that’s what she’ll do,” said Orphan stubbornly, knowing it was so. Sometimes she knew these things. It wasn’t the way Oracle knew them, seeing them in a vision. It was just knowing, the way she knew two and two made four. They just did.

  “Listen to her,” said Bastard with an unpleasant sneer in Orphan’s direction. “Sounding all grown up, which, of course, she is. You know, Orphan, you’re getting a little old for your archetype. A little big for your … panties.”

  “There’ve been Orphans older than she is,” objected Oracle in a troubled voice.

  “Older and uglier,” agreed Burned Man, with a gallant bow in Orphan’s direction and a smile that would have been charming had he had any lips.

  “Very little older,” Bastard insisted. “What are you, girl? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

  Orphan shrugged, aware of a sudden apprehension. “No,” she almost shouted. “Nineteen. At most.”

  Bastard sneered. “You sound like Ingenue. But let’s count it up. You were a toddler when I came, and I’ve been here what? Seventeen, eighteen years?” He grinned at her, a flesh-eating grin. “Watch it, woman. Any day now, they’ll be sending us a new Orphan, and then what’ll you do?”

  “Stop cleaning house for you,” Orphan said vehemently. “That’s the first thing.”

  It was some satisfaction, seeing his face as he turned and stalked away. Let him think about doing his own work! Last time it had taken her four days to get his house clean. Piles of stuff all over everything, wherever he’d dropped them! Compared to him, Miser was neat!

  Lately, she’d been doing entirely too much housekeeping. There wasn’t a wide choice of employment in the village, and archetypes who had no wherewithal coming in—like Orphan—had to earn from those who did—like Bastard, who had remittances from his family, or Oracle, who had money from her fees, or even Burned Man and Drowned Woman, who had Martyr’s and Suicide’s pensions from their families. Orphan had nothing at all.

  “Poor as a churchmouse,” she reminded herself, eyes fixed on Bastard’s departing back. “As a gnawed bone. As a handful of ashes. As a knacker’s horse.”

  Enough of that. Orphan gestured toward the chairs by her door as she said to Oracle, “Have a cup of tea with me.”

  Though the fire had burned to ashes, the kettle still steamed. Orphan rinsed out the pot with hot water, measured in the tea, then filled the pot to let it brew while she fetched her other cup. It was cracked, but it would hold tea if you squeezed it while you were drinking.

  Outside the door, Oracle leaned back in one of the two rickety chairs watching Bastard as he walked away. “Hateful though he is, Bastard’s right about one thing.”

  Orphan, who was desperately trying to keep her mind off the young man on the horse by making a mental shopping list for the next time Peddler came, did not ask what Bastard was right about. She emerged from the door to see Oracle unfolding a napkin on the rickety table between the chairs, a napkin holding half a dozen buttery scones.

  “I tucked them in my pocket before all that fuss this morning,” mumbled Oracle. “I thought you might be hungry.”

  “I’m always hungry,” Orphan admitted as she grabbed a scone. “I can’t remember a time I wasn’t hungry. Except that feast, that time, when the warlord from that coastal gang paid you in gold because you foresaw a great naval victory, and you paid Huntsman to bring us a whole pig. I actually got stuffed that time.”

  “Ah, yes.” Oracle licked her lips at the lubricious memory. Roast pig. Fat crackling over the flames. Everybody loved it but Burned Man, who couldn’t stand the smell of meat roasting, and who could blame him for that? “Too bad the victory I foresaw was for the other side.”

  “You said you foresaw a great victory. It was his own fault that he assumed you meant it for him.” Ruminatively, Orphan bit into another scone. Despite being crumbly they were wonderfully filling

  “Where was Hero this morning, while all that was going on?” Oracle wondered, looking down toward Hero’s tent, still closed tight, with its banners hanging limp in the morning still.

  “I heard his horse go clopping by in the early hours of the morning. He’s still asleep, I suppose, though he often wakes me with his morning declamations.”

  As though in response, Hero’s high peaked tent bulged feraciously and produced. Hero himself, who yawned, stretched, then strode to the center of the marketplace, where he rattled his sword on his shield and declaimed in a deep voice:

  “Look upon the world’s Hero, rescuer of maidens, restorer of kingdoms, remedy of dragons. Queens and priestesses regard me with favor. The sun admits my glory, and the moon my integrity.”

  “No false modesty there,” murmured Oracle.

  “Bassos don’t need modesty,” remarked Orphan. “Any more than peacocks do.”

  “True,” Oracle acknowledged as Hero went on:

  “My power comes from purity of purpose. Only the wicked die at my intention; I am unstained by their deaths. I am goodness’s executioner, honesty’s hangman. I am the blameless warrior who descends into the pit of evil and emerges unscathed. I take no account of law, but I put my finger upon the scales of justice and bring the balance. I am the restoration of righteousness.

  “I am maleness incorruptible who takes celibacy as a wife. I am he who honors all women but knows none. I am the preserver of innocence, the champion of virtue, the paradigm of purity. In me is all chastity, my heart is the house of decorum.

  “Yea, though I seek corruption, I am incorruptible; though my weapons are bloodied, my soul is unstained.”

  He clanged his sword three times on his shield, strode around behind the tent, got on his horse, and rode slowly up the village street, gravely saluting Oracle and Orphan as he passed.

  When he had gone, Oracle shook her head in amusement. “Like a big archetypal Boy Scout.”

  “He’s sort of in love with himself,” said Orphan.

  “That’s what I just said,” said Oracle. “He has to love himself; he’s not allowed to love anyone else.”

  “Hero says he loves honor.”

  “Yes, well, some love honor, some love the ideal, and some love God. But it’s always one’s own honor, one’s own ideal, and one’s own God, isn’t it. There’s a certain narcissism there.”

  Orphan was stubborn about it. “He’s been very nice to me. He taught me a lot of things.”

  Oracle frowned at herself. “He has been nice to you, and I shouldn’t criticize him. He’s typical, God knows, which is what he’s supposed to be. Besides, I didn’t come to discuss Hero. I baked the scones to lure you into a time of quiet talk, and we must talk. It can’t be put off any longer. Bastard uttered a truth this morning: You are old for an Orphan.”

  Orphan banged her fist on the step, not wanting to hear any more about it. “Damn it, Oracle!”

  “It’s true!”

  “Well, hell, then I’ll be the Spinster Sister!”

  “We already have an Artist’s Wife, which is practically the same thing. And you’re too pretty and loquacious, beside
s.”

  “Pretty!” Orphan’s jaw dropped. What did the woman mean, pretty?

  “Try though I may to make you look waiflike, it doesn’t take! Whenever you wash yourself, your hair shines like polished ebony, your skin is smooth and sweet! Orphans are supposed to be pale and washed-out-looking, but you’re a lovely brown when you’ve had a little sun. Orphans are supposed to slouch, and you’ve never mastered the slouch. Your features are interesting.” Oracle stared at her, taking inventory. “Nice straight nose, wide mouth, fringy lashes. Your eyes are a lovely nut-brown and big enough for any two young women. All in all, you’re an attractive, shapely person who has become more un-Orphanish with every passing season!”

  She glared angrily, as though Orphan had failed in some simple but important task.

  “Was that why one of those purple men was staring at me all the time he was here?” Orphan asked, her face growing hot.

  Oracle turned toward her, staring in her own right. “Who? When?”

  Orphan swallowed deeply. “When the concubine came One of the men—he kept staring at me.”

  “Perhaps it was only curiosity,” said Oracle, half-doubtfully. “No doubt that was it. Because you don’t really look like an Orphan.”

  “I’ll be something else.”

  “My point is, there’s nothing else you can be.”

  Which was probably true enough. The village afforded little opportunity. There weren’t many vacancies she might fill. The ruined castle waited for any member of a Royal Family, but there hadn’t been anyone in it for a generation or more. Privately, Orphan thought it fit only for an archetypal Ghost. Both the Temple and the Parsonage were empty, but Orphan didn’t aspire to either priesthood or preacherdom. Ingenue was old for her job, but Orphan didn’t know how to flirt or giggle.

  Oracle went on doggedly, “The matter worries me enough that I’d like to offer you a prediction.”

  Orphan looked up from under her lashes. “What prediction?”

  “Yours. In the cavern. You should be entitled to a prediction.”

  “I can’t pay you. Never in a million years.”

  “I know I’m not supposed to predict without a fee, but I can set whatever fee I like. I’ll set this fee at—this cup of tea!”

  “A prediction for me! What will it say?”

  “Child, how the hell do I know? I never know until the time comes. I’m no phony soothsayer, no carnival trickster! I’m Oracle! I’ve told you my history! How they sent me here from my home by the Faulty Sea because I’m Oracle, I light the fire and burn the incense, I sound the gong, I mount the tripod—all that because it’s customary—but whether I do it or not, the words come. They come out of nothing, or out of the smoke, out of the echoes, out of goodness knows where. I don’t make them up, and I don’t know what they’ll be until I hear them pouring from my own lips!”

  “I thought—”

  “No matter what you thought. Never mind. I’d never have ended up here if I weren’t the genuine article. Look around you, girl! The Bastard is really a Bastard, isn’t he? And Burned Man? Can you look at him and think he’s a phony?”

  He wasn’t, of course.

  “And remember when the ogre came down out of the hills, eating this one and that one—wasn’t he monstrous? And when Hero killed him, wasn’t he the quintessential Hero? Wasn’t the Faithful Sidekick exactly what he should be?”

  “It was too bad about him,” sighed Orphan. Though it had been a long time ago, she could still remember.

  “So it follows that our Orphan must be the genuine article,” Oracle went on, not to be sidetracked into sentiment.

  Orphan shrugged. “How would I know, Oracle? All anybody knows is some little man dumped me off a donkey and said, ‘Here’s your Orphan.’ ”

  Oracle got to her feet and shook herself. “Well, child, you can do as you like about the prediction, but if I were you, considering that I’m giving it away practically for free, I’d take advantage of the offer.”

  Orphan stared at her feet and didn’t answer.

  “Another day, another duller,” said the guardian-angel.

  “Hush,” she murmured, not really hearing. “Be still, angel.”

  “Well?” demanded Oracle.

  “Oh, all right!” Orphan grumped, getting herself out of the chair and following Oracle as she strode back toward the cavern. The air smelled of dust and resin and crushed herbs, all with an overlay of Hero’s horse.

  The path to the cavern went through several small caves littered with stuff people had dropped or thrown away in anger or despair. Clockworks and bedsprings and petitions written on scrolls. Mostly prayers that the petitioner wouldn’t die of IDDIs.

  “You ought to clean this place up,” grumped Orphan, staring at the sandy floor, which was covered with bare footprints and sandal prints and even donkey prints where Woodcutter had led his beast down into the Cavern of Prophecy. The way got darker the farther they went, and she stopped at last, unable to see where she was going.

  “One moment,” murmured Oracle. “The fire’s gone out.”

  Darkness drew away from a tiny flame, which became a torch, which became a fire in the pit. Familiar light flickered across the rising pillars and half pillars of rock, the hanging forest of stony branches and twigs. Orphan found it comforting and warm, even the pairs of eyes peering from the corners.

  “Stand there,” said Oracle, pointing to a low circular podium near the fire, “where the petitioner stands.”

  Orphan moved into the circle while Oracle threw incense on the fire, whanged the gong a couple of times, then heaved herself onto the thick leather pad atop the tripod. Smoke blew into her face Her eyes rolled back.

  “What question do you bring to the Oracle?” she cried in a strangled voice.

  Orphan shook her head, puzzled. What question? Where she had come from? Where she was going next? What she should be doing? What would happen to her?

  “What question should I ask?” she blurted.

  Oracle’s eyes snapped open, white, no see-parts showing, just blind ivory orbs, like somebody dead. She trembled and stretched her arms into the darkness. Her voice came from some far-off, echoey place:

  “Ask one only child.

  Ask two who made her

  Ask three thrones that tower,

  Gnawed by four to make them fall.

  Find five champions,

  And six set upon salvation,

  And answer seven questions in the place of power.”

  Orphan heard the words as though through a heavy fog. Only one of them was clear, the word thrones, which rang in her head like a mighty bell. The other words she heard, remembered, but that one permeated her, shook her, she shuddered with the sound of it, the pictures it evoked in her mind: inchoate, terrible, yet as seductive as the smell of food when she was hungry. A need. An appetite.

  Oracle panted. The smoke rose around her like a blown veil, and she began to cough, the pupils of her eyes sliding down out of her head and coming to rest at the center of her eyeballs with an almost audible clang.

  “Damn!” she gasped, struggling down from the tripod. “All this fragrance is getting too much for me.” She coughed again. “How did you like it?”

  “I—it did something in my head,” said Orphan fearfully, her eyes wide.

  “I should hope so,” snapped Oracle. “Prophecies should do that.”

  “I mean something strange,” she cried. “Like somebody calling me, Oracle.”

  “Well now?” Oracle sat down with a thump.

  “I didn’t understand it. Don’t. Understand it.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. If you understood it right off, it wouldn’t be worth much, would it?”

  “I didn’t understand it at all. And I don’t know why I feel this way. As though I should be … going off somewhere. Right now At once!”

  “I thought parts of it were unusually clear,” grunted Oracle. “ ‘Ask one only child’ and ‘ask two who made her’ are easy en
ough. You’re supposed to ask who you are and who your parents were. Those questions are universal. Everyone wants to know who he or she is; everyone wants to know who his parents were. That’s our anchor in time. Also, it tells you you have no siblings, which is interesting.”

  “All right,” said Orphan fretfully. “Who am I, and who were they?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “You said I was supposed to ask!”

  “You are! But don’t ask me. I’ve already given you your bargain-rate prophecy, the answer to your question. Your question was, what question should you ask, and I’ve told you.”

  Orphan felt a familiar black wave of despair rise up inside her, one she knew well, one she kept afloat on only by resolutely ignoring it. She cried, “I hadn’t thought about who I am! No matter what you prophesy, that doesn’t change what I am, does it?”

  Oracle sighed deeply. “Hush, child, hush Some roles are permanent, like Oracle or Bastard. But Orphan is a temporary role, like Baby or Student, or Young Lover, or Bride. One outgrows those archetypes. One should, at any rate.”

  “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Orphan managed to say. “But … if there’s no room for me here, no answers here, it means.…” It meant terror, was what it meant. It meant letting the waiting blackness beyond the notch in the hills well up and drown her. It meant answering the call, the voice she heard in her head, going to some unknown place, to do some unknown and totally strange thing.

  Oracle turned her face away, hiding her expression. “Yes, it means going out there somewhere.” She gestured at the road, leading away over the mountain. “That’s where the answers to most things are. Out in the world.”

  Orphan’s jaw was rigid, her hands were clenched tightly. This whole subject was one she had learned to avoid ever since she’d been old enough to think. She’d learned not to think about it. She’d taught herself not to think about it, but now … with this summons ricocheting about in her head. Like people calling her. Not “Orphan,” but some other name. Her real true name. Whatever that was.